It’s really a YMMV thing with Nvidia on Linux. I’m running 3 computers in the house on openSUSE Tumbleweed (mine and my 2 boy’s computers). The computers all have various Nvidia cards and they all work just fine for gaming.
The “iffy” part for Nvidia is mainly focused on the troublesome issues some people run into with kernel updates and the drivers not keeping up. This is mostly a historical thing. It’s been several years since I’ve ran into any Nvidia driver update related issues in Linux. The other major complaint about Nvidia is screen tearing… it’s occasionally ugly. It’s hard to resolve or fix,a nd in many cases it just is what it is.
The issue you’re encountering with games running poorly on Linux Mint will probably not be resolved by distro hopping - I’m not trying to discourage some experimentation… that’s a fun/good thing :-) … but the Mvidia drivers on Mint will be the same ones you will install on Fedora, and openSUSE and and and. The very first place I’d look is at the drivers. Are you 100% certain that the proprietary Nvidia drivers are actually installed vs the default Nouveau Nvidia drivers? You’re running on a laptop… so that’s the hybrid video card thing. Are you 100% certain that the games are launching on Nvidia vs running on the default Intel? If the games run terribly… they are very very likely not using the full capability of the 2060… either because the full drivers are not installed or you’re running on the Intel by default even though the drivers were installed.
Double-check that you have Nvidia Prime configured/selected. It’s been a while since I’ve used Mint, but… try this…
Open the App menu (bottom left, same as in Windows)
Type "nvidia’ and this should show you the NVIDIA X Server Settings app. Click on it to launch.
Double-check that you see all the drive info, including the driver version. Close out the app of all looks “right”.
In the Mint system tray (lower right), click on the Nvidia icon (if you don’t see it, open the app menu, type “startup” and make sure “Support for NVIDIA Prime” is enabled) 5. Set the profile to “Active profile” (it’s hard on battery life in this mode). This forces everything to run on the Nvidia card only…
Test your games. Do they work better? If yes, you’ve found the root cause of the performance issue… if not… Hmmm, I’m not sure, then it’s time to try other things.
My experience with this is that Nvidia Prime was not being enabled/selected when I was trying to game. If this (forcing everything to launch on Prime) works and your games are working at a more acceptable performance level, you can leave it in “Active profile” at the expense of battery life… or you can set up the On-Demand profile… or explicitly switch between Intel and Nvidia, using Intel for all non-gaming things and pop it into Nvidia when you want to game… lots of possibilities depending on how you want to use the computer. :-)
BTW, an alternative to the systray method is simply setting the profiles right within the NVIDIA X Server Settings app (the last menu item on the left nav menu within the NVIDIA app). I just find that the systray icon is a quick/easy way, and it’s worth knowing about.
It’s really a YMMV thing with Nvidia on Linux. I’m running 3 computers in the house on openSUSE Tumbleweed (mine and my 2 boy’s computers). The computers all have various Nvidia cards and they all work just fine for gaming.
The “iffy” part for Nvidia is mainly focused on the troublesome issues some people run into with kernel updates and the drivers not keeping up. This is mostly a historical thing. It’s been several years since I’ve ran into any Nvidia driver update related issues in Linux. The other major complaint about Nvidia is screen tearing… it’s occasionally ugly. It’s hard to resolve or fix,a nd in many cases it just is what it is.
The issue you’re encountering with games running poorly on Linux Mint will probably not be resolved by distro hopping - I’m not trying to discourage some experimentation… that’s a fun/good thing :-) … but the Mvidia drivers on Mint will be the same ones you will install on Fedora, and openSUSE and and and. The very first place I’d look is at the drivers. Are you 100% certain that the proprietary Nvidia drivers are actually installed vs the default Nouveau Nvidia drivers? You’re running on a laptop… so that’s the hybrid video card thing. Are you 100% certain that the games are launching on Nvidia vs running on the default Intel? If the games run terribly… they are very very likely not using the full capability of the 2060… either because the full drivers are not installed or you’re running on the Intel by default even though the drivers were installed.
Im fairly certain im runni g the nvidia drivers and only on the nvidia card at least the driver too and the nvidia tool says I am
Double-check that you have Nvidia Prime configured/selected. It’s been a while since I’ve used Mint, but… try this…
My experience with this is that Nvidia Prime was not being enabled/selected when I was trying to game. If this (forcing everything to launch on Prime) works and your games are working at a more acceptable performance level, you can leave it in “Active profile” at the expense of battery life… or you can set up the On-Demand profile… or explicitly switch between Intel and Nvidia, using Intel for all non-gaming things and pop it into Nvidia when you want to game… lots of possibilities depending on how you want to use the computer. :-)
BTW, an alternative to the systray method is simply setting the profiles right within the NVIDIA X Server Settings app (the last menu item on the left nav menu within the NVIDIA app). I just find that the systray icon is a quick/easy way, and it’s worth knowing about.
Ill give this a go thank you very much!