Best hassle-free way to get a Mint system up and running for Steam gaming...

[markt435]

So I recently dropped Windows 8.1 on my gaming comp for Mint 16. After some trial and error I found a way to get the newest beta drivers up and running correctly for my setup and I thought I'd share. While I could go and fix the drivers to actually work, I followed these steps in order to just get it to work with minimal configuration effort in the event something got screwed up.

This works for the AMD drivers...one day they'll be as good as the Nvidia ones (I hope).

- Installed Mint 16 x64 Cinnamon
- Performed all needed updates
- Upgraded the kernel to 3.12.2 using this thread
- Installed Steam using apt-get and made sure it was opened and ready to go
- Downloaded Catalyst 13.11 Beta 9.4 drivers and installed using terminal from the location I downloaded to after extracting the compressed file:

cd Downloads
sudo sh ./driver-filename_here.run

After installation, opt not to restart and do this from the terminal:

sudo aticonfig --initial

- Restart and you should be good to start downloading games from Steam and playing

Right now I'm messing with PlayOnLinux and a Windows Steam install to see what I can get going on here. I'm still a Linux novice and will be continuing to learn. After using Mac OS and Windows for years it is refreshing to learn something new for a change and have fun doing it. Hope this helps anyone who is trying to find a (mostly) pain-free way to get the newest Catalyst drivers going.

 

[jwcalla]

You may also be able to use the xorg-edgers PPA on Mint for the latest beta drivers.

If you do, just install the driver packages though, and not the other stuff.

More stable drivers are in the x-swat PPA which appears to finally be updated (at least for nvidia) after a long period of stagnation.