The Linux Mint team has just released Linux Mint 22, a new major version of the free Linux distribution. With Windows 10’s end of support coming up quickly next year, at least some users may consider making the switch to Linux.
While there are other options, paying Microsoft for extended support or upgrading to Windows 11, these options are not available for all users or desirable.
Linux Mint 22 is a long-term service release. Means, it is supported until 2029. Unlike Microsoft, which made drastic changes to the system requirements of Windows 11 to lock out millions of devices from upgrading to the new version, Linux Mint will continue to work on older hardware, even after 2029.
Here are the core changes in Linux Mint 22:
- Based on the new Ubuntu 24.04 package base.
- Kernel version is 6.8.
- Software Manager loads faster and has improved multi-threading.
- Unverified Flatpaks are disabled by default.
- Preinstalled Matrix Web App for using chat networks.
- Improved language support removes any language not selected by the user after installation to save disk space.
- Several under-the-hood changes that update libraries or software.
Too bad Linux can’t run all my games yet. If it could I’d switch in a heart beat
Let me preach you the gospel of
bazzite.gg
A user friendly, steam OS like distro specifically made for gaming. About as difficult to set up as a new smartphone, and comes with all the goods needed for gaming preinstalled, like steam, wine (lutris), and various other compatibility features.
It is also an immutable distro, which essentially means you can’t break your system*. If you mess something up you can simply roll back to an earlier configuration.
*you certainly still can, but you would have to actively try
Tried it this week, video signal would cut off as soon as there was a tiny bit of load on the GPU (like intro videos in a game would be too much)… I’ll have to experiment some more but you can’t blame people for using the option that just works when switching OS probably means troubleshooting for tens of hours…
Have you experimented with the Proton version? Video playback in games is commonly problematic, and sometimes switching to the GE version, Experimental, or a downgraded version will fix it.
Check ProtonDB and see if there’s a tweak you should make. I had to downgrade the Proton version in River City Girls to get video to work properly.
Yep, tried with Jedi: Fallen Order on the EA app via Lutris using Proton, same thing with Helldivers 2 and Pillars of Eternity on Steam, as soon as there was load on the GPU the display signal would stop (and it wasn’t just graphics not being loaded, it would switch to displaying my laptop input instead of my desktop display).
Weird. I wish I knew more about that stuff to offer you better suggestions.
What gpu do you have?
6650xt
I’ve got the whole day tomorrow to start over from scratch, I tried reinstalling to an external drive and I didn’t have a taskbar and wifi didn’t work, so clearly there’s something wrong somewhere…
Bazzite is a small distro that isnt very well tested on desktops, have you tried something like pop, mint, zorin or fedora?
I’m not sure what you mean by that, it’s directly built on Fedora which is probably one of if not the best workstation OS.
And it does a bunch of custom stuff that can break
Such as?
I certainly dont blame them, I just made the switch from windows myself a few months ago and have been amazed by my problem free experience.
Perhaps it isnt as effortless for everyone depending on the hardware, I have to concede, but my experience has been nothing but brilliant. My biggest gripe so far has been that the open source rgb controller needs to be set manually for my keyboard (which isnt much of a gripe really).
I installed Bazzite earlier this month as a dual boot and have been very happy with it. A lot of stuff just worked on bootup, haven’t installed a single driver, and that’s including my AMD GPU, just installed a game, plugged in my controller, and it played. Most games seem to run better than Windows. Fullscreen mode is a lot less annoying to tab out of - there isn’t the annoying momentary black screen, tab just happens. OBS seems to finally be on the level of Windows performance, although some of my favorite extensions are Windows-only. That’s been something of an annoyance, a lot of stuff is Windows-only, but usually if I Google “[program] Linux” I’ll get a workaround or substitute. I still leave Windows installed because of anti-cheat nonsense, but I rarely boot into Windows anymore.
Kind of meandering but that’s my experience so far. Overall pretty satisfied.
Ive been willing to skip the like 2% of games I have that won’t play on it, personally.
Which of your games doesn’t work? Do they happen to be multiplayer?
Have you checked https://protondb.com?