My set-up of Linux Mint and GRUB seems to have messed up my Windows drive, as now I can’t boot from it directly anymore, but only by going through GRUB first, and I want to uninstall Linux. How would I go about figuring out the issue and fixing it?
As for why I want to uninstall Linux, it’s mostly two reasons 1: My father gave me a spare HDD he had since I’m not a fan of buying things when you already have them. Turns out (coming from a teen who’s been booting from an SSD for most of their life) HDDs are slow, too slow for my liking. 2: Linux, Mint at least, feels incomplete, sort of like a tech demo, with extremely limited support for anything that wasn’t directly intended by the developers. The concept of having to compile something yourself is basically foreign to me, and the few times I had to do it in Windows I could easily find a way around it. Plus having to basically rely on a built-in app database/store to easily install apps… Kinda stinks to me, and not being able to simply download an installer from a website and having the program, whatever program, up and running reliably within a minute, the concept seems ridiculous… I’m not sure, I could be really spoiled by Windows 10, or simply too used to it.
TLDR: HDDs are slower than I thought and Linux doesn’t seem good for people like me
Ps: Yes, I know, mass storage is “super cheap” nowdays, but for someone who only reliably gets money during their birthday and Christmas, €20 may as well be €200
Also, I am pretty sure that I will come back to Linux in the future once Windows has devolved to the point of being garbage (which from what I’ve seen might be very close) and I’ve gotten better at general computer usage (which may be close too since I’m starting to familiarize myself with CLIs)
Why do you need to uninstall it? You can boot Windows through Grub, so you could just set GRUB to have a short timeout and have Windows be the default option. Then if you ever want to go back to Linux it’ll be really easy.
As for your issues with finding programs:
Most stuff for Linux Mint is available to download as a .deb file, which is just an installer, btw, so the exact same thing you’re used to on Windows with a .msi file or .exe that installs the program. Much of the time you can add a PPA for any software you want and Mint will keep it updated just like the apps from the built-in app store. You can also install Flatpak apps from flathub.org or from various projects’ Github pages or you can download and run AppImage apps which don’t need to be installed at all.
Generally if it seems like you need to compile something on Mint, you should see if there’s a version for Ubuntu or a Flatpak. Mint 21 is based on Ubuntu 22.04 and can run stuff built for it. Flatpaks work on any Linux distro because they kinda run in their own little sandbox.