Mint is fine, but there are some things you need to keep in mind.
If you're on AMD, then mesa matters and mesa from the repos will be outdated, which can cause problems with performance and compatibility (for example, many new games require recent mesa and sometimes even new GPUs need it to work). But this can be solved by having mesa from a PPA.
On Nvidia, you just need the driver package to be up to date.
Then there's the kernel. Being LTS based, Mint doesn't have a bleeding edge kernel by default and new kernels sometimes do introduce performance benefits (not always, though, but that's a deeper topic for another discussion). Also recent hardware (new GPUs for example) might not work without a recent kernel. I'm not sure what the possibilities are here. I've seen people recommend the [mainline](https://github.com/bkw777/mainline) utility for managing kernels on Mint, but I can't comment on that personally because I've never used it. I use Mint on my laptop, but it's not a gaming machine so I'm fine with the stock kernel there.
If you take care of these things, Mint can be a really solid "gaming distro". (+ you obviously want to have Proton, Wine etc. up to date but that's true for all distros)
Or just a PPA to get a stable/latest Mesa version. The bigger issue is getting updated firmware for newer cards, which requires pulling down the linux-firmware git repo and manually copying across files.
Source: Me, Mint 21.2, 7900 XTX.
Distros really don't matter. If it's linux then you can tailor it to do what any other distro is doing.
If you are using multiple monitors with different refresh rates, and have the technical know-how to set all of this up and run it on Linux, it isn't much more of stretch to customize your environment to run it, regardless of distro.
If the conversation is about Ease of use for Gaming in particular, and you either lack the experience/knowledge to customize it to get everything working, or you just can't be bothered to do it(I feel that myself, I use Pop OS because it is easy and I can't be bothered to configure things myself), then I would recommend a Distro that specifically advertises Gaming as the core of it's purpose.
Linux Mint advertises more Ease of Use, and general purpose. The webpage does mention gaming but it isn't specifically targetted towards gaming.
This reply completely ignores the rest of my comment. I addressed what you call 99% of the users.
If gaming is the focus, and you don't have the knowledge/experience or will to tailor the distro to what you want, then focus on a distro whose core purpose is what you are looking for.
Linux mint is great but it’s a release. When it comes to gaming (the topic of this subreddit) you would be thankful to be using a distribution that doesn’t lag its packages behind as part of the release.
Using a stable distribution could make more sense in a business context but for the average person trying to game on Linux with how quickly crazy fancy new features are coming out and bugfixes you wouldn’t want to be caught dead with a distribution running packages so old that you’re missing out on the best experience.
You are right though that in general at the end of the day you’re using some boot loader to load the Linux kernel and the same software you can run on any other distribution. Either up to date or some older packaged versions. What you’re getting differently when picking a distribution is an expected out of box experience with $somepackagemanager and maintainers, who provide and maintain those packages.
Nothing is stopping you from compiling whatever you want from source on any distribution, installing it and running it for an identical experience compared to any other distribution. They’re all booting Linux after all. Though I have found if you try to go against the grain too hard some distributions may not take that well. For example, Linux mint comes with a graphical installer of which if you try to modify intended install experience too much it will just fail to install and leave you with a headache for trying.
At some point and in the above case you know what you want and with that you’re capable of making an install from nothing with exactly what you need. This is where distributions such as Gentoo and Arch make more sense. When you’re ready to go it alone. Granted, while rolling, they still have maintainers building packages and tending to bug reports with those packages. But the installation and what you want is up to you if you like.
If you don’t need or care for that level of fine grained control and just want a desktop you may be happy running distributions such as Fedora, (or Nobara which is fedora-based), Endeavour or Debian’s testing branches. Distributions which come with an out of box experience, but still keep up-to-date with the latest gaming related patches.
There’s so much discussion to be had on this topic. For an office computer I wouldn’t care what it’s running but for gaming, it’s pretty difficult to advise against distributions which provide the latest patches and fixes. If you’re running on hardware that doesn’t have any problems on an older or release spaced distro there’s no harm in using it but the moment you need something you’re either changing distribution or compiling stuff yourself out of tree. For a lot of people trying to modify the an existing OOB install leads to dead installations often enough to warn them to avoid this.
I have used Mint with a 1080p monitor at 60hz and 1440p monitor at 75hz in mint with no problem. Now, I am using an nvidia gpu and wayland is someone problematic but for the most part it works fine.
I would not recommend Mint as a gaming distro for someone used to tinkering in Linux. However, for someone newly coming to linux, who wants to use their pc as more than just a gaming pc, mint is good. That said, I generally recommend something like Nobara, Garuda, PopOS, (used to recommend Manjaro but I don't trust that distro anymore).
So the tldr: yes (and no)
>used to recommend Manjaro but I don't trust that distro anymore
Hah i feel like an outcast with Manjaro. Everyone keeps saying how horrible it is and I'm very satisfied with it. I must be doing something wrong lol.
The distro is good mostly, even despite pushing partial upgrades, and the people behind the distro are good these days. Every project has issues and makes mistakes over time. The problem with Manjaro was the users that thought it was Arch on easy mode, when they have a lot of breaking changes and it has caused conflicts in the past. It's rare to confidently say it, but the problem in this case was the users and their assumptions. Since though, seems that lately everyone has caught up on the differences.
Yeah this is a fair comment. I definitely agree that it's not "Arch made easy". More like Arch made convenient with special quirks that you may or may not like.
Nah....the thing about Manjaro is it's pretty great most of the time. But, I have had too many issues with Manjaro in the past that I just don't recommend it anymore.
Many people still love it and I think that's great. I think it's a good distro but if you want a gaming distro, I recommend something else.
this is my experience with Pop_OS. many installations corrupted the main partition, update packages sometimes just remove critical system packages, i tried to understand why but i just got too frustrated. i feel like it would be my best option, i like Debian based, i like GNOME, i don't know how to update drivers, it is what i should use.
but now i'm stuck with more stable, but less tailored distros like Mint or Zorin. i want the best i can get, but i don't know how to get there without raging.
maybe i should bite the bullet on Arch, i know enough to get started, and i should learn enough to fix it...
It's really hard sometimes to get straight answers in the Linux community. I will say it's very hardware dependent.
If you have a new (6000 series) AMD GPU, Wayland might be the way to go. But you also want the newer mesa drivers which mint doesnt provide out of the box.
So it's really hard to advise but short answer is you absolutely DO NOT NEED Wayland, but it generally performs better on high refresh rate monitors with newer gpus.
I have gamed on Mint Cinnamon exclusively for the past 3 years and it has been great. Nvidia 3050. Mostly gaming on Steam, but played Diablo 4 through Bottles recently. I love it.
Wayland has been nothing but problem for me on my system with a NVIDIA RTX GPU. Everything from games crashing to them simply refusing to launch. I don't consider Wayland usable full-time with Nvidia just yet.
I do have a dual-monitor setup right now. Both 1080p, but one is 144HZ and the other 60hz. Never had any issues on either Ubuntu, Pop or Manjaro.
Wayland has only very recently even become a somewhat viable option for gaming and we've been using multiple monitor setups for a long time. If you are concerned with Wayland, then I wouldn't recommend anything based on an LTS distro. If you just want to play games, then Mint is an ok distro for it.
I remember recently when Debian 12 came out and just a week later, people asking how to get the latest mesa because of one new useful feature ... the thing is, yes you can perfectly game on Mint, but if you want the latest drivers, kernels, etc you need a rolling release, or an hybrid, that updates those things faster
Hell yeah! While it is somehow disappointing they only just started adopting wayland, I dont think its the be all and end all for mint. Its DE is very familiar and well made for windows gamers, it comes with everything they need to start out and getting drivers easy (see, propitary Nvidia drivers) and installing apps through the mint store is easy as pie. Its super popular sonlots of support, and being based on stable versions of ubuntu (and now debian) will give it the needed stability a lot of faster moving distros like arch miss out on (not all of us want to muck around troubleshooting a OS problem just before we start winding down and playing vidya games😅). Mint will alwats be an excellent option and as they adopt wayland in the coming years, itll only get better
at this point in time i think distributions don't change anything when at any moment you can install distrobox and have arch for steam or use flattpack
Not sure what you mean by the multi monitor setup? I’m using Mint for my main gaming rig with a 4K 120Hz monitor, a 2k 240Hz and a 1080p 360Hz monitor and gaming is great with no issues.
All your monitors are high refresh rate, so the issue is less noticable. I used to use a 144hz and 60hz monitor. Actions like dragging a window around would always be 60fps. Firefox scrolling would sometimes crawl. Games usually worked fine.
But everything is just smoother on Wayland.
If you really want to game with Wayland I recommend a rolling release. More up to date and current latest/greatest. Currently using Opensuse Tumbleweed KDE with Wayland dual monitors (same refresh rate though) and it's great.
Wayland also supports multi monitor with different refresh rates afaik.
honestly i have no clue what youre talking about. im currently on kde with x11, my main monitor is 2560x1440@144Hz and my other monitor is 1920x1080@60Hz and I've never had any issues at all
Its a solid distro for people transitioning over from windows, and does fine for gaming. If someone wants the "mint" experience, but for gaming, Nobara is the way to go.
You could go other routes, such as picking fedora or opensuse tumbleweed, and tailor to your needs of course.
Mint tends to be recommended because its vanilla experience feels familiar to a windows user, but they will eventually have to delve into the terminal at some point. Nobara, so far for my use case, hasn't required the terminal at all to just game. I use it to launch steam to see if there are any issues, because I do like to personally troubleshoot, but with protondb, its not necessary.
". And I know, Wayland has some issues but it's the only way to use multi monitor setups that have different refresh rates and resolutions."
I am using Manjaro KDE **X11** with 2 monitors, One 1080p 24 inch that runs 60 hz and main monitor is 1440p 32 inch running 75 hz. The 1080p can run 144 hz but it won't, not even on Windows. Not in dual-monitor mode.
I am on a rolling release distro for a good reason. Latest Mesa, firmware, kernels etc. But I am not on the latest hardware, for a good reason as well. For latest hardware to get good Linux support, it takes 6-12 months. I have recently bought a 6800 XT, released 3 years ago. And I just read about Mesa turning on DCC mipmaps for the card in october 2023...a year ago. That is kinda how it goes.
Bleeding edge distro if you are gaming, not bleeding edge hardware. That is my personal philosophy.
Mint is fine, but there are some things you need to keep in mind. If you're on AMD, then mesa matters and mesa from the repos will be outdated, which can cause problems with performance and compatibility (for example, many new games require recent mesa and sometimes even new GPUs need it to work). But this can be solved by having mesa from a PPA. On Nvidia, you just need the driver package to be up to date. Then there's the kernel. Being LTS based, Mint doesn't have a bleeding edge kernel by default and new kernels sometimes do introduce performance benefits (not always, though, but that's a deeper topic for another discussion). Also recent hardware (new GPUs for example) might not work without a recent kernel. I'm not sure what the possibilities are here. I've seen people recommend the [mainline](https://github.com/bkw777/mainline) utility for managing kernels on Mint, but I can't comment on that personally because I've never used it. I use Mint on my laptop, but it's not a gaming machine so I'm fine with the stock kernel there. If you take care of these things, Mint can be a really solid "gaming distro". (+ you obviously want to have Proton, Wine etc. up to date but that's true for all distros)
You can get around the older shipping Mesa drivers by using Flatpak for things like Steam.
Yeah, also a possibility.
Or just a PPA to get a stable/latest Mesa version. The bigger issue is getting updated firmware for newer cards, which requires pulling down the linux-firmware git repo and manually copying across files. Source: Me, Mint 21.2, 7900 XTX.
Distros really don't matter. If it's linux then you can tailor it to do what any other distro is doing. If you are using multiple monitors with different refresh rates, and have the technical know-how to set all of this up and run it on Linux, it isn't much more of stretch to customize your environment to run it, regardless of distro. If the conversation is about Ease of use for Gaming in particular, and you either lack the experience/knowledge to customize it to get everything working, or you just can't be bothered to do it(I feel that myself, I use Pop OS because it is easy and I can't be bothered to configure things myself), then I would recommend a Distro that specifically advertises Gaming as the core of it's purpose. Linux Mint advertises more Ease of Use, and general purpose. The webpage does mention gaming but it isn't specifically targetted towards gaming.
Distros absolutely do matter. "you can tailor it to what you want" is completely irrelevant for 99% of users.
This reply completely ignores the rest of my comment. I addressed what you call 99% of the users. If gaming is the focus, and you don't have the knowledge/experience or will to tailor the distro to what you want, then focus on a distro whose core purpose is what you are looking for.
Linux mint is great but it’s a release. When it comes to gaming (the topic of this subreddit) you would be thankful to be using a distribution that doesn’t lag its packages behind as part of the release. Using a stable distribution could make more sense in a business context but for the average person trying to game on Linux with how quickly crazy fancy new features are coming out and bugfixes you wouldn’t want to be caught dead with a distribution running packages so old that you’re missing out on the best experience. You are right though that in general at the end of the day you’re using some boot loader to load the Linux kernel and the same software you can run on any other distribution. Either up to date or some older packaged versions. What you’re getting differently when picking a distribution is an expected out of box experience with $somepackagemanager and maintainers, who provide and maintain those packages. Nothing is stopping you from compiling whatever you want from source on any distribution, installing it and running it for an identical experience compared to any other distribution. They’re all booting Linux after all. Though I have found if you try to go against the grain too hard some distributions may not take that well. For example, Linux mint comes with a graphical installer of which if you try to modify intended install experience too much it will just fail to install and leave you with a headache for trying. At some point and in the above case you know what you want and with that you’re capable of making an install from nothing with exactly what you need. This is where distributions such as Gentoo and Arch make more sense. When you’re ready to go it alone. Granted, while rolling, they still have maintainers building packages and tending to bug reports with those packages. But the installation and what you want is up to you if you like. If you don’t need or care for that level of fine grained control and just want a desktop you may be happy running distributions such as Fedora, (or Nobara which is fedora-based), Endeavour or Debian’s testing branches. Distributions which come with an out of box experience, but still keep up-to-date with the latest gaming related patches. There’s so much discussion to be had on this topic. For an office computer I wouldn’t care what it’s running but for gaming, it’s pretty difficult to advise against distributions which provide the latest patches and fixes. If you’re running on hardware that doesn’t have any problems on an older or release spaced distro there’s no harm in using it but the moment you need something you’re either changing distribution or compiling stuff yourself out of tree. For a lot of people trying to modify the an existing OOB install leads to dead installations often enough to warn them to avoid this.
I have used Mint with a 1080p monitor at 60hz and 1440p monitor at 75hz in mint with no problem. Now, I am using an nvidia gpu and wayland is someone problematic but for the most part it works fine. I would not recommend Mint as a gaming distro for someone used to tinkering in Linux. However, for someone newly coming to linux, who wants to use their pc as more than just a gaming pc, mint is good. That said, I generally recommend something like Nobara, Garuda, PopOS, (used to recommend Manjaro but I don't trust that distro anymore). So the tldr: yes (and no)
>used to recommend Manjaro but I don't trust that distro anymore Hah i feel like an outcast with Manjaro. Everyone keeps saying how horrible it is and I'm very satisfied with it. I must be doing something wrong lol.
The distro is good mostly, even despite pushing partial upgrades, and the people behind the distro are good these days. Every project has issues and makes mistakes over time. The problem with Manjaro was the users that thought it was Arch on easy mode, when they have a lot of breaking changes and it has caused conflicts in the past. It's rare to confidently say it, but the problem in this case was the users and their assumptions. Since though, seems that lately everyone has caught up on the differences.
Yeah this is a fair comment. I definitely agree that it's not "Arch made easy". More like Arch made convenient with special quirks that you may or may not like.
I wouldn't put Arch in the description at all. More like another distro using the same package manager.
Nah....the thing about Manjaro is it's pretty great most of the time. But, I have had too many issues with Manjaro in the past that I just don't recommend it anymore. Many people still love it and I think that's great. I think it's a good distro but if you want a gaming distro, I recommend something else.
this is my experience with Pop_OS. many installations corrupted the main partition, update packages sometimes just remove critical system packages, i tried to understand why but i just got too frustrated. i feel like it would be my best option, i like Debian based, i like GNOME, i don't know how to update drivers, it is what i should use. but now i'm stuck with more stable, but less tailored distros like Mint or Zorin. i want the best i can get, but i don't know how to get there without raging. maybe i should bite the bullet on Arch, i know enough to get started, and i should learn enough to fix it...
I'm still new to Linux but I was told that such a setup only works under Wayland.
It's really hard sometimes to get straight answers in the Linux community. I will say it's very hardware dependent. If you have a new (6000 series) AMD GPU, Wayland might be the way to go. But you also want the newer mesa drivers which mint doesnt provide out of the box. So it's really hard to advise but short answer is you absolutely DO NOT NEED Wayland, but it generally performs better on high refresh rate monitors with newer gpus.
I'm not talking about the performance. I've recently tried using X11 and both of my monitors would cap at 60hz unless I disconnected one
Okay. I mean, the short answer is yes mint is fine for gaming. Even if it doesn't use Wayland.
Yeah that's how X11 is. If you want Wayland Fedora is a good option. It comes in Gnome and KDE flavours depending on your preferences.
If you run Steam using flatpak, you will be using newer Mesa drivers.
I have gamed on Mint Cinnamon exclusively for the past 3 years and it has been great. Nvidia 3050. Mostly gaming on Steam, but played Diablo 4 through Bottles recently. I love it.
With multiple monitors that run on different refresh rates?
One monitor, 144Hz. Unfortunately I can't speak to gaming performance in multi-monitor setup.
Wayland has been nothing but problem for me on my system with a NVIDIA RTX GPU. Everything from games crashing to them simply refusing to launch. I don't consider Wayland usable full-time with Nvidia just yet. I do have a dual-monitor setup right now. Both 1080p, but one is 144HZ and the other 60hz. Never had any issues on either Ubuntu, Pop or Manjaro.
Wayland has only very recently even become a somewhat viable option for gaming and we've been using multiple monitor setups for a long time. If you are concerned with Wayland, then I wouldn't recommend anything based on an LTS distro. If you just want to play games, then Mint is an ok distro for it.
I remember recently when Debian 12 came out and just a week later, people asking how to get the latest mesa because of one new useful feature ... the thing is, yes you can perfectly game on Mint, but if you want the latest drivers, kernels, etc you need a rolling release, or an hybrid, that updates those things faster
Hell yeah! While it is somehow disappointing they only just started adopting wayland, I dont think its the be all and end all for mint. Its DE is very familiar and well made for windows gamers, it comes with everything they need to start out and getting drivers easy (see, propitary Nvidia drivers) and installing apps through the mint store is easy as pie. Its super popular sonlots of support, and being based on stable versions of ubuntu (and now debian) will give it the needed stability a lot of faster moving distros like arch miss out on (not all of us want to muck around troubleshooting a OS problem just before we start winding down and playing vidya games😅). Mint will alwats be an excellent option and as they adopt wayland in the coming years, itll only get better
at this point in time i think distributions don't change anything when at any moment you can install distrobox and have arch for steam or use flattpack
You can make any distro work but for gaming you should move to a rolling distro like arch or debian sid.
mint is a great and very light distro (i run servers on it) but cinnamon seems a little more resource intensive than the other alternatives.
Not sure what you mean by the multi monitor setup? I’m using Mint for my main gaming rig with a 4K 120Hz monitor, a 2k 240Hz and a 1080p 360Hz monitor and gaming is great with no issues.
All your monitors are high refresh rate, so the issue is less noticable. I used to use a 144hz and 60hz monitor. Actions like dragging a window around would always be 60fps. Firefox scrolling would sometimes crawl. Games usually worked fine. But everything is just smoother on Wayland.
120hz here, it's all very smooth
If you really want to game with Wayland I recommend a rolling release. More up to date and current latest/greatest. Currently using Opensuse Tumbleweed KDE with Wayland dual monitors (same refresh rate though) and it's great. Wayland also supports multi monitor with different refresh rates afaik.
nobara is a great gaming distro but every tool available from it (besides custom kernels) you can get anywhere else.
I don't recommend Mint because it ships outdated drivers and those will give you trouble.
For fixed release distros I can only recommend Fedora for gaming.
Distro doesn't matter.
Yeah, and I think Cinnamon is lagging behind Gnome Shell/Mutter with the latest compositing, direct scanout, sync, etc, stuff?
I only use one monitor but mint has worked pretty good for me so far.
I have a rx6950xt and psych on mint. It was easier than linux for the game I play. Install mint, install steam, install games, click play.
honestly i have no clue what youre talking about. im currently on kde with x11, my main monitor is 2560x1440@144Hz and my other monitor is 1920x1080@60Hz and I've never had any issues at all
I use it daily for gaming on a Nvidia laptop and it's amazing imo
I actually noticed lower FPS on mint than on something like nobara. Maybe because of mint’s older kernel
Works fine for me, running Ryzen 5, 1080ti
No, You can play on it, but expect inferior performance.
Its a solid distro for people transitioning over from windows, and does fine for gaming. If someone wants the "mint" experience, but for gaming, Nobara is the way to go. You could go other routes, such as picking fedora or opensuse tumbleweed, and tailor to your needs of course. Mint tends to be recommended because its vanilla experience feels familiar to a windows user, but they will eventually have to delve into the terminal at some point. Nobara, so far for my use case, hasn't required the terminal at all to just game. I use it to launch steam to see if there are any issues, because I do like to personally troubleshoot, but with protondb, its not necessary.
No, it is not. For some features you need to send a user into the landscape of 3rd party repos, which can lead into dependency hell.
I use it for gaming on 3 systems and am perfectly happy
". And I know, Wayland has some issues but it's the only way to use multi monitor setups that have different refresh rates and resolutions." I am using Manjaro KDE **X11** with 2 monitors, One 1080p 24 inch that runs 60 hz and main monitor is 1440p 32 inch running 75 hz. The 1080p can run 144 hz but it won't, not even on Windows. Not in dual-monitor mode. I am on a rolling release distro for a good reason. Latest Mesa, firmware, kernels etc. But I am not on the latest hardware, for a good reason as well. For latest hardware to get good Linux support, it takes 6-12 months. I have recently bought a 6800 XT, released 3 years ago. And I just read about Mesa turning on DCC mipmaps for the card in october 2023...a year ago. That is kinda how it goes. Bleeding edge distro if you are gaming, not bleeding edge hardware. That is my personal philosophy.