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Distro recommendations and Nvidia advice? (lemmy.blahaj.zone)

submitted 1 year ago by yttrium@lemmy.blahaj.zone to c/linux_gaming@lemmy.ml

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I'm planning on putting linux on a gaming laptop (an Asus TUF f15 from 2021), and I'm having a hard time deciding which distro to go with. I'm particularly interested in Nobara and Garuda, but any recommendations or advice are welcome.

I'd consider myself a novice at *nix, so I'm looking for something that'll just work with a minimum of troubleshooting. From what I've read the biggest barrier to "just working" is probably going to be the GPU(s); for battery life reasons I need to be able to use the Nvidia card for games and the integrated GPU for less intensive tasks. If anyone could tell me about their experience with TUFs or getting Nvidia Optimus to work on linux I'd appreciate it.

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[–] Tibert@jlai.lu 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

For less work and nice interface on a laptop, I can suggest Pop OS. Tho you would still need to install software and tools.

It is using gnome, but you can install extensions to change how the desktop appears.

Gnome is pretty good for laptops and supports gestures pretty well.

Pop os has already installed extensions allowing switching for optimus and they have an ISO with nvidia drivers already installed.

How optimus switching works on Linux is : There are 3 modes :

integrated (nvidia disabled)
hybrid (intel used, Nvidia available at very low power constantly. Nvidia gpus cannot be disabled in this mode. It uses more power than integrated becauset the nvidia gpu is running at low power)
dedicated (nvidia gpu, highest power consumption)

In hybrid mode, When you want to use the nvidia gpu in games or something which cannot auto detect the gpus in it's configuration, you need to launch it with an argument to get it to run on the nvidia gpu.

For games, i suggest to use proton-ge on steam, by enabling the compatibility in the settings. Proton-ge has enhancements compared to default proton with automatic launch of gamemode (additional software to be installed), already integrated fsr 1... It is also available for other software (heroic launcher (gui for legendary)/legendary (epic games & gog) with Wine-GE, and specific versions for Lutris...

For garuda Linux, when i tried it, it was a trash experience. I wasn't even able to install wine because it wanted to remove the audio driver (pipewire if I remember), and obviously not tested by the devs. Wine was installing perfectly fine on other distros.

And as said in another comment, no idea for nobara, I couldn't boot into it.

As other comments suggested too, Linux mint is a good one too. The switch between gpu config isn't made through the power menu, but through the nvidia panel for that distro.

However I don't like it very much for dual booting, because even if I make another efi partition, it still writes to the windows partition. So when I delete the linux mint partitions, I still have a Linux mint entry lingering in the bios. I uses cinnamon as a desktop. It works great too. Tho not sure how well it got updated to gestures compared to gnome.