Check out part two here

With the release of Linux Mint 18.2 last weekend and the update to my Linux Mint beginner's guide today, it's time for another "Try Linux" giveaway :)

It's a great time to use Linux; it's easier to use and better supported than ever, with more & more games now coming to Linux. And as the Linux userbase grows so does the incentive for manufacturers and developers to support it, leading to even better support as time goes on.

Wine has also been seeing huge improvements, allowing many more Windows-only games and other software to run on Linux. Front-ends for Wine such as and [url=https://www.codeweavers.com/products/crossover-linux]CrossOver make it a lot easier to use as well. And then there are projects such as vv221's project and [url=https://www.gog.com/mix/adamhms_linux_wine_wrappers]my own Wine wrapper scripts to make things even easier for select games :)

So, if anyone's even a little curious about Linux I invite you to take a look at the guide and consider trying it: The "Try Linux" Repost/Rewrite (a "beginner's guide")

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I will be running this as a series of smaller giveaways as it's easier to manage this way. While the focus is on Linux games, I am also including some Windows games that I've made Wine wrappers for (except Morrowind - use OpenMW for that) to make them more easily playable on Linux. Those games link to the release posts where you can find more details & download links for the wrappers.

The prize list for this giveaway is:

> The Adventures of Shuggy
> Bastion
> Defender's Quest
> Deus Ex GOTY Edition (Deus Ex for Linux)
> The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind GOTY Edition (OpenMW)
> Freedom Planet
> Hitman Classics pack (Hitman series for Linux)
> Hotline Miami
> Infinifactory
> Mirror's Edge (Mirror's Edge for Linux)
> Mousecraft
> Sam & Max Hit the Road
> Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun
> TRI: Of Friendship and Madness
> The Witcher (The Witcher for Linux)

To enter, you just need to post here listing the games you want in order of preference. The giveaway is open to everyone, subject to the rules below - using or trying Linux is encouraged, but not a requirement in any way. Feel free to enter for as many prizes as you're interested in; only one prize can be awarded per winner.

This giveaway will run until Friday 14th July at 18:00 UTC. Due to problems with downrepping in previous giveaways, the winners will *not* be publicly revealed unless they decide to do so themselves.

Rules:
- No rep requirement but I reserve the right to disqualify entries at my discretion.
- Winners will be selected randomly after the giveaway ends
- Each winner will receive one prize - whichever of the remaining prizes is their most preferred.
- Please only enter for games that you don't already have (entering to replace retail copies of older games is ok though).
- Please only enter for games that your system can run.
- Please only enter for games that you're interested in, intend to play & won't just let rot in a backlog.
- Keys are for your own use only/not to be traded (except for leftovers from multi-game keys which may be re-gifted but not traded)
- Anything not redeemed within one week after being awarded will either be given to another entrant or reused for a future giveaway.

Great giveaway as usual! Thanks a lot! Nit in this time because I haven't finished the last game I got from you (Broforce)

Bro, I read about the Linux Mint release and I thought of you:) Were you on a vacation lately?

Fantastic giveaway as always, thanks Adam. I'm browsing the games and they are really great.

IN for

Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun

EDIT: changed my mind

Thank you for this nice giveaway.
I'm in with these titles in decreasing order of preference :

Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun
Mirror's Edge
The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind GOTY Edition
Bastion
Deus Ex GOTY Edition
Hitman Classics pack

Good luck to everyone.

So how does one go about upgrading Linux Mint 17.1 to 18.2. What is the best way to maintain a Linux system that is easy to upgrade but you have no data loss and need very little tweaking to get the previous settings on the new version?

Thanks for giveaway adamhm!

I'm in for:
> Deus Ex GOTY Edition
> Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun
> The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind GOTY Edition
> Hotline Miami
> Mirror's Edge

Thanks for the giveaway! Long time Linux user here.

I'm in for Deus Ex GOTY Edition.

I've wanted to try Deus Ex for a long time but never found guts to buy it.

I've just been focusing on updating the guide & planning all this. There are upgrade options between 17.x releases and 18.x releases through the Update Manager, and IIRC there is also a way to upgrade from 17.3 to 18 but IMO the best & most reliable approach to upgrading is to just reinstall.

Reinstalling Mint is a lot less hassle than reinstalling Windows anyway... I always dreaded having to reinstall Windows because there's a million different options scattered all over the place that need to be changed plus a long list of services to disable as well as many reboots along the way, and it always seemed to take up a whole evening to get everything set up to my liking (and then over the following week or so would still keep running into little things here & there I forgot about). I imagine it's even worse with Win10 now, with all the privacy-invading junk.

It's a lot different with Mint though, as everything's done much faster and the settings aren't scattered all over the place like on Windows (and most of the defaults are fine anyway). Backup home directory, reinstall, then copy over the stuff I want to keep from the backup. All of your user data is normally kept in your home directory, so simply keeping a backup of that should keep all of your user data & user-specific settings intact. One common "trick" is to create a separate partition for the home directory when installing - this way all of your user data is kept separate to the rest of the system, and when you reinstall you can simply reuse the existing home partition to restore it all.

(I don't do it this way myself though - I just backup everything I want to keep prior to reinstalling)

Thanks a lot!

Thanks for the giveaway!

1. Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun
2. Deus Ex GOTY Edition

Thanks for the gifts adamhm!

I see this as an opportunity to the play the classics

> The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind GOTY Edition,
> Deus Ex GOTY Edition and
> Hitman Classics pack,

because I do not pay for windows only versions (but freebies are fine).

Thank you again =)

> Hotline Miami
> The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind GOTY Edition
> Hitman Classics pack
> Sam & Max Hit the Road

As always, your giveaway is credit to the community :)

Not in, this time.

I read about that release and I'm a bit confused. Perhaps you're the right person to ask. Mint was always based on Ubuntu editions released twice a year (April and October AFAIR). Every two years there was a LTS Ubuntu distro and I always switched to Mint based on that LTS edition. Support for other editions was too short for me.

Last time I've jumped to 18.0 (i.e. Sarah) and now I'm lost. I'm looking on this list of Mint releases and understand nothing. Are we still on Ubuntu 16.04? But here it looks like 18.2 is LTS. And all Mint editions since 17.0 are LTS. How is that possible? And how long is that LTS? :)

I'm always making fresh installation and my purpose was always to:
a) make a new installation as rarily as possible
b) have the newest possible kernel and software ;)
Any idea if it makes sense to change to 18.2 in considering such priorities?