New laptop, will Linux Mint run well

[quenguin]

I have just bought a new laptop and wondering how well Linux Mint 22 Cinnamon will run on this laptop I bought for gaming.

Spec is as follows:

Acer Nitro V16 16in Ryzen 7 16GB 512GB RTX4060 Gaming Laptop

AMD Ryzen 7 - 8845HS processor.
Octa core processor.
3.8GHz processor speed with a burst speed of 5.1GHz.
16GB RAM DDR5.
512GB SSD storage

NVIDIA RTX 40 Series RTX 4060 graphics card GDDR6

Any advice would be appreciated. I have been running Linux mint on my Desktop and it ran really well with a Ryzen 7 3800X 32GB RAM, AMD RX 6600 8GB. Don't have much experience with Nvidia graphics on Linux

[Hoser Rob]

That's fairly new stuff, I would try booting a live USB stick of Mint 22, connecting it online, and opening Mint Driver Manager. See if there's a driver for your Nvidia card in the list. I'd want to proprietary Nvidia driver rather than the open source one.

[quenguin]

Ok, thanks. it has one of those new AI CPU's which is another reason I want to dump windows and put Linux on it. It's mainly for gaming and some minor works stuff

[Hoser Rob]

... I want to dump windows and put Linux on it. It's mainly for gaming ...

If you want to do any remotely serious gaming I would highly recommend keeping some Windows. Linux gaming stinks, largely because the code for drivers and the games themselves are never as well optimized for Linux as they are for Windows. Also the number of AAA titles is a lot less in Linux. This is very unlikely to change.

[SMG]

Any advice would be appreciated. I have been running Linux mint on my Desktop and it ran really well with a Ryzen 7 3800X 32GB RAM, AMD RX 6600 8GB. Don't have much experience with Nvidia graphics on Linux

That appears to be a dual-GPU laptop. While Nvidia is the discrete GPU, the 8845HS processor has Radeon 780M integrated graphics. What that means is you will have graphics even if drivers do not load for Nvidia (which might be the case if you do not disable secure boot and do not create MOK).

Please keep that in mind for any advice you see online about Nvidia usually the advice is for those with only Nvidia and not for those with dual-GPU laptops.

More information about Nvidia drivers can be found in the Nvidia Graphics Troubleshooting section of the Tips for Troubleshooting Graphics Issues Rev. 1 (including external monitors not working) which is a sticky topic at the top of the Graphics Cards & Monitors forum.

[ander111]

Yes, booting from a Mint live USB is always the best way to test new hardware (keeping in mind that everything will run much faster if you install it).

Let us know if it works!

[quenguin]

Any advice would be appreciated. I have been running Linux mint on my Desktop and it ran really well with a Ryzen 7 3800X 32GB RAM, AMD RX 6600 8GB. Don't have much experience with Nvidia graphics on Linux

That appears to be a dual-GPU laptop. While Nvidia is the discrete GPU, the 8845HS processor has Radeon 780M integrated graphics. What that means is you will have graphics even if drivers do not load for Nvidia (which might be the case if you do not disable secure boot and do not create MOK).

Please keep that in mind for any advice you see online about Nvidia usually the advice is for those with only Nvidia and not for those with dual-GPU laptops.

More information about Nvidia drivers can be found in the Nvidia Graphics Troubleshooting section of the Tips for Troubleshooting Graphics Issues Rev. 1 (including external monitors not working) which is a sticky topic at the top of the Graphics Cards & Monitors forum.

Unfortunately most laptops now come with AMD/Nvidia or Intel/Nvidia GPU's. I had a Laptop with AMD/AMD and it worked quite well but I needed a new laptop and it was a good price for the spec. Hopefully I don't have many issues. I prefer AMD GPU's for Linux since I have had less issues with them. I had my wife's laptop on Linux (Intel/Nvidia graphics) and some games like world of warcraft wouldn't even see the RTX 3050 GPU in the GPU selection options. The Nvidia drivers were working. A couple of other games would not work but they were not a deal breaker for the laptop

[Florian]

... I want to dump windows and put Linux on it. It's mainly for gaming ...

If you want to do any remotely serious gaming I would highly recommend keeping some Windows. Linux gaming stinks, largely because the code for drivers and the games themselves are never as well optimized for Linux as they are for Windows. Also the number of AAA titles is a lot less in Linux. This is very unlikely to change.

Gaming on mint is fine. The playable library is orders of magnitude bigger than, say, a playstation's and one doesn't get restricted by the console manufacturer.

Just don't step in with the expectation that the experience is identical to windows'. To belabour the obvious: for windows gaming go with windows, for ps5 gaming: a ps5, linux gaming: linux.