I am pretty new to Linux (a bit over a year) but to be fair, I haven’t really messed with it. Once set up, everything works, so I never really use the terminal. to me, it is just an OS, and i don’t mess under the hood with it.
I use Mint (Cinnamon) and I am pretty happy with it. My thoughts now are, with a new PC comming, if I should stick to Mint, or install an other distribution?
I use it mainly as a home desktop, but also do some image editing, video editing, learning CAD at the moment and of course a bit of gaming (through Steam)
Any advice is welcomed
What are the specs of your new computer? Mint can struggle with brand-new hardware (e.g. new GPUs from AMD/Intel). Or did you purchase a new PC that officially supports Linux (Mint)?
AMD Ryzen 9000X, 32GB DDR5 ram (6000mhz), 2TB SSD nvme, ASROCK B650M pro RS AM5 4xDDR5 PSU 850W. Not sure about the GPU yet, but i am inclined to go with the GTX 5070
Long time mint user ungraded to amd 9900x and 9070 so needed a newer kernel.
Tried mainline but did not work.
Switched to endeavour os.
I do miss mint used it for years after ubuntu changed de.
A change once in a while is good.
Total tech iliterate here. Was the cpu or the gpu that was not supported? I thought and gpus were better supported than Nvidia?
I think those should be fine with Mint 22. You’ll just need to use the graphics-driver-ppa to get an up-to-date Nvidia driver.
So, it’s basically up to you if you want to play around with another distro or not. But tbh it sounds like Mint is a good fit for you.
What is graphics driver ppa?
It’s an unofficial repository (PPA) for Nvidia drivers on Ubuntu and Mint: https://launchpad.net/~graphics-drivers/+archive/ubuntu/ppa
If you add “ppa:graphics-drivers/ppa” in “Software Sources”, you’ll be able to install newer driver versions in the “Driver Manager”. For a 50-series GPU, you’ll want at least version 570 IIRC.
Thanks!
It’s the unofficial updater for nVidia graphics on Linux. If you’re running Mint you should use the Driver Manager software instead, imo
I’d advise going with an AMD card, personally just moved away from nVidia due to a mix of too many issues with Linux that are nVidias fault + being way more expensive than similarly powered AMD GPUs
The PPA just provides the packages, you can actually install them through the Driver Manager after adding the PPA. However, without the PPA, the newest available version seems to be 550, which is not new enough for a 50-series GPU.
So, I kind of would say no?
Don’t get me wrong, mint can handle anything.
But now is not a bad time to experiment a bit, maybe try kubuntu, it’s got good support for gaming, while keeping the base Ubuntu safety, plus KDE is incredible compared to gnome.
The best part of kubuntu, if it doesn’t work out you can apt install Ubuntu-desktop and you’re right back to safety.
All the gaming stuff is well tested and the drivers work too.
Only downside: snap, but you can generally get around it, and it’s not as bad anymore.
Every distro has essentially the same support for gaming, assuming the same kernel and whatnot. Mint is based on Ubuntu (unless it’s the Debian edition), so it’ll have the same kernel.