Time for a sequel to my Aug 2022 post especially with Windows 10 approaching end of life in October (although soon you can extend MS security updates for it for 1 year for $30).
If you are already running Linux Mint you can skip to where the Steam Installation section begins, and go from there. If you want to see how I completely replaced Windows, continue from here. This post is much more detailed than my last one. The PC involved is my oldest one, and I’m currently using it as my primary PC at the moment. You will of course need to create a bootable “live” flash drive using Rufus, Balena Etcher, or Ventvoy after downloading the Linux Mint installation iso.
Motherboard Warning If you have a newer motherboard be aware you may run into issues requiring changes to the BIOS settings and/or troubleshooting regarding TPM, Secure Boot, UEFI, and CSM. Make backups of your existing system before you start installing anything of course!
PC Specs
Alienware Aurora (64 bit)
CPU: Intel i7-8700 3.2 Ghz
GPU: GeForce GTX 1070 Ti
RAM: 32 GB
OS: Windows 11 Pro (Upgraded from Windows 10 Pro)
MoBo: Alienware model: 0VDT73
DISKS: 256GB SSD, 2TB SATA
BIOS Changes and Booting
Rebooted, entered BIOS
Disabled “Secure Boot”
Changed SATA Operations from “RAID on” to “AHCI”
Selected to boot from USB1-UEFI OS (the bootable LM flash drive)
Selected “Start Linux Mint 22.1 Cinnamon 64-Bit”
Linux Mint Installation
After Linux Mint starts using the Live USB, check basic things work: mouse, keyboard, sound, internet, bluetooth, and access to hard drives.
Start the Linux Mint Install (Icon on the Desktop)
I chose the option to “Erase Disk and Install Linux Mint” onto my SSD.
Complete the installation process, remove the bootable flash drive, and boot from your newly formatted disk installed with Linux mint.
My secondary 2 TB SATA drive had extra partitions from Windows I didn’t want so I used the DISKS application to delete the extra partitions and reformatted it with ext4 as one partition across the entire drive.
Created a backup of the OS using TIMESHIFT to create a snapshot. The backup storage location defaulted to the SSD, so I changed it to the SATA drive by going to the settings for TIMESHIFT, selected LOCATION and changed it to point to the SATA drive. Created a fresh backup that appears on the SATA drive.
Using DRIVER MANAGER I updated the video driver since I have an NVIDIA GPU. Changed from the Xorg default driver to the (recommended) NVIDIA driver.
Using FIREWALL, I enabled it. Kept the default settings with DENY to Incoming (denies connections originating from the outside world).
Using an external bluetooth speaker I ensured I could pair/connect to it for sound.
Miscellaneous
Using the File Manager, go to Edit/Preferences/Context Menus, and check the box for “Make Link”. This is so right clicking any file or folder lets you create a link (shortcut).
If you have a secondary drive, and want it to automatically mount on startup use the DISKS application. Select the partition, then select the gear icon, uncheck the “User Session Defaults”, and ensure the “Mount at Startup” box is checked.
Password Management
I’ve always used only locally stored passwords that I keep in an encrypted file system that I can unlock with a single master password. It’s not as convenient as modern cloud based password programs, but this eliminates any possibility of a security breach affecting ALL my passwords on one company’s cloud server. For Windows PC’s I used Cypherix’s application Cryptainer LE (free for personal use), and I wanted to setup a similar method where I could just copy the files containing my passwords without going through an import process. The solution for me was CryptMount.
Install CryptMount from the Software Manager.
Restart the PC.
Open a terminal (command line interface) and start the setup program
sudo /usr/sbin/cryptmount-setup
Enter your Linux Mint password to authenticate
The setup program asks you for only a few things
Filesystem name to use (I used “cryptcon”)
User Owner Name (Use your username; if you enter a blank it will use root which prevents you from copying/editing files into the encrypted folder easily because of permissions. I originally entered blank and had to manually change the owner to my username with the command
sudo chown <username> crypt
The setup program will ask you to enter the password you want to use for accessing this encrypted file system. This is your “master password”; don’t forget it as you can’t recover any files stored in this encrypted container without it. When you are entering the password for the first time in the setup program the cursor does not indicate you are typing anything, but it IS being entered.
The setup program should complete successfully.
To access the encrypted files you mount the filesystem with the following command. Then it will ask for your password for the encrypted filesystem.
cryptmount <filesystem name>
To unmount (close) the encrypted filesystem the command is
cryptmount --unmount <filesystem name>
Steam Installation
1a. Before installing Steam from Software Manager, run the following command to install 32bit version support because Steam needs it as a 32 bit application even though most of the games on it are 64 bit:
sudo dpkg --add-architecture i386; apt update
1b. Install Steam from Software Manager.
1c. Start Steam, and Login. Navigate to Steam settings, find the Compatibility section, and toggle on the "Enable Steam Play for all other titles" option. Restart your computer.
2. Buy the Steam version of ESO if you don't own it already.
3. Check that your game downloads are set to the correct drive. You do this by going to the Steam Settings, then Storage. You should see your Local Drive at the top. If you want Steam to download games to a different drive click on the bar where your Local Drive is shown, and select “Add Drive”. Steam will pop up a window to “Add a new Steam library folder”. If you have multiple drives it may not be the correct drive you want. To change, click on the directory shown, and you’ll get a drop down where you can select “Let me choose another location”. Select the correct drive, and you can probably change the defaulted directory structure too but I did not. Click the “Add” button, and that should take you back to the STORAGE display where you can now select the drive shown and change it to the one you added.
4. Install ESO from Steam but be sure to select the drive you want to install it on if you have more than one drive. For me the first time it didn’t default to the secondary drive I’d just set up in the STORAGE settings.
5. Go to your Steam library of games, right click on the ESO game, and pull up the Properties.
a. Under the General section set the Launch Options to the following:
PROTON_SET_GAME_DRIVE=1 %command%
b. Under the Compatibility section make sure the "Force the use of a specific Steam Play compatibility tool" checkbox is checked, and change the selection below it to the Proton version you want to use. A few years ago I used Proton 6.3-8 successfully on a laptop. Proton 9.0-4 is working good for me after playing ESO, doing daily crafting writs, dungeon runs, and house decorating with all my addons active.
6. To get my addons for the game, I used a flash drive and copied the folders and files “Addons”, “SavedVariables”, “GuildHistory”, “Screenshots”, “AddOnSettings.txt”, and “UserSettings.txt from the ESO “Live” folder on my Windows computer to the “Live” folder on my secondary drive located at:
/mnt/6fdf9ac7-b3f0-464b-88dc-f4d9edf2bf5c/SteamLibrary/steamapps/compatdata/306130/pfx/drive_c/users/steamuser/My Documents/Elder Scrolls Online/live/AddOns
If you have a single drive it may start differently (not necessarily from /mnt).
The 306130 number is the number that Steam uses to identify the ESO game. You can find these numbers by using your web browser to find the game on the steam website. The url will have that number at the end of the address, e.g.
https://store.steampowered.com/agecheck/app/306130/
7.Link your ESO Account Game to your steam account. I did this from the ESO Account Website, but it is also possible to initiate it from Steam.
8. When launching the game, the launcher stayed on top of the game even though the “active” window was the game itself. Simply alt-tab to the launcher window and then minimize or close it to get it out of the way.
Minion and Flatseal Installation
Because Minion is a Flatpack package, Flatseal is needed to set permissions for Minion to access the addon folders where ESO is installed. It may or may not be required if you have a single drive, but for my case with ESO on a secondary drive I definitely needed it.
1. Install Minion from Software Manager
2. Install Flatseal from Software Manager, and determine the path to your game drive (same as what was used if you copied your addons from another PC).
3. In Flatseal select Minion on the left side of the window.
4. Scroll down to the File permission section, and click the small icon to add a line for a new path and copy/paste the addon path into the new line.
5. Click the small icon again to add another line, and copy/paste the path to the addon folder again, but edit it so “Addons” is changed to “SavedVariables”.
6. Click the small icon again to add another line, and copy/paste the path to the addon folder again, but delete “Addons” so “Live” is the last part of the path.
7. Ensure the drive where ESO is installed is mounted.
8. Start up Minion and go through the normal process of setting it up.
9. Minion recognized about 90% of my addons, but not all. So I manually searched for the missing ones in Minion (even though they were present in the addon directory), and installed them through Minion. After that Minion worked fine with all the addons.
TTC Pricing Updates
1. Setup a bash script in the TTC addon folder to update TTC pricing, and then setup a launcher on the desktop to run it by double-clicking the launcher. Make sure to set it up to run in the terminal because you'll need to type an "A" as an answer to replacing all the pricing files.
2. Bash script file location (yours may be different if you have a single drive): /media/<username>/Games/SteamLibrary/steamapps/compatdata/306130/pfx/drive_c/users/steamuser/My Documents/Elder Scrolls Online/live/AddOns/TamrielTradeCentre
3.Bash script
a. Name I used located inside the TTC addon folder: TTC_Prices.sh
b. Bash script contents (remove the quotes):
"#!/bin/bash"
"curl
https://us.tamrieltradecentre.com/download/PriceTable –output TTCpricefile.zip"
"unzip TTCpricefile.zip"
ESO Logs Client
For those involved in trials, ESO Logs is a great resource to study what goes on during a trial (or dungeons and arenas), and many trial leaders regularly use this client to upload logs of trials to the website.
Download the Linux client from
https://www.esologs.com/client/download. It is a single appimage file, so move the file wherever you want it (I put mine on my Desktop). You make it executable by (right click/Properties/Permissions) checking the box for “Allow executing file as program”, and then double-click it to run it.
Gaming Mouse Buttons
To map keyboard keys to mouse buttons, install Input-Remapper from the Software Manager. The software works great, but the usage instructions I found for it were not very useful on the website and in YouTube videos, so I’ve written step-by-step instructions below.
Starting up the Input-Remapper it recognized the mouse I have on the PC as an older Naga Hex V2.
1. Click on your mouse (in my case it was Razer Razer Naga Hex V2)
2. Click on “New Preset”
3. Now on the Editor tab click the “+Add” button, then click the edit icon to the right of the line that appeared as “Empty Mapping”, and enter a name for the first mouse button to remap. My mouse has 7 buttons on the side each defaulting to the numbers 1 through 7 so seven mappings are required. The first was to change my mouse “4” button to be a “1” button. So I named the map “Mouse 4 to 1”. Hit ENTER to get out of naming editor.
4. Make sure the Output side has Key or Macro selected first (not “Analog Axis”).
5. Click RECORD.
6. Click the mouse button to remap.
7. Click the keyboard button to remap the mouse button to.
8. Click APPLY and wait 2 or 3 seconds
9. Click STOP
10. Go to Step 3 and repeat for each mouse button you want to remap.
11.When done you can hit APPLY to test all your mappings. If satisfied, turn on the AUTOLOAD switch if you want the mapping active all the time.