2021 8th gen intel isn’t “new cpu” by any standards Mint and most Debian flavors are horribly out of date

Steam failing to run sounds more like a distributuion issue than a DE issue to me

Niri is awesome, but I cannot stand DMS with how often it completely changes the base setup and breaks my configs. The generated json dotfiles are also a mess, impossible to work with outside of their GUI. My friend tried it and switched to Noctalia, and he’s much happier. I’m probably just going back to Waybar or something simpler, but that’s just personal preference

I really wanted to like Mint, and with the wave of friends wanting to move I decided to try it on a spare drive.

Wayland is still experimental on Cinnamon, and had noticeable artifacts. Shipped Nvidia drivers are Nouveau, so I looked for documentation on how to install it, and was directed by the official pages to look for “Driver Manager” IIRC. It simply was not in the “start menu”, neither via search nor via manual navigation.

Hardly “just works” unfortunately. Had much more luck with recommending Bazzite, despite its own shortcomings.

But if Mint works for you and others, you won’t hear me complain.