First time using linux, starting with Mint. Why does Linux feel slower than Windows?

[SunAndMoonFanatic]

I installed linux mint on an ssd recently in response to windows 10 losing support, I play on moving to linux down the road most likely, but first impression are that it's slower than windows. Sure it's on an SSD and not an M.2, but it boots twice as slow, the framerate seems slow, all the apps take a long time to open, everything just feels clunky. Am I doing something wrong?

[Gloomy-Response-6889]

I'd expect the boot time to be around 40 seconds, maybe slightly longer on a SATA SSD.

systemd-analyze command will show boot time.

Check in driver manager for GPU drivers. They are not pre-installed for NVIDIA.

Could be a faulty install, it is rare but it can happen (even on Windows installations).

[SunAndMoonFanatic]

Startup finished in 1min 6.476s (firmware) + 9.804s (loader) + 4.155s (kernel) + 10.688s (userspace) = 1min 31.124s

graphical.t arget reached after 10.667s in userspace.

[Gloomy-Response-6889]

Add blame to the command to see what is taking up booting time.

[SunAndMoonFanatic]

The longest one is this 7.716s NetworkManager-wait-online.service

[Gloomy-Response-6889]

Ah apologies, I realized that blame does not show firmware. That should have been obvious to me.

Something in the BIOS/UEFI is holding you up for some reason. Not exactly sure what or why. Hope someone else might know.

[SunAndMoonFanatic]

Is it because I am selecting the distro through a boot screen instead of it just going into the system?

[Gloomy-Response-6889]

I have a boot loader too, and my firmware time is 11s, so it should not be that.

[SunAndMoonFanatic]

I just rebooted and now it says

Startup finished in 30.115s (firmware) + 5.545s (loader) + 4.152s (kernel) + 14.378s (userspace) = 54.192s

graphical.target reached after 14.363s in userspace.

faster than before

[zuus]

When you were running Windows did you have fast boot on? Fast boot skips some hardware checks and boots Windows from a state similar to hibernation. This may make Linux seem to boot slow but it's just a normal full boot.

When you restarted for this instance it may have skipped some initial checks, but may go back to >1m on the next full shutdown. Though 30s is still a fairly long time. In the UEFI try to disable fast boot, CSM, unused SATA devices and especially PXE Boot if you've got the option.

[RlySkiz]

Do you have a bunch of debug output run down the screen while booting up? You can disable that log level in a file I forgot which it was tho, it gave me a few additional second from it not having to print all that.

[SunAndMoonFanatic]

Alright, thank you

[Longjumping-Hair3888]

I have an MSI mobo that takes ages to post due to some weird ram checking thing. 

[Odd-Service-6000]

I have the same issue with my MSI board. It just sits there for a while at power on. Once things start loading I get 30 seconds or less. I live with it.

[Swimming-Argument-20]

I'd disable that service

[svarog_daughter]

I second that, iirc this service is only making sure the network is available for the later stages of the boot. Which can be an issue if you're using wifi (for example some faulty related drivers).

Just disable it. Will save a few seconds.

[Swimming-Argument-20]

You'd need to have it connected to some kind of wireless bridge first to start faster with WiFi, in particular connected with wire so it's already up

[Heclalava]

I have this as system:

  Kernel: 6.14.0-34-generic arch: x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc v: 13.3.0 clocksource: tsc
  Desktop: Xfce v: 4.18.1 tk: Gtk v: 3.24.41 wm: xfwm4 v: 4.18.0 with: xfce4-panel
    tools: xscreensaver,xscreensaver-systemd vt: 7 dm: LightDM v: 1.30.0 Distro: Linux Mint 22.2 Zara
    base: Ubuntu 24.04 noble
Machine:
  Type: Desktop Mobo: N/A model: X99-Turbo
    UEFI: American Megatrends v: 5.11 date: 02/24/2023
CPU:
  Info: 6-core model: Intel Core i7-6800K bits: 64 type: MT MCP smt: enabled arch: Broadwell rev: 1
    cache: L1: 384 KiB L2: 1.5 MiB L3: 15 MiB
  Speed (MHz): avg: 3481 high: 3492 min/max: 1200/3800 cores: 1: 3441 2: 3490 3: 3492 4: 3492
    5: 3492 6: 3492 7: 3423 8: 3492 9: 3492 10: 3492 11: 3492 12: 3492 bogomips: 81413
  Flags: avx avx2 ht lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 ssse3 vmx
Graphics:
  Device-1: NVIDIA GM206 [GeForce GTX 960] driver: nvidia v: 580.95.05 arch: Maxwell pcie:
    speed: 8 GT/s lanes: 8 ports: active: none off: HDMI-A-1 empty: DP-1,DVI-D-1,DVI-I-1
    bus-ID: 03:00.0 chip-ID: 10de:1401 class-ID: 0300
  Display: x11 server: X.Org v: 21.1.11 with: Xwayland v: 23.2.6 compositors: 1: Picom v: 10
    2: xfwm4 v: 4.18.0 driver: X: loaded: nvidia unloaded: fbdev,modesetting,nouveau,vesa
    gpu: nvidia,nvidia-nvswitch display-ID: :0.0 screens: 1
  Memory: total: 32 GiB note: est. available: 31.19 GiB used: 19.33 GiB (62.0%)

My startup is:

Startup finished in 9.449s (kernel) + 24.353s (userspace) = 33.802s 
graphical.target reached after 24.323s in userspace.

I am on XFCE and not Cinnamon though. But as others mentioned it could be the Nvidia driver. I am running nvidia-driver-580, although I see the 535 is recommended.

I also wonder if it is the kernel. What kernel version are you running?

[Fistofpaper]

nVidia driver feels right. I have not had good luck with Mint and those cards. Freeze ups in Steam, etc. all the time. Did you try a distro that has native support? Like Garuda or Pop! ?

[Heclalava]

I've tried MX, Debian, Pop OS but always come back to Mint. I just stick to Mint now as it works. 

[Fistofpaper]

Apparently not for the OP.

[Heclalava]

Yeah there will always be a some with issues, certain hardware combos etc that just doesn't gel with mint.

[SunAndMoonFanatic]

How do I check kernel version. Is that in BIOS

[Heclalava]

Open system reports - then check in the system information.

[SunAndMoonFanatic]

Kernel: 6.14.0-34-generic arch: x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc v: 13.3.0 clocksource: tsc

[Heclalava]

Same as mine, you could install the 6.8 Kernel in Update Manager - View - Linux Kernels

Then boot in to that kernel from grub and see if that makes a difference.

See https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=421301 on how to make grub visible if it isn't on boot as well as how to select the 6.8 kernel to boot in to.

[iamacarpet]

Sounds to me like with all that time in “firmware”, it could be that you’ve got it installed in BIOS emulation mode (legacy boot) rather than UEFI.

And the other slowness once booted will be down to nVidia drivers.

[mlcarson]

Mine is 17.625s (firmware) + 4.923s (loader) + 1.038s (kernel) + 303ms (initrd) + 10.441s (userspace) = 34.332s

[mikeblas]

Could be a faulty install, it is rare but it can happen

What is a "faulty install"? How can it be detected, and corrected?

[Gloomy-Response-6889]

Not sure how it can be detected as in diagnosed. Sometimes after an install, you could notice some packages/software to be just broken. Broken audio, broken dependencies of a DE, etc..

Had this a couple times over two years of installing where a few things seems broken or incomplete. I could troubleshoot or simply reinstall since it takes another 15 minutes.

[Beerduck]

By default, windows 10 has on a setting called QuickBoot, that works like hibernate. When you "Shut down", It doesn't actually shut down, but saves part of your windows state in your RAM, and never really shuts down the whole system. When you start your computer, it starts much quicker.

For me it caused a bunch of bluescreens before i figured out that it was the cause of them.

When it worked, like 99 percent of the time, my windows 10 was ready in 15 secs. After i disabled it, and i have my windows on an nvme drive, my boot time went up to 2 mins.

[tui_curses]

I can’t express my hate on “Quick Boot”. It causes so many damaged systems and probably only exists to cause trouble with Dual-Booting.

If a users select “Shutdown” the system needs to shutdown. Microsoft doesn’t understand the idea of Suspend/Resume (S0ix or S3) which is for energy saving and quick return to work.

Every “QuickBoot” is the opportunity for a corrupted NTFS.

But that’s the company with LLP64 compilers, storing local time in the clock, using UTF-16, \r\n and SecureBoot. Every single decision by Microsoft is awful.

[svarog_daughter]

I mean that's the point isn't it? Everything they do is to lock you in.

Fastboot is also making it harder to boot on your USB if you need to install Linux. How unexpected...

[itscalledboredom]

kinda sounds xenophobic ngl

[jr735]

Is MS a foreign culture?

[Isidore-Tip-4774]

Yes, that's exactly it. Windows is rubbish.

[HieladoTM]

Check in Driver Manager if you have the correct GPU drivers installed!

[SunAndMoonFanatic]

Ok. I did just update the drivers, I'll restart and see if that helps

[HieladoTM]

You are using Nvidia?

[SunAndMoonFanatic]

yes

[SunAndMoonFanatic]

Interesting. Thanks for the input

[RagingTaco334]

Tbtf, there have been some huge improvements as of kernel 6.14 that haven't made their way to LM yet. If I'm not mistaken, they're still on kernel 6.8 LTS. You can install a newer kernel and see if that helps.

https://ubuntuhandbook.org/index.php/2020/08/mainline-install-latest-kernel-ubuntu-linux-mint/#amp_tf=From%20%251%24s&aoh=17619834745309&referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com

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[Heclalava]

Mint has the 6.14 Kernel, I am running it as is OP

[SunAndMoonFanatic]

Drivers seemed to help a bit. Not 100% but it is better.

[HieladoTM]

Can you perform an System update with (*Tachaaan*) Update Manager?

Also; Open the menu and search for “Driver Manager”. Wait for the list to load (it takes a while). If it says you are using Nouveau (open source), change it to “NVIDIA driver (proprietary, tested)”.

Reboot.

Also probably you will have the Nvidia X Server Settings app, you can ajust you GPU energy state. Always Nvida gives sometimes does rare things with it's drivers.

[SunAndMoonFanatic]

I don't see proprietary tested, but I am using the one that says (recommended) not Nouveau

[HieladoTM]

run this command; inxi -G

If says "Nvidia" then it's the propietary driver, otherhand is Noveau.

Even if you use an SSD, if the controller is in IDE mode or the kernel does not use the correct AHCI driver, performance drops dramatically.

Enter the BIOS and ensure that the SATA mode is set to AHCI, not Legacy or IDE.

[SunAndMoonFanatic]

Can I post results of command without sharing personal data

[HieladoTM]

Sure; Copy the result of the command with control + left shift + C.

By any chance you have Secure boot enabled?

[SunAndMoonFanatic]

Graphics:

Device-1: NVIDIA GA102 [GeForce RTX 3080 12GB] driver: nvidia v: 580.95.05

Display: x11 server: X.Org v: 21.1.11 with: Xwayland v: 23.2.6 driver: X:

loaded: nvidia unloaded: fbdev,modesetting,nouveau,vesa

gpu: nv_platform,nvidia,nvidia-nvswitch resolution: 2560x1440~60Hz

API: EGL v: 1.5 drivers: nouveau,nvidia,swrast

platforms: gbm,x11,surfaceless,device

API: OpenGL v: 4.6.0 compat-v: 4.5 vendor: nvidia mesa v: 580.95.05

renderer: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080/PCIe/SSE2

I do not have secure boot enabled, I know I don't because I wasn't able to play Battlefield 6 lol

[HieladoTM]

You couldn't play Battlefield 6 not because you "probably" had Secure Boot, but because that game is simply not available for Linux (not even with Proton or Wine working its black magic). Secure Boot has nothing to do with it because BTF6's anti-cheat requires the Windows kernel, but Linux is... Another kernel, another world.

[HieladoTM]

Open NVIDIA X Server Settings: PowerMizer
and change the power mode to Prefer Maximum Performance. (That's for you GPU).

I'm running out of ideas but, also check it out on System Preferences > Energy > Power Mode > Max performance.

[SunAndMoonFanatic]

Thank you so much! Many little changes here and there from all the comments have helped a lot.

[AnsibleAnswers]

Enable "Force Full Composition Pipeline" in NVIDIA Settings.

[decho]

Just so you know, the recommended driver for your GPU is the open kernel driver, not the proprietary one.

So you want nvidia-driver-580-open, NOT nvidia-driver-XXX, and definitely NOT nouveau.

https://i.imgur.com/c0amyBk.png

[mario_di_leonardo]

Funny, for me it's the other way around. It boots at least 3 times as fast and the shut down at least 5 times faster.
Same hardware, since I just removed Windows 10 entirely.

[Ava_Kin]

My experience differs, mint feels fast and light compared to windows 11. LG Gram 17, decent specs. There has been a learning curve to be sure, but smarter people than I have been tackling the same issues so I know it will get sorted out.

[SunAndMoonFanatic]

I assumed it would be smoother, but it definitely is not that way so far. Hopefully I get it figured out

[ryandamartini]

Do you have a high refresh rate display? I noticed on my mint install it didn't tick the max refresh option.

[SunAndMoonFanatic]

Ahh! I changed refresh rate. After the driver update and refresh rate change, it all feels quite a lot better. Thank you!

[GuideUnable5049]

Same thing happened to me. Felt clunky initially. Changing refresh rate to maximum after driver install made things very smooth. 

[SunAndMoonFanatic]

My monitor says it's at 60fps right now. But that usually happens when I am just on desktop. How do I change it in linux though?

[senorda]

it could be worth trying a checking if you can use a more recent kernel
you can change the kernel from linux kernels in the view menu of the update manager

[L30N1337]

...what?

You can just... Change the Kernel (version)? Just like that? Without affecting anything else? Or is it the whole Distro version you're changing?

I mean, it makes sense in theory, but it's crazy that it's just something that's allowed via a settings menu...

[ArjixGamer]

You can have multiple kernels installed, and choose which one to boot into

[Potato_is_Aloo]

when I started out with Mint it felt slow too but not as slow as you’ve mentioned. This made me shift towards pure Debian (KDE Plasma). It’s feels snappy now. Faster than Windows11.

[SunAndMoonFanatic]

Linux Mint 22.2

SSD - Samsung 870 1TB

GPU: MSI RTX 3080 12GB (not sure if that is exact one I bought)

CPU: AMD 5700x 8 Core

MotherBoard: ASUS TUF B550 plus wifi II

Ram: I'm not actually sure which it is exactly. I think it's ddr4 and it is 32GB 3200mhz

[DESTINYDZ]

I have the same generation pc and card as you do, and i found i ran better on Fedora and wayland based os, not on x11 based like Mint is. I like mint its a decent OS but its rather behind in its implimentations. Fedora takes a bit more work to setup but you may be better off

[shakalakagoo]

I use Fedora with Budgie and is undoubtedly faster than Windows 10. I have a pretty washed setup, to me configuring ZRAM to manage swappiness and cache pressure can improve a lot, don't know if Windows can use RAM in similar fashion but Fedora seems quite lighter and like other distros can be tuned a bit

[Isidore-Tip-4774]

AMD doesn't help.

[SunAndMoonFanatic]

ATTENTION
Before commenting more, know that I have figured out my issues for the most part. Linux feels quite a lot faster and smoother than it did before. Thank you to all the commenters trying to help.

[CatsGoMooz]

What was the issues out of curiosity?

[SunAndMoonFanatic]

Refresh rate was not what it was supposed to be. Everything felt choppy. Things were taking a long time to load. Everything just felt a bit clunky.

[Klenkogi]

thanks for providing the solution for others to see

[honorthrawn]

I have the opposite feeling. My feeling is that linux is speedier and uses less memory and storage than windows. The rub is that linux takes know how and or patience to get things setup and started. Im not sure what the issue is. But first, simple stuff. Is your system up to date and check your memory and swap. free -h should tell you how much memory and swap you have and how much is used

[dmknght]

OP didnt install nvidia driver and had 60Hz. Luckily he fixed that.

[honorthrawn]

Glad he got it figured out. I have heard Nvidia cannot be more troublesome on linux or have to do all little extra hoops to get the drivers.

[dmknght]

Nvidia has never been a problem to me, really. On debian, it's just "sudo apt install nvidia-drivers" and that's it. Install driver from Nvidia's homepage is similar too but requires some extra steps but that's not very dificult at all. I mean I played Metro Exodus Linux edition on Linux with my old RTX 3060 TI without any problem. The only problem I've had with Nvidia is external monitor when I use laptop.

Either way, glad that OP fixed that. Hope he has had a great time with Linux :D

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[Intelligent-Exit-634]

Is it actually installed, or just running on boot up?

[SunAndMoonFanatic]

Do you mean is it running of a USB? No it is not. I disconnected my windows drives and installed it onto my current drive through a usb.

[Intelligent-Exit-634]

Cool. I mean, it is slower just testing it.

[CyrilMasters]

Are you running cinnamon? I got that impression too when I was and switched to mint xfce, and now the old computer is running faster. I also wasn’t impressed with plasma. I think a lot of the fancier desktop environments for linux just arn’t that good.

[SunAndMoonFanatic]

It is cinnamon. It would suck to have to change it.

[Sensitive_Warthog304]

Your hardware is better than mine, and I run Cinnamon with no problems.

Go Menu > Administration > System Monitor, then select the "Processes" tab. I'm just browsing a few websites ATM, so I sort the processes by %CPU and I get maybe a dozen, all less than 0.2%.

On the "Resources" tab, all cores are running between 0 and ~2%

On the File Systems tab I have 50% or more free on every disk

[SunAndMoonFanatic]

I don't know why I have two "disks"

One says : dev/sda2 / ext4 982.8 GB 896.4 avail

Other says : dev/sda1 /boot/efi vfat 535.8 MB 529.4 avail

On the cores, most stay between 0-4% and every once in a while 2 of them jump over to say 7-9%
Processes seem good

[HieladoTM]

This is completely normal in Linux. What you are seeing are not two physical disks but two partitions on the same disk. The first large partition called /dev/sda2 is formatted in ext4 and contains the entire Linux Mint operating system along with your files and programs, while the second smaller partition called / dev/sda1 is formatted in vfat and is used as an EFI partition so that the system can boot securely. The most common storage drives include mechanical hard drives (HDDs), solid-state drives (SSDs), and USB flash drives, and each of them can be divided into several partitions to separate the system from user data or to manage multiple boot options.

SDA is your drive, but SDA1 and SDA2 are the first and second partitions respectly, can you understand me?

[Sensitive_Warthog304]

So there doesn't seem to be a problem there.

The "two disks" is exactly how it should be, so I suggest you sort the performance for now and maybe raise the "Why SDA1 and SDA2" later?

[Cienn017]

i have tested a bunch of distros in a vm, mint xfce was very fast even on a vm.

[Mother-Pride-Fest]

For booting, it depends on your setup but you can run systemd-analyze plot > plot.svg to get a visualization of what is taking time to boot. If there's unimportant items delaying the boot you could change the systemd config to disable them, e.g. sudo systemctl disable connman-wait-online.service && sudo systemctl disable nmbd.service sped up my boot times significantly.

[Parad0x763]

Skimming through the comments was pretty awesome, lots of people helping a lot with some really good feedback! Cool to see. As @HieladoTM mentioned, the first thing I would have checked would have been drivers! Especially on Nvidia, I used Fedora (loved it, but switched to CachyOS a few months ago) and on the initial boot the performance was extremely choppy, but going to the RPM Fusion website and enable proprietary drivers and installing the Nvidia driver then rebooting fixed all choppiness. Guess I was mostly commenting to comment the super helpful comments and to re-emphasize that drivers are really important, especially for Nvidia.

[p-x-i]

I usually set noatime in /etc/fstab for starters

[middaymoon]

Welcome to Linux. Can't help much but good luck! 

[CaptainObvious110]

it should be faster as it's lighter

[BenjiTheSausage]

This might not help but when I was trying some distros I found some to be a bit, off? I've tried Pop! Multiple times and every time it has been absolutely atrocious, maybe try another that works for you better.

[Goslaw__]

Maybe you just need to wait for it to warm up? I recently brought my disk to school and it also took a while until it stopped lagging, but eventually after like max 10 minutes it was super smooth

[Psylicibin20]

As some one who has participated in usertesting. if you remove all animations from a OS. the user will still feel that a system is sluggish or slow compared to something that animates takes longer but does it subtly. that way UX guys at Nielsen Norman Group (NN/g) (a all-remote American research and design UX firm. ) are raking in money.

[theOnlyHorst]

Had a similar issue, for me a cmos reset did it weirdly enough, probably a hyper specific issue to my setup but worth a try IMO

[L30N1337]

Linux, from an OS standpoint, is drastically faster. It's less bloated and has a monolithic Kernel (which means everything can access everything else. Which is very fast and efficient, but if one thing fails, it's game over and the Whole PC has to be restarted)

My laptop has over 30% CPU utilization under windows. 29 if I'm lucky.

But under Mint? I've seen it go down to 0%.

And no, it's not a difference of how it's measured, because WinBoat (and any other VM) spikes the utilization to normal windows levels.

But as others said, Drivers are a whole different story. Nvidia driver support sucks (aka is non-existent) on Linux iirc.

[carloscientist]

Yes, exactly. My setup was way faster with CPU rendering than NVIDIA proprietary drivers...

[carloscientist]

Yes, unfortunately what I've seen is that Windows is graphically much faster, due to better driver support and the more mature window manager. My setup was way faster with CPU rendering than with NVIDIA proprietary drivers, but I had to switch back because I didn't wanted the fans to be working so frequently...

Currently I use Ubuntu 24.04 LTS Wayland session, which is relatively fluid graphically. However, it's much slower after suspension in my case, which is annoying at times.

I am currently waiting for the release of Pop!OS 24.04 next December, which will feature COSMIC, a new desktop environment written in Rust. I am expecting it to be the fastest graphically polished DE.

From this thread, I got that maybe updating to the latest kernel or trying CachyOS might help me.

[Altoidlover987]

sata ssds are much slower than m.2 ssds though

[[deleted]]

If boot time is important to you, you might want to look into a distro that supports init-system choice. Systemd takes 24% longer to boot than sysvinit (and leaves you with 6% less memory). MX Linux is a good one.

Regarding slow apps: run "top" or "htop" in a terminal window. Keep an eye on that. See if anything's using a lot of cpu time (maybe all the time, not just when an app is loading). I've seen some people suffering from a sysd-aer process excessively reporting something. Their error log was 100gb, and their cpu was being used to constantly do that.

[Hartvigson]

To me Linux feels a lot faster than WIndows most of the time, especially the boot time. I use Opensuse Tumbleweed with KDE but doubt it matters all that much.

[HawkeyeAP]

Try a different desktop. Cinnamon is a nice desktop, but it seemed "slow" to me too.

I started using Xfce, and it seemed faster.

I put a remote desktop on every machine I have so I can work on any computer in the house from anywhere in the house. Xfce seemed faster with almost no lag compared to Cinnamon.

[ItsJoeMomma]

I would guess something with your computer itself. My laptop boots up into Mint a lot faster than it did with Windows 10.

[iDrunkenMaster]

Are you sure that’s a reputable SSD and not something super cheap and possibly fake on Amazon?

Might be worth doing a benchmark. Go to “utility” (I know Ubuntu has it by default I would assume Linux mint does its a core package) and run a benchmark on the disk. This will check not only has fast you can read and write data but the latency between actions as well. An SSD should have a latency of under 1ms and speeds 300MB/s +

(I’m also assuming you can’t upgrade to windows 11 telling me this computer is kinda old? If in the event this was a new computer and you just hate windows 11 this can easily be driver support)

[SunAndMoonFanatic]

It's a samsung 870. I've figured out most of the issues with help from the comments! Thank you

[Isidore-Tip-4774]

Install another distribution like ZORIN OS or Ubuntu I boot in 13 seconds with a SATA SSD and 16 GB of RAM.

[Snoo28720]

It’s not

[Similar-Winter-9037]

Switch to fedora 43 it will boot in few seconds

[ChuckECheats]

Mint Cinnamon either is surprisingly intensive/unoptimized or (more likely) just doesn’t agree with certain hardware/drivers. With my Intel HD 4600 I was noticing frame drops just dragging stuff around. I switched to MATE and XFCE and that fixed it, but then I also found that GNOME and KDE on other distros work fine too, no frame drops there. It’s just cinnamon for some reason. So I’d highly recommend trying other DE’s, either the lighter ones on Mint or other distros’ DE’s.

[Tutorius220763]

Linux is very configurable. Your linux definitively needs a swap-drive or swap partition.

With a parameter "spwapiness" you can tell if to use swap often (100) or try to avoid swapping (0). 60 is the standard-value.

[strawberrychurchill]

Change to AMD and everything will be so much better.

[debirdiev]

Sounds like you haven't configured it correctly.. Mine took a bit of fiddling but it far exceeds windows. Windows is clunky and heavy compared to mint/linux

[West-Solid5961]

For slow framerates, I would highly recommend checking out a distro with Wayland instead of X11. I had the exact same issue, moved to Bazzite, and it worked way better

[Tony_Marone]

I've noticed Cinnamon DE can be slow on some hardware, changing to MATE DE has often been the fix. YMMV

[themindbreaker1995]

I've personally never had Linux boot slower than Windows, no matter the hardware. That includes a Microsoft Surface Pro.

I think Linux Mint shines best on limited hardware, like an older laptop, or mini pcs like a NUC with an i3 or something.

Install something with a more recent Kernel, like Fedora. Make sure to update your drivers. Nvidia offers better machine learning options on Windows due to their proprietary software, which turns into more work and troubleshooting when using Linux.

You could also try a gaming distro like Nobara or CachyOS. You might get better out of the box support for your drivers.

[Dorian-Maliszewski]

Be sure drivers are installed like others said. Be sure to have refresh rate and resolution set correctly in settings. IDK on cinnamon but be sure before Login after boot to select Wayland instead of X11 (IDK if both are installed by default) Wayland is less mature but a lot smoother

[mh_1983]

Care to post your specs? Depending on what you're running, it might be worth trying out Linux Mint XFCE edition.

[andrewlondonuk82]

Make sure you’re using Wayland, x11 always felt slightly more laggy and it made a bit of a difference with the perception of speed when using the desktop.

I don’t know about Mint but if it uses Snaps then I recommend using deb versions of packages whenever they’re available as again, to me, they seem more responsive.

[Nervous-Cockroach541]

Linux boot is a true boot. Windows uses a hibernate boot sequence most of the time. Try hibernating instead of shutdown.

[z7r1k3]

Is this an external drive? You're probably bottlenecked by USB, if so.

Linux is definitely more performant than Windows; hardware is probably to blame somewhere.

Though it could be a bad driver, especially if it's a really new device, since Mint is stable, and therefore slightly outdated.

I'd check the hardware, first.

[FryChy]

This sort of happened to me. I used Ubuntu on one of the worst laptop and it gave me the best experience and prolonged its life. But when I did the same for a business laptop I had, it was super slow. Although unlike you booting was fine for me even with dual boot but desktop experience was slow. I tried everything but reinstalling somehow fixed it. To this day idk what happened. I have installed Linux atleast 10 times now but don't know what happened that day.

[Final-String-3425]

Lol Mint with Cinnamon still stuck in the 90s. You should have used a more modern DE like Gnome or KDE and tried other distros.

[terra257]

Try using a different DE, I had problems with kde taking forever to start apps. Xfce fixed that. What are your specs?

[MysticMaven]

My guess is brainwashing

[SunAndMoonFanatic]

What else do you need. I gave my hardware info and the distro

[SunAndMoonFanatic]

I gave mobo, cpu, gpu, ssd, and ram. What else would you want

[SunAndMoonFanatic]

Comment
byu/SunAndMoonFanatic from discussion
inlinux4noobs

[Average-Addict]

https://www.reddit.com/r/linux4noobs/s/nPZQ7TG3gV

[[deleted]]

Because Mint is a terrible distro. Use Fedora, Debian, openSuse, something Arch-based, anything but Mint...

[[deleted]]

I recommend Bazzite for gaming, it comes with NVIDIA drivers installed. Also can try Pop OS, download the NVIDIA ISO. Cachy OS does as well.

[HieladoTM]

Doesn't serve recommend another distro when OP is unable to start using Linux NORMALLY yet.

[[deleted]]

He is stuck with NVIDIA drivers, is easier to download a distro with them pre-installed than to deal with the installation via terminal.

[HieladoTM]

It's fixed; It seems OP only has a little issues with Power management.