r/linuxmint • u/kong_r8tta • 3h ago
Support Request Running slower after installing Mint
I downloaded Mint onto my new gaming computer and I'm having a bunch of performance issues. When i first started with linux I couldn't play anything since the graphics were abysmal and it would barely run. I fixed that when I found out that I hadn't even downloaded the nvidia driver... And while it's obviously a lot better now, I'm still having big issues! Discord crashes almost immidiately whenever i try to stream anything, Overwatch(which was running perfectly when i had windows) is choppy and basically unplayable, and the screen on my laptop will suddenly freeze all the time. The weirdest thing about the screen freezes is that when i had a TV connected via HDMI, it showed that it wasn't the computer that was frozen, cuz it functioned just fine on the TV, it was just the screen on my laptop. I suppose i wonder whether there are other things similar to downloading the driver that i don't know about that would fix these issues. Thanks in advance!
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u/Hauptideal 3h ago
What's your hardware? If your new gaming computer is really new, i.e. from after 2024, Mint won't offer you the best Linux performance, which is tied a lot to the latest kernels, drivers and graphics / Mesa stacks. Mint is still based on Ubuntu 24.04 from 2024.
Furthermore, Mint doesn't compress RAM like a distro optimized for local desktop / gaming use. As RAM can be compressed 3:1 to 4:1, Mint fills up your physical RAM much faster, and when the system has to swap, performance tanks.
If you are gaming, especially on new hardware or hardware-demanding games, you should get a distro made for gaming and optimized for performance (or get a mainstream distro that ships up-to-date kernels and drivers and compresses RAM, such as Fedora).
Finally, while Linux gaming peformance can be better on AMD hardware, nVidia systems can still perform worse on some games than Windows, but nVidia is working on that.
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u/kong_r8tta 3h ago
The Lenovo laptop I'm using is called LOQ 15ARP10E it seems. It has both nvidia and amd it seems to me. But you're probably right that a distro made for gaming would probably suit me better. Still doesn't explain why my screen freezes even just while using firefox though...
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u/Hauptideal 2h ago
Freezes should go away with another distro if software-related. When my laptop was new, it also had issues with Ubuntu and I had to enable the HWE stack to even allow it to wake up from sleep. When we say nVidia vs AMD system in the context of Linux gaming, we only mean the dedicated GPU, if it exists. So AMD CPU with nVidia GPU is an nVidia system.
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u/Lurch1400 2h ago
Its much easier to help if you post your rig specs and whether its a laptop or desktop
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u/FaireNatt 3h ago
This is EXACTLY what has been happening to me. I've heard that it's because Mint is not very optimized for performance in particularly new hardware. I personally have been eyeing Cachy OS and am planning to switch to it, but...honestly, I completely relate to your issue. Sorry I don't really have a solution for you.
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u/delacroix01 1h ago
Maybe you can try switching to older kernels like 6.17. These days Mint runs on kernel 7.0 by default, which can cause problems on certain hardware.
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u/TheKingTigerTank Linux Mint 22.3 Zena | Cinnamon 1h ago
Try turning off hardware acceleration in discord. I had a similar issue where when I would try to stream something the client would crash and restart, turning off hardware acceleration fixed it for me.
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