Linux

While (I think) you can install HWE (hardware enablement) kernels on Mint, you would also have to upgrade Mesa, which is not as easy on Mint.

Personally in this case, for a truly stable distro, I’d install Debian Stable and install a backports kernel and backports Mesa, which are both currently versions that should support RDNA4 GPUs like OPs just fine. This involves two simple steps after installing:

1. Enable the Debian Backports Repo (see https://backports.debian.org/Instructions/). It’s like, one file.
2. Install the packages with something like sudo apt install -t bookworm-backports linux-image-amd64 mesa-va-drivers and reboot.

Before you take these steps, you probably won’t have hardware acceleration, but will still get video output so you can perform the steps and reboot.

This is definitely a weird suggestion, and other people’s suggestions might be less work out of the box. I just like Debian, and stability+backports+testing is part of what makes it possible for it to be my everything distro.

I'd personally recommend openSuse Tumbleweed if you are looking for the most up to date software with an easy setup. Been using it for a solid year now for gaming and general use with zero issues.

If you are looking for stability, and a strong gaming focus I would recommend Bazzite. Its stable, comes with everything basically game ready, and is pretty simple. It does come with the cost of less customization but it's atomic nature makes it really hard to break. It's solid for general use as well.

if you go with the Arch, you can keep your Mint Cinnanon without troubles. wink wink

If you want to use newer hardware, and would rather not tinker with the system to get it working (and then have to maintain that tinkering yourself if something breaks later), Bazzite is probably the better option. It's based on Fedora Atomic which is almost identical to rolling-release like Arch. I switched from Windows to Bazzite more than a year ago and have personally had no major issues, never had to mess with drivers or kernel updates due to the image-based system, and pretty much everything I might need for some workaround or another is included in the image. The community is very active on both the Discord and the web forum, and the documentation on the website is good as well, so there's no shortage of help and available resources if you run into an issue or don't know how to do something.

The main thing you need to be aware of going in is to be sure of which Desktop Environment you want (KDE or Gnome), because their user-space configs (which are not part of the image) interfere with each other so you can't really switch between them without breaking a lot of things. Coming from Windows, I picked KDE and have been very happy with it.

Arch or EndeavourOS (Arch for babies) should give you the best support for any new hardware.

Is there a particular reason you need an nvidia gpu? Like plans to do local LLMs or other projects that really require a nvidia gpu?

Because I am just so pleased with AMD for gpus in Linux. So simple.

Not knocking your choice, just trying to understand it. Everyone has valid reasons for why they choose their setups.

Edit: nevermind I am so confused by the new naming schemes I thought this was an nvidia, others have informed me its an AMD. Nevermind me I am a dingus.

Doesn't Mint have newer kernel as well?

You want a semi or rolling release distro. Fedora is semi-rolling, would be the most user-friendly I think. Anything Arch-based but more user-friendly, like CachyOS, would be good as well. Tim leweed is rarely recommended unless you need like bleeding edge, which it doesn't sound like you really want.

I always go arch for stuff that needs the new shit, and debian for stuff that should run stable. Those nix bazzite tubleweed thingies are nice, but too niche, if you have a problem the small communities are less probable to have it as well and good luck finding solutions