I have pretty similar hardware, but I do not have an NVIDIA card. Can confirm that Bluetooth is pretty dog shit most of the time, but I generally use wired accessories (preference). I did have some pretty good luck with an ASUS bluetooth adapter which worked better than the onboard one. Controllers work great with steam both wireless (save BT issues) and wired. I also run Fedora on all my machines so I couldn't speak to anything Mint specific but I have been running Linux for a very long time and have found that some distros have better support for newer hardware than others.

Mint is fantastic and that community does great work, all systems I manage that I do not own (family) run Mint. It is what i would recommend for any new linux user. However, for your use-case it might not be a terrible idea to give something else a try (if you haven't already).

There will always be troubleshooting that needs to be done regardless of the OS, as others have said, hardware manufacturers do not take (desktop) Linux seriously unfortunately.

Just a heads up, if you want that to be more readable, put it in between two sets of 3 backticks:

System:
  Kernel: 6.8.0-53-generic arch: x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc v: 13.3.0
  Desktop: Cinnamon v: 6.4.6 tk: GTK v: 3.24.41 wm: Muffin dm: LightDM
    Distro: Linux Mint 22.1 Xia base: Ubuntu 24.04 noble 

Ah thanks. I will do that

Like I said. It has nothing to do with the hardware, and has nothing to do with Linux. You don't have the right drivers installed: https://github.com/atar-axis/xpadneo

The drivers tell linux how to control and connect to the device. How can your hardware possibly work if you don't have that installed at all or correctly?

Thanks so much. I may give some of those a try

I have steam-devices and same issues. No luck at all. Thanks for the response.

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.

Good luck and godspeed until then.

That's even worse. PS5 controllers work out of the box, basically cementing that this is a bluetooth driver issue. Did you make sure to install your bluetooth drivers?

What is your bluetooth device model? Does the driver come in the kernel, or does it require you to explicitly install?

Windows does not require secure boot.

Windows 11 absolutely does require secure boot

I thought the driver came in the kernel. I am trying to use it wired, not Bluetooth. If I use lsusb it recognizes the Dualsense controller. It's so weird

https://www.makeuseof.com/rufus-bypass-tpm-secure-boot-requirements-windows-11/

Oh nice. Fuck I might do that

Thanks for the reply. My next build will not have windows on it at all, If I can help it. Honestly mint is great and was working amazing until I had to reinstall it.

I appreciate it

Thanks for the response I appreciate it

It's probably because I come off as a whiny bitch, which I do. Lol just frustrated.