About a month ago, I decided to try dual booting PopOS with Windows, but my drive got completely wiped out. So, I had two choices: reinstall Windows or dive fully into the Linux experience. I went with the latter!
I started with Mint Cinnamon and quickly fell in love with how simple it was to set up. Gaming was pretty good too, especially in comparison to Windows. However, I wanted to explore KDE Plasma for its customization options, so I switched my Mint partition to Fedora KDE. I liked it, but it felt a bit choppier than Cinnamon. The real kicker was gaming—most of my games were stored on a 2TB HDD formatted in NTFS. When I tried DOOM 2016 on Fedora, it lagged, regardless of the graphics settings or Proton version. Oddly enough, Forza Horizon 4 ran fine. I even tested CachyOS and Bazzite to see if they'd help, but no luck. Eventually, I formatted the HDD to ext4 after backing everything up, and DOOM ran smoothly afterward.
I also tried Nobara, which combines Fedora with pre-installed gaming tweaks. Just as I thought my troubles were over, I faced a shutdown issue where the computer wouldn't completely turn off—it still had spinning fans and lights on despite having no display. After some digging in the Nobara Discord, it seems it might be related to Nvidia drivers. I switched back to Mint to see if the problem persists.
Despite all the troubleshooting, I've really enjoyed my month with Linux and definitely plan to stick with it! I'd love to hear any feedback or tips from fellow users. Thanks for reading, and happy new year!
3 Answers
Have you tried running a terminal command like `sudo systemctl poweroff`? Sometimes, basic commands can help diagnose issues like shutdown problems.
I actually ran `journalctl -b -1` when I was in the Nobara Discord. Here's the output it gave: [link to output]. Maybe it can provide some insights!
You may want to check your BIOS settings. Some machines have a Windows-only shutdown or sleep mode that can be toggled in there. A quick search like 'motherboard + linux sleep' might help.
Just a heads up, you didn't have to switch the whole OS! You could've installed KDE Plasma on your Mint setup instead.
Exactly! A lot of Linux issues can be traced back to simple diagnostics, but many folks haven't learned how to troubleshoot effectively.