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.
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.
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.
