Let me start by saying I think Linux Mint is one of the top 5 greatest distros of all time. It is an absolutely essential starting point for many people and their work is responsible for much of the user-friendliness you see in the world of Linux today. It is stable, has a nice aesthetic, “just works”, and doesn’t make you update constantly.
These things are great but they are the very things that make Linux Mint unsuited for online gaming. Is this a bad thing? No!! It’s just not a distro made for gaming purposes. It’s like showing up to a monster truck drag race in a Ferrari. I cannot count on my two hands how many times I have provided support to a user, to find their issue was outdated libraries due to using Linux Mint. It happens all the time. Go look at any game on ProtonDB that is currently working, and you’ll find 1-2 “not working” reports and they are always on either Debian on Mint.
I understand why we see it so often, because Linux Mint is awesome and users want to play their games on it. But if I suggested Hell Let Loose to a friend using Linux Mint right now, the first distro suggested for gaming in our FAQ, he wouldn’t be able to play because of his choice of distro. Making rolling distros look like a fortress in 2023 and suggesting Mint for gaming will only set new Linux users up for disappointment.
Most issues of libraries are likely bypassed by just using the flatpak version of Steam.
Though honestly I’ve not encountered any of these issues from using Mint for 3 years for gaming. (and funny enough not even using the flatpak)
But if you’re going to say Mint is an issue, you should probably include Debian Stable, Ubuntu LTS, and pretty much every derivative as well. Since the issues you mention are not at all Mint-specific.
Edit: also, what libraries?
Nobody (or at least very few) puts Debian or Ubuntu LTS on their “Top 5 Gaming Distro” listicles, but literally every single one of them is putting Mint. When I installed Mint a couple months back, the kernel was on 5.2.x and I forget which version the mesa stack was on but it was very outdated as well.
Don’t get me wrong, Mint is awesome and I loved it while I used it. But if you just built a brand new machine and want to do some linux gaming, there are probably better choices.
It’s one of the things I’d love to see improved honestly - that the driver manager should be able to handle Mesa and firmware updates for newer hardware.
And the Mint team were a bit late this time around, but they often put out an ‘Edge’ ISO which contains a more up-to-date kernel.
I’m not at all going to shy away from issues that exist and I’d love to see some improvements to make Mint better in this area.
I would absolutely put Ubuntu LTS at the number one spot by a country mile. I just want to play games. I don’t want to spend hours tinkering or installing untested bleeding edge software in the hope of getting 2 more FPS. I did a lot of that 20 years ago because I am a hardcore nerd, but nowadays I want well-tested software that means everything works well out of the box.
I see problems coming up in this sub time and again that look like “I’m using libfrobnizzle-2.9.9-alpha7 and all of my colours are inverted”, where people respond like “lol you noob; that’s ancient history, it’s almost a week old - libfrobnizzle-2.9.9-alpha9-pre6.1 came out 17 seconds ago, just upgrade”. Meanwhile libfrobnizzle-2.8.42 works perfectly.
That comment would seem to be a misnomer since mint is built on top of a desbian base as well as Ubuntu. If you look at distros with a desbian foundation then it’s constantly at the top. The difference is the packages meaning all distros have the potential to perform well. They just need to be configured properly.
Flatpaks are horrible. For a start, I like bold fonts everywhere (Inter Extra Bold) and Flatpaks tend to use their own fonts, ignoring my font of choice. Also you have to give Flatpaks permission to write to the entire drive as it’s useless otherwise.
The only real problem that LTS distros like Mint have is the out of date kernel and Mesa (except when using the proprietary Nvdia drivers, then it doesn’t matter).
Everything else should be covered by the Steam Runtime.
I typically always game on nvidias drivers. Although there is a ppa for that now. To make things simpler. Also the open version of the driver Nvidia started making.
Indeed. It’s a gripe I still have. A few times already in this thread I’ve mentioned that I wished Mesa and firmware would be handled by Driver Manager software.
You can use a new kernel and a new Mesa, it’s not difficult at all. Maybe even easier than changing distros.
This is exactly the reason why I chose Fedora 39. The only problem I currently have with Fedora 39 is, for some unknown reason I simply can’t fathom, the Flatpak release of OpenTyrain had begun crashing on me after using upgrading the distro from Fedora 38 within Konsole. Fortunately for me however, the Snap release of OpenTyrian still works flawlessly.
The so-called outdated kernel mesa drivers can be updated pretty easily. Having the very latest kernel and mesa drivers is not always a positive. Consider, bugs, regressions, feature omissions, etc. Even with the latest kernel, mesa and LLVM software bleeding edge hardware isn’t automatically covered. Support takes time and many cases it could be weeks or months before support shows up in stable releases.
For example, I purchased a Asus TUF Gaming A16 2023 Advantage Edition laptop in Sept of this year. It was released in Feb, Mar, or April of this year. There was an issue with the internal keyboard and touch pad that had to do some odd internal design. Of course the laptops works with Windows because it is made for and targeted at Windows gamers and comes with Windows 11. It took the work of an AMD developer and 4-5 end users testing over a 3 month period to get to a stable modified kernel version that worked with the odd internal design. Lots of trial and error testing, and reporting back via a discussion thread. By the time the changes coming from the dev were integrated into a new kernel release it would not have mattered if one was on an LTS distro or rolling release. The newer kernel with the support was readily available to everyone. In many instances the installation procedure wasn’t merely just install the new kernel and firmware.
If you want the nitty-gritty full details take a look ==> https://www.reddit.com/r/AMDLaptops/comments/159mj6i/anyone_have_experience_with_asus_tuf_gaming_a16/?sort=new
I ordered the same one, next week ill receive it, which distro do you use? Is linux running fine now on it ? I’m new to this stuff, so im totally unknown of everything except i tried nobara on my pc with nvidia, thats why i bought this amd/amd laptop ^^
I don’t see the problem people have. I update the kernel and mesa manually in Ubuntu LTS using one of the kernel methods here:
https://www.makeuseof.com/upgrade-linux-kernel-in-ubuntu/
And update mesa using this Kisak-mesa PPA. Which instructions can be found here:
https://itsfoss.com/install-mesa-ubuntu/
I keep on the most recent non-lts Ubuntu distro and i’ve had very little issues with steam. The LTS part might be the issue?
I run on Mint myself and use Steam without issue. It’s possible we’ve not hit any of the games the OP was talking about, but it’s hard to know.
The non-LTS version does have better hardware compatibility with the latest Intel/AMD GPUs out of the box though.
Yeah, the kernel and hardware compatibility as well as older libraries on LTS distros are what i was wondering about. Perhaps one or both of those contributed to the Mint issues seen.
Mint doesn’t really appear to be LTS anymore. It’s still running a 5.x kernel as opposed to the 6.2 kernel supported by actual LTS releases.
Debian in general shouldn’t be used for most desktop systems imo, as they have a habit of not shipping bugfix releases. And yes, Ubuntu LTS is not a good recommendation for gaming either… but neither of these are being recommended for gaming, so there isn’t any need to stop doing that.
Flatpak steam is great, UNTIL you wanna get into the guts of stuff via modding, MangoHUD/gamescope, etc. it’s an extra layer of complexity for new users to try to understand wtf is going on. I’d consider myself a pretty seasoned Linux veteran, and I pretty frequently get confused with something and gotta search how to do X in flatpak. Which isn’t a big deal for me but for a new user it’s just another layer of confusion.
Yeah, libraries aren’t the major issue imo, it’s the outdated Kernel (which in turn limits Mesa) that is, only really affecting AMD/Intel users ofc.
Steam ships with it’s own “Steam Linux Runtime” libraries, so I don’t know what benefit a flatpack would even have? Steam’s already doing it.