So for the emulation and patching of roms it’s a non issue, everything is there, from mame to retroarch, ares, duckstation, pcsx2 and many more

for the games using japanese locale it’s trivial the generate new ones and install fonts. However no idea how those games runs, probably fine to start them with Steam or Lutris/Bottles

Same for older games mentioned, a lot are available through GoG so Lutris should do the job if not in Steam.

The tricky part could be the Flash requirement, as far as I know it’s not supported since 2020 and some distro like Debian removed it from the main repos. Honestly I wouldn’t feel safe running it on my main computer. Maybe someone else will have the information.

For the more modern games or mainstream you can take a look at https://www.protondb.com/ and see their compatibility. Outside of anticheat or weird kernel rootkit everything should more or less run.

For pirated games it’s been a while for me, but assuming there is a setup.exe somewhere just telling Lutris to run it should be ok.

Now regarding your configuration I would strongly advice even if you stay on Windows to upgrade to a SSD, even on an old motherboard like you have getting SATA SSD would be an amazing upgrade, and they aren’t expensive, you can get 1TB from Crucial or Samsung for less than $60 and very easy to re-use if you change more of your platform later on.

• https://www.amazon.com/Crucial-MX500-NAND-SATA-Internal/dp/B078211KBB
• https://www.amazon.com/SAMSUNG-Inch-Internal-MZ-77E1T0B-AM/dp/B08QBJ2YMG

Also you can give Linux a try without installing anything, a good mix of mainstream, supported and light could be Fedora LXDE: https://fedoraproject.org/spins/xfce/

Download the ISO file and copy it to an USB stick using https://etcher.balena.io/ for example, you can then boot on it and try it without changing anything on your hard drive until you decide to install.

You will get a full fledged desktop and a workflow not too different than Windows regarding the menus, explorer and so on.

I see, so it’s really a switch issue. I can’t test due to not having a laptop with Nvidia in it but Endeavour documentation do display a large set of options to mange that from auto to manual switch: https://discovery.endeavouros.com/nvidia/nvidia-optimus-notebooks-hybrid-graphics/2021/03/

The first one mentioned do have a in-depth page on the Arch wiki: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Supergfxctl

It does references two parameters required for the kernel: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/NVIDIA#DRM_kernel_mode_setting

It couldn’t hurt if only to fix some vulnerabilities, Lenovo do try to be up to date on CVE, but I doubt it will fix your specific issue.

What are the difference between Linux and Windows if you have a benchmark/game you can try on both ?

Hello, so you probably read it before but it’s worth repeating, any mainstream distro can be used for gaming. Gaming distros usually just have a few settings already done for you compared to their base but that’s about it, granted Nobara seems to do more than most.

Now for the issues you had it probably came to some post install configuration missed or maybe Nvidia drivers with Wayland being the usual pain.

The RTX 2070 Super isn’t that old and should work fine.

Check the main games you have and their compatibility in protondb, example for Mount and Blade II: https://www.protondb.com/app/261550

If you don’t feel like tinkering and don’t see a game you WANT to play there maybe it’s not there yet for you.

Regarding a distro recommendation Mint is often mentioned for new users and they seems to have articles dedicated to Nvidia: https://itsfoss.com/nvidia-linux-mint/

I do tend to prefer mainlines distro instead of derivatives and two could match what you are looking for

• OpenSuse Tumbleweed
• Fedora KDE spin

Both are very polished and well supported, and should work perfectly fine with Nvidia

• https://en.opensuse.org/SDB:NVIDIA_drivers
• https://rpmfusion.org/Howto/NVIDIA

Whatever distro you choose take your time and read the documentation, the post install and how you maintain your system is what will break it or not, be it a Debian or a Gentoo ;)

https://en.opensuse.org/Portal:Tumbleweed

https://github.com/devangshekhawat/Fedora-39-Post-Install-Guide

Also another reason to pick a mainline distro, you will find support more easily.

Could it be the hybrid graphics stuck on the igp of your Intel 12th gen instead of switching to the discrete gpu?

Maybe worth to take a look at the documentation related to this topic

• https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/PRIME
• https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/NVIDIA_Optimus#Use_NVIDIA_graphics_only
• https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Bumblebee

An older thread but it could be similar to your case: https://forums.developer.nvidia.com/t/lenovo-p15-gen1-with-rtx-a4000-ubuntu-20-04-discrete-graphics-blank-screen/201672/3

Can you post the content of your /etc/fstab ?
It’s probably related to the mount options

Given that’s it your working device if I understand correctly I will stay with something known and reliable: OpenSuse or Fedora

Both have the support of big names, are well maintained and provides more recent components than Debian.

OpenSuse has an amazing btrfs integration with snapper so it could give it an edge, but you could do about the same with Fedora. No wrong choices with those too.