I used to run Gentoo on my old laptop, and it was great compared to Windows. Now, I've got a new PC with Windows 11, but it's pretty annoying how much RAM it eats up with background processes. Gaming isn't terrible, but I want to switch fully to Linux. The issue is, my new computer has an NVIDIA RTX 4050 GPU, and I've heard mixed reviews about NVIDIA support on Linux, which makes me concerned about performance. I've looked into SteamOS and Bazzite, but I'm wondering if I should dual-boot first and which distro would be best for my NVIDIA card. Any recommendations?
2 Answers
Most modern distros support the 40 series graphics cards. I recommend trying Linux Mint; it has a handy driver manager that simplifies downloading the drivers. Alternatively, Pop!_OS offers a dedicated NVIDIA ISO that comes with the drivers pre-installed, making things a lot easier for you with the RTX 4050.
If you want something that works right out of the box with NVIDIA GPUs, give POP_OS a shot. I currently use it, and I've had zero problems with my graphics card and drivers getting installed during the setup.
Are you sure Mint can actually give better frame rates than Windows? I mean, the heaviest game I'm planning to play is Minecraft with shaders, so I'm a bit worried about performance.