nyan

As a long-time Gentoo user, I can tell you that it’s perfectlly capable of producing both a useful gaming rig and a useful server, provided you have some idea of what you want to end up with. Proprietary nvidia drivers should be straightforward enough: emerge nvidia-drivers and blacklist the nouveau module (or compile a custom kernel that doesn’t contain it). You’ll probably want to read what the Gentoo wiki has to say about Steam. Good luck.

It has better specs than the 2008 laptop I retired last year (I was running Gentoo on that, but I don’t entirely recommend that unless you’re experienced with Gentoo and know what kind of setup to go with). Anyway, SNES emulation is less demanding than running a modern web browser, so your little beastie should be fine for that.

Gentoo, across multiple machines. Started there, stayed there. Yes, it's a bear to install, but once you've got everything sorted out, it's rock-solid.

And I think all programs should follow user theming, regardless of desktop environment, widget set, or anything else. ('Scuse me while I give GTK4 the stinkeye again.) You can never tell whether someone’s colour selection is a matter of accessibility rather than just personal preference, so you absolutely should not ignore it. Defaults matter very little as long as you can change them.

It’s really more nvidia’s fault than Mint’s—the nvidia proprietary drivers periodically drop support for a generation or three of cards, and nouveau doesn’t work properly with some cards because nvidia has a history of not giving out needed information.

Why would it be awkward? Most non-technical people are so thrown by my white-text-on-black desktop theme that they can’t even tell what software I’m using, and the few technical people around know that I have Opinions about software and aren’t interested in talking about it. Keeping everything adequately compatible with the company-issued software is my problem.