The main issue is that a lot of these bigger manufacturers have 3 tiers of hardware they kick out:
- consumer-grade/junk
- professional/developer/niche
- enterprise hardened
If you find a model of something you’re looking to buy for sale at big box stores, it’s going to be total junk: windows-centric hardware with low reliability, but really cheap to produce. Stay away from those, as their Linux compatibility is going to be horrendous UNLESS you’ve heard otherwise specifically about a particular model.
Lenovo has done something interesting in the last few years and blurred the lines between #1 and #2, so now it’s a crapshoot. ASUS ruined their #2 tier stuff years ago by including gimmicky stuff like touch bars, and secondary displays without ANY support except for Windows.
For Linux compatibility, you need to make sure your components either already have driver support, or is made by a company who directly releases or contributes Linux drivers. AMD and Intel are top of that list, with Nvidia kinda/sorta doing the bare minimum for consumer-grade components, but full support for enterprise-grade stuff.
If you’re not sure all the components in the machine you’re buying already have Linux support, it’s going to be a crapshoot. ASUS specifically makes crappy moves by including things that notoriously DON’T have native Linux support like: Broadcom chipsets, or random audio codecs and speakers that are essentially windows-only.
You can look around and see people’s experiences with specific models of ROG, but even those are kind of iffy because of the above. Depending on what you want to use it for, you may be able to work with certain things not working, but if you’re talking laptops and Linux, I’d steer clear of anything with Nvidia in it for the battery life alone.
Mint is fine, as the others have said, and there isn’t going to be a WILD performance difference between any distros (+/- 5%, you can check Phoronix for benchmarks), so just pick whatever feels okay for you.
To expand on the general difference between distros: if you want something that is running the most up-to-date kernel versions and Mesa drivers, you’ll want something that does rolling releases like Fedora, CachyOS (Arch-based), or Tumbleweed.
If you want something that is more generally stable and unchanged over time, and doesn’t upgrade the kernel or drivers, stick with Mint LTSbor Ubuntu LTS.
You need to enable hibernation: https://luisartola.com/solving-the-framework-laptop-battery-drain/
Steam Deck is a Linux desktop.
Alas, this game is currently “borked”. Some people say switch to Proton Experimental. https://www.protondb.com/app/2918300
The game’s functional state in Proton is one thing: does it start, support controls, and render without crashing.
That’s “Gold” on ProtonDB.
This does not guarantee online play and anti-cheat bans by platform, because that’s not what the project is about.
The project is simply about making games RUN. Online play is a separate thing.
There’s contact info right there. There’s also the GitHub pages to report back to the actual project.
ProtonDB is more about people finding fixes to problems. If you haven’t tried all combinations of stuff, it’s probably not worth registering a bug in GitHub because the project is more about generalized compatibility versus specific games. It’s an open source project, so not based on specific games or game engines.
Maybe work through all the different proton engines first and get back to a working version before registering a complaint. Meaning: don’t run on the bleeding edge, go back a few versions to when it worked for you.
User reports and automated regression testing. Go report it. The less people contrir, the more inaccurate it becomes. Keep in mind, ProtonDB, is not run by Valve.
Read the site notes: https://www.protondb.com/contribute
According to this, that force close directive just minimizes to tray. So is Steam actually running properly just minimizes to tray when the interface disappears?
Post the rest of the specs of the machine if handy, or the model if you have it.
As far as the GPU, you’re in a bit of a pinch because those older GTX models aren’t supported by more recent drivers. Looking at the docs, it IS supported up to the 470 release, which means any distro would be fine as long you make sure to install and pin that 470 version of the drivers if you want to game.
If you don’t want to do any heavy gaming, then any distro will work with the Nouveau drivers, and should be detected automatically out of the box.
As far as the not booting…I would expect the display just not to start properly, but the machine is actually booting. Many ways you can confirm this if needed.
Fedora - faster point releases and closer to modern kernels Debian - slow release, but stable Ubuntu - two releases per year, but sticks to older more stable kernel versions Arch - roll your own. Mostly for the very experienced.
Understanding WHY one distro may not work well on your hardware is key though. The above definitions should help with that, but understand that any derivative of one Ubuntu point release will behave exactly as all others out of the box. Meaning anything based on 24.03 will work with the same hardware out of the box because of the kernel version. Switching to a different distro base may yield different results.
Anyone making too much of a big deal about any of these is either over-opinionated and wrong, or absolutely full of shit and doesn’t know what they are talking about. You need what works best for you, and your hardware. If it runs well from a livecd, just go with it.
Recommended specifications from developers are highly subjective, so it would be kind of pointless to really create a database of what “works” because it’s different for who is writing the reviews/reports. If there was a database of what was reported solely from the developer, I guess you’d at least know what it was tested on for the best experience, but that doesn’t mean someone else would rather just get it to play on the lowest settings and experience just to have it work.
Set your desktop resolution to whatever you’re setting gamescope to, then see if it works properly. Turn off DLSS as well.
Edit: look here to see if you find anything useful: https://github.com/ValveSoftware/gamescope/issues/1145
It’s setting the full screen size as the target area for input, not the resolution you’re setting. Reduce your desktop resolution to the resolution you want to play at first if you’re going that route. This is a known issue with a long list of problems leading up to this particular display of symptoms. Easier to just change your resolution before you play a lower resolution.
Cliffhanger? Other upvotes because they know what I’m talking about. No cliffhanger.
Think about all the positional sensots in your phone. Then think about what it knows before going into this bag…then after.
Time elapsed, steps taken, speed, direction faced, phone orientation…it can tell you almost exactly where you are without GPS.
Not really since in this specific context it’s only working with live feeds. I was more talking about the technoweenies finding low-hanging fruit in the Deepfake world to make life more miserable or annoying to people. Scammers, YouTubers, teenage family members…ALL will be annoying everyone using this specific tool any day now.
Friend…$700-1000 is NOT a premium. Especially not for what you’re actually getting. You need to reevaluate your life 🤣