kdgog: Ah, I see the difference between
https://www.gog.com/game/kingdom_rush and
https://www.gog.com/game/kingdom_rush_origins in the Linux specs section. One has a scary list of files (the one that didn't work). It's a shame it is only on the store page - I don't see that when I go to purchased games and download an executable. Some of my games don't even have store pages any more, e.g. when a GOG game stops being sold, or gets a change of distributor, meaning that info might disappear.
It's not too difficult to work out what's needed once you're more familiar with things. Plus as Ganni1987 said, most games use a limited selection of common libraries (looking at the list given on the store page for Kingdom Rush, those are all commonly used libraries) so it makes sense to simply install those soon after performing a fresh install - this is partly the intention behind my common dependencies meta-package; it makes it easy to install them all in one go.
kdgog: I'm still not sure why - if the files are needed - they're not just added to the download, as happens with Windows games?
This is because it is best to use the versions of those libraries provided by the system; it would be possible to include them with the games, but this could cause compatibility issues as not everyone uses Ubuntu-based distros and it could cause compatibility issues with later versions, in addition to increasing the download size.
The Steam Runtime works around this to an extent by bundling a large number of libraries (it's a bit like having a very basic Ubuntu install with all of the common packages installed).
kdgog: Mint was one of the three Linux versions I considered trying, but I got put off by the three versions. I couldn't find lists of which were best on what specs, and what the real differences were. I wanted to install Linux on more than one machine so just went for Zorin in the end because it looked most similar to Windows 7 and I could just get one install file on a bootable USB, rather than needing different ones for different computers.
The difference between them is just the desktop environment/GUI, which is largely a matter of personal preference so it doesn't really matter all that much. Regardless of which version you choose you're not committed to any desktop environment since you can install a different one afterwards (you can have multiple DEs installed at the same time & select which to use at login).
As for performance, even the heaviest of Linux desktop environments are less resource-intensive than Windows so that shouldn't be too big a concern :)
