Will my programs work is the only question that really decides a switch. The answer is neither the fan's everything works nor the sceptic's nothing works - it is a short list of categories, and your software already knows which ones it belongs to.
Before any install, do the audit this guide lays out: write down the programs you actually open every week, and sort them into the four categories. The result tells you whether to switch cleanly, dual boot, or keep one Windows machine in the house.
More of daily life lives here than switchers expect. Chrome and Firefox are native. LibreOffice comes installed and opens Word, Excel and PowerPoint files - and if a document's formatting must be pixel-perfect, Microsoft 365 in the browser handles it. Teams, Zoom, Google Meet, WhatsApp Web, Gmail, YouTube, Netflix, Spotify - all run, most in the browser with nothing to install. VLC plays everything it played on Windows, because it is the same VLC.
For the average home and office user, this category quietly covers 90 percent of the day. Check your own list against it honestly before worrying about the rest.
Steam installs natively on Mint, and its Proton layer runs a large share of the Windows game library - thousands of titles rated playable or verified by the community. The honest limits: games built on aggressive kernel-level anti-cheat often refuse Linux entirely, and brand-new releases can trail. If gaming is the machine's main job, check your specific titles on ProtonDB before switching. If gaming is occasional, you will likely be pleasantly surprised.
Wine (and its friendlier front-end, Bottles) translates Windows programs to run on Linux. The truthful summary: small utilities and older programs often run beautifully; the famous heavyweights - desktop Microsoft Office, Photoshop, most accounting packages - install badly, run worse, or break on update. Treat Wine as a bonus for a favourite small tool, never as the foundation of a work machine.
And the category nobody puts in videos: niche Windows-only software - Tally in many Indian offices, printer and biometric device utilities, exam and banking tools, old industry programs. Assume these need Windows until you have proof otherwise. For a machine that depends on one such program, the professional answers are dual boot or a Windows virtual machine inside Mint for that one job - not hope.
Watch the install video first - then run your own app list through this scoreboard before you commit the machine.
▶️ Watch Full VideoYou have three honest routes: LibreOffice for everyday documents (compatibility is good, complex formatting can shift), Microsoft 365 in the browser for documents that must render exactly, and a Windows virtual machine or dual boot for the full desktop Office with macros and add-ins. Desktop Office does not install natively on Linux, and Wine attempts are unreliable - plan around that fact rather than fighting it.
Assume Windows-only until proven otherwise. Tally and many Indian accounting, billing and device-utility programs are built for Windows and are business-critical, so the safe pattern in offices is to keep them on a Windows PC or a Windows virtual machine, and use Mint machines for everything else. Test your exact version in a virtual machine before retiring any Windows install that runs them.
For occasional use of a light program, yes - VirtualBox is free and the program runs in a window on your Mint desktop. It needs a licensed Windows install, enough RAM to share (8 GB total is comfortable), and it is not the answer for games or heavy daily work. For a program you live in all day, dual boot instead.