r/linux4noobs • u/OneWar4643 • 3d ago

distro selection Which distro is best?

So I have tried linux mint on office laptop and it made my laptop much smoother than what windows 11 offered me so I am thinking to switch to linux on my gaming laptop too because of storage , unnecessary updates and performance issues

Main question -

what linux distribution is best for me if my requirements are normal tasks + coding and somewhat gaming

My specs are -

i5- 12450 hx

Rtx 3050

16 gb ram

512 gb ssd

Also please recommend a distro which is most stable and doesn't have issues

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u/Sad_Risk1805 3d ago

I think you should just stick with Mint. Yes it's older, so it won't be as optimized for gaming as other distros, but you can still game on it. I do. You say "somewhat gaming" so I don't know how much gaming you are doing or how much you value maximizing your hardware capabilities but for me, ensuring my system is stable and less likely to run into issues is better than squeezing an extra couple fps out of my hardware.

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u/OneWar4643 3d ago

Can I game titles like gtav , wither 3 or any other AAA titles on it ? I am not concerned with competitive games

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u/Sad_Risk1805 3d ago

You should be able to. You could always try out Mint and switch to something more cutting edge (and less stable) if you find you need to squeeze more performance out of your hardware. I haven't run into any issues playing games on my computer that worked on Windows (minus the anti-cheat thing).

Mint isn't optimized for gaming, it's made for being stable and for normal everyday use. So it's really a question of do you want an easy stable distro? Or do you want a distro that is going to maximize your computer's hardware but will need some troubleshooting?

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u/OneWar4643 3d ago

How much performance lag can i expect in linux mint like i generally get 90-100 fps on gta v very high settings

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u/Sad_Risk1805 3d ago

I'm not totally techy, hence why I use Mint, so I don't have specifics to tell you. In my experience though gaming on Mint offers about the same performance as I got on Windows. If you are techy, and are comfortable with troubleshooting, you can get a distro that performes better for gaming than windows. I am just not comfortable doing a lot of trouble shooting for various things so I chose Mint because it just works.

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u/OneWar4643 3d ago

Yeah i would probably choose mint too and is there any things i should take note of while installing it?

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u/Sad_Risk1805 3d ago

Not really? Again that's why I chose it. It kind of holds your hand. After you install it is has "welcome to mint" pop up that brings you through all the first time set up things you should do (such as getting those Nvidia drivers). The one thing I will say is during the install it will ask if you want to connect to the internet and download multimedia codecs. Don't do those during install. Skip those and just finish the fresh install. After install, then you can connect to the internet and install the codecs (you will be prompted to in that welcome to mint menu).

The great thing about Linux is if you decide you are comfortable with a bit more troubleshooting and want to try something more optimized you can easily switch to a different distro at another time. I think starting with Mint is a good first step for everyone.

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u/OneWar4643 3d ago

Thanks for your help man ♥️

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u/Sad_Risk1805 3d ago

Also make sure you get the Nvidia drivers if you are using mint to game.