I've been dual booting Linux Mint and Windows 11 on my gaming laptop using an external hard drive for a bit. I'm hoping to get it fully installed on my main machine once I'm comfortable with how it runs. However, I'm struggling to get most of my games to work well. The few that do run, like Undertale and Progressbar95, have odd audio issues, with static and such. When I was on Windows, my games performed just fine, so I think the laptop's capabilities (Nvidia GTX 1060) aren't the problem. Although I've installed the correct Nvidia drivers, I've heard that Linux and Nvidia can have issues. I've also set up Proton on Steam properly. Anytime I launch a more demanding game, though, it's like the game's trying to crawl—it runs super slow or doesn't start at all. I'm starting to wonder if the external drive setup is affecting performance, even though I'm not sure why that would be the case. People seem to think it's best to test it as a main OS, but I want to make sure gaming, art, and video editing work well before fully committing. So could my external drive setup be behind these problems, or is there something else I should check?
3 Answers
Make sure you have Proton set to experimental for each game you're trying. And check if your laptop's plugged in; it could be running in battery mode, which might throttle performance. Also, enabling "force full composition pipeline" in the Nvidia settings helped improve my experience significantly.
Hmm, sounds like a mix of issues. First off, are you running the games off the Windows drive? If so, that could slow things down, particularly since NTFS can be clunky on Linux. It's usually better to install games directly on your Linux drive for smoother performance. Also, try running "nvidia-smi" in the terminal to check if your Nvidia drivers are properly loaded. If it says the driver isn't loaded correctly, that's definitely a red flag. And remember, Undertale doesn’t need Proton since it has a native Linux version. Focus on getting one game running smoothly first before diving into all of them. Good luck!
I switched the games to my Linux drive, and I didn't realize it could access Windows files initially. Just checked 'nvidia-smi' and it said, "NVIDIA-SMI has failed because it couldn't communicate with the NVIDIA driver." That's strange since I thought I had the latest NVIDIA drivers installed.
I looked into it a bit, and 'inxi -G' shows "driver: N/A" which seems off.
It might also help to check your kernel version since if it’s too old, it might not fully support newer hardware like your GTX 1060. Linux Mint is stable, but that can mean some packages are outdated. If you’re serious about gaming, consider using a distro that updates more frequently, like Bazzite or Nobara. They tend to have better support for the latest tech.
The GTX 1060 mobile is from 2016; I doubt that's the issue you’re facing.
Yeah, also verify that your driver manager is set to the proprietary driver to ensure everything's configured properly.