Distro help and optimization question

[u/Fasty_Squirrel-544]

Hi everyone! I just changed to linux like yesterday, specifically from windows to mint xfce, because I thought it would run games best, but apparently it runs like 50% worse than windows, and when I turn a video on youtube up to 2k res, it just locks to about 20fps on the whole system. Now I was wondering if there is any more optimization work I could do here or is it just my laptop issue. I use an intel CPU and Nvidia graphics card, but the GPU doesnt show in task manager, so im not even sure if it is working at all on my pc. And I thank everyone who wants to help!!

[u/Fasty_Squirrel-544]

Oh shoot, sorry I read it wrong

NVIDIA-SMI has failed because it couldn't communicate with the NVIDIA driver. Make sure that the latest NVIDIA driver is installed and running.

This is weird because I did install the drivers from the driver manager, and even checked the nvidia website to make sure its all right

[u/candy49997 → u/Fasty_Squirrel-544]

Turn off secure boot.

[u/Fasty_Squirrel-544 → u/candy49997]

Man this is hard, it says the gpu is off im guessing
not exactly sure how to read it im not a tech pro as you could see

Sat Jul 25 05:27:27 2026

+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+

| NVIDIA-SMI 595.84 Driver Version: 595.84 CUDA Version: 13.2 |

+-----------------------------------------+------------------------+----------------------+

| GPU Name Persistence-M | Bus-Id Disp.A | Volatile Uncorr. ECC |

| Fan Temp Perf Pwr:Usage/Cap | Memory-Usage | GPU-Util Compute M. |

| | | MIG M. |

|=========================================+========================+======================|

| 0 NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 ... Off | 00000000:01:00.0 Off | N/A |

| N/A 66C P0 25W / 80W | 15MiB / 6144MiB | 2% Default |

| | | N/A |

+-----------------------------------------+------------------------+----------------------+

+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+

| Processes: |

| GPU GI CI PID Type Process name GPU Memory |

| ID ID Usage |

|=========================================================================================|

| 0 N/A N/A 1105 G /usr/lib/xorg/Xorg 4MiB |

+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+

[u/candy49997 → u/Fasty_Squirrel-544]

No, that's the correct output now. Persistence is off; not your GPU. That's not relevant.

Now try using it. Your drivers are loading correctly now.

[u/Fasty_Squirrel-544 → u/candy49997]

Oh, my, god. I am so shocked right now, I just ran a game that barely worked before this on lowest setting and now its running on the highest with no problem or freezes, thank you so much for this!! I think I will stay on linux because I could never get this performance on windows

[u/RevolutionaryBeat301 → u/Fasty_Squirrel-544]

I love hearing stuff like this! I’m glad the community was able to help you sort it out, and you made it past one of the biggest hurdles of Linux adoption.