My time with Linux has been equal parts amazing and absolutely infuriating. Linux Mint is NOT usable out of the box. Here have been my issues:
Nvidia GPU - Trying to figure out how to get the drivers working was a nightmare with ten million different people giving different advice on how to get it to work. Eventually I was able to get them signed and it seems to work
Bluetooth - Another nightmare. Bluetooth is terrible on Linux. It took hours to get it even remotely working ok, but I still don’t think it’s perfect.
Compatibility - Some things just straight up don’t work for seemingly no reason. None of my controllers work with Steam, no matter how many countless hours I’ve spent troubleshooting.
And that is where I am disappointed. Troubleshooting Linux issues sucks. There are so many people giving their opinions and all of them are different and most don’t work.
When Linux is working right it is amazing, and I love it. But right now, it just isn’t as good as Windows and extremely infuriating more often than not. Guess I am going to switch back and give Bill Gates all of my info again. Really fucking disappointing
Update: Controllers seem to work after forcing compatibility mode in Steam. No idea why that was off or why Steam was essentially hijacking my controller, but it seems to work now. For everyone that helped thank you.
fucking hate bluetooth ngl, it’s a horrendous standard that doesn’t do what I want it to do and even when it can it fails horribly and is unbearably unreliable
how did you install the nvidia drivers btw? I thought in mint there was a “driver manager” thingy that installed it for you with one click
You use popos like a pro 👑
It was that easy this time around, because I’m dumb. The last time I never said I needed to sign them in the installer so I had to do it manually
oh are you using secure boot? my condolences
I’ve been on and off with Linux for about 15 years and just want to counter some of the people trying to troubleshoot or criticize to say: it can be really tough.
We need our computers to work and we expect things to function correctly.
I’ve used dozens of distros over the years. I was a super early Arch adopter, mained Gentoo for about three years, ran my own BSD server for programming projects, and still maintain several small home Linux servers. And even I sometimes want to pull my hair out trying to get semi-new hardware working right in my distro of choice. I spent three hours today fighting Nvidia and sound drivers and eventually just had to give up on that machine after being told that what I want just flat out isn’t supported in Linux on the hardware I have.
Take a breath, set it aside until you’re ready to take another crack at it, and know that it’s a journey. You’ll get there or the software will catch up and meet you halfway. No shame in being frustrated :)
Thanks so much! I appreciate it. Already giving it another go with Pop OS
Thanks so much seriously. This is great
Those are not normal problems. Linux generally does work out of the box unless you’ve got weird or new hardware.
Mint usually does the trick ez peasy and that’s why it’s recommended so much. BUT, sometimes it craps on your hardware. I’d actually suggest trying a different distro before you make up your mind. Some are newer than mint and might work where mint doesn’t.
Might I suggest fedora workstation or popos? Fedora and the rpm fusion team make installing nvidia a breeze and it’s running pretty recent kernels and code. I’ve never run popos but it seems to be gaming focused and people generally like it.
If your having the same issues, then you probably do have some hardware incompatibilities. And if that’s the case, you have my condolences-you’d be better off just sticking with something that works - aka windows.
But please do believe me/us when I say you shouldn’t have to work that hard - mint is either too old, or you’ve got wonky hardware that is going to be a pain no matter what.
I appreciate the response. I fixed my current issue, but honestly I’m thinking off messing with other distros. We’ll see.
Mint isn’t the platform for gaming on Linux. It’s way behind on a lot of things like display drivers. Try something like Bazzite or Nobara that have a ton of tweaks for both Nvidia and steam. Honestly, I’m really shying away from recommending Mint to new users, it’s getting really stale.
I appreciate the response. What would you recommend as the easiest way to test different distros easily? Vm?
Ventoy with all the distro LiveUSB images you want to try on it. You should be able to configure them as if they’re installed, unless you have to reboot. If your issues are hardware based, you’ll have a tough time doing anything useful on VMs. If you find you have to reboot to do anything, you’re probably going to want to actually install it. But you should get an idea of how things will go with a distro by doing this.
Thanks!
I’m sorry to hear you’ve had so much trouble with Linux. I understand the frustration that comes with Unix based OSes especially after being a heavy Windows user for years.
I did a bit of searching on your profile and saw you’re dual-booting with Windows on the same hard drive. I personally had issues with trying to set that up myself (Windows is a finicky, jealous b****). My own solution was installing my distro of choice onto a separate hard drive - if you can eventually do that I recommend it.
I know you’re getting a lot of flak for your post but it’s good to see honest opinions from people who genuinely want to try Linux but aren’t necessarily the same level of hyper-nerd as the typical demographic here.
Having information from a wider opinion pool will help in understanding how to get Linux to more of the population - but that’s a side tangent.
It’s encouraging to see that you are still open to trying in the future and taking a break from it can help you clear your head and come back with fresher eyes.
Unfortunately I don’t have much experience with NVIDIA drivers, and probably a similar amount of troubleshooting as Mint but I’ve found EndeavourOS to be friendlier to a middle-upper tech/gamer use case. Mint, for me, seemed cold and “office”-y and didn’t work well for me as I don’t only use my browser and word processor.
That said, distros are an almost ridiculously personal choice and part of that is trial and error. If you haven’t gotten the chance I recommend test driving a couple other distros in an Oracle VM (for user-friendliness) so you can decide what you like the feel of before committing to an install again, if and when you feel ready.
Good luck and godspeed until then.
Thanks for the reply. My next build will not have windows on it at all, If I can help it. Honestly mint is great and was working amazing until I had to reinstall it.
in the beginning I dual booted too and windows did cause some strange issues, but they disappeared when I disabled fast boot from somewhere in windows settings.
also I distrohop every now and then, and a I had trouble installing nvidia drivers a few times. on distros that earlier had no trouble at all with it. bluetooth works great on my pc, which was a pleasant surprise. I don’t own a controller, but I heard that PS4 controllers work best.
all of your existing hardware may not be supported, but in the future you may want to search and check if the peripheral or component you are buying will play nice with linux if you want to move in that direction.
Looks like you used hardware that was designed for windows and are blaming it now on Linux.
I am not understanding the issue you have that requires signing of drivers.
Yes some Bluetooth devices lack the support from the manufacturer’s for Linux, the Controllers i have used work great, at least for my needs.
Controllers have better support Linux for ages. Not understanding the issue here either.
Troubleshooting on Windows sucks at least to the same degree. The same non specific error message gets you 50 possible solutions.
No need to announce your departure.
I’m venting because I don’t understand how the experience is so vastly different for people. And what do you mean hardware designed for windows? Literally the only thing is the NVIDIA gpu
Not the guy your responding to and I 100% get your frustration, but I want to provide a little anecdote.
Back in November, I built a new desktop to replace my 7 year old one and put OpenSUSE on it. No matter what I tried, I could not get either Bluetooth or WiFi working. I tried updating drivers, restarting controllers, reinstalling the OS, replacing the OS with Mint. Nothing worked.
I did a lot of searching over the next few days, and it turned out that my motherboard was so new that it’s built in WiFi chip did not have Linux drivers yet. Like at all.
Most products aren’t created with Linux in mind, so compatibility isn’t a concern. It’s up to the community to create patches & drivers to make things work, and it can take a bit to get things working.
I’m genuinely sorry you had the experience you did, but I hope that if you do return to Windows that you’ll give Linux another try in the future. Search your products to see if others have had issues, along with potential solutions, before you dive in.
Thanks for the thoughtful response, and not chastising me like half the other people in this thread. Yes it’s been very frustrating because I want to switch full time. I don’t understand how I am having these issues on a reinstall of Linux, when my first install had none of these issues.
Basically everything you stated, Bluetooth, Controller and GPU is hardware.
Your experience is probably different since you still think and act like you use windows. This is normal. When you are used to something and then switch to something that works differently you will run into problems.
I did a first install of mint months ago and daily drove it. I have gotten pretty used to Linux.
months ago
How long have you been using Windows for?
My whole life up until last September when I first installed mint
Do you see the paradox here? You expect to be as proficient as you might be with something you’ve used your entire life with something you’ve only used on and off for a couple of months…
I’m venting because I don’t understand how the experience is so vastly different for people.
It’s always going to be a driver issue. It takes time and money to develop drivers for *nix, so most manufacturers don’t bother. It’s the most significant issue *nix has to deal with and if it wasn’t an issue, no one would deal with Windows.
Nvidia isn’t supported well on Linux*. A touch of Google fu would have told you that.
So all of this can be traced back to using a NVIDIA gpu and having to use secure boot?
Why do you need SecureBoot?
Dual boot with Windows. Dumb windows requires it
Sorry to hear that Linux Mint is not working well for you. Unfortunately, things can sometimes still be rough when it comes to hardware support. I have personally also had issues with Nvidia GPUs and Bluetooth. Often this is because the manufacturers only provide drivers for Windows and Linux drivers need to be created by the community.
Regarding Nvidia and secure boot. I’ve had the same issue (on both Mint and other distros). After some frustrations (including a BIOS update) I finally gave up and disabled secure boot. Since then, I haven’t had any issues with my dual boot with Win 10 (but I probably won’t buy another Nvidia GPU). What makes you say that Windows requires Secure Boot?
No I didn’t. When I installed Linux mint the first time I was able to fix everything. I needed to reinstall it and that is where this controller issue started
This seems quite weird. Are you perhaps missing a package (e.g. steam-devices)?
I have steam-devices and same issues. No luck at all. Thanks for the response.
Windows does not require secure boot.
Windows 11 absolutely does require secure boot
You might be better off with bare-metal linux and shoving windows inside a VM where it belongs.
I tried installing a VM but man it was really laggy. I used the open source one on linix, not virtualbox. I probably fucked something up, though.
deleted by creator
And you’re missing the point: do your own research
Nvidia isn’t responsible for the other issues you have… Did you do any research about your hardware and Linux compatibility?
Bluetooth will be whatever wireless chipset you’re using likely.
No I didn’t. When I installed Linux mint the first time I was able to fix everything. I needed to reinstall it and that is where this controller issue started
And Bluetooth devices count as hardware. You bitched about that too.
Thanks for the response
People are downvoting your comments about your actual experience and that’s not helpful.
Folks, please don’t downvote an unpopular (to you) opinion. Instead, try to prove for more info and provide your expertise to help someone try to have a better experience. The point is to help someone learn how to enjoy Linux, not hate them for not liking it. Don’t be counterproductive and solidify a bad reputation of Linux users.
It’s probably because I come off as a whiny bitch, which I do. Lol just frustrated.
I use Pop!_OS and have had zero issues getting my Nvidia GPU to work on it, so that or a similar Linux distro that has good Nvidia driver support might be worth checking out.
565 drivers now support Wayland on PopOS
I can see everyone down voting you to oblivion… And that’s sort of fair. But that’s beside the point.
I was having trouble with NVIDIA while using mint early on and decided to switch to Fedora. Maybe try that once. Fedora has better defaults for nvidia.
Use the KDE Plasma spin btw. See if it works.
I guess there’s difference with the gpu model too, because for me it has been the opposite: mint works without issues and fedora has been a nightmare, especially the kde spin one. last time it killed itself afrer the first updates. nobara was almost perfect but I could never figure out why it can’t turn the monitor back on after it has turned off.
I know. That’s why the live usbs are a life saver. I really just use the live usb to test everything out.
Thanks, I might try that if a new install doesn’t work
Linux Mint is NOT usable out of the box.
I set Mint up for my 65 year old mother about 4 years ago, and she hasn’t had a single issue since. I think it’s less about Mint being usable out of the box and more about Mint not doing what you want out of the box…
Normally I don’t suggest distro-hopping for newbies but sometimes it’s a good idea to try a couple distro before settling in. Since there are tons of different hardware, some distros offer a better out of the box solution for some hardware.
Try openSUSE Leap for instance.
Also someone suggested trying KDE Plasma on Mint, so try that first. It might alone solve your problems.By the way, if your need for Windows can be covered on a virtual machine, go that way instead of dual boot. Windows really can mess with your bootloader.
As a daily OpenSUSE user on both my work and personal machine I’m not sure if I would recommend for a first timer, I feel like it makes a lot of assumptions as how much the user knows
While KDE plasma can be made to work on Mint (I’ve done it as a PoC) it is NOT something a beginner should be doing because a) it’s an unsupported config and b) you need to pull in non mint repositories to get the plasma files, and then you’ll be fiddling around to get it working again when an update breaks something.
If Mint has been troublesome then popOS ubuntu and Fedora would be better choices.
What does PoC mean in this context?
Sorry, proof of concept, i was being lazy
Of course it’s proof of concept, that was my bad. Thanks!
I don’t use Mint myself so I don’t know how things are there. Thanks for clarifying.
About NVIDIA: yeah, Nvidia on Linux is a big, big mess. Things are improving but it’s still a pain in the ass sometimes. Maybe some of your issues could be solved by changing to another Desktop Enviroment.
About Bluetooth: I don’t know how recent your hardware is, but maybe changing to a newer kernel (preferably a more up to date Distro, like Fedora) would solve it.
About Compatibility: I don’t know what controllers you are using. I personally had issues with Xbox Wireless Controller drivers, and after some searching I easily fixed it with xpadneo, maybe that could help.
Mint is usually a great distro for beginners, BUT it sometimes sacrifices shiny new updates for stability (which is a good feature of Mint), that’s why I recommend you to try Fedora. Good luck with your Linux adventure 😃
Thanks for the response I appreciate it
Wasn’t a fan of mint when I tried it. IMO, I found popOS to be an overall better experience when I first started using Linux and have since switched back to it after having a few issues on Fedora.
You might give that a shot especially if you are using nivida. PopOS hasn’t given me much grief (aside from Gnome but that’s more a personal distaste for it)
Even after being on Linux for a year and considering myself a fairly capable guy in tech, Linux is kind of a pain in the ass if you’re doing more complicated things like in my case music production.
But it sounds like you’ve had an even worse go doing normal things which sucks. I feel for you man. I hope your next go is better.
It took me a few tries and Windows being a privacy nightmare to switch. It can be done but it wasn’t (and still isnt) easy.
