Quote Originally Posted by Mouse View Post
Still trying to get my head around this...

Say I already have folders named "GIMP work", "Krita work", "CC3 maps" "Challenge Maps", "City Maps" etc all in the Windows side, I'll be able to open them, edit them and save them again right where they are while working in Mint, and then go back to Windows and Windows will be able to see and use them just like before?
Yes

Quote Originally Posted by Mouse View Post
Just thought about something else:

Will I need antivirus installed on the Mint side of things as well as the Windows side?
TL;DR version: No.

Explanation: There aren't all that many viruses kicking about for Linux. They do exist but they're rare. This is because to install things on Linux you have to have root access. You, as a user, do not have root access until you elevate yourself to 'superuser' status. Under the Ubuntu family of systems (it may even be the same for Debian I can't remember) you can temporarily elevate yourself using the 'sudo' command and then enter your password. Through the graphical interface, installing new software will pop up a window asking for your password.

Installing software on Ubuntu derivatives is largely done through repositories. These repositories (apart from the defaults) need to be set up before anything can be installed from them. You'll come already good to go with the main ones where all the software in there is checked and approved so is very unlikely to have malicious code. There are also partnered repositories for other software, and it's possible to add repositories for non-approved sources but you do so at your own risk. You then either use the graphical installer hoojar whose name I've forgotten, or you use the command line in the terminal to install.

You can download the .deb package and install manually, but you'd have to do this deliberately.

Another way to get software on your system is to download the source code, and compile it yourself. You'd have to do this very deliberately.

It's all about probabilities. The software in the repositories is hashed with an algorithm that is compared to the file that is downloaded to check its integrity. There is a chance that malicious code can have the same hash as the authentic code but ... probabilities dictate it's far too much effort to try to get access to the repository to upload malicious software that has the same hash as the authentic software, which is probably going to be overwritten every night anyway. So virus writers tend not to spend too much time writing for Linux systems.