Hi,
I have a Lenovo Ideapad gaming 3i with a gtx 1650, and I would like to find a more lightweight distro than PopOS that supports (or is easier to set up) nvidia optimus graphics. Any suggestions?
It’s a little more of a setup but you could try endeavour. It’s pretty lightweight and performant, they have every kind of DE imaginable to install during the setup.
Linux Mint Debian Edition is very lightweight and easy to use.
Isn’t that a streaming one, though? I tend to go for mint XFCE.
I’ll try it out thanks
If you want lightweight, void is pretty good. Not sure about nvidia though.
I’ve been playing around with Nobara. Coming from Fedora, I always felt like I didn’t have “everything I needed to run games properly”. Followed a few tutorials on YouTube to set up my Fedora (f36+) box for gaming but that feelining of incompleteness never left. Since installing Nobara, I’ve realized that my “feeling” was absolutely right! Nobara basically installed a bunch of other gaming things I never even knew I needed for basic gaming (codecs, other nvidia software, ProtonUp-QT, etc). Nice easy step through style setup. Using the KDE version and so far, I’m staying with Nobara. Just my opinion.
I had a good experiences with nobrara. For non gamers it is a bit bloated, but everything worked out of the box or after just one reboot. https://nobaraproject.org/
Sounds interesting. I’ll throw it on a usb. Thanks!
For the best Nvidia Optimus experience IMO go with an arch based distro, something like Endeavor OS, and install and configure Optimus Manager. It has a Hybrid Mode which makes it work much like it does on Windows, were you just launch a game and it uses the dedicated GPU. I like it better that way vs having to be switching modes manually.
Here’s a guide for it: https://discovery.endeavouros.com/nvidia/optimus-manager-for-nvidia/2021/03/
