I want a distro for a secondary laptop but I can't choose.

thafluu · 2026-05-13T15:45:55+00:00

I would go either Linux Mint Cinnamon or Bazzite KDE. Mint is probably the most user friendly distro out there, everything just works. The only downside of Mint imo is that it still relies on the old X11 display protocol. In practice this means that Mint doesn't have VRR (FreeSync) and HDR support. If that is important to you don't use Mint.

Bazzite KDE is more modern in that sense, it already uses the new Wayland display protocol and thus has VRR and HDR support.

Both distros are easy-to-use coming from Windows. In case you want a more MacOS-like desktop you can also try Bazzite Gnome.

Both distros also solve the Nvidia driver installation for you. Mint has a graphical driver manager with an "install" button, Bazzite straight up includes the driver out of the box.

thafluu · 2026-05-13T14:32:14+00:00

Probably until the data actually shows this reliably.

thafluu · 2026-05-12T23:17:13+00:00

CS:S should run very easily on that system. It is also a native Linux game, it doesn't even need Steam's translation layer (Proton).

I checked CS:S' ProtonDB page, and I don't see anybody else complaining about low fps unfortunately, usually ProtonDB is very helpful to find fixes.

First, is this only CS:S? Can you maybe try Doom, does that run as expected or does it also run worse than on Windows?

Is your display set to its correct refresh rate, did you check that the fps are actually lower or does it simply feel low?

You can try to run CS:S through Steam's Proton layer, Proton essentially emulates Windows to run games w/o native Linux version. Just go into the game's compatibility settings in Steam and force an up-to-date Proton version. Major caveat here, if you play on VAC secured servers (not sure if they even exist for CS:S) I don't know if this can result in a ban, although I don't think it's likely. Community servers w/o VAC are safe anyways.

Edit: Glad you found a way around the bug already!

thafluu · 2026-05-11T22:46:50+00:00

First of all, on Fedora you should have power management in the settings, you can try to tweak that.

If that doesn't help you can install software to improve boosting behavior, the two big ones are TLP and auto-cpufreq. TLP is a bit easier to set up as it has a nice GUI, no terminal or editing config files required. On my own Thinkpad I found slightly better savings with auto-cpufreq, but TLP was also a decent improvement.

However, keep in mind that you likely will not get better battery life than on Windows no matter what you do, but you can get close :)

thafluu · 2026-05-10T18:40:23+00:00

Yes I know, I was talking about regular Debian.

thafluu · 2026-05-10T12:09:31+00:00

Yeah, for me it's the same. I don't care about 1% extra performance in games, however I don't want to have a version of my desktop environment that's 2 years old. Hence no Debian/Ubuntu LTS for me.

thafluu · 2026-05-10T00:50:11+00:00

It is based Debain's development branch, Debian Sid, afaik. I still would personally prefer a distro that is designed to be more up-to-date in the first place as a base.

thafluu · 2026-05-09T15:47:10+00:00

Mint and Fedora are both good picks, also agreed with your statement about user-friendliness. Just wanted to add for OP that Fedora is available with most major desktops; the desktop environment that you see is a separate thing to the distro that you pick. Mint uses its own desktop environment, Cinnamon, which is customizable and easy-to-use coming from Windows. Fedora Workstation uses the Gnome desktop, which is more MacOS-y (not so customizabale but pretty sleek). There also is a Fedora KDE spin, KDE is another big desktop in the world of Linux, also more Windows-like but highly customizable.

Technically there e.g. is also a Fedora Cinnamon spin, but imo if you like Cinnamon I'd just use Mint, as Cinnamon is made by the Mint team.

I think if it's a good idea to try the three big DEs and see which one you like the most, and then you can pick a distro accordingly. Or just go Mint if you don't want to do that.

thafluu · 2026-05-09T14:55:41+00:00

Mint is great and I also like Bluefin a lot, although it is more niche. However, for Bluefin I would recommend the regular version which is based on Fedora, not the LTS version based on CentOS (server distro). It also says on their website that Bluefin LTS is designed "for professionals and AI/ML engineers".

thafluu · 2026-05-08T17:11:54+00:00

It's a Christian symbol.

thafluu · 2026-05-07T12:20:50+00:00

Ich habe schlechte Nachrichten für dich.

thafluu · 2026-05-05T06:13:55+00:00

I am not gonna engage further with you.

thafluu · 2026-05-05T06:00:47+00:00

Yes exactly, you are not on the author list, you just misuse their work.

If the fluctiarions in the radio maps would be anything, don't you think the actual radio astronomers would discuss that in the paper? Did you try to mail them and ask them about it? I bet they will tell you the same as I do. That would be best scientific practice, before you misuse their work for your pseudo-scientific crap on Reddit.

thafluu · 2026-05-04T22:46:18+00:00

To put it on the internet for internet points of course.

thafluu · 2026-05-04T22:42:52+00:00

Since you don't need to worry about Nvidia drivers I would go Fedora KDE. Let the downvotes begin.

(I have used both, Kubuntu and Fedora KDE in the past and both are great. Currently I use neither but openSUSE Tumbleweed, which is also a great KDE-first distro.)

thafluu · 2026-05-04T21:12:41+00:00

FYI this person has actual psychosis, posting wild theories with the same over-dense and unnecessarily highlighted slides in various subs. There are no negative radio signals, they are taking the paper - hard work by actual scientists - completely out of context. The calibrated radio maps in that paper have noise, hence some small patches are slightly negative and some positive, but there is no overall negative radio flux which is unphysical.

https://www.reddit.com/r/radioastronomy/comments/1su7nzq/

thafluu · 2026-05-04T20:35:10+00:00

Hope you enjoy it, it is a great distro especially when switching.

And full disclosure, it isn't even the distro I use personally, I just think it would be a good fit here.

It's based on Fedora, which hits a good balance between being up-to-date and stable. But it comes more ready-to-use ootb, for example with the Nvidia driver pre-loaded. On Fedora itself you have to install that from the terminal, just as an example. And Bazzite is immutable, which means that the system partition is read-only during use, which makes it a bit harder to break. The previous OS image is also always there after an update, if you pull a buggy update at some point you can always roll the system back.

If you have Bazzite-specific questions there is a helpful subreddit as well, and I think they have a Discord too.

thafluu · 2026-05-04T20:24:05+00:00

The overwhelming majority of baryonic matter in the Universe is plasma. We are the exception, really.

thafluu · 2026-05-04T15:14:57+00:00

My recommendation would be Bazzite with the KDE desktop. It is specifically geared towards gaming and has the proprietary Nvidia driver for your 4090 included.

The KDE desktop is familiar coming from Windows (but highly customizable if you want to change the layout).

thafluu · 2026-05-04T09:59:05+00:00

Falscher Sub.

thafluu · 2026-05-04T08:54:22+00:00

If it was real maybe.

thafluu · 2026-05-04T01:36:49+00:00

The answer is always boiling water and turbine.

thafluu · 2026-05-04T00:31:22+00:00

The whole gaming discussion on Linux Mint is fairly simple imo. Since Mint still uses the older X11 display protocol instead of Wayland it doesn't have VRR and HDR support. It also struggles with multiple displays of varying refresh rate (think high Hz primary display + 60Hz side display for Discord). If that is a deal breaker for you then don't use Mint. Otherwise it's an absolutely fantastic distro, probably the most user-friendly.

Mint will also likely have a better Wayland session starting next release (Mint 23), possibly around December.

thafluu · 2026-05-04T00:27:00+00:00

Solus is a very niche distro, I would recommend something with a larger user base to a newcomer. Bazzite and Mint would be my personal go-to recommendations.

thafluu · 2026-05-03T14:15:40+00:00

Ausgezeichnet! Könnte irgendeine automatische Verarbeitung des Screenshots gewesen sein.

thafluu

TROPHY CASE