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Hello PlayOnLinux Community,

I'm having a really tough time getting Skyrim to work on my newly built machine.I wonder if part of the reason is that I'm using integrated graphics until my new GPU comes in.

Specs:

i7-4770k (using IGP)
Linux Mint 16 Cinnamon (fresh install)
default Cinnamon desktop
PlayOnLinux 4.2.1 (from Mint's repositories)
GNU_Raziel's Skyrim script (Steam version, no DVD)
Wine 1.5.20 (installed via above script)
Skyrim Legendary Edition (latest version from Steam, just purchased)

I have tried many many things according to winehq (always my first source), online tutorials (booman's is the most recent and relevant, but I got renderer initialization errors), etc., and cannot figure out what's wrong.

The closest I've gotten so far is running the Steam install script in POL (not the winetrick but the actual script from the supported programs list), installing Skyrim in Steam, and running without any additional libraries. That will actually run the game for me but with no audio. There's no shortage of talk about audio problems with Skyrim, but none of the tips have worked for me.

I figured the POL script would be the easiest way to get it running, but I hit a wall there both on Mint 16 Cinnamon release candidate and the fresh install of the official Mint 16 Cinnamon release, so it's not just because of the RC version. Perhaps my problem has nothing to do with POL, but if I can help get the script working, that'd be best for everyone.

Basically, the script installs all the necessary software before Steam. It then installs Steam and prompts me to install Skyrim but not play it, as the script needs to finish its work after the download. The Steam login window pops up, and I put in my login information. As soon as I hit enter, I get this message:

"The program Steam.exe has encountered a serious problem and needs to close."

If I click Show Information, I see:

"Unhandled exception: page fault on read access to 0x00000004 in 32-bit code (0x7cf1daea)."

I closed that (had to force it after some time) and the script window automatically closed.

Here is my debugging output (sorry, I don't know how to format it better, and thanks for your help):

urceW ((null),L".NET Runtime Optimization Service"): stub
fixme:advapi:DeregisterEventSource (0xcafe4242) stub
fixme:advapi:RegisterTraceGuidsW (0x7a03261a, 0x149938, {e13c0d23-ccbc-4e12-931b-d9cc2eee27e4}, 14, 0x7a3bee40, (null), (null), 0x7a3bdc70,): stub
fixme:advapi:RegisterTraceGuidsW (0x7a030638, 0x149938, {cc2bcbba-16b6-4cf3-8990-d74c2e8af500}, 1, 0x7a3bee38, (null), (null), 0x7a3bdc78,): stub
fixme:thread:SetThreadStackGuarantee (0x33efe4): stub
fixme:shell:URL_ParseUrl failed to parse L"System.Web"
fixme:shell:URL_ParseUrl failed to parse L"System"
fixme:shell:URL_ParseUrl failed to parse L"System.Configuration"
fixme:shell:URL_ParseUrl failed to parse L"System.Drawing"
fixme:shell:URL_ParseUrl failed to parse L"System.Xml"
fixme:shell:URL_ParseUrl failed to parse L"System.Data"
fixme:shell:URL_ParseUrl failed to parse L"System.Web.Services"
fixme:shell:URL_ParseUrl failed to parse L"System.DirectoryServices"
fixme:shell:URL_ParseUrl failed to parse L"System.DirectoryServices.Protocols"
fixme:shell:URL_ParseUrl failed to parse L"System.EnterpriseServices"
fixme:shell:URL_ParseUrl failed to parse L"System.Design"
fixme:shell:URL_ParseUrl failed to parse L"System.ServiceProcess"
fixme:shell:URL_ParseUrl failed to parse L"System.Windows.Forms"
fixme:shell:URL_ParseUrl failed to parse L"System.Web.RegularExpressions"
fixme:process:FlushProcessWriteBuffers : stub
fixme:advapi:RegisterEventSourceW ((null),L".NET Runtime Optimization Service"): stub
fixme:advapi:DeregisterEventSource (0xcafe4242) stub
fixme:advapi:RegisterTraceGuidsW (0x7a03261a, 0x14c150, {e13c0d23-ccbc-4e12-931b-d9cc2eee27e4}, 14, 0x7a3bee40, (null), (null), 0x7a3bdc70,): stub
fixme:advapi:RegisterTraceGuidsW (0x7a030638, 0x14c150, {cc2bcbba-16b6-4cf3-8990-d74c2e8af500}, 1, 0x7a3bee38, (null), (null), 0x7a3bdc78,): stub
fixme:thread:SetThreadStackGuarantee (0x33ef28): stub
fixme:shell:URL_ParseUrl failed to parse L"System.Web"
fixme:shell:URL_ParseUrl failed to parse L"System"
err:ole:CoInitializeEx Attempt to change threading model of this apartment from apartment threaded to multi-threaded
err:ole:CoGetContextToken apartment not initialised
fixme:shell:URL_ParseUrl failed to parse L"System.Configuration"
fixme:wtsapi:WTSQuerySessionInformationW Stub (nil) 0xffffffff 4 0x96e984 0x96e974
fixme:shell:URL_ParseUrl failed to parse L"System.Xml"
fixme:shell:URL_ParseUrl failed to parse L"System.DirectoryServices.Protocols"
fixme:shell:URL_ParseUrl failed to parse L"System.DirectoryServices"
fixme:shell:URL_ParseUrl failed to parse L"System.Drawing"
fixme:shell:URL_ParseUrl failed to parse L"System.Data"
fixme:shell:URL_ParseUrl failed to parse L"System.Web.Services"
fixme:shell:URL_ParseUrl failed to parse L"System.EnterpriseServices"
fixme:shell:URL_ParseUrl failed to parse L"System.Design"
fixme:shell:URL_ParseUrl failed to parse L"System.ServiceProcess"
fixme:shell:URL_ParseUrl failed to parse L"System.Windows.Forms"
fixme:shell:URL_ParseUrl failed to parse L"System.Web.RegularExpressions"
fixme:shell:URL_ParseUrl failed to parse L"System.Data.SqlXml"
fixme:wtsapi:WTSQuerySessionInformationW Stub (nil) 0xffffffff 4 0x96e984 0x96e974
fixme:wtsapi:WTSQuerySessionInformationW Stub (nil) 0xffffffff 4 0x96e984 0x96e974
fixme:process:FlushProcessWriteBuffers : stub
fixme:advapi:RegisterEventSourceW ((null),L".NET Runtime Optimization Service"): stub
fixme:advapi:DeregisterEventSource (0xcafe4242) stub
fixme:advapi:RegisterTraceGuidsW (0x7a03261a, 0x149960, {e13c0d23-ccbc-4e12-931b-d9cc2eee27e4}, 14, 0x7a3bee40, (null), (null), 0x7a3bdc70,): stub
fixme:advapi:RegisterTraceGuidsW (0x7a030638, 0x149960, {cc2bcbba-16b6-4cf3-8990-d74c2e8af500}, 1, 0x7a3bee38, (null), (null), 0x7a3bdc78,): stub
fixme:thread:SetThreadStackGuarantee (0x33efe4): stub
fixme:shell:URL_ParseUrl failed to parse L"System.Web.Mobile"
fixme:shell:URL_ParseUrl failed to parse L"System"
fixme:shell:URL_ParseUrl failed to parse L"System.Configuration"
fixme:shell:URL_ParseUrl failed to parse L"System.Web"
fixme:shell:URL_ParseUrl failed to parse L"System.Design"
fixme:wtsapi:WTSQuerySessionInformationW Stub (nil) 0xffffffff 4 0x96e984 0x96e974
fixme:shell:URL_ParseUrl failed to parse L"System.Windows.Forms"
fixme:shell:URL_ParseUrl failed to parse L"System.Drawing"
fixme:shell:URL_ParseUrl failed to parse L"System.Xml"
fixme:shell:URL_ParseUrl failed to parse L"System.Data"
fixme:shell:URL_ParseUrl failed to parse L"System.Web.RegularExpressions"
fixme:process:FlushProcessWriteBuffers : stub
fixme:advapi:RegisterEventSourceW ((null),L".NET Runtime Optimization Service"): stub
fixme:advapi:DeregisterEventSource (0xcafe4242) stub
fixme:advapi:RegisterTraceGuidsW (0x7a03261a, 0x14b820, {e13c0d23-ccbc-4e12-931b-d9cc2eee27e4}, 14, 0x7a3bee40, (null), (null), 0x7a3bdc70,): stub
fixme:advapi:RegisterTraceGuidsW (0x7a030638, 0x14b820, {cc2bcbba-16b6-4cf3-8990-d74c2e8af500}, 1, 0x7a3bee38, (null), (null), 0x7a3bdc78,): stub
fixme:thread:SetThreadStackGuarantee (0x33ef28): stub
fixme:shell:URL_ParseUrl failed to parse L"System.Web.Mobile"
fixme:shell:URL_ParseUrl failed to parse L"System"
fixme:shell:URL_ParseUrl failed to parse L"System.Configuration"
fixme:shell:URL_ParseUrl failed to parse L"System.Web"
fixme:shell:URL_ParseUrl failed to parse L"System.Xml"
fixme:shell:URL_ParseUrl failed to parse L"System.Drawing"
fixme:shell:URL_ParseUrl failed to parse L"System.Design"
fixme:shell:URL_ParseUrl failed to parse L"System.Windows.Forms"
fixme:shell:URL_ParseUrl failed to parse L"System.Data"
err:ole:CoInitializeEx Attempt to change threading model of this apartment from apartment threaded to multi-threaded
err:ole:CoGetContextToken apartment not initialised
fixme:shell:URL_ParseUrl failed to parse L"System.Web.RegularExpressions"
fixme:process:FlushProcessWriteBuffers : stub
fixme:advapi:RegisterEventSourceW ((null),L".NET Runtime Optimization Service"): stub
fixme:advapi:DeregisterEventSource (0xcafe4242) stub
fixme:advapi:RegisterTraceGuidsW (0x7a03261a, 0x1499e0, {e13c0d23-ccbc-4e12-931b-d9cc2eee27e4}, 14, 0x7a3bee40, (null), (null), 0x7a3bdc70,): stub
fixme:advapi:RegisterTraceGuidsW (0x7a030638, 0x1499e0, {cc2bcbba-16b6-4cf3-8990-d74c2e8af500}, 1, 0x7a3bee38, (null), (null), 0x7a3bdc78,): stub
fixme:thread:SetThreadStackGuarantee (0x33efe4): stub
fixme:shell:URL_ParseUrl failed to parse L"System.Web.RegularExpressions"
fixme:shell:URL_ParseUrl failed to parse L"System"
fixme:shell:URL_ParseUrl failed to parse L"System.Configuration"
fixme:shell:URL_ParseUrl failed to parse L"System.Xml"
fixme:process:FlushProcessWriteBuffers : stub
fixme:advapi:RegisterEventSourceW ((null),L".NET Runtime Optimization Service"): stub
fixme:advapi:DeregisterEventSource (0xcafe4242) stub
fixme:advapi:RegisterTraceGuidsW (0x7a03261a, 0x14a870, {e13c0d23-ccbc-4e12-931b-d9cc2eee27e4}, 14, 0x7a3bee40, (null), (null), 0x7a3bdc70,): stub
fixme:advapi:RegisterTraceGuidsW (0x7a030638, 0x14a870, {cc2bcbba-16b6-4cf3-8990-d74c2e8af500}, 1, 0x7a3bee38, (null), (null), 0x7a3bdc78,): stub
fixme:thread:SetThreadStackGuarantee (0x33ef28): stub
fixme:shell:URL_ParseUrl failed to parse L"System.Web.RegularExpressions"
fixme:shell:URL_ParseUrl failed to parse L"System"
fixme:process:FlushProcessWriteBuffers : stub
fixme:advapi:RegisterEventSourceW ((null),L".NET Runtime Optimization Service"): stub
fixme:advapi:DeregisterEventSource (0xcafe4242) stub
fixme:advapi:RegisterTraceGuidsW (0x7a03261a, 0x149998, {e13c0d23-ccbc-4e12-931b-d9cc2eee27e4}, 14, 0x7a3bee40, (null), (null), 0x7a3bdc70,): stub
fixme:advapi:RegisterTraceGuidsW (0x7a030638, 0x149998, {cc2bcbba-16b6-4cf3-8990-d74c2e8af500}, 1, 0x7a3bee38, (null), (null), 0x7a3bdc78,): stub
fixme:thread:SetThreadStackGuarantee (0x33efe4): stub
fixme:shell:URL_ParseUrl failed to parse L"System.Web.Services"
fixme:wtsapi:WTSQuerySessionInformationW Stub (nil) 0xffffffff 4 0x96e984 0x96e974
fixme:shell:URL_ParseUrl failed to parse L"System"
fixme:shell:URL_ParseUrl failed to parse L"System.Xml"
fixme:shell:URL_ParseUrl failed to parse L"System.Web"
fixme:shell:URL_ParseUrl failed to parse L"System.Configuration"
fixme:shell:URL_ParseUrl failed to parse L"System.EnterpriseServices"
fixme:shell:URL_ParseUrl failed to parse L"System.DirectoryServices"
fixme:shell:URL_ParseUrl failed to parse L"System.Design"
fixme:shell:URL_ParseUrl failed to parse L"System.Data"
fixme:process:FlushProcessWriteBuffers : stub
fixme:advapi:RegisterEventSourceW ((null),L".NET Runtime Optimization Service"): stub
fixme:advapi:DeregisterEventSource (0xcafe4242) stub
fixme:advapi:RegisterTraceGuidsW (0x7a03261a, 0x14b638, {e13c0d23-ccbc-4e12-931b-d9cc2eee27e4}, 14, 0x7a3bee40, (null), (null), 0x7a3bdc70,): stub
fixme:advapi:RegisterTraceGuidsW (0x7a030638, 0x14b638, {cc2bcbba-16b6-4cf3-8990-d74c2e8af500}, 1, 0x7a3bee38, (null), (null), 0x7a3bdc78,): stub
fixme:thread:SetThreadStackGuarantee (0x33ef28): stub
fixme:shell:URL_ParseUrl failed to parse L"System.Web.Services"
fixme:shell:URL_ParseUrl failed to parse L"System"
fixme:shell:URL_ParseUrl failed to parse L"System.Xml"
fixme:shell:URL_ParseUrl failed to parse L"System.Web"
fixme:shell:URL_ParseUrl failed to parse L"System.Configuration"
fixme:shell:URL_ParseUrl failed to parse L"System.EnterpriseServices"
err:ole:CoInitializeEx Attempt to change threading model of this apartment from apartment threaded to multi-threaded
err:ole:CoGetContextToken apartment not initialised
fixme:shell:URL_ParseUrl failed to parse L"System.DirectoryServices"
fixme:shell:URL_ParseUrl failed to parse L"System.Design"
fixme:shell:URL_ParseUrl failed to parse L"System.Data"
fixme:process:FlushProcessWriteBuffers : stub
fixme:advapi:RegisterEventSourceW ((null),L".NET Runtime Optimization Service"): stub
fixme:advapi:DeregisterEventSource (0xcafe4242) stub
fixme:advapi:RegisterEventSourceW ((null),L".NET Runtime Optimization Service"): stub
fixme:advapi:DeregisterEventSource (0xcafe4242) stub
12/02/13 02:41:14 - [POL_SetupWindow_Close] Message: Closing window for pid 6120

I'm seeing the same issue (I posted about it here).  I don't think it's because of your integrated graphics.

I was able to install Steam with the steam POL script and from there install (but not yet run) Skyrim.

You could try installing skyrim in this way then installing dxfullsetup, vcrun2008, and xact into this virtual machine. 

Or as the skyrim script seems to be doing, 'dotnet35' and 'dxfullsetup'.

Thanks for posting all of your systems specs!

It really depends on the integrated graphics you are using...
I'm surprised any Integrated Graphics chip would be able to run Skyrim.

I would definitely wait until your graphics card arrives... hopefully its a GeForce card.

I do see .NET Runtime Optimization errors but Skyrim didn't require dotnet at all when I tried it.
But it did require vcrun and direct x. Installing dxfullsetup is fine too.
Since you followed my guide, then you tried Wine 1.7.1 but those renderer errors might be related to the graphics chip or drivers.

What integrated graphics are you using?
Are you using Mint 64-bit or 32-bit?

Remember if you have to start over with a new virtual drive, don't delete the Skyrim game files, go to the Steam SteamApps folder and cut-n-paste the Skyrim folder to your desktop first.

Thanks for the replies!

Sorry about the duplicate post, trousermonkey. I actually did search for Skyrim and remember seeing yours, but it was early in a long list of posts and I forgot the details.

booman, I'm using 64-bit Mint. I'd rather not go back to a 32-bit OS just to play Skyrim. I always make sure to use a 32-bit wineprefix and whatnot when going the manual installation route, but it's possible I or the script have missed something.

I agree it should not require .NET. Don't newer versions of Wine include Mono by default? Regardless, Skyrim was able to install its included .NET just fine when I ran the manual installation.

I did try Wine 1.7.1 and did everything as closely to your tutorial as possible (I don't however have the physical game DVD).

I'm using whichever integrated graphics are included in my new CPU. According to Intel, that would be Intel HD Graphics 4600. Yeah, definitely not ideal.

I think I'm going to pull out the GTS 450 GPU from my old PC and put it in here to see if that fixes anything.I'm going to go by your guide again. If that doesn't work, I'll do dxfullsetup instead of the individual dx's. If that doesn't work, I'll also run the DX10 setup program from the Skyrim folder as suggested on winehq. And finally, if none of that works, I guess I can try the script again.

Once it's working, I'll test if it works on the latest Wine (1.7.7 I believe) just out of curiosity. I'll update this topic when I figure something out.

P.S. It is a GeForce ;) GTX 770. I wanted to wait a while to see how everything plays out with Mantle, SteamOS, AMD Linux drivers, etc. But the Black Friday deals were too tempting! My GTS 450 is a mid-range card from about 3 years ago, so nowhere near as good as the GTX 770, but I think it should be able to run Skyrim.

I also forgot to mention, thank you so much for your guide booman. The vast majority of tutorials on installing Skyrim are from a couple of years ago and things have changed since then. Yours is very recent and clearly written. There is recent information on winehq, but it's more chaotic. I hope I can figure this out and help others who might have bought the game on sale thinking it would be easy to run like I did.

Okay, good news, Skyrim now runs fine with audio after putting in the GTS 450 and installing Nvidia's proprietary drivers. I basically followed booman's guide (link to his guides in his forum signature) as exactly as possible including string cases and such. The one part where I did my own thing was the part on installing Steam. After selecting libraries and clicking Next to install them, POL asks which program you'd like to run. I exit out of that window without selecting one, go back to the Install a non-listed program window, and choose to select libraries again for the same wineprefix (you have to check a box to show installed wineprefixes). I select POL_install_steam and then Next and let it install Steam that way. From there, I created the shortcut to Steam.exe, ran it, and exited without logging in and started where the guide says to click Configure. I even set the -no-dwrite argument just in case. However, I was getting text because of the POL_install_steam installation, so it probably wasn't necessary. I then went through the rest of the tutorial as written.

Alternatively, I could have probably downloaded the Steam installer from the website and told POL to run it after installing the libraries in place of the DVD version, and I'm hoping that would give the same results, but I haven't tested it and I'm satisfied with the included Steam installation script.

Thanks to all who helped and to those who developed POL and Wine. However, there are a few details I'd like to figure out before setting this topic as solved (even though it never fixed the official installation script). booman's guide suggested emulating a virtual desktop at a lower resolution, and I want to fiddle with that to see what my best settings are. Also, I'd like to test not using -no-dwrite because I don't think it's necessary after installing Steam the way I did. I want to give my personally preferred names for shortcuts and wineprefixes. My audio is also somewhat quiet, although it may be easiest to just raise in-game volume. Lastly, I want to do a complete reinstall of 64-bit Mint 16 Cinnamon, Steam, Skyrim, etc. with my recommended settings and possibly post my results here or on Winehq so that people can have another complete reference besides booman's (which is currently my favorite and definitely the most up-to-date but not necessarily the first place people look for answers regarding Wine).

Thanks again!

Well, I spoke too soon. I thought the game was working fine, but after playing for a couple of minutes, I realized I have a mouse problem. My character can't look all the way around. It's like the mouse is confined in a box. I'm currently pursuing the issue at Winehq along with a guy named Tim who has a similar problem on Mint 16 as well.

Manual installing game is a good option over using scripts.  Sometimes the scripts are old and are not updated with newer versions of Wine.

That's not like scripts cannot be updated, it just needs people taking care of it.

Edited by petch

Well, with the mouse issue, it'll take me a while to develop a full list of recommendations (and it looks like another bug has come up with a recent Steam update requiring a fresh build of Wine to run Steam, but I haven't confirmed this on my system yet).

However, I did confirm that adding the Steam install script to the initial libraries installation works just as well as doing it a second time around. This is because it doesn't actually run the Steam installer, it just sets up some environment options and puts the installer in the virtual drive, which you then create a shortcut to and run yourself.

I also confirmed that there is no need to manually add -no-dwrite if you use the Steam install script in POL.

I also confirmed that not using a virtual desktop works fine. booman is right though; there were times when I accidentally crashed Skyrim at a lower resolution and my desktop was left at a lower resolution. It's not that bad to fix, but just an annoyance. If virtual desktop really does have the other benefits he mentioned, it's probably a better way to go, but I think I'll leave it off until I get the mouse working correctly and then experiment with that option more.

As far as audio volume, I think it might just be Mint 16's default sound options. After install, it was set to less than half of full volume. On Mint 14, I always did everything relative to full volume. I raised the system volume to 100%, but other sounds in Mint were then quite loud, while Skyrim was loud but reasonable as it should have been.

Neither the automatic capture nor the mouse override option fixes my mouse problem. I even installed the MATE desktop environment on my system and that didn't fix it with any combination of those options either. According to the related Wine bug report, it could have to do with an input system, and at least one user was able to fix the problem with a patch to Wine, but it doesn't seem like something you'd want to affect other games. I want to try one last thing: doing a fresh install of Mint 16 MATE without Cinnamon to see if maybe there is just some residual effect from Cinnamon being installed first on the system. If that doesn't work, the fix is probably out of the scope of what I can do with Wine without losing more sleep than I already have, so I'd probably be going back to an older Mint release (or perhaps another distro).

Anyway, I'm going to mark this topic as solved because my mouse problem doesn't appear to have anything to do with POL, and the installation went smoothly with POL otherwise. Thanks for the help.

If anyone would like to check up on my progress with the mouse bug, I'll be posting updates over on the Winehq Skyrim Steam page. However, my job has nothing to do with Wine or Linux and so my time and energy for this is limited and I don't have the greatest insight into how to fix the problem.

I also forgot to mention (geez, I post a lot, don't I?):

I tested with Wine 1.7.7 and it works fine.

I tested without changing anything in the Miscellanious tab in POL Configuration. This step was recommended in booman's guide (setting VRAM, fbo, OpenGL, etc.) but I seemed to get the same results without this step.

I thought not setting fbo might cause the mouse problem, but I tested that and it didn't change anything. So yeah, those are my most up-to-date recommendations. Overall a pretty simple install once I popped in the GTS 450, but really frustrating with the Intel HD 4600 graphics.

You probably don't have to change distro's just for one game, but that is your call...
I rarely have serious mouse issues. The main symptom I get is you can turn all the way around but after clicking once, its seems to refresh the mouse support.
I have found that using PrtScn button to take screenshots messes up mouse support in games, but I do that because of my guides.
Clicking the screen again usually fixes it.

By the way, did you notice any tree animation problems in Skyrim? I noticed that some vegetation would sway and others would not... kind of erratic animation.
The other problem I had was going underwater... I couldn't see anything. Just a solid color on the screen.

Have you been able to test other games in your Distro?
Do they have mouse problems also?

Once you get your new video card, let us know if Skyrim improves overall. I know the graphics will improve and the frame rates, but I wonder if audio and mouse support will improve too?

I actually change and reinstall distros A LOT. I separate data from my distros so I can reinstall at a whim. I change distros just to try them, or perhaps to get a more up-to-date system. I used to switch distros every few months because every distro I tried for years had noticeable problems. I liked PCLinuxOS but felt it was a bit stagnant. I tried earlier releases of Fedora and loved it, but one release had a blatant out-of-the-box package conflict which made upgrading packages a nightmare. I tried OpenSuse and loved it as well, but I YaST always gave me weird errors. I switched to Ubuntu and found it to be the best out-of-the-box experience at the time, but Unity was the straw that broke the camel's back. I tried Arch and thought it was the best distribution I had ever tried... until they took their philosophy to the extreme and changed default bootloaders (read: you had to manually change your default bootloader) while simultaneously getting rid of their entire installation framework to make the distro "simpler" and trashing the vast majority of their beloved wiki's installation guides and replacing them with documentation that could've been written by a 90-year-old woman. I spent way too many hours trying to save my precious installation after changing my bootloader made my system unbootable, and eventually decided walking the fine line between "simple" and useless was not for me anymore. Then I tried Mint, and it was the exact opposite. It is by far the best out-of-box experience in the desktop Linux world, no contest. The only problem I noticed at first was that managing audio had some weird issues, but I think that was due more to the adoption of PulseAudio than actual Mint bugs, and those issues quickly went away. I didn't have any major problems with Mint (the whole JDK conflict thing was an easy fix) until this mouse issue with Mint 16. I wouldn't mind trying OpenSuse or Fedora again.

I didn't get far enough into the game to notice any tree animation or water problems. I thought my mouse was supposed to be confined in the intro section. But then the dragon came and I was supposed to run from it and had to run backwards! Supposedly there is a mod which fixes the water problem.

I haven't tested other games in my distro. I mostly buy native Linux games since leaving Windows for good, but I had to make an exception for Skyrim when it was on sale. I always check Winehq before buying a Windows game though, but seeing as how Mint 16 is brand new, there were no updates using it.

I will let you know what happens with the new card. Audio seems fine now, and it looks like the mouse issue is a known one. I guess I forgot to mention in specs that I'm using the winealsa audio driver. I have never used winepulse although I would love very much to have a native PulseAudio driver (though that has a long and interesting history in the Wine project). I probably won't use it until I have a serious need for it though.

By the way, I just clicked your Linux for Beginners link out of curiosity since I would like to get more of my family and friends on Linux, and I noticed you said cd stands for "create directory". To be honest, I've never actually seen it definitively defined as "change directory", but I'm guessing "change" is more accurate than "create", haha.

Wow, it sounds like you pick a good distro and they make changes that totally turn you off.... very funny actually, but sad at the same time.

I have always been a Fedora fan and have used it on my server for years. I would only boot it up once a week or so...

Now I use Mint almost every day... so far its been very consistent with Cinnamon desktop.
But it sounds like you are more familiar with the inner workings of Linux than I am.

Yes, keep us up-to-date on your new card and Skyrim adventure.

You are exactly right about "cd" its IS supposed to be "change directory"
I'll change it right now.