Linux Mint Setup Basics

[@davidwestra8181]

LMDE has been my go to for a year now and love it. I’ve tried some others, but keep coming back.

[@cheebadigga4092]

me too! Happy with LMDE6 and kernel 6.11 from bookworm-backports.

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

Didn't see it, but note, that on Mint, by default the App Store has a limited selection of Flatpak software. You can see the full set if you enable it in the sttings of the store as I recall. Overall, great overview. Love to see you on this journey.

[@Jims-Garage]

Much appreciated, I'll definitely check that out. Assume they're "unofficial" ?

[@cheebadigga4092]

@@Jims-Garage They are "not verified" - just as on the Flathub page of the specific app. "verified" means that either the app's developer published the app on Flathub directly, or the app's dev or maintainer or company CEO or whatever endorsed the 3rd party publishing of their app. An example would be Google Chrome: Google has official DEB and RPM packages out there, but have yet to publish any Flatpak package. Somebody else did it, but Google neither gave their blessing nor did they go against it, resulting in the app being flagged as "not verified" on Flathub. It's basically exactly the same as packaging the Linux kernel for a distro. Neither Linus Torvalds, nor his team, nor the Linux Foundation publish any kind of packaged kernel. There is also no "official binary" that I know of. The kernel team publishes the source code of the kernel, which distro maintainers take, compile, and make packages of for their distro. Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, .... all of them basically run on "unofficial builds of the kernel", so to speak, but most of them are "verified", because the kernel maintainers kinda/sorta automatically endorse packaging the binaries, if that makes sense.

[@Nexis4Jersey]

@@Jims-Garage unverified , not dangerous but usually not by the main developer.

[@Popcorncandy09]

I'm also interested on the "rules" on when to use snap, when to use package and when to use flatpak, and what are the performances between them. This is one thing that is making me hold off on linux as a daily driver for now.

[@noriller]

probably go with the one "officially supported" first, then the most up to date, then whatever you can find. flatpak is usually "the way to go", unless you're in ubuntu, then canonical is pushing for the snaps. performance only really matters on some apps and even then as an example, you can run a windows VM on linux with gpu passthrough with less than 5% performance hit and considering most machines nowadays... unless someone screwup in the packaging of the app...

[@haplozetetic9519]

Use the distro's packages, except when a newer version is needed.

[@KomradeMikhail]

Snaps are basically Ubuntu specific... They have not caught on the way Canonical had intended, and should probably be avoided on any other distro. While Mint may be technically forked from Ubuntu, it has all the proprietary Snap stuff removed, because reasons. (You can even cut out the middle-man entirely, try LMDE [Linux Mint Debian Edition], forked straight from Debian without any Ubuntu in the middle.) Flatpaks are essentially containers that have most of the dependencies rolled up in with the app, which usually makes them work across distros. Flatpaks often get updated more often than distro repositories, because everything is in one central place. As this video implies, for the average newbie user, simply choose the Flatpak if given a choice in your distro's app-store. There are a handful of apps that should be installed from system package (.deb, etc.), as they need higher permissions which Flatpak restricts... Steam, Discord, and OBS are the common examples. Steam and Discord notably have their own self-updaters, so you won't be stuck with older versions anyway.

[@NFvidoJagg2]

One of the things I like to do is put application on their own workspace and cycle thought them with hot keys. Grant I'm also using cosmic, which acts more like a tiling window manager. but i find the workflow is good if you have lots of windows open. especially in multi-monitor setups. I'll also note, because of other comments. NVIDIA driver 550 is the current stable driver. 56X drivers are still in beta. Hence distros with bleeding edge kernels are using them.

[@bashhulk]

550 was giving me issues with my razer blade and prime discreet graphics switching so I went to 565-open on mint and it's working great.

[@praetorxyn]

"... unfortunately, the driver situation for Linux is quite far behind." This is incorrect. The driver is ancient because you're using Linux Mint, which has ancient packages. This is exactly why I said a month ago when you first said you were going to use Mint that doing so was a bad idea. CachyOS had the 560 Nvidia driver around August 10th. All Arch-based distros should, but CachyOS has a custom kernel with a lot of patches and optimizations applied, and its kernel manager will let you choose a scheduler appropriate for your CPU (this you'll have to look up which is best for you). Out of the box, it works better than any distro I've found, especially for gaming. For things like Switch emulation, I've seen it get 30+ more FPS than Windows. Using an Arch-based distro, you don't have to worry about Flathub / Flatpaks and the massive sizes of those packages either, as your package manager package versions will just be up to date.

[@jimmya1118]

Thats interesting and is making me consider running an arch based distro in the near future

[@praetorxyn]

@ I wouldn’t use any other kind of distro for a desktop. The base repos have most things, and the AUR has everything else. You never have to faff about with repositories or PPAs ever again. If you are uncomfortable with Arch, you can try PikaOS, which is a Debian based distro that a madman put a ton of work into updating the packages to match Arch. I’d only use “traditional” distros on a server, and there, you are likely going to be running all your applications through virtual machines and Docker so it matters a lot less how old the packages are. Plus it should be headless, so you likely wouldn’t need to worry about graphics drivers at all.

[@Jims-Garage]

Thanks for sharing. I'm planning on changing distros further down the road and reasons such as these are clear cut. Equally, I want it to be painless for people Mint still ticks that box for now .

[@praetorxyn]

@ For a technical user like you, that’s fine. The reason I push back against this reasoning is that when a newbie’s first exposure to Linux is Mint and they inevitably run into issues because of this, their takeaway is never “Mint sucks for gaming, maybe I should try another distro,” it’s “Linux sucks for gaming, I’m going back to Windows.”

[@Jims-Garage]

@@praetorxyn yes, that's a fair point. Ironically I'm getting more FPS in Linux than Windows even on outdated drivers (albeit the games are old and so is the GPU).

[@cyberjohn44]

Great video to help new user transition to Linux.

[@Jims-Garage]

Great to hear!

[@WarrenFeltmate]

Not a Mint user, but a great video to help new users give it a go. I did notice one minor bit of incomplete information. The Nvidia drivers are currently v565, but not all distros support the most recent versions, much like how Fedora uses the 6.12 kernel but Mint uses 6.8

[@Jims-Garage]

Yes, thanks for that. I should have been clearer and stated it's distro specific. I will be checking other versions of Linux with later drivers.

[@NFvidoJagg2]

550 is the latest stable driver. 565 is a feature beta driver.

[@TheStevenWhiting]

What about AMD drivers? I'm looking to build a new PC for gaming, rendering vids and VMs. Was gonna go AMD instead of Nvidia but whats the AMD drivers like for Linux?

[@Jims-Garage]

@@TheStevenWhiting I believe AMD is supported at the kernel level (it just works)

[@haplozetetic9519]

I've been using AMD for some time with no problems.

[@brockhard]

Love mint. Great video!

[@Jims-Garage]

Thanks for watching!

[@johnnys25s-o9i]

Good video. Keep them coming.

[@Jims-Garage]

@johnnys25s-o9i thanks 👍

[@abdullahX001]

Have a look at Looking Glass

[@Jims-Garage]

Thanks, will do

[@KomradeMikhail]

There are a handful of apps that are better off installing system packages rather than the Flatpaks, because of permissions issues... Common examples being Steam, Discord, and OBS. Notably, Steam and Discord both have self-updaters... So you will not be using older versions anyway.

[@Jims-Garage]

OK, that's good to know, thanks for sharing.

[@JavierPerez-fq2fi]

Jim! thanks for the move since you convinced me after my last try 10 years ago, to do the same. I did already the change and so far I am really... LOVING IT! I did try Mint but don't know why nvidia drivers where unable to be properly installed in my machine. Instead using latest ubuntu worked seamlessly. In my case I am having proxmox as host with GPU pass through as I had so far with windows 11. Indeed, I won't remove windows 11 because some games only works there but for rest... looks like will be the final move :) -I really hated trend of windows nowadays forcing you to log in and track everything you do- Again thanks for great initiative 2025! 💪

[@Jims-Garage]

That's awesome, great job!

[@davidr8424]

Jim, just put this on, thanks. Any chance you can do a nextcloud aio guide on a Ubuntu server VM using proxmox. Maybe using dockge and mounted shares in proxmox for data and backups. :)

[@R_a_y_123]

Great video, just recently switched from Mint to Zorin

[@Jims-Garage]

Good choice!

[@joeschmoe7324]

Please as an example of adding an outside repo get brave browser.

You can demonstrate how to install Nvidia drivers in Linux Mint Debian Edition

[@phantompanda1508]

JIM please please plase make a tutorial on setting up VPN's on linux systems specially Nekoray and v2ray. we really really need it on the other side of the world, also thanks for the great content

[@Jims-Garage]

@@phantompanda1508 thanks, will take a look. I've never heard of those clients, are others suitable like nordvpn?

[@enissay9950]

Why mint instead of ubuntu?

[@Jims-Garage]

@@enissay9950 ease of use predominantly, but it's basically the same under the hood.

[@enissay9950]

@@Jims-Garage I thought is was the other way around, Ubuntu is the most adopted distribution which makes it easier to find support about anything. Currently I am ubuntu 22.04, and planning to upgrade, is it worth moving to Mint then ?

[@Jims-Garage]

@enissay9950 Ubuntu server sure, desktop I believe Mint is more popular (I could be wrong).

[@toddselby443]

@@Jims-Garage Whatever distro you name, 100 people will tell you their distro is better.

[@joeschmoe7324]

Mint has tweaked the system and desktop to be more familiar to windows user while using the best feature of ubuntu.