My friend didn't have a great experience with Linux

Unfortunately you chose the wrong distro for your friend - Linux Mint isn't good for gaming - it uses an outdated kernel/drivers/other packages, which means you'll be missing out on all the performance improvements (and fixes) found in more up-to-date distros. Gaming on Linux is a very fast moving target, the landscape is changing at a rapid pace thanks to the development efforts of Valve and the community. So for gaming, you'd generally want to be on the latest kernel+mesa+wine stack.
Also, as you've experienced, on Mint you'd have to manually install things like Waydroid and other gaming software, which can be a PITA for newbies.
So instead, I'd highly recommend a gaming-oriented distro such as Nobara or Bazzite. Personally, I'm a big fan of Bazzite - it has everything you'd need for gaming out-of-the-box, and you can even get a console/Steam Deck-like experience, if you install the -deck variant. Also, because it's an immutable distro with atomic updates, it has a very low chance of breaking, and in the rare ocassion that an update has some issues - you can just select the previous image from the boot menu. So this would be pretty ideal for someone who's new to Linux, likes to game, and just wants stuff to work.
In saying that, getting games to run in Linux can be tricky sometimes, depending on the game. The general rule of thumb is: try running the game using Proton-GE, and if that fails, check Proton DB for any fixes/tweaks needed for that game - with this, you would never again have to spend hours on troubleshooting, unless you're playing some niche game that no one has tested before.
- I really wish people stopped recommending mint for any purpose other than reviving a 20 Yr old laptop into a chromebook.
  
  @Lojcs @d3Xt3r I only use linux mint because the laptop is 6 years old but, it was a stop gap computer with 2GB ram and a 64GB emmc. The latest windows 10 brings it to it's knees.
- The problem is not that games don't run smoothly. The problem is that games don't run at all or require major effort to run without issues. Will installing that distro fix the complicated installation of Prism Launcher cracked? I don't think so. But I agree with you for the fact that I chose the wrong distro. I wanted something easy for beginners.
  
  The problem is that games don't run at all or require major effort to run without issues.
  A major cause for that is the distro - when it comes to gaming, the distro makes a huge difference as I outlined previously. The second major cause is the flavor of Wine you chose (Proton-GE is the best, not sure what you used). The third major cause is checking whether or not the games are even compatible in the first place (via ProtonDB, Reddit etc) - you should do this BEFORE you recommend Linux to a gamer.
  In saying all that, I've no idea about pirated stuff though, you're on your own on that one - Valve and the Wine developers obviously don't test against pirated copies, and you won't get much support from the community either.
  
  Bazzite also solves this, sometimes.
  But you cant change if Roblox etc actively block Linux compatibility
- Thanks I'm going to give this a try.
- In the case that mint is the problem perhaps a different distro that is still stable and has a large user base would be good as it makes it easier to get support. I think that's also why those distros aren't recommended to newbies. I started with Ubuntu which worked fine. I think I could've started with most gnome/KDE distros though if they were similarly stable (preferably more). I think having the settings available in a gui was important for my first time.

Sounds like your friend is absolutely not the target audience for a linux-based operating system. If he wants to play Windows games and use software designed for Windows, then he should be using a Windows OS. Anything else would be providing a suboptimal experience for him.
Personally, I've been using various Linux-based systems since 2004, as a software developer I use a lot of command-line utilities, and many tools and applications designed for Linux. If I were using predominantly tools and applications designed for Windows, then I would be using Windows. No need to make life more difficult for yourself and others.
- This right here. I know lemmy is all "LINUX IS FOR EVERYONE!" But it isn't.
  I know this would go against Google's self interest but they are best poised to make Linux mainstream. Chrome OS can play android games natively. But it's all close source.
  It wouldn't take much to make the ecosystem for general Linux. I don't know if the other android-based OSes are working on this but anything we can do to push gaming into Linux would help it to become a better everyday OS
  
  anything we can do to push gaming into Linux would help it to become a better everyday OS
  I feel like the SteamDeck and SteamOS have already done more for Linux gaming than ChromeOS ever had the potential for.

I have been using Linux for years, but I don't insist anyone to use it, because when they encounter a problem, they blame you.
Let them drown in their filth.
- My friend doesn't blame me. He blames Linux, which also isn't nice. Of course, it isn't Linux's fault that the Roblox developers patched their game so it cannot be ran with wine, but in his eyes, and the eyes of the non tech-savvy people, if it runs on Windows and not on Linux, Linux is doing something wrong.
  
  I would never try to convince anyone to use Linux. If they're happy with Windows, let them use Windows.
  
  Its our fault for making him use Linux. Why does it matter what OS people use? Chill my man.

Your friend plays only the games that are a pain to make work on Linux, or straight up don't work. What else does he want to play, fortnite? Maybe some destiny? Lol Let them be. Windows is for them, Linux isn't, and that's ok.
- Ooh ooh! Genshin for good measure! That one even absolutely REFUSES to play in a VM or emulator!
  
  I've been playing genshin on Linux for almost a year now. Hint, Heroic games launcher ;)

What should I do?
Let them do what they want.

You skipped a few steps. Before you install Linux for your friend, you should first ask him what he uses the PC for, and if he plays games, what games does he play.

What should I do?
Install Windows on his laptop, or better yet let him do it and sit besides him for guidance, so that he can learn to reinstall in case something breaks badly.
It's nice to showcase your favourite OS and make people curious but don't abuse your friends with your Linux preference by forcing it onto them.
(Also, if you fix everything for them all the time, how will they learn?)
- I am trying to make him learn something by explaining what the commands do. For example, I say to them "run cd Documents which changes your current directory to Documents.". But I agree with you, I will tell him a little more about dual boot, and if he doesn't want to dual boot, I will help them install Windows.

Maybe you should have considered the stuff he wanted to do before convincing him to use linux. I could have told you he'd have problems with that stuff. If he said he mainly plays steam games then sure, but not literally the most finicky, cumbersome games to get going in existence. Also out of curiosity because I haven't even thought about Roblox in like 8 years. I thought that was a browser game?
- Minecraft runs fine for me, surely FIFA runs fine with proton (protondb says 2019 -2022 work)? I don't even get why people use Roblox from what I've heard so I have no idea about that.
  I have no idea what is going on with that laptop.
  
  Minecraft runs great for me as well.
  Prism Launcher seems to be well support on Linux and Minecraft runs fine on Linux (for myself and others) it could be that they’re trying to run a cracked version. Or that and a combination of poor hardware specs for what they’d like to do.
- I had checked and saw that FIFA 17 ran on Linux, so I told him that, and was not prepared for the troubleshooting nightmare that followed.

He obviously wants to use only proprietary Windows Software.
There is little reason to force him to use Linux. Of course Linux may have less overall tracking, annoying behaviors, better performance etc.
Win10 will be EOL veeery soon. Win11 is really bad on old hardware.
I second uBlue Bazzite and ProtonDB, check what you run first.
Respect that you even came that far lol.

I would say unless you always want to do troubleshooting for this friend just stick him with windows. At some point it is up to the individual to be able to troubleshoot these issues using the Internet as the resource, but a lot of people just don't want to mess with that. My own time is too limited to be on call for people.

Well you get an a for effort. But if your friend wants to play windows games it’s better for them to just have windows on the machine. I give it to you and your friend for going all out on a new laptop and putting Linux on it right away.
A more convenient way for a new user to experience Linux is to do a live usb for them. That way they can boot into Linux easily but boot into windows just by removing the usb drive.
- I'm really sad to see this “If he wants to play Windows games, let him use Windows” being repeated a hundred times in these comments. Mostly because it's an echo chamber, but also because Windows games have been better and better under Proton so 80-90% of Windows games on Steam run without a problem on Linux.
  
  I understand your frustration but if you were in this guys shoes and this was your friend calling you all day to do troubleshooting, what would you do? Spend hours of your time helping him become a Linux addict or tell them just to put his computer back to windows and be done with it?
  I’m a huge Linux fan but even my main pc and laptop are windows. I use WSL (amazing btw) on the laptop with a kali install. And I’ll use powershell (also really good) on the pc for any ssh needs for my Linux servers.

First of all you should have asked what he wanted to do with the laptop, the moment he replied playing games that are not on Steam you should have let him use Windows. Secondly, a laptop with 256GB of disk is likely going to have very low amounts of RAM and an onboard GPU, performance is going to be shit on Windows as well, you should have let him use that before, I think it's highly likely that Windows itself would run like shit on it, so after a year or two putting Linux on that laptop would have blown his socks off. But the problem is that he didn't get to experience any of that before you touched the computer, now he will claim it's your fault that games don't run or Windows is slow. I've been there, a friend had issues with the laptop, I said I didn't understand Windows and would only help if I could put Linux, at first everything worked great, but then the friend needed special software that wasn't available so I had to reinstall Windows for them (and btw, you OBVIOUSLY should reinstall Windows for your friend), and then everything on that laptop was my fault, even the problems the person was having before were somewhat my fault because I had put Linux there.
- It has an NVMe drive and after my friend upgraded it, 16 GB of RAM. Yes, it has an integrated Intel GPU, but I think it is pretty decent.
  
  FIFA 17, Roblox and Minecraft? Yeah I reckon a modern integrated GPU is just fine.
  But unfortunately it seems like your friend's preferred games aren't all that Linux friendly. Maybe get him addicted to a Steam library on Windows first and then you can win him over using Proton lol

Minecraft runs natively on Linux. What was the issue?
- They were trying to run it cracked through an alternative launcher.
  
  Oh, yeah your cracked launcher designed for Windows probably won't work well without tinkering.

Do your friend a favor and install Windows back on his laptop for him.

Let him go back to Windows. You already planted the idea of using Linux in his head. Next time he gets tired of windows for any reason, he knows there is an alternative and he'll consider switching to Linux on his own.
- His experience was one of torment and suffering just to play one game. Dude will be windows until logging in requires you to submit a butthole scan and get punched in the face, and maybe even past that.
  
  Your average user is comparing the time to setup a new game vs a punch in the face, no contest punch in the face all day! Now if you are getting punched in the face for more than 5 hours then maybe they will start considering an alternative....
  
  Maybe, maybe not. Who knows. Not everyone will switch to Linux, but those who do must be introduced to it somehow. My first experience with Linux 18 years ago was very painful yet I eventually made the switch a few years later.
- There's very few people that hear about Linux and then switch over the next day. It's something that needs to fester in your head for a while. I didn't start using Linux full time until like a decade after I tried it for the first time

Roblox not runnimg is more like a feature. /s

Sounds like he doesn't want to spend his time tinkering, but playing.
Can't blame him.
If he wants Windows, why are you questioning what he wants to do with his computer? He's had enough of playing fuck-fuck with Linux. (Mind, I work with Linux all day, every day, it's the cat's meow for dedicated services like Proxmox, TrueNAS, containers, etc).
Go get Win10 LTSC. It gets updates 2x/year, has very minimal bloat.
Then get O&O Shutup to reduce bloat even more.
And you can permanently license it using Microsoft's own scripts.
Scripts on Gituub.
- Sounds like he doesn't want to spend his time tinkering, but playing.
  Ehhh, I feel like this person is a tinkerer, it's just the things they wanna tinker with don't play nice with Linux.
  Installing a modded version of Minecraft indicates a desire to tinker. Roblox is a game based around the concept of tinkering. EA games (especially ones from 7 years ago) require some level of tinkering even in Windows.
  
  Please stop reminding me that 2017 was 7 years ago.

You have a nice friendship :) That's more important than Linux.
- Of course! :)

Why were you trying to install the Android version of Roblox instead of using Vinegar?
- Roblox removed wine support for linux so its either emulating the android version or running a vm with gpu passthru
  
  When did they do that? There was a short time where Wine wasn't supported recently but that was fixed.

You have to be doing something seriously wrong to make Minecraft run poorly. It has native support for Linux.
- Minecraft ran pretty well, the installation procedure was just difficult, because we were using this (which was a mistake).
- I've been down this road, java Minecraft is fine, bedrock Minecraft is not. Most people and cross platform play Minecraft use the bedrock version. It's literally Microsoft saying FU linux
  
  Microsoft: Bedrock is truly cross-platform!
  Linux: Heyy...
  Microsoft: No, not that much cross-platform
  
  I've run Minecraft: Bedrock on Linux/amd64 using a wrapper that repackaged the android distro. I was able to log in to my MS account and play on servers requiring the online authentication crap.

Just bail out, it wasn't meant to be. I tried a similar thing with family a few times and they always went back to Windows.
Linux is unfortunately not for people that aren't at least a bit tech savvy. If you insist on them using Linux you're gonna be on call to fix their shit all the time.
- People need to quit pressuring others into Linux. Linux users and Microsoft have that in common.
- For what I see as a helpdesk guy, most problems that are encountered origin from Windows being Windows, not tech knowleadge of some person. I cannot expect much from system where even installing stuff is stuck at pre 2000 era.
  
  For what I see as a helpdesk guy, most problems that are encountered origin from Windows being Windows, not tech knowleadge of some person.
  Yeah but things just work by default more often on Windows than on Linux. "Linux being Linux" is also the most common cause of Linux problems.
  Linux usually does give you the tools to fix problems more easily than Windows but that's where the tech savviness comes in.
  
  It also works reliably and be supported by anyone (Windows that is)

The problem is mate is that not all games have native Linux versions, If FIFA 17 were on steam, you could use proton on it but I believe it isn't.
It just comes with the territory of Linux that some games are windows only and can be finicky.
Minecraft however, should run fine on potato machines and with Linux, should have a native port you can install from say Flatpak.
When moving to the penguin train, he needs to write down what software and games he wants to use, and what might be omitted due to compatibility issues.
If the man wants to use Windows, let him be, he might reconsider in future about trying Mint again or another distro like Kubuntu.

With Minecraft, it wasn't any better.
Minecraft runs natively on Linux, though. It's not FOSS so it's not available through apt, but you can install it from a .deb from their website
Download page
The installation file
I've had better performance with Minecraft on Linux Mint Cinnamon 21.3 (albeit with kernel 6.1) than on Windows 10 personally.
Sadly, I can't easily fix FIFA or Roblox for you

Roblox in particular has been super hostile to the Linux community, they've two or three times now intentionally changed their application to make it so it won't run under wine. If Roblox is something that is a hard requirement for him, I would highly recommend against any of the non-windows derivatives. The lead development team on Roblox seems to have the ideology that anything that isn't Windows is a hacker platform and therefore they attempt to remove access from those platforms wherever possible. I don't personally agree with it but, it is what it is.
I also wish people would stop blindly recommending Unix platforms as a drop-in replacement for gaming on Windows. I have yet to see anyone who has been able to just install any of the flavors and have it "just work". I fully agree that we are ages better in terms of compatibility than it was even 5 years ago, but at 100% should be going into it as a "you will have issues prepare to have to troubleshoot" and if this was his first time using anything not windows, I would have hard recommended against nuking the windows install, at the very least shrink the C partition on Windows which can be done via GParted, which thankfully is already pre-installed on the Linux Mint installation media.
It's disappointing that he is looking to go back, but I can fully understand his frustration, as someone who's recently retaking the plunge after 6 or 7 years of being on windows again, I find myself getting aggravated at times trying to make hack scripts to make things work as well.
That being said, if he is wanting to go back you shouldn't force using it, that's only going to remove the possibility of him switching back in the future(like when MS makes w10 a subscription model either end of this year or the year after which will force w11)
- Honestly with the exception of trying out Nvidia drivers until they worked nicely (took 3 tries the first time back when I was on Ubuntu because it had nouveau as default and I miss read the first time) everything worked fine with wine or proton (or was just Linux compatible in the first place) and often I had better performance too.
  Now on endeavouros I do more tinkering but I still don't have any problems except on my Wayland machine which experiences stutter in a few games but I'm guessing that will be fixed later this year with the new drivers and Wayland protocol changes.

If they want to game, can't commit to only playing steam games, and can't learn how to use lutris, have them stay on windows. Linux will never live up to their expectations.

My wife and I gave a Linux computer to a friend's kid. I think I used something called Grapejuice to install Roblox, which ran perfectly for about a year. Then it broke because they wrote a new game client or something, but the kid just said "it's ok, I'll play other games instead." Best Linux gamer attitude :)

With only 256GB it might be even hard for him to use windows, to be honest.

Just tell him, "Give Linux another shot when you are bored.".
t. Used to be a Windows tryhard w/ baby duck syndrome, told myself exactly this. Took me a while, but I became a penguin a couple years after.
- I was ok with windows but frustrated with it's ads and updates. Even back then I liked OSS which I later found out was mostly FOSS and I tried out Linux dual boot on my new computer, I've probably spent 60h on that windows installation and at this point I only have it to change the settings on a usb device that doesn't seem to have Linux support, which I'm considering writing something small for if I figure out how those things work.
  Most of those 60h were in the first year and then a couple of hours between Ubuntu and endeavouros, making sure I had my backups even if I couldn't boot into Linux.

FIFA and Roblox, those gotta be one of the worst games to run on linux..

Don't tell him to dual boot. He wants Windows don't shove Linux down throat. Honestly he probably shouldn't of been using to begin with. I'm not sure why you would pressure him so hard.

Install Windows. He gave it a shot, and that’s better than most. Hopefully Linux will fit his needs soon, and he can try again.
- Or maybe just let this poor lad go in peace. It sounds like he was almost coerced into Linux.
  Not everyone needs Linux

if hes willing try zorinos. If that does not work I know of nothing easier. It comes with play on linux pretty well configured.

Just let him read the arch with wiki.

There's a drm-free version of prism launcher called PollyMC (note the two l's)
- Can we please just stick to one modded MC launcher instead of having a controversy every year
  
  Why should I care?
  And I don't think you really understand free software by what you are saying, because you're suggesting we should monopolize the software we use for no reason, which really goes against the whole point.

- You can't really complain that your pirated stuff doesn't work right, lol.
  Gave me a good chuckle when I read that. There’s no guarantee that it’d perform well on Windows (pirated software in general), why should it on Linux.

I actually gave up getting Roblox to work on Linux. It had more issues than most games.
- If anything, being blocked from Roblox is probably better for you.
  I finally quit LoL by committing to GNU∧Linux during a time when the Linux solutions were primitive & broke constantly each patch so it was never worth the effort. By the time support was good enough, the habit was luckily already broken. With the new kernel measures kicking folks off of Linux support, maybe it is time to reassess the kinds of games you interact with.

Haven't personally used it but I heard there is a native Roblox client for Linux called Grapejuice. Might be worth looking into to solve one problem. I have no idea if it's good or not but here's a link: https://brinkervii.gitlab.io/grapejuice/
- This worked well before Roblox blocked the use of Wine. Sadly, we tried it and it didn't work.
  
  Wow they blocked wine? That sucks wow. I bet that means Steam Deck compatibility is a no go now too huh. That really is too bad.

I've tried to switch to Linux as my primary OS several times over the years, and every time I've done it I've run into some bullshit where I need to install a kernel patch to make my mouse wheel work or find a custom driver on some obscure forum to have working sound. I'm a technically-competent person but it's been a huge hassle literally every time I've tried, and that's without getting into WINE or other cross-platform shenanigans. I want it to "just work" and my experience is that it just doesn't. That said, it's been a few years and Windows 11 appears to be insanely hot garbage, so maybe I'll give it another shot.
- Do. Take a boot USB for a spin. Try a few distros.
  I've been on Linux (Mint) for years and never had a mouse-wheel not work or any problems with sound (hardware failure notwithstanding). The computer's been the same all the way through, but it is a bit of a Ship of Theseus at this point. Mint has had no problem with new (and old) parts that I've thrown in. Or new mice, as I implied before.
  Getting old Windows games to work has been the biggest non-starter, which is pretty much where OPs friend was having trouble too.
  Minecraft (Java) runs fine with the standard launcher, but I do get FPS problems if I've had an Xorg update. That's more of a "your graphics card is so old Mint doesn't really support it any more" problem, which I know how to work around.
  I did have problems getting Linux to run on a laptop once, but then it was 1998 and Linux drivers weren't quite so plug and play. I had no idea what refresh rates my TFT screen needed and neither did Linux, boldly warning that if I set them wrong I could burn out my screen. Since I needed a GUI, I went back to Windows 95.
  
  Logitech wireless mice don't work on Linux until you find out someone wrote an app you can install to make them work.
  My brand new Logitech mouse works on Windows 95 on first plugin.
  Don't tell me mice work fine on Linux. It doesn't even natively support the most common mouse there is.

Slap the bottoms of his bare feet with reeds until he complies. /s
If you want to persuade your friend down the road to give it another shot, try asking what things he'd like to do and see if you can configure everything in advance. It's impossible to predict all future desires, but knocking out some of the bigger ones could help. Honestly, I'd be surprised if he tries again any time soon. Can't blame him. We all have different levels of tolerance for drudgery vs wanting things to just work.

At least he tried it. Maybe he'll pick up a second drive and dualboot. Regardless I have mad respect for someone who doesn't just assume things but puts the effort into finding out for themselves.
I remember when I was testing the water. I accidentally nuked my drive and something about that felt so final. At least after I found the USB drive I kept my backed up files, that was a real nightmare. I thought I lost my receipts for tax sure but all those photos and videos.

Better luck next time.

Laptops often have open slots for hard drives. With his permission open the back and see if he has one. Bonus points for replacing his win10 hd with a 1tb. He'd probably appreciate it enough to give Linux another go

I think the best course would be to tell him something along the lines of "I'm sorry these games didn't work out well for you and the experience didn't turn out to be good for you, there's still the option to dual-boot or try a different distro if you want but I understand if you don't. Just know that these issues aren't specifically because of Linux but rather poor support from the game's devs, or more likely their publishers, games (about 90% of them) work fine through steam or Lutris unless the devs implement anti-cheats without linux compatibility so hopefully in the future if you happen to play more steam games you'd consider giving Linux another chance." nonetheless I'd still say he should go on windows, find out that his games will likely still run like shit on there on his own and if he complains about it maybe bring up Linux again, gently and appropriately of course.

I swear it's always the same mistake each time someone has an issue trying linux. It should be a rule at this point : never switch to another OS without knowing what will work and what will not.
Going at it blindly is a quick way to get overwhelmed and discouraged.
(Not pointing fingers here, had a friend who wanted to try it out too, didn't listen to my warnings, didn't wanna check if everything would work out and then spent three month of pure hell, with me picking up the pieces and fixing their pc all the god damn time..)

I've been using Mint for about two years and it games okay and also feels outdated. I built a gaming computer for a friend recently and put Bazzite on it and it runs games great and just works great as a whole

If you want to game stick up with Windows, for everything else use Linux.

Nvidia user?

Aren't Roblox and old Minecraft rather efficient? FIFA 17 sounds like it's from 2017. To me it sounds like mostly old games so without the specs of the laptop which don't sound good with 256gb of storage I can't really judge whether 10fps in newer Minecraft versions isn't perhaps to be expected. Minecraft has always run the best on my machine (compared to most steam games which are more finicky when it comes to drivers. Btw for me fixing drivers it's usually just switching between the ones on flatpak and arch whenever it doesn't work and worst case I do a downgrade until it's fixed.)
Would it be worth testing the vanilla Minecraft launcher to see if that's the problem, perhaps compare the launch options if it's not possible? (I completely get not liking what Microsoft is doing with the launcher and I'm looking for an alternative at this point as well.)
It's possible that the laptop has an old/niche graphics card with bad driver support, which will probably be worse to try to fix on windows, unless they already know how to use the manufacturers likely gui based weird custom installer already (I think that's how Nvidia does it and of course it has ads).
Personally my experience on windows has been a nightmare with it breaking itself more often than Linux (while being used a fraction of the time or probably slightly more if I count the time spent on my old laptop which had slightly fewer issues). Luckily I don't have to use it but I do have a windows install in dual boot which takes 3x longer to start, shows me ads, requires me to plug the mouse in after booting for it to work.

Next time you want to sail the high seas with Minecraft, try HMCL. Should be less of a hassle.

Maybe your friend have Nvidia GPU? I only just switched over to Linux and I managed to get all of my games working without any hassle with the help of Wine Proton and Lutris, maybe try to run games in steam launcher? I have better with it
- Unfortunately the fact is that some games are patched to run on Windows exclusively. For some, no amount of tinkering will give you a working game.
  In my house there is 1 windows machine remaining, and it's for a software that my wife needs to use once per month for her business,anx she doesn't want to hear about a VM, but we all rock some distro as our daily drivers, thank God.
- I have an Nvidia GPU and aside from the occasional lemon of a driver, I've had no issues (to be sure, I don't use Wayland). I play games through Proton just fine. MHW, Elden Ring, Hunt Showdown, BG3, etc. Unfortunately the games he picked are borked or not listed on protondb. Not sure about Minecraft though, I used to play that just fine.

You wouldn't expect to be able to run Windows software on a Mac, why expect to be able to run Windows software on Linux?
Having said that, it's true that you actually can run some windows software through Wine but it's a hack and it's not going to work as well as it would on the OS it was designed for.
But there are also things like Java and Electron applications that run natively on linux and just as well as on windows.
As for Minecraft Java edition, I just downloaded the Minecraft launcher .deb from minecraft.net and installed it, and it runs perfectly. You can't really complain that your pirated stuff isn't work right, lol.
edit to add: An easier way for your friend to try out Linux would be to either run it on a virtual machine within Windows, or boot from a live USB (that's slower though).
- Having said that, it's true that you actually can run some windows software through Wine but it's a hack and it's not going to work as well as it would on the OS it was designed for.
  Most Steam games built for Windows run perfectly fine under Linux, many even better than on Windows. 10 years ago you'd have been correct, but the landscape has changed drastically.

He's too young. And you're too young
- Old man yells at cloud meme