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.
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.
The reality is, people will be using Linux on Windows hardware, people won’t build special computers just for Linux or buy a premade Linux computer, they’ll flash Linux on their Windows computer expecting it to work and get annoyed if it doesn’t, the person in the post is making very valid points and those issues should be worked on
I absolutely disagree with you. If a manufacturer does not care about Linux support, it’s on the manufacturer. Do not blame the thousands of unpaid volunteers and a few paid ppl for not supporting a specific BT chip or controller or whatever.
The signing issue is so on OP cause disabling secure boot or using a supported distro like ubuntu could have fixed that, and yes you can run Windows 11 with Linux dual boot without secure boot.
I don’t think anyone is blaming volunteers. More so stating the obvious. If you’re new to Linux, you cant be expected to know everything about it. You may not know that some hardware may not work well with Linux. You may not know secure boot sux with linux. You may not know arch is not the best intro to Linux but because arch based distros are recommended frequently for gaming you may try it first. Linux can have a steep learning curve, expecting everyone to RTFM and all the forum posts is unreasonable. Sometimes people just need to try and experience pain and frustration.
OC stated those things ‘should be worked on’. What else is it than blaming ppl?
Yes things could be better, but saying things should be better while sitting on their ass and doing nothing is just not correct to say. If you say it should be better then you should take part in it getting better.
Maybe you should take a read on Wikipedia on what gatekeeping is before you insult me. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gatekeeping_(communication)
Would you say your attitude and responses here drive inclusion or increase motivation to join opensource or improve things voluntarily?
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
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.
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.
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?
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.
And you’re missing the point: do your own research
And Bluetooth devices count as hardware. You bitched about that too.
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 :)
I started using mint a year ago and had no such issues. What hardware are you running out on?
System: Kernel: 6.8.0-53-generic arch: x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc v: 13.3.0 Desktop: Cinnamon v: 6.4.6 tk: GTK v: 3.24.41 wm: Muffin dm: LightDM Distro: Linux Mint 22.1 Xia base: Ubuntu 24.04 noble Machine: Type: Desktop Mobo: ASUSTeK model: ROG STRIX X570-F GAMING v: Rev X.0x serial: <superuser required> part-nu: SKU UEFI: American Megatrends v: 5013 date: 03/18/2024 CPU: Info: 12-core model: AMD Ryzen 9 3900X bits: 64 type: MT MCP arch: Zen 2 rev: 0 cache: L1: 768 KiB L2: 6 MiB L3: 64 MiB Speed (MHz): avg: 2321 high: 3800 min/max: 2200/4672 boost: enabled cores: 1: 2200 2: 2200 3: 2200 4: 2051 5: 2200 6: 2200 7: 2200 8: 2200 9: 2200 10: 2200 11: 2200 12: 2200 13: 2200 14: 2200 15: 2200 16: 2200 17: 3800 18: 2200 19: 2200 20: 2200 21: 2200 22: 2200 23: 2057 24: 3800 bogomips: 182408 Flags: avx avx2 ht lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 sse4a ssse3 svm Graphics: Device-1: NVIDIA GA104 [GeForce RTX 3060 Ti Lite Hash Rate] vendor: Micro-Star MSI driver: nvidia v: 550.120 arch: Ampere pcie: speed: 5 GT/s lanes: 16 ports: active: none off: DP-1,DP-2 empty: DP-3,HDMI-A-1 bus-ID: 08:00.0 chip-ID: 10de:2489 Display: x11 server: X.Org v: 21.1.11 with: Xwayland v: 23.2.6 driver: X: loaded: nouveau unloaded: fbdev,modesetting,vesa failed: nvidia gpu: nvidia,nvidia-nvswitch display-ID: :0 screens: 1 Screen-1: 0 s-res: 2560x1440 s-dpi: 96 Monitor-1: DP-0 size-res: N/A Monitor-2: DP-2 pos: primary res: 2560x1440 dpi: 108 diag: 690mm (27.15") API: EGL v: 1.5 platforms: device: 0 drv: nvidia device: 2 drv: swrast surfaceless: drv: nvidia x11: drv: nvidia inactive: gbm,wayland,device-1 API: OpenGL v: 4.6.0 compat-v: 4.5 vendor: nvidia mesa v: 550.120 glx-v: 1.4 direct-render: yes renderer: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti/PCIe/SSE2 Audio: Device-1: NVIDIA GA104 High Definition Audio vendor: Micro-Star MSI driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel pcie: speed: 16 GT/s lanes: 16 bus-ID: 08:00.1 chip-ID: 10de:228b Device-2: AMD Starship/Matisse HD Audio vendor: ASUSTeK driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel pcie: speed: 16 GT/s lanes: 16 bus-ID: 0a:00.4 chip-ID: 1022:1487 Device-3: Focusrite-Novation Scarlett 2i2 4th Gen driver: snd-usb-audio type: USB rev: 2.0 speed: 480 Mb/s lanes: 1 bus-ID: 1-3:2 chip-ID: 1235:8219 Device-4: PreSonus Audio ATOM driver: snd-usb-audio type: USB rev: 2.0 speed: 12 Mb/s lanes: 1 bus-ID: 5-1:2 chip-ID: 194f:0206 Device-5: Blue Microphones Yeti Stereo Microphone driver: hid-generic,snd-usb-audio,usbhid type: USB rev: 1.1 speed: 12 Mb/s lanes: 1 bus-ID: 5-2:3 chip-ID: b58e:9e84 API: ALSA v: k6.8.0-53-generic status: kernel-api Server-1: PipeWire v: 1.0.5 status: active with: 1: pipewire-pulse status: active 2: wireplumber status: active Server-2: PulseAudio v: 16.1 status: off (using pipewire-pulse) Network: Device-1: Intel I211 Gigabit Network vendor: ASUSTeK driver: igb v: kernel pcie: speed: 2.5 GT/s lanes: 1 port: f000 bus-ID: 04:00.0 chip-ID: 8086:1539 IF: enp4s0 state: up speed: 1000 Mbps duplex: full mac: <filter> Bluetooth: Device-1: ASUSTek Broadcom BCM20702A0 Bluetooth driver: btusb v: 0.8 type: USB rev: 2.0 speed: 12 Mb/s lanes: 1 bus-ID: 3-1:2 chip-ID: 0b05:17cb Report: hciconfig ID: hci0 rfk-id: 0 state: up address: <filter> bt-v: 4.0 lmp-v: 6 sub-v: 220e Drives: Local Storage: total: 2.27 TiB used: 165.04 GiB (7.1%) ID-1: /dev/nvme0n1 vendor: Samsung model: SSD 970 EVO 500GB size: 465.76 GiB speed: 31.6 Gb/s lanes: 4 serial: <filter> temp: 42.9 C ID-2: /dev/sda vendor: Samsung model: SSD 860 QVO 2TB size: 1.82 TiB speed: 6.0 Gb/s serial: <filter> Partition: ID-1: / size: 921.69 GiB used: 165.01 GiB (17.9%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sda4 ID-2: /boot/efi size: 95 MiB used: 32.7 MiB (34.4%) fs: vfat dev: /dev/nvme0n1p2 Swap: ID-1: swap-1 type: file size: 2 GiB used: 0 KiB (0.0%) priority: -2 file: /swapfile Sensors: System Temperatures: cpu: 35.0 C mobo: 38.0 C gpu: nvidia temp: 48 C Fan Speeds (rpm): N/A gpu: nvidia fan: 0% Repos: Packages: 2166 pm: dpkg pkgs: 2160 pm: flatpak pkgs: 6 No active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/1password.list 1: deb [arch=amd64 signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/1password-archive-keyring.gpg] https://downloads.1password.com/linux/debian/amd64 stable main Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/official-package-repositories.list 1: deb http://packages.linuxmint.com/ xia main upstream import backport 2: deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu noble main restricted universe multiverse 3: deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu noble-updates main restricted universe multiverse 4: deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu noble-backports main restricted universe multiverse 5: deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ noble-security main restricted universe multiverse Info: Memory: total: 64 GiB note: est. available: 62.7 GiB used: 4.1 GiB (6.5%) Processes: 470 Power: uptime: 15m wakeups: 0 Init: systemd v: 255 target: graphical (5) default: graphical Compilers: gcc: 13.3.0 Shell: Bash v: 5.2.21 running-in: gnome-terminal inxi: 3.3.34
I have pretty similar hardware, but I do not have an NVIDIA card. Can confirm that Bluetooth is pretty dog shit most of the time, but I generally use wired accessories (preference). I did have some pretty good luck with an ASUS bluetooth adapter which worked better than the onboard one. Controllers work great with steam both wireless (save BT issues) and wired. I also run Fedora on all my machines so I couldn’t speak to anything Mint specific but I have been running Linux for a very long time and have found that some distros have better support for newer hardware than others.
Mint is fantastic and that community does great work, all systems I manage that I do not own (family) run Mint. It is what i would recommend for any new linux user. However, for your use-case it might not be a terrible idea to give something else a try (if you haven’t already).
There will always be troubleshooting that needs to be done regardless of the OS, as others have said, hardware manufacturers do not take (desktop) Linux seriously unfortunately.
Thanks for the response. If I can figure this controller thing out I think I am good. But yeah I may try another distro if needed
Can I ask how you have steam installed? IIRC Mint does not use snapd so is it via flatlak or apt? If it’s Flatpak it could be that the flatpak doesn’t have the appropriate access to dbus which can be changed with something like Warehouse or Flatseal.
I typically perfer a native .deb (or .rpm in my case) for something like steam.
I believe I had it installed as a flatpak and I definitely do now that I’m on POP Os. Do you think I should switch?
If you have issues with your controllers with the flatpak I would try switching to the native package. There should be a .deb package for steam. If it doesn’t change the behavior, then I would assume something else is causing a problem.
You can also install flatseal and try messing with the dbus setting, should be like half way down the menu for the steam flatpak. Since flatpaks are usually not given access to the entire system I could see it not having the correct permissions.
Thanks! I tried switching to the deb package and it was all the same issues. I think I got it working though. Just forced compatibility in Steam and it eventually worked. Still don’t fully understand why.
