I’ve been trying Linux Mint on my old dell laptop with an nvidia GPU and it’s been just one impossible issue after the other.
Even games that have native linux versions like Valheim don’t run if I’m running off the GPU (but run if i switch to the integrated intel gpu but with terrible performance). Some games that work with proton work fine but have tons of weird issues like not being able to type specific characters on the keyboard, or the game and the entire OS just randomly freezing after 15-20 minutes - it happened in both warframe and guild wars 2 for example. Every time it happened I had to do a hard reboot since it was completely unresponsive.
I tried installing bottles and couldn’t get through the basic setup of the GOG launcher without getting black screens in it. There were some workarounds with no-sandbox launch arguments at one point but I think I eventually gave up on it. Steam had tons of issues with launchers freezing, or steam itself getting stuck on constant shader updates every day I start the game.
I tried changing proton versions, installing wine and lutris manually, changing nvidia drivers (randomly trying other one since there’s no useful info online about which to pick or which ones even work…) and it never got to a satisfactory point. I still have no idea which drivers im supposed to be using (if it’s not the recommended ones that come with Mint), or how to properly update them manually.
I’ve had steam somethines just not run at all, I run it and nothing happens. I see it in the process manager, kill it ,restart it… it gets the temporary update popup and then disappears with no error message whatsoever.
I actually own a steam deck and I never had any major issues with it, so my only conclusion is that this time it’s the fault of either linux mint (which is supposed to be the stable, no-nonsense OS), or the different hardware - probably the GPU.
So yeah… is the conclusion wrong, or is it really simply pointless to try linux with nvidia?
edit: hardware info:
GPU: GeForce GTX 1060 Mobile
CPU: i7-7700HQ
I’m currently running Linux Mint 21.2 Cinnamon
Nvidia drivers in use are the latest ones available from the driver manager (currently nvidia-driver-550).
Will try PopOS! next
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Short answer: no. I’m using Linux Mint with an Nvidia card and it works great. From the games you’ve mentioned I’ve played Guild Wars 2 and Warframe with zero problems, they actually ran like on Windows where I had them installed before. Steam, Heroic Games Launcher, Bottles, Lutris - they all work fine for me.
Also some of the issues you’re describing don’t sound like a typical GPU problem. But sure, try a different distro, maybe your particular hardware setup doesn’t play nice with Mint.
For gaming, you should be using the most current version of nvidia’s proprietary drivers that supports your GPU, unless that GPU is really old. Have a look at this page: https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/drivers/unix/legacy-gpu/
If your GPU isn’t listed there, use the most recent driver you can find.
If your GPU is on the 470.xx supported list, try 470.223.02, as that seems to be the last in the series.
If your GPU is on the 390.xx supported list, try 390.157.
If your GPU is on one of the other lists, it’s a really old chipset and you should be using the Nouveau driver that’s built into the kernel.
If you’re using the nvidia proprietary drivers on a system that also has Nouveau installed, make sure you’ve blacklisted Nouveau so that you’re loading the correct driver.
Dual-graphics laptops are a bit of a bear to work with under Linux generally. Good luck.
I have nvidia, and I can’t use any other proton version that is higher than ge-7.50. It’s probably a software issue, but I can still play many games, both new and old. I have gtx 1060 6GB. Using Zorin OS.
Oh, sometimes, the driver update gets stuck, and I have to use a command (dpkg --configure -a) to resume it after a system reboot.
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