Let me start by saying I think Linux Mint is one of the top 5 greatest distros of all time. It is an absolutely essential starting point for many people and their work is responsible for much of the user-friendliness you see in the world of Linux today. It is stable, has a nice aesthetic, “just works”, and doesn’t make you update constantly.
These things are great but they are the very things that make Linux Mint unsuited for online gaming. Is this a bad thing? No!! It’s just not a distro made for gaming purposes. It’s like showing up to a monster truck drag race in a Ferrari. I cannot count on my two hands how many times I have provided support to a user, to find their issue was outdated libraries due to using Linux Mint. It happens all the time. Go look at any game on ProtonDB that is currently working, and you’ll find 1-2 “not working” reports and they are always on either Debian on Mint.
I understand why we see it so often, because Linux Mint is awesome and users want to play their games on it. But if I suggested Hell Let Loose to a friend using Linux Mint right now, the first distro suggested for gaming in our FAQ, he wouldn’t be able to play because of his choice of distro. Making rolling distros look like a fortress in 2023 and suggesting Mint for gaming will only set new Linux users up for disappointment.
I disagree. One does not need a gaming centered distro. in order to have a great gaming experience. There are some gaming distros such as Nobara but as far as I know the user isn’t going to see a 10x difference in performance. It won’t be 4x or 5x either. There will be small differences most of which are negligible or overkill. Think in terms of going from 250 FPS to 285 FPS. 90+% of users won’t be able to tell the difference. Even those who know what and where to look for differences will still have a difficult time. A minimalist distro. isn’t really going to matter much if one is at the 16GB or 32GB RAM mark. In lower end hardware setup one could argue over the performance gains of a minimalist distro. A clean install of Mint/Cinnamon is going to take up 2.5GB RAM. Its not a hog like Windows 10. Load up Cinnamon 21.2 and Mint XFCE 21.2 in VMs and see for yourself.
Slackware is exceedingly complex compared to Mint and Pop. Most Linux gamers are not Linux Pros. One does not steer newbies in the direction of Slackware when they are just looking to enjoy their Steam games and don’t have a Linux background. Debian is generally frown upon for gaming because it has very old its in its repos. and it maybe more work or more difficult to get the latest kernel, Mesa, LLVM installed on it. Mint and Pop are a cut above Ubuntu while still providing simplicity. Arch is not newbie friendly nor is their forum/community. There is just way too much complexity for newbies who don’t have a Linux background.
Fedora would be simpler than Slackware or Arch.