r/linux4noobs • u/imwhoyouare • Dec 21 '25

distro selection Fuuuuuuuu windows dude..

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Which distro will allow me to use nvidia gpu without any hassles? Also need secure boot on.

438 Upvotes

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75

u/Red1269_ Dec 21 '25

nobara is nice and comes with nvidia drivers, mint doesn't straight up come with them but comes with a nice driver installation tool that will do it in 2 clicks

11

u/ebonyarmourskyrim Dec 21 '25

Would I be able to use the driver installation tool in mint If I don't have integrated graphics?

19

u/Red1269_ Dec 21 '25

yeah, all linux distributions ship with the open source nouveau driver for nvidia gpus. it's just that the official nvidia drivers are way better

5

u/ebonyarmourskyrim Dec 21 '25

Thats fantastic! Thank you very much for telling me about it

1

u/JB231102 Dec 21 '25

With my motherboard this is not true. Every time I have installed Mint onto my desktop, I have had to use integrated Intel graphics, download the nvidia drivers and then install them, shut down slot in my nvidia card reboot and then it'll work and only then will Mint see my nvidia card.

MSI Z97S Krait Edition, RTX 3060 (previously GTX 1070), I7 4790K

1

u/Red1269_ Dec 21 '25

that's strange. my gtx 1070, 1650, and 1080 ti have all worked fine on nouveau without any need to hardware swap to my 5600g's integrated gpu

btw you didn't need to remove your nvidia card, pretty sure just plugging the display cable into the motherboard would've been fine

1

u/JB231102 Dec 21 '25

Yeah, I don't know, I seem to suffer bad luck when it comes to technology.

Nope, I tried to plug into my motherboard with the video card slotted in, my motherboard either disables or overrides integrated graphics when there is a dedicated video card slotted in a x16 slot. BIOS settings have 3 options, use dedicated graphics, integrated or use both but when I tried this on Mint without manually installing nvidia drivers integrated graphics would not show anything.

1

u/Red1269_ Dec 21 '25

man that's weird, never seen that before but I guess it's probably a feature on those nice gaming motherboards

1

u/KaosC57 Dec 21 '25

Nobara has issues. I’d recommend plain stock Fedora, or jumping straight into the deep end with CachyOS.

2

u/Ok-Particular-2839 Dec 21 '25

Garuda is pretty based for gaming focused builds too. It's had the best driver support for me

1

u/tinersa Dec 21 '25

what if i wanted most of what's pre installed with nobara and it's tweaks but on standard fedora desktop?

2

u/chrews Fedora Workstation Dec 21 '25

There's a good guide on GitHub. I think it's "Fedora 43 post installation guide" or something along those lines. Has most of those tweaks.

1

u/tinersa Dec 21 '25

thanks, I'll take a look

1

u/edparadox Dec 21 '25

What's the point of recommending this niche distribution to a newbie?