Heyo comrades, I just bought a laptop with an Nvidia RTX 3060 (don’t call me a capitalist, Italy discounts VAT on tech stuff if you’re disabled) and was looking for a noob-friendly distro with a good Nvidia support (fuck those proprietary pigs)

I looked at Mint since I use it on my desktop, but it has an out of date kernel (I heard that you need 5.8 or above to game with Nvidia, once again fuck them. Never had an issue with my trusty rx580) would just updating the kernel be an option or should I be looking for a different distro?

My only 2 requirements are that:

It’s noob friendly (something Debian-based maybe, with a .deb and APT based package management)

And that doesn’t use a gnome DE, maybe something more like cinnamon, KDE of XFCE would be nice.

Thanks.

(sorry for long post, had to insult Nvidia)

  • Char [she/her]
    8·
    1 year ago

    Nobara KDE
    https://nobaraproject.org/

    Made by RedHat dev Glorious Eggroll who has been improving Proton and other tools for Linux gaming. Has a SteamDeck version. Welcome screen installs anything gaming you could want/need.

    Tried Debian/Ubuntu distros but needed newer packages/drivers and it was time-consuming.
    Tried Arch and derivatives but being that cutting edge had quirks.

    Fedora-based Nobara KDE hit that just-right spot of stability vs latest.

    Games run better than they ever did on w11.

    • frippa@lemmy.mlOP
      7·
      1 year ago

      I was about to pull the trigger on nobara for my desktop, I will certainly try it on live USB after reimbursing my windows license (God bless the best 9/11, 9/11 2014,the day from which we can ask for reimbursement for windows keys) I’m used to APT but I think the switch won’t be hard, thanks a lot!

      • roguestew@lemmy.world
        3·
        1 year ago

        Pop_OS has NVIDIA support out of the box. I know it comes with gnome, but it’s fairly simple to install another DE. That’s the route I ended up going, as an apt fan

        • frippa@lemmy.mlOP
          1·
          1 year ago

          I’ll try Pop too, I’ve actually tried that on liveUSB on a desktop (not the best thing I know, it’s a laptop distro) and I think their modified gnome isn’t that bad, I think I might get used to it. The fact they use APT is a huge plus IMO, I’m used to it.

      • Char [she/her]
        3·
        1 year ago

        I’m very much a noob. Personally found Nobara easier to install and maintain than Ubuntu/Arch and derivatives. Always went back to windows in frustration until Nobara. Fully aware that I may be a lucky anomaly. Whether using the startup pop up thingy to update or Discover I haven’t had any broken updates or kernels. Sometimes I still run NobaraPackageManager bauh or yumex and it hasn’t broken anything. Never check the discord. I subbed to the reddit comm before leaving for lemmy so sometimes saw it on my feed but didn’t check it. The one quirk is it doesn’t seem to have an upgrade notification, but even running old versions for months hasn’t had anything break so far.

        Appreciate you adding to this, though! My noob experience of ‘it just works’ without needing to be involved in the community is apparently not universal. I first tried it after hearing that the dev puts it on his non-techy father’s computer for ease of use and low maintenance, which has been my experience so far. But I wouldn’t want to recommend something that didn’t work. Sorry it’s been giving you problems, wasn’t aware as I don’t keep up with that stuff.

  • ghostOfRoux();@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
    4·
    1 year ago

    For what it’s worth, you can update the kernel in Mint pretty easily. I did it about a year ago to add support for my new WiFi card.

    • albigu@lemmygrad.ml
      2·
      1 year ago

      To add to that, if the only red line is GNOME, you can also install something you’re already comfortable such as the latest Ubuntu, then install a different DE. Lightdm is very versatile and allows basically any other DE.

  • JucheStalin@lemmygrad.ml
    4·
    1 year ago

    Manjaro has been surprisingly easy for me, but I’m not new to Linux so take that into account.

    Socialism isn’t shared poverty; who would complain about you buying that laptop?

    • Marcuss2@lemmygrad.ml
      2·
      1 year ago

      I don’t have good experience with Manjaro, if you want to go Arch based, I can recommend EndeavourOS

      I say this as an Arch user

  • relay@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    I’ve been using novidea with debian 11 cinnamon by installing the proprietary drivers.

    90 percent of the time it works every time.

    The good thing with Pop OS is that you can just use the image that explicitally has the novidea drivers on it initially.

  • hellvolution@lemmygrad.ml
    1·
    1 year ago

    Debian testing (install debian stable n change the repository to testing). Upgrade to testing…

    Reboot;

    After it, type, as root/su:

    dpkg --add-architecture i386 && apt update

    *i386 for 32 bits apps like Steam

    Install the Nvidia drivers packages (check debian + Nvidia official debian documentation, piece of cake)

    https://wiki.debian.org/NvidiaGraphicsDrivers

    Reboot, fine tune the GPU/monitor config with: nvidia-settings

    Install steam:

    apt install steam

    GG, happy gaming