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nvidia-dkms
has never not worked for me. Arch wiki has more info in the nvidia page.
If this laptop is your friend’s main laptop, I’d recommend going for something other than arch or at the very least preparing before going into it
nvidia-dkms
has never not worked for me. Arch wiki has more info in the nvidia page.
If this laptop is your friend’s main laptop, I’d recommend going for something other than arch or at the very least preparing before going into it
Your issue seems to be outdated packages, so I wouldn’t recommend distro hopping(especially to something arch based) for just that reason. Look into workarounds for those packages in mint itself. In the worst case scenario there’s also the option of compiling from source.
I wouldn’t recommend distro hopping to arch without some high level understanding of the different moving parts of the OS. EndeavourOS has given me almost no issues but when things break(like grub a while back) you have to be OK with touching parts of the system that just work and are taken for granted on distros like mint. It’s why I don’t consider anything arch based friendly to a “noob user”.
If you’re a “noob user” who wants to learn more you can try endeavourOS, that’s kind of the spirit of it.
Before I could fully leave windows, I spent a lot of time being lost in Linux distrohopping and ricing without even fully understanding what I was doing. Without a solid setup to live in, Linux had a weird experimental feel and it got frustrating when I wanted stuff done.
Coming to your case, there are 2 different priorities here: daily driving and Linux proficiency. You’re tied into windows for the daily driving bit for now so your main focus should be learning, and that probably won’t need a dual boot right away.
First up is understanding why there are so many distributions. Linux is the kernel, the common skeleton that you can’t use on its own. There are other modular bits that go on top to make a full fledged OS, and the choices of what those are is what makes a distribution. Learn more about the options available for the modular bits - the ones that you should concern yourself with for now are:
apt
. That’s why you would’ve probably used apt
on Ubuntu, it’s based on Debian.Once you get this modularity based perspective, distributions wont be overwhelming and vague. You’ll understand why people are recommending mint or popOS:
You’ll also know, you can choose whatever you want as long as it’s Ubuntu based for your learning phase. Only at that point I think it will make sense to dual boot. You can boot in for particular reasons instead of a vague “let me understand Linux”. The reasons will be finding alternative software to daily drive, learning how to use the terminal or just getting comfortable with Linux in general. From there, you can find your own way or reach out to the community with questions specific for your use cases.
Welp, here’s my part
GNU is Not Unix is recursive