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
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Finally gave in and tried Mint recently when my Ubuntu was crapping out on me. It turned out to be a BIOS issue that I subsequently fixed, but I’m glad I did it, because it is the very first time for me when a linux install went smoothly and got me doing what I wanted without making me tear out my hair for hours at a time.
It actually felt better than a Windows install because on top of being smooth, it didn’t bombard me with dark pattern data mining AI-riddled trash.
I can’t ditch Windows entirely because of a handful of things that cannot run without it, but for the first time Linux has become a daily driver for me.
So yeah, I would stick with Mint. Turns out the hype was real.
Plenty of reasons to stick with mint, the most important being that you said you’re happy with it.
The only reason to switch distros is because you’re unhappy with some aspect of your current distro (doesn’t sound like it) or you want to try something on a different distro (also doesn’t sound like it). So in short no, you shouldn’t switch unless you have a reason for it.
and I am pretty happy with it.
No reason to switch from the sound of it
If it ain’t broken, don’t fix it
You really only ever switch distros if you’re having issues with it or if you wanna tinker with another one. Given your post, you don’t seem to fit either of these categories, so stick with mint and have fun being a sane person.
If you’re happy with it, it should be fine. Mint’s a good distro.
Mint makes troubleshooting issues – when they do rarely arise – so simple because Mint’s so common, so I personally plan to stick with it pretty much indefinitely. Maybe once I finally work up the courage to nuke my Windows partition I’ll repurpose it as a “distro experimentation” partition. I’ve kinda been procrastinating cleaning that mess out for ages. For now? I’m happy.
No reason to switch if everything works as expected.
That’s a good caveat. If you’re getting a new PC with a new GPU and new hardware it’s entirely possible that features or functionality won’t be as well supported and that decision will be made for you.
But if it still works, keep it.
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
It’s the unofficial updater for nVidia graphics on Linux. If you’re running Mint you should use the Driver Manager software instead, imo
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.
I’ve been using Mint pretty successfully on my new build i did in January
It’s fun to discover new distros, but in the long run it is more important to keep my workstation working.
I keep an old laptop around for trying other distros.
if you’re running on base lmint (not de), you may try updating your kernel to latest one (whatever ubuntu’s currently being supported) by using ubuntu mainline kernel heres the guide
make sure you have backed up, enabled timeshift or whatever because this may break your system.
If you can I’d stick with Mint. I updated my hardware recently and need kernel 6.14 or newer. I’ve not been happy with Arch and miss Mint.
I’m thinking of giving NixOS a try as it also supports 6.14.
Try EndeavourOS for an easier Arch.
Unless you really want to try NixOS. Then just pretend I never said anything.
If they’ve already installed Arch I don’t think there’s much difference to EndeavourOS. Both use the official Arch repos, and the latter mainly makes installation simpler.
Thanks but it’s not so much difficult as I’ve learned I dislike a rolling release. Feels to much like being at work in a production environment.
I think NixOS is going to give me the stability where I want it and the cutting edge where I need it. Being able to roll back changes to the OS sounds great. In theory anyway I’ll see how it goes in practice.
Good news is I should be able to get it like I want on a flash drive and them just port the config to my SSD when I’m ready to nuke Arch.
Being able to roll back changes to the OS sounds great.
I don’t know a ton about NixOS, but rolling back changes is getting more and more common. openSUSE distros enable
snapperby default (btrfs snapshots and rollbacks), and you can get the same working w/ pretty much any distro, provided you use an FS that supports snapshots.I’m currently testing out openSUSE Aeon (very similar to Fedora’s Silverblue, Steam OS, or Bazzite), which has an immutable base and relies on flatpaks for all applications. So far it’s working pretty well, and it’s an interesting concept:
- rolling base - always latest kernel and desktop environment, and you don’t need to worry about it
- containerized applications - the version of each app doesn’t depend on the base os
Maybe you’d like something similar?
Nice. Hope that Nix works out for you then.
I’m still figuring out where I really fall on the stability spectrum. Love the idea of stability, hate the idea of old packages. I’ll be looking at stable releases with Flatpaks at some point for my more work-oriented machines.
I tend to keep my laptops on mint or ubuntu. PC’s you use as a daily driver, should be easy to manage. When you boot, they just work.
Build a homelab, if you want to break stuff.
A homelab can be as small, as a vm in virtualbox. No need for extra hardware when starting off…
Mint is the distro for people like you and me. Minimal hassle, just works. No need to muck around with it.
