There are distros designed for your use case. Research “portable” distros to get what you’re after without having to crowbar it.

Thank you for the implementation advice, that was my next question.

I have an old drive I installed Win 10 on a few years ago. It was a fresh build, so it would have been the only drive in the machine when I installed it. The software I need is already installed there and in a working state.

I also have a new machine with a new drive. I installed Mint on the new drive while it was the only drive in the new machine.

My plan is to move the Win 10 drive from the old machine to the new one. In the BIOS, I would set the Linux drive as the default boot option. When I need Windows, I would boot into BIOS and select the Windows drive as a one-time boot option.

Am I on the right track?

Oh, what about the ones with gangsta Bugs Bunny / SpongeBob / Tweety Bird. Memba?

Gog literally won’t allow you to sell a game if it has DRM

So, Steam respects their customers enough to offer them a choice while GOG doesn’t; good to know.

set whatever environment variables the game needs, create the necessary folders, install the redistributable runtimes the game needs to run,and link the dlls properly

Ok, and? I can do all that on Steam too. I can even launch the game directly without involving Steam at all.

If you only have the game files you have to manage all of that yourself

Yeah, and all that is a huge pain in the ass. Having it to do myself isn’t a positive.

If a game has DRM on one platform, but not another, that’s because the publisher required it. That can be for any number of reasons that don’t have anything to do with the platform.

I guess what I’m asking is, what’s the benefit to having the installer instead of the game files?

You have to be online to download the installer. The end result is being able to play normally, offline, from portable storage if you choose. Besides a few gigabytes, it seems like a distinction without a difference.

If the game itself has DRM, then it has DRM on GOG too.

Steam itself is a form of DRM if you must install it and login to install and/or run a game.

Did you read what I wrote?

How is this not also true for Steam? Unless the game itself has DRM, I can copy game files to an offline machine that doesn’t have Steam installed and launch and play them normally.

Edit: Glazing GOG for this while insisting “sTeAm iS dIfFeReNt” is like buying the cereal box that says “Asbestos Free!” on it.

Ever since that Sony tweet, all these kids are, overnight, developing all these strong opinions about shit they never cared about before, based on nothing but hype, memes, and regurgitated streamer slop.

Physical media has licenses too. GOG purchases come with licenses too. Optical media rots. And Steam isn’t secretly Sony (yet. They probably will be after Gabe dies).

Downvote me all you want, it doesn’t change the truth and reveals much more about you than me.

Optical media will eventually suffer bit rot and be useless. Save them to an old HDD, SD card, or USB drive, they’ll last longer.

For anyone thinking of buying the original PC versions of Black Ops 1, 2, or 3 to play online because of this, DON’T. Whether it’s zombies or multiplayer, the vanilla PC games are vulnerable to remote arbitrary code execution exploits that allow anyone in the game you’re playing to run any code they want on your computer.

If you absolutely must play these games online, go download Plutonium and play that way to protect yourself.