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 I cannot count on my two hands how many times I have provided support to a user, to find their issue was outdated libraries due to using Linux Mint.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.
There isn’t any major differences. OP is talking out of his ass.
I think OP is talking about the release schedules of distros. Debian/Mint/etc aren’t rolling release, and take a few months shock for updates to make their way to the stable repos. Though this is easily fixed by switching to the testing upstream repos, this is a step too far for most (even “experienced”) Linux users.
Man shit like this makes me glad I went thought the pain of starting with arch Linux. I taught me so much
This. The thing inside my skull is a little slow but holy crap the sheer amount of documentation and enthusiastically helpful users has been a great experience.
No clue why you are being down voted. Its true, the level of documentation out there for arch is insane. Sure you start with nothing but if you are willing to read documentation its everything I could’ve ever wished for
I’ve noticed all mentions of Arch Linux and anyone praising it gets downvoted on this particular sub. On top of that, Reddit has a tendency to pile-on if they see something downvoted. The person I replied to was in the negative when I replied, for instance lol
For whoever is doing it: You could just spend that time doing literally anything else. Staring at a wall would be better for your blood pressure.
But yeah, I was a solid B and C student in high school and dropped out of college. If you’re willing to take the time, Arch is really not that big of a deal. And the boons you get from taking that time is well worth it.
there are. you can’t even play cs2 on debian stable with nvidia, but it works flawlessly on tumbleweed, for instance
OP’s title is about Mint, and I am replying to someone asking about Ubuntu (I suppose since Mint is based on Ubuntu)
These distros work great for gaming.
The issue most people have with NVidia is the poor Wayland support, but both Ubuntu (LTS) and Mint are still using XOrg. They work great on NVidia hardware.
Debian defaults to Wayland now, so people with NVidia hardware will have issues.
It is nonsense to say “Don´t use Mint for gaming”. What one could say is “Don´t use Wayland if you have NVidia hardware”
it is nonsense because mint is stuck with old mesa libraries and old nvidia drivers, it doesn’t matter about wayland
Not sure if you missed a “not” word there, but to be clear:
Ubuntu (and therefore Mint) is not running old nvidia drivers. My aptitude upgrade install the latest nvidia drivers, the same version available for download from nvidia’s website (not sure if that was within a couple of weeks, days or hours, but the latest version came out on October 31st and that’s what I have installed now)
okay, depends if you consider 535 newest, i’m currently running 545 which fixes a bunch of issues but it doesn’t change the fact that what OP is saying generally holds true
I have had the same experiences on debian that the OP is describing. It’s nice that things work for you but there are certain distributions like fedora and debian which I’ve had all around terrible experiences with in gaming. mint is a great OS but rolling release is just better generally when it comes to being a linux gamer in 2023