Redshift or F.Lux should be unnecessary from version 22.1 onwards. It has a built in blue light filter now. Just search for "night light" in the settings and it should show up.
@toiletobserver
i see two things, boot entries and the hardware clock.
AFAIK with uefi windows wants to be the first entry in uefi boot list, otherwise it will set it and overwrite the boot mechanisms but one can set the entry to be first but disabled, thus uefi boots the next active entry every time while windows doesnt overwrite the boot settings during updates. i tested this to some degree, but i do not boot windows on that machine often enough, so i dont know what really happens on updates. i got this info from the evil internet and it sort of made sense while not harming at all so i did it that way and it used grub all the time up to now.
take care to have a backup of boot entries to quickly restore them in case microsoft overwrites things without beeing asked to.
second things is rtc clock.
in the past windows stored local time in the hardware clock while linux usually set the more sane utc value. if these settings concurrent, there will be surprises and time jumps depending on what bootet last and updated the hw clock.
i guess microsoft will rather stick to the option that is less sane and causes overall more problems, so i guess you should have a look at it, and if there are problems, either set windows to put/expect utc or linux to put/expect local timezone to/from hw clock.
i might be wrong and they already solved the problem when designing uefi definitions, but better look at it or at least observe it somehow.
@toiletobserver
the effect of utc vs local time would always jump by your timezone offset to utc which is usually whole hours and some timezones have half or quarter hours or such, IMHO it shouldnt cause clock "drift", that is unless thats a feature of windows time handling when the time has a huge offset.
ntpd used to slightly adjust the clock only if the offset to remote servers is something like few seconds and would "step" to immediately correct the system clock if its larger.
Syncthing to sync files across devices, it's really handy
Firefox for browsing
OnlyOffice, it has a more modern interface than LibreOffice and better support of .***x files (docx, xlsx, pptx, ...)
Thunderbird for mail services
FileZilla if you've got a ftp server
KDE connect to easily sync your phone and your PC. You can do more than sync, you can control one from the other, etc. Give it a go. There is also a fork called Zorin Connect which might or might not be better suiter for Mint.
For additional softwares that may or may not be useful to you : Krita, GIMP, TexStudio, konsole, Blender, wine, steam, proton-GE.
LocalSend if you want to send files between devices on your local network. Works on (almost) all operating systems.
VLC video player
Redshift or F.Lux to reduce blue light at night.
GPick to see exactly what color a pixel is.
GHex for editing binary files (advanced).
Redshift or F.Lux should be unnecessary from version 22.1 onwards. It has a built in blue light filter now. Just search for "night light" in the settings and it should show up.
https://www.linuxmint.com/rel_xia_whatsnew.php
I can't live without TOR Browser. Open a Terminal and follow these instructions on how to install:
https://itsfoss.gitlab.io/post/how-to-install-tor-browser-on-linux-mint-22-21-or-20/
Echoing VLC as a must-have as well.
Make sure quick booting is turned off in Windows. It can mess up a shared disk otherwise.
@toiletobserver
i see two things, boot entries and the hardware clock.
AFAIK with uefi windows wants to be the first entry in uefi boot list, otherwise it will set it and overwrite the boot mechanisms but one can set the entry to be first but disabled, thus uefi boots the next active entry every time while windows doesnt overwrite the boot settings during updates. i tested this to some degree, but i do not boot windows on that machine often enough, so i dont know what really happens on updates. i got this info from the evil internet and it sort of made sense while not harming at all so i did it that way and it used grub all the time up to now.
take care to have a backup of boot entries to quickly restore them in case microsoft overwrites things without beeing asked to.
second things is rtc clock.
in the past windows stored local time in the hardware clock while linux usually set the more sane utc value. if these settings concurrent, there will be surprises and time jumps depending on what bootet last and updated the hw clock.
i guess microsoft will rather stick to the option that is less sane and causes overall more problems, so i guess you should have a look at it, and if there are problems, either set windows to put/expect utc or linux to put/expect local timezone to/from hw clock.
i might be wrong and they already solved the problem when designing uefi definitions, but better look at it or at least observe it somehow.
my 2 cents
That's interesting, i did notice the windows click went out of sync and didn't understand why. Thanks
@toiletobserver
the effect of utc vs local time would always jump by your timezone offset to utc which is usually whole hours and some timezones have half or quarter hours or such, IMHO it shouldnt cause clock "drift", that is unless thats a feature of windows time handling when the time has a huge offset.
ntpd used to slightly adjust the clock only if the offset to remote servers is something like few seconds and would "step" to immediately correct the system clock if its larger.
VLC for multimedia
Syncthing to sync files across devices, it's really handy
Firefox for browsing
OnlyOffice, it has a more modern interface than LibreOffice and better support of .***x files (docx, xlsx, pptx, ...)
Thunderbird for mail services
FileZilla if you've got a ftp server
KDE connect to easily sync your phone and your PC. You can do more than sync, you can control one from the other, etc. Give it a go. There is also a fork called Zorin Connect which might or might not be better suiter for Mint.
For additional softwares that may or may not be useful to you : Krita, GIMP, TexStudio, konsole, Blender, wine, steam, proton-GE.
is GE proton necessary or just an additional to gaming?
It's additional but has many fixes and optimisations.
Using backup lool for image disk as clonezilla/RescueZilla/foxclone just in case
disable fastboot in windows, that actually ruins the experience