thoughts on a good linux distro for a newish linux user that has been enjoying mint?

mainly looking for something with good HDR support and that plays well with nvidia cards

I've heard some mention of bazzite being a good option, but I find all of the options to be a tiny bit overwhelming

mint has been a good experience, but I've ran into some issues with older packages not playing well with everything I've tried messing around with and wayland support being spotty

@Chel i mean. if you want a linux that Just Works, i’d go with fedora, but i don’t really know if it works well with those things because i don’t have any of those things. also, you aren’t ever gonna find something that works great with nvidia, because nvidia sucks because reasons, ask scarlet

@shroomie yes, I know nvidia isn't great.

unfortunately I have an nvidia card and despite the fact that I would REALLY like to not have an nvidia card right now, I won't be able to afford replacing it with anything for the foreseeable future, because I am currently poor as fuck

so i'm a bit stuck

i've been satisfied with my card's operation on mint, so anything that works just as well would be fine

@Chel i've been using mx linux on all my devices and it's been good :-) including modern games on an nvidia card

@eri oo, I'm not familiar with that one, I'll put it on my radar!

and yeah... I have complicated feelings about my video card. it's going on six years old and still performs well, but god DAMN do I fucking hate what nvidia... well, I hesitate to say 'what they've become'

more like, 'what they increasingly blatantly are'

the fact that nvidia cards aren't really the best choice for linux just adds to that at this point, since I'm never going back to windows^^;

@Chel @eri +1 for mx linux, i use the KDE version and it's good :3 the only thing ive had issues with is getting newer nvidia drivers for VR, but i managed to wrangle it into installing the newer ones

@sudo_EatPant @eri this is good to know! I have an index from years back when i had money to spend on fun things that I'd like to get back into the habit of using

@Chel Bazzite is working really well for me so far and it's gaming focused (with hdr support out of the box )

@OctaviaConAmore good to hear that it's still working out well!

that's definitely the front runner at the moment i think

how has the transition been, adjusting to it from windows?

@Chel i mean, you're a gamer type person so you could just do steamOS....?
(which is built on Arch i think)

@Leviamicky from what I've read steamos isn't necessarily recommended at the moment for general desktop use outside of the hardware valve ships on

definitely think that's something that valve should work toward though, given the dumpster fire that windows is

@Chel ye! just let me know if you need help with that, and/or check out the linux vr adventures wiki

@sudo_EatPant thank you for that link!

this will, i expect, prove very useful

@Chel fair, i can't comment on driver support or anything like that. i just know its available and has been for a long time, and ive enjoyed my tinkering with it (on a docked steam deck with a big TV and a M+KB) thus far.
shrug
i just figure their line about "its not officially supported except on official devices" is mostly "we wont give you tech support" not "it doesn't work"

@Leviamicky I'd definitely like to see it move toward being a general windows replacement for gaming

hopefully now that they're starting to introduce a larger variety of hardware running it, that'll start to be the case moving forward

@Chel bazzite seems like a good choice to try. Though I’m saying so because it’s on my list of distros to try rather than experience

@dawn from what I've read, it's definitely a very strong contender

@Chel The only issues I've faced so far were a known bug with Umamusume (solved by getting Proton GE(?), am annoyance getting Japanese input going, the Spout2 OBS plugin not existing for Linux (but that @lina has been working on), and... oh, my secondary drives sometimes not auto-mounting (haven't had the tune to look into this last problem)

other than that, it's been smooth sailing to the point that the one time I booted back into Windows, I was there to extract a settings export file and then boot back into Bazzite

@OctaviaConAmore yeah, honestly at this point I boot into windows so rarely that it doesn't make sense for me to waste any space on any of my good drives on it

so it's time for it to get relegated to a tiny SSD that's old enough to be at risk of failing any moment now

and that's all good to hear!

@Chel I’ve really enjoyed using Solus @getsolus

It’s a rolling release distro that I’ve used as my primary install since around 2018 or so.

They’ve had pretty good nvidia support as far as I can recall. I haven’t had any noticeable issues with my previous 980 or my current 4060ti.

I use the Budgie edition which will switch to wayland on its next release, but it isn’t quite there yet so I haven’t had a chance to experiment with potential HDR support.
The Plasma edition might have support for HDR? I’m not entirely sure. I know that the recent Plasma release announcements have been mentioning advancements in their HDR support.

@Leora I think I've heard good things about plasma

appreciate the tip! I'll add Solus to my research list

@Chel that's good to hear I'll probably just leave it where it is and just nuke it if I don't use it for half a year or whatever

@OctaviaConAmore I expect I'll probably get there, too

realistically I haven't touched it in any meaningful capacity for several months, but... i dunno. my brain is all like "Yeah But What If You Suddenly Really Wanna Do This Thing That Only Works In Windows???????"

@Chel @OctaviaConAmore thats what dual booting and VMs are for...?

(extensive up-front effort for better ongoing rewards, i guess)

@Leviamicky @OctaviaConAmore this is true

i definitely do look forward to eventually fully dumping it, whenever that time comes though

which... if microsoft continues on their full steam ahead zeor privacy AI obsession is potentially sooner rather than later

@Chel @OctaviaConAmore yah im currently living in "if i just don't (meaningfully) update what i already have that works just fine for what I want, can't i just use it til it ages out and then replace it with [current equivalent of] a gabecube?"-land.

@Leviamicky honestly a really good approach i think

@jenesuispersonne appreciate this info!