What's the timeline on this? I have played a bunch of modded Skyrim but just switched to Linux. That said I was about to build a mod list for myself, probably a lightish simonrim (basically vanilla +) setup with the good quest/new land mods if compatible. If that sounds like something you would also like I will just give you my mod list and load order when done.

Wow. I'm doing the same thing right now. I bought and installed Skyrim for the first time a few days ago. Then I thought, if I'm going to play it, it should be with all the graphics mods. Which I haven't figured out so I haven't played.

Go to a local PC repair shop? Will be much safer than giving someone on the Internet access to your PC. Like probably 95% nothing awful happens (esp picking some random Lemmy person) but in that 5% they will drop a keylogger, get your banking login and clean you out.

I tried to play the official Skyrim VR and couldn't even make it through the intro because the horse cart would bug out before it completed the path. I haven't even started the modding process yet but it's funny that I'll likely have to do that to even play at all 🙃

Bro buy a premium nexus mods account and then install vortex from Nexus mods and simply go to https://www.nexusmods.com/games/skyrimspecialedition/collections and basically one click install a thousand mods. Choose a collection that has the highest success rate install and just follow the very few directions you'll need to do (like launch Skyrim once or something after new install)

Just spitballing, but most of modding skyrim is just loading .esm and .esp files in the right order.

You may be able to get the modlist downloaded, load order sorted (and any merged patches made if those are still a thing) in a Windows VM, then shift the files and load order list over to Linux so you're just struggling with Linux compatibility to run instead of also with the setup of the mods.

As far as I know, that's the reccomended way to handle modding for a lot of games running on linux through compat layer stuff.

As far as mods themselves, I'd pick one of the more popular packs on nexus or wabbajack that appeals to you and doesn't seem to have a lot of complaints about bugs in the comments.

Modding has multiple hurdles. Getting the tools set up, getting the game set up, selecting and installing the mods, working out compatibility issues, and making sure everything runs at the end. By sticking with a popular modpack, you cut out selecting the mods and having to figure out getting them working together yourself. By using a Windows VM for initial setup, you cut out most of the struggles of getting the tools working on Linux. Hopefully that would cut the challenges down to a managable level.