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!

 

[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!