I’ve been seriously looking to migrate away from Windows’s grip recently and I’ve laid my eyes on LMDE, as it seems like a simple and stable distro (I’m a total beginner in Linux/Unix). However, I have a laptop with an NVIDIA integrated graphics card, and given NVIDIA’s record, I’m worried about compatibility issues given that LMDE is Debian-based. Can anyone shine me some light on this? Thanks!
I’ve been dual-booting Windows 11 and LMDE for a few months now on seperate drives. I’ve got secure boot enabled and have a Nvidia GPU. I’ve only had to go on Windows once to play a game from the Xbox app(I still have an active gamepads subscription) with my friends online.
It’s been working fine for the most part. I haven’t been able to get a second monitor to work properly again after disabling it in nvidia-settings shortly after installation. This has been a minor annoyance that I’m sure I could figure out with some effort.
What CPU do you have?
From experience: not as good as the regular Linux Mint.
Tried out LMDE with a 4080 Super and had no issues; didn’t try doing anything like video editing though, just some games.
You are still a beginner, and in that case almost everyone rightfully says to go to regular Mint only, instead of LMDE or any other distro. A beginner will not know how to evaluate the situation in case of troubles or follow any complex instruction (like anything involving the terminal that is not completely copy-paste). Mint is fully click-click-install now, something that no other distro has equaled. Linux Mint, regular edition, is widely compatible with all sorts of hardware, that in other distros give black screens or esoteric deep s**t at install or later, which is a show stopper for beginners just making the transition.
I myself am not a beginner anymore, and every other distro (save Mint) has failed me at some point. Debian, LMDE and Sparky Linux have not even booted in one notebook, Bazzite (Fedora) has after a few weeks given me a black screen in a desktop pc with Nvidia that i could not solve, and Arch - Endeavour OS - Manjaro have simply collapsed after a few months (probably by using AUR, which is supposed to be their main advantage, but i could not even discover the source of the problem, in each). Everything was restored in order after a blanck install of Linux Mint XFCE, which is the only distro i use now.
This was very informative, thank you! One more question: what are the differences between Mint Cinnamon and Mint Xfce?
It’s mostly an aesthetic choice, a choice between desktop environments.
Desktop environment (DE) is just the visual bells and whistles that you use to navigate the PC, like that quick animation when you minimize or maximize a program (Apple loves this), a start menu that has cute icons for each program and turns blue when you pass the mouse over it (or a start menu that is just a raw list of program names), etc.
Mint Cinnamon uses a DE that looks like Windows 7 reborn, Mint XFCE uses a DE that looks like Windows XP reborn, and Mint MATE uses a DE that looks like Windows Vista reborn.
People will tell you that these DEs will have a slight difference in consumption of RAM, where the most ‘shiny’ DEs will consume more RAM (XFCE<MATE<Cinnamon) by virtue of having more bells and whistles and some different programs that execute the same function, but the difference is irrelevant in practice (unless you are using a 2gb or less PC, where each 50mb of RAM counts). So it’s mostly what you fancy to look at. I just like the old-school visual of XFCE.
May I ask why LMDE and not regular Linux Mint? In my experience, it is rock solid and handles nvidia pretty well, too
I was thinking about using something Debian-based since I love how reliable it is, though it seems I’ll be better off installing regular Linux Mint.
if you are ok with an Ubuntu base (which these days is drifting further from its Debian base) then regular mint is great.
if forced…
- Debian stable (or sid if you loathe/love yourself)
- lmde
- mint
- something other than ubuntu
- …
- ubuntu
not hating on ubuntu, its just been moving away from where I am at.
Probably gonna go with regular Mint, then. Thank you!
I’ve installed an uninstalled so. many. distros. over the past few weeks just trying things out on my previously windows-laden machine, and I’ve got a 2080Ti from a few years ago in it. Mint (non-DE) has wonderful integration with nvidia drivers…it’ll prompt the driver installation when you first boot it up. But, I’m currently on Debian with KDE Plasma desktop environment, and there is a bit of setup in Debian. I’ve bookmarked and followed this tutorial each time I’ve distro-hopped lately, and with the exception of openSUSE (because it doesn’t use the apt install scheme), it has worked perfectly.
Each distro I’ve used has its own little quirks and it has been a big learning experience. But, if you’ve got a bit of tech knowledge, it shouldn’t be too bad. Good luck to you!
FWIW I installed Debian few times this weekend, both Sid and Bookworm, with a 2080Ti and iirc following the official documentation, e.g https://wiki.debian.org/NvidiaGraphicsDrivers#Debian_12_.22Bookworm.22 was enough, nothing exotic needed namely :
- adding
contribandnon-free, updating, install drivers - rebooting and sticking to X11, not Wayland (which for me with KDE Plasma didn’t work)
Yes, I forgot about the X11/Wayland issue. Supposedly being worked on for the next version of Plasma, but we’ll see.
this thread is it in a nut shell. the x11/wayland situation can trip things when it really should be super seamless. that will be fixed soon enough.
- adding
Very informative, thank you! I’m a total newbie when it comes to Linux so there’s a lot of things I don’t get. Are there any drawbacks to using LMDE with NVIDIA compared to using regular Mint? Will this also work on an integrated, less powerful graphics card?
You’re welcome! I’m definitely no expert with Linux as I only truly started digging in several weeks ago. I’ve got a MacBook Pro for anything I can’t do on Linux and, like I said above, I’ve been hopping around/making mistakes/reinstalling in a frenzy since then.
To answer your question with my limited experience, Mint is just a good gateway for Windows folks wanting to switch to Linux. I used it for a bit a year or so ago, but there were issues with the nvidia drivers at the time, so I didn’t stick to it. Now, however, those have been updated and it is the easiest so far (aside from maybe Pop! OS) to get Linux playing nice with nvidia cards. I was easily able to get my Steam games as well as Diablo IV on Lutris (a sort of translation layer frontend to allow battle.net to run) going. Debian is only slightly less simple, and it took me a bit to find a site that made it easier (the link in my post above) for me.
I’m at the point now where I can get just about any distro I’ve hopped to/from up and running pretty quickly with my 2080Ti. OpenSUSE is the only one that I just simply couldn’t get everything working right. It has a completely different way of installing apps and utilities than the others I’ve tried. It’s a "cutting edge, " rolling distro, which means it updates things as soon as they’re stable, unlike most others. So, it might have something to do with that aspect. All in all, Debian has been a good, solid distro that I’ve been happy with. I haven’t tried LMDE, so I can’t speak to it directly but, and others more experienced than me can please chime in, I think it’s mostly Debian with the Cinnamon desktop environment. That may be simplistic, but that’s my current understanding.
Sorry for the long post. Hope it helps.
It did, thank you very much!
I’ve been on LMDE for several years now and had no major issues with my 1080. But also I have no idea if I had to do anything to get it started.
its the same as Debian. Personally I would not recommend Debian or LMDE if you intend to use proprietary drivers but if you have to you can follow the Debian wiki for a guide.
You could dual boot and find out. Or even do a live session and play around.
“Find out yourself”… That’s a very helpful comment!
