MANJARO LINUX = EXCELLENT
THAT’S ALL FOLKS
Jokes aside I’m happy do help YPU once my life isnt chaos im also on the bus
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Sorry I’ve been neglecting this thread as of late. As much as I love GNU, software in general gives me headaches if I’m not in the proper mindset.
What the hell happened with your computer?
Also are you sticking to dual-booting with Mint?
Obs: my nerdy friend says you installed GRUB to the wrong disk. Did you check you had your sda/sdb/etc situation correctly? 
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My guess is the following:
Win8 had the BCD/MBR (whatevs it’s called) installed to Drive D: we’ll call it.
Well drive D was 120GB and would be perfect to install Windows 10 on so I could use this lovely service called Xbox Pass.
I tried wiping Drive D through windows, but it wasn’t willing to format.
So I installed Mint onto it in order to full wipe the drive. I did not pull any other drives though.
I then launched Win10 to wipe the Mint Drive again.
After that, I tried to launch Win8.1 and it was refusing. So I unplugged all but the Win8.1 drive and the NvME (which had nothing on it).
That’s picture #1. After about 1 hour of researching and utilizing a Win 8 Recovery Disk, the Win10 USB, a Win8.1 Pro disk, and then finally a Win7 Ult disk, I found an answer (for Win7 of all things) of creating a BCD on the C drive and designating it to the C drive. This worked while just about everything else was failing. So the conclusion was that Win8.1 didn’t install the BCD or boot record or wtf it’s called to the right drive and I wiped it.
Yeah, that was fun at 11pm at night.
Unfortunately, No.
As to why?
- I already use Win10 on my laptop and elsewhere.
- Xbox Game Pass requires Win10
- Ryzen Master requires Win10
- The kicker: There is no easy CPU/GPU temperature monitor available for Mint. Keyword being easy. I tried, and after 30minutes of trying to set it up decided that I enjoyed installing a program and having it work how I wanted it to in mere minutes. Oh, and even if I could monitor, I don’t think I could overwrite the fan curve (I don’t think I can do that with the RX 5700 XT atm anyway, but it should be a thing after some driver updates.) Basically, Mint is missing easy access to a program that I use just about everyday.
Not quite. Win10 didn’t properly overwrite the disk for some reason. It worked as intended before I asked Win10 to wipe it for installation. I’ve found that since Win8, Windows Installation disks suck at doing things properly, especially wiping things.
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Hello guys. I would like to revive this topic as Windows 10 has ended its official support by 14.10.2025 and its extended security update (ESU) is ending by 12.10.2027
I have some good old machines I’m attached to and don’t want them to end on scrapeyard. So I decided to install some Linux Distros on them, that are focused on Gaming not only everyday use.
I used these Linux distros before:
- Fedora (during classes at high scool in 2008-2010)
- Ubuntu (Dual boot for more security)
- Linux Mint (For similarities with Windows and I always recommended this distro)
But they are not the perfect ones for playing games of different platforms like EA Play or Ubisoft Connect. Even Linux support some of Steam games but in total only 261 games of my game library of 1040 are playable on Linux.
There are some workarounds too and apps that emulates or help to run native Windows games.
For example on Bazzite’s website they mention Lutris:
Own games outside of Steam? Lutris (Pre-installed) and other launchers can not only run games from most game stores, but cleanly integrate them into Steam Gaming Mode, including: Xbox Game Pass (via battle.net), EA App, Epic Games Store, GOG.com, itch.io, Rockstar Games Launcher, Ubisoft Connect, your dad’s old CDs, and more!
So I made some research and found some Linux distros that may be suitable for old hardware and gaming on linux. The list consist of:
- Nobara
- Bazzite
- Pop!_OS
- CatchyOS
- Manjaro
- Garuda Linux
- ChimeraOS (Steam big picture)
I want to give new life to notebooks that don’t meet the requirement for Windows 11:
- 8gen intel CPU or newer gen
- Ryzen 2600 or newer
Is anyone using Linux for gaming?
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I am currently on Endeavour OS, been using it for over a year now. Gaming on linux has become much easier and simpler than it used to be.
(Endeavour OS is based of off Arch Linux like Manjaro is.)
First you might want to decide between rolling-/point released distors.
Endeavour is a rolling release, meaning the kernel and general system updates gets pushed regularly. This gets you the newest drivers etc., but things might break.
A point based distro usually pushes major updates like the kernel twice a year, they are not as cutting edge, but much more stable and should require less maintenance.
I would recommend a point release LTS distro for machines that are not daily drivers.
The easiest thing to do is of course to download a few distros you like the look of and run them as live sessions from an usb stick. I think Balena etcher is still a popular choice for making bottable usb’s, and supposedly you can put several ISO’s to one stick.
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So how my journey goes?
On my Thinkpad E530 laptop
intel i5 3210m (2Cores 4 threads)
Nvidia GeForce GT 630M
Tried Nobara and Bazzite - both very laggy cause of incompatibility with Older Nvidia GPU.
I learned that KDE is generally not working great with Nvidia, while AMD does great.
On your recommendation I’m gonna try Garuda Linux that is Arch linux based aswell as a last try. If it will not work well, I get back to Linux Mint 22.3 or maybe Fedora (and play only Linux supported games of Steam)
With Nobara I’ve had some problems with Nvidia drivers. Could run only games marked as Linux compatible while using installed files of windows on another drive.
Non Linux marked games would not run.
I did not try to make other games run cause the endless lagging even during cutscenes were unbearable.
Edit:
Tried Garuda Linux.
I totally love the GUI and overall visuals, but could not update the system ending with some lib32 errors.
I don’t really have the time nor the knowledge to solve problems like this, so I went back to stable Linux Mint Cinnamon, that was tried and proved OS being installed for 10+ years as dual boot system on this notebook.
Leaving version Linux Mint 21.3 dual boot and installed version 22.3 as the only OS for this notebook.
Much less 2 days wasted experimenting, but at least I learnt about Lutris, that allows me to play GOG games (many games are supported by Linux). Might try Ubisoft connect games on Linux, but I’m not sure if they work…
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XFCE is a desctop enviroment i have never tried myself, but it is supposed to run well with older hardware.
Nvidia cards has both free and non-free drivers, not every distro installs the non-free ones.
Also double check that vulkan and mesa drivers are installed.
ProtonUp will let you install additional proton vetsions.
I kinda assume a gaming focused distro allready shippes with all this, but it might be worth mentioning.
Edit: Make sure you try something that runs X11 instead of Wayland. That should work better with an old Nvidia.
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I have a 10+ year old computer on Linux Mint. It has AM3 and DDR3. So I use it for youtube, emails, etc.
I bought a new computer last December, deleted Win11 and tried several distros. I eventually ended with Bazzite. This is my gaming PC after all. Otherwise it is off. I haven’t noticed not being able to play my steam games. So far I played Expedition 33, Palworld, Sonic Generations (thanks family sharing), and some older games on GoG.
Though I’m an amateur and still don’t know my way around Linux. But I am managing to get by since I don’t plan to go back to Windows.
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As for me, I’m also considering moving my games to Linux if I have conditions someday. The only thing that was stopping me from doing so was Source Filmmaker, which I’ll leave on Windows.
I’ll pick Bazzite for my gaming side, and Windows for the rest.
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