Is Linux pretty much unusable with an Nvidia GPU?
I've been trying Linux Mint on my old dell laptop with an nvidia GPU and it's been just one impossible issue after the other.
Even games that have native linux versions like Valheim don't run if I'm running off the GPU (but run if i switch to the integrated intel gpu but with terrible performance). Some games that work with proton work fine but have tons of weird issues like not being able to type specific characters on the keyboard, or the game and the entire OS just randomly freezing after 15-20 minutes - it happened in both warframe and guild wars 2 for example. Every time it happened I had to do a hard reboot since it was completely unresponsive.
I tried installing bottles and couldn't get through the basic setup of the GOG launcher without getting black screens in it. There were some workarounds with no-sandbox launch arguments at one point but I think I eventually gave up on it. Steam had tons of issues with launchers freezing, or steam itself getting stuck on constant shader updates every day I start the game.
I tried changing proton versions, installing wine and lutris manually, changing nvidia drivers (randomly trying other one since there's no useful info online about which to pick or which ones even work...) and it never got to a satisfactory point. I still have no idea which drivers im supposed to be using (if it's not the recommended ones that come with Mint), or how to properly update them manually.
I've had steam somethines just not run at all, I run it and nothing happens. I see it in the process manager, kill it ,restart it... it gets the temporary update popup and then disappears with no error message whatsoever.
I actually own a steam deck and I never had any major issues with it, so my only conclusion is that this time it's the fault of either linux mint (which is supposed to be the stable, no-nonsense OS), or the different hardware - probably the GPU.
So yeah... is the conclusion wrong, or is it really simply pointless to try linux with nvidia?
edit: hardware info:
GPU: GeForce GTX 1060 Mobile
CPU: i7-7700HQ
I'm currently running Linux Mint 21.2 Cinnamon
Nvidia drivers in use are the latest ones available from the driver manager (currently nvidia-driver-550).
Will try PopOS! next
Well, valheim now works straight out of the box on Pop_OS so that's an improvement! Haven't downloaded other games so not sure about that just yet though, still setting up my usual programs now.
On the other hand I kinda hate its GUI, I installed that gnome extension to make the toolbars customizeable and now it just crashes every once in a while, for example just few minutes ago alt-tab stopped working and everything minimalized and became unresponsive so I had to force shut it off. An hour ago I closed the laptop lid and when I reopened it later, the OS woke up to the login screen but everything was frozen and I couldn't do anything. It's a bit of a cursed OS, you can't even click the folder path to copy the path, I miss mint lol.
I have some issues with alt tabbing while running some full screen games, but not sure what is causing that. It doesnt happen often so it doesnt bother me, but its not even that bad as you described.
You can if you press CTRL+L
That doesn't sound good. Maybe you could try to post on the official Mint forums, people really know their stuff there from my experience (and here too, but since you liked Mint, maybe give it a try, because running a distro you don't like is not a great option imho.) https://forums.linuxmint.com/index.php