https://joinmobilizon.org/

Maybe you can also find open source communities in your area. After some digging, I was surprised how many groups there are in my area and they are always happy to get additional hands to organize stuff or run errands etc.

Sure it’s allowed, but we have these questions a lot, so some enthusiasts made some really great posts with tons of info, for example:

https://lemmy.ml/post/12123645

https://lemmy.ml/post/18268622

I’d recommend to read through them, then come back and ask more specific questions.

For all those suggesting Bazzite, Ublue (including Bazzite) images are offline installers only, see: https://universal-blue.discourse.group/t/couldnt-get-aurora-into-test-mode-in-live-usb/4567

Oh good to know, last time I checked they said on their website they’re not supporting it. That’s great news, thanks!

Yeah Waydroid doesn’t support these yet sadly.

Waydroid not working? You don’t happen to have an Nvidia card, do you?

I really like Mint, but I wouldn’t say it “has relatively up-to-date updates”.

First thing that came to mind was Fedora, if you are willing to try an immutable distro I highly recommend Bazzite, but tinkering has its limits there.

Coral Cove

I didn’t say it was. I posted the quote from the website to clarify.

From their website:

"Update on Your Terms

Pop!_OS provides the latest features and security patches through rolling updates and periodic OS version upgrades, to be performed at your discretion. And if you want a clean slate, the Refresh Install feature resets your OS while preserving the files in your Home folder. "

I like the idea of immutable distros a lot, but I realised they are not for me, at least not now.

I couldn’t install global themes because the SDDM is immutable. There is a workaround, but it didn’t work 100% for me.

I couldn’t get Steam to put shortcuts on the desktop (it’s a known thing, simply I didn’t know it). It only worked with Bazzite which comes with Steam preinstalled. But then I couldn’t edit these shortcuts (for example: -silent) because if I did, they would vanish.

Then I experimented with Waydroid. There was something I wanted to test but couldn’t use the online advice because Bazzite/Aurora doesn’t have dnf for example.

There were other little things I’m used to tinker on my system and couldn’t so I realised, I wanna stick with other distros for the moment.

Interesting, thanks! Never heard of Nitrux before.

Yes that’s true. I just realised that I apparently tinker too much to use an immutable distro as of now. But I’m definitely keeping an eye on them.

Yes of course, that’s always an option. I was just trying to look over my Mint horizon and check out other distros and how they work. Exciting!

I like that article, I’m in a similar position at the moment. I’ve been using Mint on my Nvidia machine for a long time now, but with the new Mint 22 update that’s also based on Ubuntu 24.04, I’m facing similar issues and so I’ve done some distrohopping over the past couple of weeks. I’ve tried Aurora/Bazzite and Nobara as Fedora based distros, Garuda and CachyOS as Arch based ones, OpenSUSE Tumbleweed and probably something else I can’t remember right now. All of them were great distros but had certain flaws that were offputting somehow. And I’m in no rush, since Mint 21.3 is still supported for a while.

I’m still open to suggestions what to try next! I’m getting faster and faster with fresh installs :)

A bad time to install Tumbleweed? I just downloaded the ISO today, not kidding.

https://linuxjourney.com/

I really liked it, I had the Flatpak version installed, but when opening larger text documents (with 20+ pages) it took forever to open them, so I stopped using it.

45+ is “older people” to you?

One important part for gaming is the graphics card - I cannot comment on that particular one, but I would recommend searching it like “nvidia rtx 4070 + linux” so you can find advice and recommendations. You could also hop over to https://www.protondb.com/, select that card and see what most people are running. Or there is this https://linux-hardware.org/ page, where you find lots of info about whats being recommended.

Nvidia used to be problematic with Linux, but I also have an older Nvidia card and haven’t run into any problems (yet). Also there’s lots of new development in that area, I’m sure it’s gonna be ok. Also some distros offer preinstalled Nvidia drivers that you simply select in a driver manager - that for example is the case for Linux Mint.

Keep at it, you got this and there’s so many people and resources online to help. Best of luck!