Have you decided on Mint yet? If not, the Bazzite distro will be easy to use. All you need to do is download the Nvidia image and install it. It will work right away. Steam and the Nvidia drivers are already installed and configured. No configuration is needed.
this post was submitted on 30 Aug 2025
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Just one more distro..
I suppose I can change things... I mean I haven't been on linux mint that long... I didn't hear about Bazzite. Let me try to fix this before I try to use a different distro.
I went through about six distros in a week before deciding. Mint and zorin were both terrible on my nvidia card.
As it stands right now, due to Just_Another_Person's link (https://itsfoss.com/nvidia-linux-mint/) pretty much took care of most of the issues. There is a minor issue with using LM studio and trying to load LLMs offline (privacy... if there is anything I miss about computing in the 90s is that there was very little in terms of any outside company looking into what you were doing on your comp), but that is not a major deal for now. I can use LLMs with small context windows. The large context windows were painfully slow anyway.
Ok. If ever you want to try Bazzite, here's the download link: https://bazzite.gg/#image-picker
Then choose: Desktop > Nvidia RTX Series > KDE > Traditional Desktop.
Run nvidia-smi and post the output
It gave the following
Command 'nvidia-smi' not found, but can be installed with:
sudo apt install nvidia-utils-525 # version 525.147.05-0ubuntu1, or
sudo apt install nvidia-utils-525-server # version 525.147.05-0ubuntu1
sudo apt install nvidia-utils-470 # version 470.256.02-0ubuntu0.24.04.1
sudo apt install nvidia-utils-470-server # version 470.256.02-0ubuntu0.24.04.1
sudo apt install nvidia-utils-535 # version 535.183.01-0ubuntu0.24.04.1
sudo apt install nvidia-utils-535-server # version 535.230.02-0ubuntu0.24.04.3
sudo apt install nvidia-utils-550 # version 550.120-0ubuntu0.24.04.1
sudo apt install nvidia-utils-570-server # version 570.86.15-0ubuntu0.24.04.4
sudo apt install nvidia-utils-565-server # version 565.57.01-0ubuntu0.24.04.3
sudo apt install nvidia-utils-550-server # version 550.144.03-0ubuntu0.24.04.1
What ur nvidia GPU firstly,and secondly u don't have installed nvidia drivers
Really? No driver? That explains a lot...
My GPU is an GeForce RTX 4090. Top of the line shit, that's why I want to make sure it is put to good use.
Yeah sounds like missing drivers, pretty sure the latest nvidia driver is 580.xx but Mint might have an older version that's stable.
IIRC you should be able to install the drivers with the 'Driver manager' program
So I installed using
sudo apt install nvidia-utils-525
And then ran nvidia-smi, it told me:
NVIDIA-SMI has failed because it couldn't communicate with the NVIDIA driver. Make sure that the latest NVIDIA driver is installed and running.
Now I am kinda worried, because I had a very hard time installing the drivers...
Your drivers aren't installed. How did you install them previously?
I went on the default driver manager and I selected the latest one there. It was Nvidia-driver-575-open. But that gave me issues and didn't allow me to use all 3 of my monitors. The one that it says s selected now is the xserver-xorg-video-nouveau.
I tried to go directly to Nvidia's site, but I ran into some issues that it did say X server was running, then I had to go on... man, I don't remember what that was one called, it asked for an admin username... and was it the one I chose at the very beginning? the password I am using didn't workout for that. It is kinda weird. I'm really needing to learn a lot to get this to work properly. It's exciting, but I'll be very happy once it is over.
Just do this: https://itsfoss.com/nvidia-linux-mint/
Report any errors.
Buddy, you are a lifesaver! I do believe that fixed my issues!
Thank you so very much!
👍