Solved Linux Mint 22: A quick summary

[Battledoge21]

Hello folks. I've been using Linux for around 2 years now. For 99% of that time, I've been distro-hopping around to try and find a distro that suits me best. While I've tried Fedora, Debian, Ubuntu, Pop! OS, and more, there's always been a distro that, for some reason, I never got around to installing. The distro in question being Linux Mint.

So, recently, I got a new GPU, and I decided to install Mint alongside it. Overall, my experience has been pleasant, but there are some issues that are small but very frustrating. My aim in this post isn't to dive into all the nuances of Mint and explain why it's a good or bad, but to simply give an overview of my experiences with it, as well as attempting to fix the many bugs plaguing it.

First Impressions
Setting up Mint was very easy, almost easier than Windows! Well, almost. Installing all of the programs that I wanted was easy enough, as was configuring them. The only gripe I have was the "System Settings" app. Upon my first boot, it was extremely slow and I was not able to access certain submenus, but this went away after a reboot. I suspect it was an issue with NVIDIA drivers, as I had installed them but not rebooted yet. Speaking of NVIDIA drivers, installation of them was incredibly easy, but most distros nowadays have easy GUI-based tools for installing NVIDIA drivers, so that's nothing to write home about.

In terms of desktop use, it's a pretty fast, if bland, experience. I have encountered Cinammon-related issues since, but I'll cover those later. It is
definitely much easier to use than GNOME but compared to KDE Plasma, it still falls behind in both performance and ease of use (in my opinion). If you're coming from Windows (7, 8 or 10 especially), then you'll feel right at home.

General Desktop Use
This is where I think Mint is the most lackluster. The desktop environment itself is great, but there are a lot of strange bugs that come with it as well. This very well could be my hardware configuration, but I digress. Either way, doing most tasks is... fine, it doesn't feel as snappy as its' competitors, but still runs well. There really isn't much else to say about the desktop; its' easy to use, but boring (not that there's anything wrong with that!).

Gaming
Things generally run about as good as any other distro. I had a lot of issues getting TF2 and BeamNG to run, but I've also had those same issues on other distros. The only thing that I have noticed is that Steams' UI seems to be really slow, running at around 10-20 FPS. I'm not sure why this happens, but any input would be appreciated.

Bugs
This is frankly what kills Linux Mint. It has incredible potential as a distro, but I've encountered more bugs than I have using TempleOS! Below I'll put a list of bugs that I've encountered that I still (as of writing) have not been able to fix. If you know a fix for them, help is very much welcome! (All bugs noted have been present since before switching to xanmod kernel)

-Steam UI runs very slow (10-20 FPS at all times).
-At seemingly random intervals, the desktop will get constant microstutters that sometimes persist even after restarting Cinnamon.
-Makes my GPU run very hot for some reason (60 degrees celsius on desktop with no apps open, fixed with GWE and a more aggressive fan curve).
-Network issues in certain games that normally wouldn't have them.
-System running extremely slow after waking from suspend.
-Generally clunky and slow desktop.

So yeah, thats' been my experience with Mint. If anyone has any fixes for the aforementioned bugs, please let me know. Otherwise, thanks for reading, and have a nice day!

UPDATE:
Thank you all for your suggestions, I don't have access to my PC right, nor will I for a few days, however I will respond to your suggestions as soon as I can, once I can properly test them. Again, thank you all!

UPDATE 2:
Since posting I have distro-hopped (again) to Debian 12 (WattOS), I have had absolutely no issues with this OS and I plan to stick to it for the foreseeable future.

 

[Condobloke]

Which Version of Linux Mint are you using ? Your signature shows Linux Mint 22.04 The first point update (22.10 has not been released yet. so ... ?

I am running LM22, which , in a nutshell, runs like clockwork, smooth and reliably solid. A few minor bugs...and I do mean minor.

-At seemingly random intervals, the desktop will get constant microstutters that sometimes persist even after restarting Cinnamon.
-Makes my GPU run very hot for some reason (60 degrees celsius on desktop with no apps open, fixed with GWE and a more aggressive fan curve).

Stuttering on a desktop will almost always be related to a graphics card issue. I can assure you there are no stutters here...micro or otherwise. Your gpu running hot is a "fault" on Linux mint's part. There is a problem with the gpu itself...for whatever reason it is not interacting with LM as most do. Try running the system without the graphics card...go to menu>driver manager> disable the gpu driver...allow it to use the motherboards inbuilt graphics.

-System running extremely slow after waking from suspend.

Instead of suspend, try using screensaver...it is also in menu
Suspend historically brings dramas depending on hardware. Screensaver is much more subtle and smooth

-Generally clunky and slow desktop.

systemd-analyze

The above code may be worth running. Research system analyze for more info.
Also worth a look in Startup Applications?...overloaded?

I notice the kernel you have loaded is KERNEL 6.10.12-x64v3-xanmod1 ...have you run it with the standard kernel ? 6.8.0-45 ?... You may find joy by experimenting here....with the gpu activated and with it disabled.

It is at least good to know that the "bugs" you encounter, are your experience with mint, and are not wide spread....therefore it is either a setting or hardware related

Stuttering on a desktop will almost always be related to a graphics card issue. I can assure you there are no stutters here...micro or otherwise !

Cinnamon....zero issues.

 

[wizardfromoz]

Actually it is the signature entry that needs amending - it is ubuntu which have releases such as 22.04, 22.10 and so on.

Mint only has 22, for now - a 22.1 will be released around Christmas/New Year.

 

[f33dm3bits]

Bugs
This is frankly what kills Linux Mint. It has incredible potential as a distro, but I've encountered more bugs than I have using TempleOS!

You can't really compare TempleOS to any Linux distribution because that wasn't meant to run in real hardware but in vm, even Terry Davis(may he RIP) ran it in a vm and it doesn't an option for a network connection and it doesn't have many other features that modern Linux distributions do have. But it's work of art and work of a genius for sure!

-Steam UI runs very slow (10-20 FPS at all times).
-At seemingly random intervals, the desktop will get constant microstutters that sometimes persist even after restarting Cinnamon.
-Makes my GPU run very hot for some reason (60 degrees celsius on desktop with no apps open, fixed with GWE and a more aggressive fan curve).

These sound more like a driver issue. What driver version did you select in the Mint driver manager and which Nvidia gpu do you have?

-Network issues in certain games that normally wouldn't have them.

Like which games and describe slow?

-System running extremely slow after waking from suspend.

For hibernation you need at least the amount of swap space as how much ram you have.

How Much Swap Should You Use in Linux?

How much should be the swap size? Should the swap be double of the RAM size or should it be half of the RAM size? Do I need swap at all if my system has got several GBs of RAM? Your questions answered in this detailed article.

itsfoss.com

If you use hibernation, then you must add swap because the content of the RAM will be written to the swap partition. This also means that the swap size should be at least the size of RAM.

art and work of a genius for sure!

-Generally clunky and slow desktop.

Also sounds more like a driver issue. I know @rado84 has an Nvidia gpu and use Cinnamon and he doesn't have that same experience, except for he uses Arch Linux.

 

[Battledoge21]

Actually it is the signature entry that needs amending - it is ubuntu which have releases such as 22.04, 22.10 and so on.

Mint only has 22, for now - a 22.1 will be released around Christmas/New Year.

Thanks for the info, my signature's been updated. I always assumed that, because it was based on Ubuntu, it used the same numbering system.

 

[Fanboi]

I have had some issues with suspend/wake just recently, for the first time in over a decade of Debian (which is regular Mint's grandad and LMDE's ... well ... father???) when upgrading to 12. The issue I had was the Nvidia 550 driver. The moment I downgraded to their 535 driver, everything was smooth. I will say there was latency starting an X11 session when using the Debian package to install the same drivers as compared to using the ones from Nvidia's site, but most folk use a Display Manager, so they won't notice it.
Personally, I have never had issues with Mint (regular version, if LMDE you may as well go regular Debian). While Mint is not my daily driver, I always use it on laptops I refurbish. Despite the bells and whistles, it's still a great performer. It's also solid and stable, and very user-friendly. Everyone I introduce to it is happy and I've had very few people ask to put Windows back after a trial intro. But that was for daily driving, not gaming.
If you want a gaming-centric OS, there's Manjaro. I last tested it 5 years ago on metal, and it was a tad resource hungry (don't take me too seriously as I only recently conceded to the fact that it's okay for your RAM usage to go above 1GB for your DE, lol). For your specs, almost distro will feel light as a feather. It wasn't super stable, but I'm sure there have been leaps since then. All in all, it's worth a try.
That all said, honestly, it doesn't matter too much the distro. Most issues can be traced back to misconfigurations or driver issues, which is basically the same even for Windows. How many "missing <insert weird name>.dll" have we seen? More than "missing <insert rational name>.so" messages for sure. The distro you choose depends on how automatically geared towards a specific task you want. When it comes to gaming, Arch (and family) definitely have the edge because of newer versions of software and the AUR (though Appimages are brining a lot of that to all distros).

 

[Battledoge21]

I have had some issues with suspend/wake just recently, for the first time in over a decade of Debian (which is regular Mint's grandad and LMDE's ... well ... father???) when upgrading to 12. The issue I had was the Nvidia 550 driver. The moment I downgraded to their 535 driver, everything was smooth. I will say there was latency starting an X11 session when using the Debian package to install the same drivers as compared to using the ones from Nvidia's site, but most folk use a Display Manager, so they won't notice it.
Personally, I have never had issues with Mint (regular version, if LMDE you may as well go regular Debian). While Mint is not my daily driver, I always use it on laptops I refurbish. Despite the bells and whistles, it's still a great performer. It's also solid and stable, and very user-friendly. Everyone I introduce to it is happy and I've had very few people ask to put Windows back after a trial intro. But that was for daily driving, not gaming.
If you want a gaming-centric OS, there's Manjaro. I last tested it 5 years ago on metal, and it was a tad resource hungry (don't take me too seriously as I only recently conceded to the fact that it's okay for your RAM usage to go above 1GB for your DE, lol). For your specs, almost distro will feel light as a feather. It wasn't super stable, but I'm sure there have been leaps since then. All in all, it's worth a try.
That all said, honestly, it doesn't matter too much the distro. Most issues can be traced back to misconfigurations or driver issues, which is basically the same even for Windows. How many "missing <insert weird name>.dll" have we seen? More than "missing <insert rational name>.so" messages for sure. The distro you choose depends on how automatically geared towards a specific task you want. When it comes to gaming, Arch (and family) definitely have the edge because of newer versions of software and the AUR (though Appimages are brining a lot of that to all distros).

I used to use Pop! OS 22.04 with the newer (experimental) 560 driver, and never had any issues on that. I remember back when the 550 driver released (on the experimental branch) I was on Ubuntu, and I ended up with a lot of GPU-related issues so it seems 550 is the problem here for sure. Next time I get access to my PC, I'll upgrade to 560, and downgrade to 535 if I continue having issues. Thanks for your input!

 

[Battledoge21]

You can't really compare TempleOS to any Linux distribution because that wasn't meant to run in real hardware but in vm, even Terry Davis(may he RIP) ran it in a vm and it doesn't an option for a network connection and it doesn't have many other features that modern Linux distributions do have. But it's work of art and work of a genius for sure!


These sound more like a driver issue. What driver version did you select in the Mint driver manager and which Nvidia gpu do you have?

Like which games and describe slow?

For hibernation you need at least the amount of swap space as how much ram you have.

How Much Swap Should You Use in Linux?

How much should be the swap size? Should the swap be double of the RAM size or should it be half of the RAM size? Do I need swap at all if my system has got several GBs of RAM? Your questions answered in this detailed article.

itsfoss.com

art and work of a genius for sure!

Also sounds more like a driver issue. I know @rado84 has an Nvidia gpu and use Cinnamon and he doesn't have that same experience, except for he uses Arch Linux.

Hello! Sorry for the late response! First off, I believe I didn't explain the TempleOS part nearly as well as I could have, so I'll have another go at it here. What I meant was that, in my usage of TempleOS (in a VM), I encountered less bugs overall than on my usage of Linux Mint. I'm sorry for the confusion that may have caused and honestly that statement was kind of in bad taste, so again, I apologize. Rest in Peace, Terry.

Secondly, I've fixed 99% of the performance issues by upgrading 560 Beta driver. To answer your question, I was using the 550 driver at the time of posting, and I am using a GTX 1060 6gb. My signature is not updated at the moment, as I do not know the exact version of the 560 driver (I'll update it soon) I am using. Now Steam runs well, as it should, and games run great as well!

As for the Hibernation issue, I've solved that by simply disabling hibernate and suspend in systemd and blanking the screen instead.

The only issue that remains is the random microstutter issue, but upon further investigation this seems like a Firefox issue, so I'll mark this thread as solved and start a new one specifically for that when I get the chance.

Also, @Condobloke, I saw your response as well and never got around to replying, but systemd-analyze has helped me quite a bit. Thank you for your input!

Edit: Signature has been updated.

 

[rado84]

Also sounds more like a driver issue. I know @rado84 has an Nvidia gpu and use Cinnamon and he doesn't have that same experience, except for he uses Arch Linux.

It's definitely a driver issue! 560.xx.xx is a glitchy driver that doesn't work well with Cinnamon, for unknown reasons. If I install that driver, the panel becomes just a picture and nothing that's on it can be clicked and used, which means no menu either.
Also, he's using the package Cinnamon 6.2.9. The official Cinnamon package is 6.2.2. Everything else after that somebody's unofficial modifications which might fix some issues, but they also create other issues - one of which is the desktop's inability to remember your sound source choice.

If @Battledoge21 can downgrade the package cinnamon to 6.2.2, the driver to 555.58 and the kernel to 6.6.35-2-LTS, he'll see a huge difference in performance of the desktop. The kernel doesn't play much of a role here but I'd recommend to avoid any modded kernels, like that xanmod. On paper it sounds nice but in reality its' just another load of crap, designed to be "But it works on my computer". I did try it once and barely stood its BS for 20 minutes. And his kernel is the rolling kernel meant mostly for Arch and generally rolling distros, so no wonder he's having issues.