Read to leap into Linux
Read to leap into Linux
Just bought a pc laptop and want to dual boot Linux. Windows will be for some games, Linux for everything else. Would this be the right place to ask for advice?
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- Linux Mint is pretty much the stock recommendation for newcomers to Linux – straight forward, no big surprises
- and Steam for your games – with Proton, there’s very little that won’t run under Linux in one way or another nowadays
That's what I've gathered: to go with Mint. I saw somewhere that I might, however, need to get something tweaked to the gpu card that I have? For reference, I just bought a Lenovo Legion Slim 5 (Ryzen 7 7840HS; NVIDIA RTX 4060). Apparently Linux struggles with NVIDIA cards?
I've also heard of Proton. Do games take a performance hit played through that? I just figured I'd boot Windows for games, to remove a challenge from this transition. But if it's not much of a challenge, and performance doesn't take a hit, I'm certainly willing to give it a shot.
The NVIDIA thing has been answered elsewhere in the thread, so I'll answer the other one: ... It depends, but usually there's a minor performance hit. Other times it works just as well, and there are some edge cases where it actually works better.
There's also the issue of compatibility: in general, if anti-cheat software is involved, expect to have problems. This website is a database for Steam games with reports from users about what works, what doesn't work, and what can be done to fix or at least mitigate what doesn't work. You can sync your Steam library to it to see how well the games you have are supported at a glance.
NVIDIA works fine for regular use (including gaming and training ML).
Mint makes changing to the propriety drivers easy, as you just search for and open the drivers screen, and then select the latest propriety driver. Mint will take care of the rest.
Now, I haven't used AMD in a long time, so I'm not sure what it has that NVIDIA doesn't since I haven't experienced any NVIDIA problems, other than open source drivers.