I’ve been toying with Linux on and off for almost 20 years now.

Started with damnsmalllinux on some ancient 600mhz Thinkpads. Dual booted Ubuntu for a long time, back when 3d desktop cubes were all the rage, so I’m used to gnome, synaptic and apt.

Tried to stick with it, but never could get away from Windows entirely. Especially for gaming, and a few critical apps. Eventually I kind of drifted away, and went full Windows for years. I always keep an Ubuntu LTS thumb drive around, and would use it occasionally for various reasons, testing etc etc.

Recently I installed Ubuntu 24.04, and had tons of stability issues. Mostly involving video output and the GUI. Screen would jitter left and right a few pixels. And sometimes maximized windows would be transparent to clicks, so you’d be clicking random stuff below the window. This was especially bad with Firefox and VLC, separately. I also had issues with removable drives not mounting properly. Standard stuff, I wasn’t doing anything weird. Practically a fresh install.

So I tried Mint, cinnamon. And so far I really like it! I’ve not been running it daily, but just the same tinkering. And so far no issues at all. But that got me thinking, what else am I missing?

I’m comfortable in the command line, but not proficient, I appreciate a good GUI for most things.

I plan to do some gaming, so steam proton compatibility is important. I don’t think that’s hard to achieve, but I wanted to make sure, it’s important to me.

Last time I played with KDE was a decade ago, I hear there’s lots of new developments going on there? In plasma? Unless plasma is different now, IDK I haven’t looked extremely hard.

I don’t care much about customization, I don’t want arch. I want something that is a pretty solid base, with decent features, and good support for when this go sideways. I feel like that’s not Ubuntu anymore. Especially with them pushing into Wayland and flat packs.

I guess my question is, does Mint seem like a good distro to start with? Or am I not looking hard enough?

Thanks!

  • utopiah@lemmy.ml
    4·
    5 hours ago

    never could get away from Windows entirely. Especially for gaming, and a few critical apps.

    Been gaming exclusively on Linux now for few years, including in VR. Just few hours ago before my work day I was playing Elden Ring with controller. 0 tinkering, System key, “EL”[ENTER] then play. So… unless you need kernel level anti-cheat, Linux is pretty good for gaming nowadays.

    Same of the few “critical” apps, I don’t know what these are but rare are the ones without equivalent and/or that don’t work with Wine, sometimes even better that on Windows.

    Anyway : Debian. Plain and simple, not BS with a mix bag of installers (but you can still use AppImage or am or even nix whenever you want to). It just works and keep on working.

    • beastlykings@sh.itjust.worksOP
      1·
      3 hours ago

      Yeah I’ve been using a steam deck since it’s release, Linux gaming is definitely a million times better than days of yore.

      Thanks for the Debian recommendation! Not a bad idea.

      • utopiah@lemmy.ml
        1·
        33 minutes ago

        I also have a SteamDeck and it’s IMHO one of the best device to promote Linux. Just hand skeptic the device, let them play and ask them how the experience then if they can guess the OS.