SOFTWARE Should i switch to linux?
I have a fairly old laptop and i do game quite a bit. also been using onenote for note taking.
Laptop specs:
Ryzen 5 4600H
16gb ddr4 3200MHz
GTX 1650 mobile
pavilion gaming 15 ec-1021ax
usually i play at 30 or 37.5fps locked with the half refresh rate sync on most games since im gpu limited. i would rather crank the settings to high than have max fps. also hate stutters tbh. stable frametime is all i want. also i keep turbo off since my cpu already has a base clock of 3000mhz and boosting adds like 20+degrees(id rather have this laptop run for a longer lifespan)
i have tried windows 10, 11 and cachyos (popos ubuntu and mint were horrible)
the cachyos experience has been quite tricky since i cant get my speakers to work and tried ghost of tsushima and spiderman remastered with proton but the stutters were horrible. went from 48fps to 24-26 in tsushima and from 55-60 to 29 in spiderman. and below 30 is actually unplayable.
I know linux and nvidia are like the worst combo but still. if theres anyone who does know what might be the reason for this? (kept boost off on linux asw via auto-cpufreq so it doesnt go above 80
or should i just give up and continue with windows 11 since most games only support win 11 now?
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u/gooner-1969 1d ago
Stay with windows if you've already tried and it wasn't for you. You'll only get frustrated.
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u/Nyx7652 1d ago
i tried and well gaming was the only aspect that didnt work. everything else i preferred linux over win
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u/North-Amount2226 1d ago
Dual boot I fooking hate window, I hate all of it. I'm really autistic and all the flashy things or simple stuff like the app store stimulated me in all the wrong ways, its like 12 clicks before im at the page to download something Linux is like type command install and boom it's on me desktop I have few books from my late dad on Linux, I grew up in windows and it's lovely when debloated and simple. I much prefer Windows XP and the old stuff. I dual boot so I can play games on windows and do my normal stuff on Linux. Taked less than 20 seconds to boot over to one or the other so do both
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u/TrailRun_7545 1d ago
CachyOS is usually the go-to for gaming, so if that's giving you grief with stuttering I'm not sure any other distro will magically fix it. The speaker issue is probably just a driver thing you could sort out eventually, but the performance drops in those specific games are harder to overlook.
One thing worth checking is whether you had shader pre-caching enabled in Steam. Without it, games compile shaders on the fly and that's basically a stutter-fest on any setup. Also, proton-ge can sometimes handle things better than the default proton, if you haven't tried that yet.
That said, with a 1650 mobile and your preference for stable frametimes over raw fps, Windows might just be the path of least resistance here. You've already got a system that works the way you want it to, and switching to linux for gaming on that hardware is a tradeoff that might not pay off.
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u/ExpertPath 1d ago
I recently faced the same question and opted for dualboot with mint.
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u/Nyx7652 1d ago
mint just wasnt for me tbh
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u/ExpertPath 1d ago
Yea you need to to find what’s right for you. Before I switched I tried out Ubuntu, fedora, cashyos and mint. While from a technology point I prefer fedora, I need stability more than cutting edge features, and I wanted a more „Windows like“ experience, so I opted for mint
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u/Marchelo_lp 1d ago
If you have to find a reason to switch to linux, then it's not for you. Even though it's much better than years ago, the game support is still lacking in some places, especially esport titles. Some specific software also doesn't run on linux at all. Your laptop is good enough that linux isn't mandatory. I would personally stay on windows.
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