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[-] piskertariot@lemmy.world 19 points 1 month ago

Consumer grade Linux Mint is impossible to differentiate from Windows/MacOS.

Install Firefox. Install Chrome. Install Steam.

Test it out on an old laptop or computer. It's trivial. Your life will improve.

[-] libra00@lemmy.world 9 points 1 month ago

Try to play games, learn how to set up wine/proton, discover that none of your games work because you have an old GPU driver, discover that you can't update it because any time you install a newer driver it hard-locks the system and reboots it in super low-res mode with no driver at all, also your sound dies randomly for no reason that you can discover and trawling reddit for 4 hours comes up with lots of solutions, half of which don't work and the other half don't even apply, get frustrated, disable dual-boot and go back to windows.

That's how my last experience with linux (admittedly that was PopOS not Mint, but) went ~6 months ago. I'm currently building up my frustration-tolerance to give it another try at some point probably with main-line Ubuntu because at least then when I go hunting for solutions to obscure problems the suggested solutions are for that distro. I'm honestly not sure what the difference between Ubuntu and Mint is tho.

[-] T156@lemmy.world 4 points 1 month ago

I've had similar issues with Arch Linux for years. The front panel outright refuses to work on Linux, even after modifying a whole bunch of things.

Your average person is more likely to get frustrated that stuff is broken/doesn't work, and switch back rather than having to alter module configuration files and things like that to fix it.

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[-] dubyakay@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 month ago

This was my experience with it too. Until I realized that the issue everything boils down to is having an old gfx. In particular an old nvidia gfx that has old, closed source driver compatibility only and can't initialize vulkan. I've still stuck to it, it's arch running on my desktop, because I'll upgrade hw components eventually. 12 years with a gtx 670 has been quite enough.

I've installed fedora workstation 41 on a decommissioned work laptop last week, a 2021 model with an 5700U, and everything just works out of the box. Some obscure game that I've been trying to play on my desktop, not even platinum rated on protondb, launched on first attempt without any shenanigans using heroic launcher.

Nvidia, especially older models, are probably just simply not the way to go for gaming on linux.

[-] libra00@lemmy.world 2 points 1 month ago

That sucks. My GPU is only a couple years old though, it's an RTX3070, and I tried using both open and closed source drivers to no avail. The one driver I finally found that worked, for whatever reason, was the v555 (still several versions back from current) server-version closed driver, but I still couldn't play games.

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[-] LoreSoong@startrek.website 1 points 1 month ago

Try the open source nouveau driver for your older gfx card ive heard compatability is better for older cards

[-] dubyakay@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 month ago

The experience was horrible with nouveau. KDE Wayland kept crashing, so I've switched to Xorg & xfce4 in the beginning, which still kept producing artifacts. I've then dug into it and found out that some 47x driver is the one that is the most compatible with my card.

I've tried switching to nouveau once more a couple months later during a kernel update, and while I've managed to stop Xorg from producing artifacts on the screen, the performance on just xfce4 was horrible, something definitely sub-20 fps rendering rate. I've mucked around a lot with drivers and reboots at this time though.

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[-] Cocodapuf@lemmy.world 9 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Consumer grade Linux Mint is impossible to differentiate from Windows/MacOS.

That sure is easy to say.

In practice, I tried to use mint for the os on a family computer and just couldn't make it work. I've been an IT guy for years and have tons of experience with both Windows and MacOS, but virtually none with Linux. Long story short, trying to make that machine work with Linux mint was just taking up way too much of my time. I just needed to get a few simple features out of it (and maybe 1 hard feature, parental controls). But having very little Linux experience, it just wasn't going to happen in a reasonable time frame. I eventually had to give up and put the Mac OS back on it (an iMac).

Anyway, mint actually has a lot in common with the Mac OS, it makes a very small set of controls very easy to use. And technically, you can do just about anything else you need to with the terminal, but that can be challenging to navigate.

[-] const_void@lemmy.ml 8 points 1 month ago
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[-] LoreSoong@startrek.website 7 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Linux definitely has a learning curve but its night and day when you actually own your device and get to decide on what software is allowed to run on your computer.

On top of the privacy, the speed of most linux distros is a huge step up from windows. Windows imo is gradually becoming obsolete in the gaming sphere. the amount of work required to properly configure and debloat a system for gaming was zero in my distro. Install gfx driver, gamemode, steam, proton GE, GOverlay, done. I play popular games such as marvel rivals and warframe at decent framerates. (my system is older).

With windows there was so much nonsense to disable that would hugely impact FPS. Sometimes disabling these things would break other features of the OS. And most of the debloat scripts to automate the process are rife with viruses and issues.

Im convinced that by enshitifying the OS it will fool users into thinking their hardware is obsolete and "cant keep up" but im running a 1070ti and a i7 from like 2018 and its still a decent system that does everything i need. until something breaks im not upgrading.

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[-] masterspace@lemmy.ca 4 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

I'm getting so sick of Microsoft and Apples bullshit that I'm about to switch personally, but from the research i did it sounds like the biggest problem with Linux on the desktop is that there still aren't standard, unified, unchanging APIs that can be relied upon, so finding third party software and utilities is still a crap shoot compared to something like Windows that can still run binaries that targets it's 1995 era APIs.

Any software that requires me to compile it from source just to run it on my machine is fine for me, a software developer, and probably fine for my mum that just does word processing and browsing since she won't be installing things, but seems a little too friction filled for your average enthusiast?

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[-] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 month ago

Install Steam

Also enable Proton for everything. I thought that was the default, but I recently reinstalled Linux on my laptop (wanted to try out openSUSE Aeon) and was surprised that at least on the flatpak, Proton isn't enabled by default.

That covers like 90% of Steam games, and 95% of what a typical SP-only gamer would need. However, MP games w/ anti-cheat are still an issue, but the more people that switch to Linux, the more likely devs are to support anti-cheat games on Linux.

[-] deranger@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 month ago

What’s installing Nvidia drivers like?

This has killed my install and interest in Linux every time I’ve tried it.

[-] datavoid@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 month ago

Installing them is dead simple.

Having them work? I'll let you know when I figure it out

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[-] Whulum@lemm.ee 3 points 1 month ago

Have tried linux with davinci resolve. Not a smooth experience. Only reason im not a full time linux user.

Still waiting for it to be a equivalent option

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[-] MyOpinion@lemm.ee 3 points 1 month ago

Until you actually try to do work on it and play games and vr. Then you find out what a complete nightmare it is to use.

[-] Someonelol@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 month ago

It works remarkably well for a lot of things if you put a little effort into it. Depending on the distro, you might have a little more trouble trying to fix something. For my use case it can do gaming, CAD, office work, and some light programming just fine with some quirks and tradeoffs. Lemmy in general is a good place to ask troubleshooting questions too

[-] cupcakezealot@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 1 month ago

trick question firefox is already installed :p

[-] calabast@lemm.ee 1 points 1 month ago

I made a new computer in November, and while I didn't try Mint (I don't think) I installed 3 or 4 different versions if Linux. In them, I installed steam and Nvidia drivers, but most of my game library said they weren't playable. If I didn't have kids I could have spent more time and gotten it working, but is Mint different? Would they have been playable on it?

[-] Skeletonek@lemmy.zip 2 points 1 month ago

It's probably because you need to go to Steam settings and enable Proton for all games. I don't understand why this is still not turned on by default...

[-] Talaraine@fedia.io 2 points 1 month ago

This. Also be sure to go to the compatibility section and select 'Enable Steam Play for all other titles.' Otherwise you're borked.

Just for completeness, I like Bazzite for gaming over Linux Mint, but Linux Mint should still work fine.

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this post was submitted on 12 Apr 2025
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