I have a friend who I recently learned is looking to switch to Linux and I offered to help, since I’ve been using Linux for ages. I’m not the most technical user, but in some ways I think that makes me uniquely well suited to be a new person’s guide, and I’m pretty familiar with the install and setup process sans one big thing, proprietary graphics drivers, I’ve generally always been installing Linux on a laptop it an integrated gpu

They let me know they have an nvidia graphics card, I think 30 series if I remember right, we don’t know what DE or distro might be a good fit for them and I told them we’d start by test driving a few, see what they thought of the interfaces, and pick a distro from there

Can you boot and use the OS without installing the proprietary drivers, or do you need to install them via like tty or something? I know nvidia started open sourcing their drivers and some amount is in the kernel now, I assume proprietary drivers are still optimal, if not explicitly necessary?

Any and all advice is welcome, it’s kinda hard to research something this general and get a sense for what the big picture looks like

Thank you!

  • zipsglacier@lemmy.world
    2·
    1 day ago

    To try pop os, they have a separate iso already including all the Nvidia stuff. It works great, rock solid, seamless. (You’ll see info about their new cosmic DE, and I think it will eventually be good, but I wouldn’t suggest trying it now, especially for a new person. It’s not ready for non-enthusiast use, and mixing it with their current Gnome-based DE introduced some small issues for me.)

    • Cris@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      3·
      20 hours ago

      Every time I try pop I run into some kind of an issue or another 😅 we may give it a try but my experience has soured me on it a bit

      Mostly I’m just trying to make sure that, whatever they seem to like, I can help them get it up and running without an issue. Only part I’m not confident in is the graphics drivers but it sounds like the answer is that I can use the open source ones, find out what they wanna run, and then follow a tutorial for the proprietary ones once we’re settled on a distro and desktop…?

      • zipsglacier@lemmy.world
        1·
        9 hours ago

        Yeah I think that sounds right. The other mentions of Mint here seem particularly suitable for this situation.