I have an old laptop that I use as a Minecraft server as well as running RPG campaigns during game night. I’m getting tired of Windows 10 and I’m looking for a good replacement. I don’t have a lot of experience with Linux lately, the last time I did anything with it was maybe 10 years or so ago and I used Ubuntu, which I’ve read here is maybe not a good choice any longer. Stats of laptop are below. Recommendations are appreciated, thanks.
Processor Intel® Core™ i7-4800MQ CPU @ 2.70GHz 2.70 GHz Installed RAM 16.0 GB (15.8 GB usable) Graphics Card NVIDIA Quadro K2100M (2 GB), Intel® HD Graphics 4600 (113 MB)
I do not want to over complicate things but there is some information that may help given that you have NVIDIA hardware.
Linux is going through a technology transition in its graphics technology from something called Xorg (x11) to something called Wayland.
Mostly you do not have to worry about this. Don’t let it distract you.
Everybody will be using Wayland in a year or two but right now today, it depends on the distro and desktop environment you choose. For example, current Ubuntu will default to GNOME on Wayland. Linux Mint defaults to Cinnamon in Xorg.
Until recently, NVIDIA has been buggy with Wayland. Specifically, NVIDIA needed something called “explicit sync”. This has now been added to newer NVIDIA drivers, Wayland compositors, Mesa, etc. So things work great now if you use the latest versions of things.
Again, you may not need to know any of these details. So, why am I bring it up?
Well, if you have an “up-to-date” distro, NVIDIA will likely work well. But if any of the required components are not available or older on the distro you use, you may have problems with NVIDIA. Only “may”. It may also work fine.
To avoid problems, you can use a very up-to-date distro like EndeavourOS. Or you can use a distro that will default to Xorg for now, like Linux Mint.
If you use a distro with older software versions, like Debian, or older software drivers, like OpenSUSE, or that lacks proprietary drivers, like Fedora, NVIDIA hardware can be a pain.
The reason people recommend AMD or Intel for Linux is because none of the above really matters on that hardware. They are more likely to “just work”.
Again, I hope I did not complicate things. I offer all this just so you can make sense of things if you run into trouble. You probably will not. And in a year or so, none of this will matter anymore even on NVIDIA. On many distros, it already doesn’t.
That hardware will fly on Linux.
Given you use NVIDIA I might recommend Mint over Ubuntu.
Happy cake day.
Hey thanks. I had not noticed!
Ubuntu is still a great choice.
Linux Mint is a good beginner distro if you come from Windows.
I decided to go with Linux mint. After installing it alongside windows, it won’t boot into either. If I reboot from my USB stick, it says that maybe it’s too far away from the start of the drive to be detected. But I believe there is some intel /hp stuff that includes some kind of boot that might also be interfering. Does anyone have a good way forward from here?
Link from boot repair: https://paste.ubuntu.com/p/GJcsXfRkrj/
I’m not too versed in grub, but did you change anything regarding UEFI? You might have to disable some BIOS/UEFI safe mode or toggle between BIOS and UEFI.
I ended up reinstalling without Win 10 and it still isn’t finding it. I’ll have to check on a toggle later
Did you nuke the whole disk? Just 1 big Linux partition?
Try enabling/disabling Secure Boot.
This is a good laptop, still plenty fast for Linux. However, given the choice, use the Intel graphics card for your 2D desktop rendering, not the nvidia one. The nvidia drivers don’t support it anymore, and the nouveau driver is too slow imho (visibly slow when moving windows etc). You can use old nvidia drivers for it, but these might be crashy with the new kernels. The Intel drivers will be fresh though.
OpenSUSE might be a good one but you could also experiment with archlinux in a VM learning it really helps in making you more comfortable with GNU/Linux in general. They have good guides and a good wiki.
I’m a big big fan of Debian. The installer can be a little intimidating for newbies but I think it’s a great all-around “throw it at the wall” kinda Linux distro. Ubuntu is based on it so you’ll find similarities between them.
Fedora (Gnome or KDE version) is what I recommend to people looking for the stock experience and a large community. I generally point people away from anything Ubuntu because of the Snap fiasco.
I’m a Fedora user but I prefer to point new people to Ubuntu over fedora. The snap v flatpak debate is irrelevant to new users compared to fedora not shipping proprietary gpu drivers out of the box which causes so many problems for nvidia users. Kernel updates often end up braking their gpu driver.
It’s relevant for a few reasons with regard to new users:
- Snap is SLOW
- Snap takes up a massive amount of space
Switching somebody with 256GB of storage to Ubuntu and pointing them to the Gonna software store to install whatever they want is just asking for confusion and problems.
What happened to all my disk space?
Why does it take 8 seconds for a browser to start?
These are new users who expect things to operate as they’ve known them to operate coming from Windows or MacOS. Ubuntu is just problematic to that point of view.
I’ve switched hundreds of desktop users in the past few years, and the above expectations and experience is what made me switch to Fedora.
Ubuntu is problematic at current.
No one switching from win10 is going to notice the package being a few MBs larger. For opening speed I think taking a few more seconds to open is a tiny price to pay compared with the extra setup work that is required on Fedora. Look if Fedora shipped with the proprietary repo’s enabled and Nvidia driver preconfigured id recommend it to new usres but until then its just to much for new users to enable proprietary repos and setup their nvidia drivers.
You’re not getting it…
A 125MB package like Firefox has up to 5 versions by default kept under the Snap system. Do this 10x across different packages, and suddenly you’re missing a lot of storage you can’t account for.
Second, SNAP IS JUST SLOW. People don’t like when it takes 5-10 seconds to launch a very simple app. Let’s not even get into the performance being absolutely horrendous when you need direct access to memory or GPU. It’s not what people want.
Last, your problem with Nvidia drivers lies with Nvidia themselves. I run a cluster of a thousand instances which never hiccup on the Nvidia server+CUDA drivers.
Desktop is a shit show, and that’s their fault. Don’t blame your misunderstanding of these two things to be the fault of the distro.
Oh no 1gb of space is being used windows users totally care about that as they go from an OS that out of the box takes 100gb to one that takes 30gb. Thats pretending what you said is true because Snap doesnt store 5 versions by default it stores two. Secondly the common runtimes are shared between applications and versions so the amount of extra space when storing multiple versions is minor also distro packaging also stores multiple versions by default 3 if I recall correctly for dnf.
I think the fact that you think a win10 user cares more about an app taking a few seconds longer to open on first load than their GPU driver being unstable(from a new user perspective) is everything. Yes! the driver is nvidia’s fault but its also fedora intentionally choosing to not ship it out of the box. Many other distro’s do this so nvidia users dont have to go through the hassle of foss drivers and them breaking every kernel update.
Also I dont blame fedora for this, fedora doesnt target new users and as a fedora user I like that they aim to ship a fully foss system and I think they make it easy to include properitary packages if thats something you want. However its pointless to point someone to a distro where you have to then give them a bunch of extra steps to enable basic functionality when there are plenty of distros that work out of the box.
For a new user one of the ublue spins is a good choice. They get the base fedora experience with nvidia gpu’s sorted out of the box and flatpak.
You apparently don’t deal with actual end-users, so let me inform you…they absolutely fucking care.
You seem to keep skipping the part where SNAP IS 10X SLOWER.
Get lost with your lazy argument.
I’m installing snap on fedora to spite you.
I personally generally recommend Mint as a good starting distro. It is widely used, which means lots of support readily found online. It also has some of the benefits of Ubuntu without having the Snap forced on users. It also generally works well on a wide range of systems including lower powered systems due to its selection of desktops.
Your laptop is decent and I’d personally be running a slick desktop on that, specifically KDE. But alot of that comes down to personal preferences, and Mint isn’t the best KDE desktop as it’s not a main desktop for it (although it is available).
However once you get to grips with the basics of Linux I think other distros offer better more focused benefits for different user groups. There are lots of choices such as Gaming focused distros, rolling release vs point release distros, slow long term projects like Debian vs bleeding edge focused projects, immutable systems etc.
I personally use OpenSuSE Tumbleweed because it’s cutting edge, but well tested prior to updates, with a good set of system tools in YaST, and decently ready for gaming and desktop use. I also like that it is European. But that may not be a good fit for your specific use case. Leap, the OpenSuSE point release distro would be better - a nice KDE desktop with a reliable release schedule and a focus on stability over cutting edge.
You never see it mentioned, but PCLOS is a great Linux starter OS. It was started by Bill Reynolds, TexStar, and is tock solid. It is my go-to when installing Linux for new users because it is extremely stable, has a great community, and avoids anything bleeding edge.
www.distrowatch.com is a great place to get an overview of most Linux and BSD distros.
What program are you using for your rpg campaigns?
Minecraft server is fairly universally supported.
Mostly Obsidian, PDF viewers (currently Foxit), Firefox, and Dropbox and/or Google Drive.
All of these can be run on any Linux distro. Dropbox is probably a better choice than Google Drive as Google drive doesn’t have an official Linux app (but you can get it working beyond just using it in a Web browser if its a must).
I’d go.with Linux Mint as it’s well supported but any point release distro will serve your needs well. For example Fedora KDD or OpenSuSE Leap, Debian etc. I wouldn’t recommend Ubuntu.
