From my understanding, there’s definitely driver support all the way around. I have a 1070 in my laptop, so it’s old enough that everything is probably about as developed and compatible as it can be. Theres an open source driver available, but most people say to simply stick with the proprietary Nvidia one, which is what I’ve done. The OS/driver manager should pick out the most stable and best tested release version for your system. I would guess all the distros can use the Nvidia drivers just fine, it’s just a matter of getting it installed one way or another, if the distro doesn’t have a driver manager. I’m just the newbie, so, I don’t have a lot of experience.

It’s kinda like installing windows, but the process is way faster during the actual install, and the initial setup. The OS is much smaller and took maybe 20 minutes to install after I got my partitions set up properly. After Linux is booted up, every program I needed to get going was easily located in the built in software package downloader. I didn’t have to go to NVIDIA’s website to download drivers because they were already accessible from the built-in driver manager. Telegram, Steam, and whatever popular software you want is just a quick search away and a button click from being installed as a flatpak application. Firefox was already installed. It didn’t ask me to log in to a Microsoft account before I could move on to using my computer.

I don’t have numbers, but I’ve seen comments/reviews that suggest they’re all within a percent or two in terms of frame rate. Like, how much thought should someone put in to getting 101 fps instead of 100 fps, you know? After using Mint for a bit, I’m probably going to stick with this for a year or two before trying out other distros, if I even feel the need. I think there is also value in giving a couple of them a try as you learn more.

What would make Nobara better for gaming than Mint? All of my Steam games have worked fine. Do the things you’re talking about matter for games that are not in Steam/Proton? Just wondering!

Mmhmm. I’ve started doing this and it does work fine. I think I saw a comment once that noted they compile faster in-game anyways. So that makes me feel better about skipping lol

I am new to Linux and never used it regularly before a couple months ago, but I’d recommend just going with Linux Mint to start off. I don’t know much about Arch, but from all the jokes I see on Lemmy, I get the impression it may be a more advanced distro for people who know what they’re doing? I wanted to try PopOS! because people said it was good for gaming, but the install wasn’t as streamlined for a dual boot Windows/Linux setup.

Linux Mint just kind of works and installed super fast. And my Windows partition is still intact and functional (but I’m wondering if I even need it tbh). My only holdup is Microsoft Office. I still haven’t tried to get that working inside of Linux, but if it’s possible, then I will certainly delete my Windows install.

But anyways, don’t over think it. Just do Linux Mint and then after a while, you’ll be able to understand why or if you should consider another distro I would guess!

I play mosty either indy games or just older games on an older gaming laptop (geforce 1070m based HP Omen) and Steam/Linux Mint work pretty great. Outer Wilds works even better in Linux now that I’ve begun using CoreCtrl to disable CPU power throttling. Otherwise, it runs about like it did on Windows. The MCC runs flawlessly. Recently purchased No Man’s Sky and it runs pretty well and is actually incredibly smooth–no idea how that one runs in Windows because I’ve been just using Linux full-time for maybe two months now.

There is some weirdness like having to process Vulcan Shades before games boot up which can be annoying, but it hasn’t discouraged me yet. You can also skip that and the only difference is there might be a bit of stuttering for the first bit of game play. After going back to Windows to compare performance, I think it does this stuttering thing anyways?

Man, I feel like that used to be true–maybe. I feel like the bags are only 1/4 to 1/3 full now. And the chips are still mostly crushed. I feel ripped off even buying chips, so I’m trying to stop entirely. Win?