Looks like you used hardware that was designed for windows and are blaming it now on Linux.

I am not understanding the issue you have that requires signing of drivers.

Yes some Bluetooth devices lack the support from the manufacturer’s for Linux, the Controllers i have used work great, at least for my needs.

Controllers have better support Linux for ages. Not understanding the issue here either.

Troubleshooting on Windows sucks at least to the same degree. The same non specific error message gets you 50 possible solutions.

No need to announce your departure.

I’m sorry to hear you’ve had so much trouble with Linux. I understand the frustration that comes with Unix based OSes especially after being a heavy Windows user for years.

I did a bit of searching on your profile and saw you’re dual-booting with Windows on the same hard drive. I personally had issues with trying to set that up myself (Windows is a finicky, jealous b****). My own solution was installing my distro of choice onto a separate hard drive - if you can eventually do that I recommend it.

I know you’re getting a lot of flak for your post but it’s good to see honest opinions from people who genuinely want to try Linux but aren’t necessarily the same level of hyper-nerd as the typical demographic here.

Having information from a wider opinion pool will help in understanding how to get Linux to more of the population - but that’s a side tangent.

It’s encouraging to see that you are still open to trying in the future and taking a break from it can help you clear your head and come back with fresher eyes.

Unfortunately I don’t have much experience with NVIDIA drivers, and probably a similar amount of troubleshooting as Mint but I’ve found EndeavourOS to be friendlier to a middle-upper tech/gamer use case. Mint, for me, seemed cold and “office”-y and didn’t work well for me as I don’t only use my browser and word processor.

That said, distros are an almost ridiculously personal choice and part of that is trial and error. If you haven’t gotten the chance I recommend test driving a couple other distros in an Oracle VM (for user-friendliness) so you can decide what you like the feel of before committing to an install again, if and when you feel ready.

Good luck and godspeed until then.

I’ve been on and off with Linux for about 15 years and just want to counter some of the people trying to troubleshoot or criticize to say: it can be really tough.

We need our computers to work and we expect things to function correctly.

I’ve used dozens of distros over the years. I was a super early Arch adopter, mained Gentoo for about three years, ran my own BSD server for programming projects, and still maintain several small home Linux servers. And even I sometimes want to pull my hair out trying to get semi-new hardware working right in my distro of choice. I spent three hours today fighting Nvidia and sound drivers and eventually just had to give up on that machine after being told that what I want just flat out isn’t supported in Linux on the hardware I have.

Take a breath, set it aside until you’re ready to take another crack at it, and know that it’s a journey. You’ll get there or the software will catch up and meet you halfway. No shame in being frustrated :)

About NVIDIA: yeah, Nvidia on Linux is a big, big mess. Things are improving but it’s still a pain in the ass sometimes. Maybe some of your issues could be solved by changing to another Desktop Enviroment.

About Bluetooth: I don’t know how recent your hardware is, but maybe changing to a newer kernel (preferably a more up to date Distro, like Fedora) would solve it.

About Compatibility: I don’t know what controllers you are using. I personally had issues with Xbox Wireless Controller drivers, and after some searching I easily fixed it with xpadneo, maybe that could help.

Mint is usually a great distro for beginners, BUT it sometimes sacrifices shiny new updates for stability (which is a good feature of Mint), that’s why I recommend you to try Fedora. Good luck with your Linux adventure 😃

tl;dr:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imprinting_(psychology)#Baby_duck_syndrome

Bluetooth - Another nightmare. Bluetooth is terrible on Linux.

Shitty dongles is shittier in Linux, that’s true. Never ever had a problem with Bluetooth on laptops.

None of my controllers work with Steam, no matter how many countless hours I’ve spent troubleshooting.

They work with games outside of Steam? If true is a Steam problem, not a Linux one. “But it works with Steam on Windows”, well Valve can fuck up and introduce a bug on the Linux version.

Mint isn’t the platform for gaming on Linux. It’s way behind on a lot of things like display drivers. Try something like Bazzite or Nobara that have a ton of tweaks for both Nvidia and steam. Honestly, I’m really shying away from recommending Mint to new users, it’s getting really stale.

Normally I don’t suggest distro-hopping for newbies but sometimes it’s a good idea to try a couple distro before settling in. Since there are tons of different hardware, some distros offer a better out of the box solution for some hardware.

Try openSUSE Leap for instance. Also someone suggested trying KDE Plasma on Mint, so try that first. It might alone solve your problems.

By the way, if your need for Windows can be covered on a virtual machine, go that way instead of dual boot. Windows really can mess with your bootloader.

My friend who uses Linux mint on a hybrid nvidia laptop faces similiar issues with you. He had gone a lot of trouble on having his Nvidia GPU to work reliably and on some issues with bluetooth which can be attributed to issues with the DE’s interface with the bluetooth driver/hardware. I had similar problems with bluetooth years ago when I used gnome on arch linux but it resolved itself later maybe due to some updates. Recently he was faced with problems on updates on his system which borked his DE and just landed him on a console, which was enough for him to restore his system to a previous working state. I think that the hacks and tinkers he they have done to solve the previously said problems (and others I may not be aware of) may have caused the update problem.

As for me I haven’t had those problems. This was recent though because years ago you really would be doing a lot of manual tinkering to even make windows games to run on linux. I’m running KDE now on arch and it is even much more stable than my windows partition which I dual boot. Heck, its the windows updates that causes problems on my linux partition.

My friend has similar opinions with you that linux is still not as good as windows and its infuriating specially when it does not work. It may have been because both of you may have chosen a distro not right for your needs and use case. Linux Mint may be touted as a beginner distro for switchers from windows, but I think that this may not be the case for most since some of those who switch are tinkers or may have specific use cases which Linux Mint is not built in mind or incapable of offering. Using Linux though is a learning experience. It maybe easier than ever to jump on linux now but it is still fundamentally different from windows and that some steps from there does not apply here. There’s a lot of suggestions and advice on this thread and I suggest that you try some of them.

Wasn’t a fan of mint when I tried it. IMO, I found popOS to be an overall better experience when I first started using Linux and have since switched back to it after having a few issues on Fedora.

You might give that a shot especially if you are using nivida. PopOS hasn’t given me much grief (aside from Gnome but that’s more a personal distaste for it)

Even after being on Linux for a year and considering myself a fairly capable guy in tech, Linux is kind of a pain in the ass if you’re doing more complicated things like in my case music production.

But it sounds like you’ve had an even worse go doing normal things which sucks. I feel for you man. I hope your next go is better.

It took me a few tries and Windows being a privacy nightmare to switch. It can be done but it wasn’t (and still isnt) easy.

i had a similarly confusing and frustrating experience when trying Ubuntu on a netbook many years ago. It has come a long way since then but sometimes you can get a bunch of annoying issues all at once.

It could just be bad luck with the hardware you have (no one really ever cares about the bluetooth adapter in their system until it causes issues) or Mint being behind the bleeding edge.

You might find Fedora KDE to be more compatible with your setup, or you can leave it a bit longer and check back later. No harm in patience!

I appreciate the response. What would you recommend as the easiest way to test different distros easily? Vm?

I’m just trying a reinstall. I’m thinking something happened when making the Bootable usb.

Thanks so much seriously. This is great

Bruh. You been on here for two days complaining about something where you’ve been told exactly what the issue is, and it’s not your Mint install, Linux, or anything else about the same system or with the community you’re asking for help in.

You’re not doing the work to find the issue, or help the people trying to debug with you. You’re actually seemingly going out of your way to not be helpful and just complain, and that’s a YOU problem. Have fun on Windows 👋