u/AccomplishedYam9891

I swapped over to Linux 2 days ago from windows 10, overall performance is a hell of a lot better as my cpu and ram isn't being fucked with bloatware anymore, and I've gained most of my ssd as usable storage for games finally when I was about to consider accepting defeat and buying a new SSD, however

Whilst using steam (downloaded from their website as a previous Reddit thread said downloading it through software manager sometimes led to issues when using nivida graphics cards, I've made sure proton (experimental) is enabled for all steam titles, I have the latest (recommended) graphics drivers for my card (GTX 1660Ti), but when I open games like portal 2, assassins creed Valhalla and fallout new vegas (only ones I've opened so far that have had issues), I drop to 2FPS, and I stutter like hell with noticeable screen tearing, dropping to minimum graphics hasn't helped at all -> on windows 10 I was running those games on ultra graphics with mods, now I can't even get minimum to run with vanilla

I've changed proton version to hotfix and 8 as they were suggested , I've dropped down the driver 530, 560 and 580 respectively with none of them resolving the issues -> steam also shows that I have 22GB of vram, and new vegas claimed I had a 6700XT

I'm currently using driver 595 on 22.3 Linux mint, with a i7-7700k, 16GB ddr4 ram, GTX 1660Ti (6GB) , and Linux is installed onto my M.2 SSD (245GB)

I posted on here yesterday asking for distro advice, and after all of your support I settled on mint, I don't own a USB flash drive and have no means of going to buy one currently, so after consulting multiple install guides I settled on installing Linux via UNetbootin, I have the iso just sitting in my c drive, where the path is literally C:Linux_mint.iso, however when I set up UNetbootin, it says it's installing the boot loader, then it tells me it's done and I can restart my pc, I restart my pc, go into boot menu, select UNetbootin, and I get an error about partitions, I press esc and choose to launch Linux mint 64 bit, it then tells me "could not find the ISO ${iso_path} , so I turn off my pc, boot back into UNetbootin and try compatability mode, that gives the same ISO error, so I turned off my pc a third time and booted into windows 10, my PC won't let me shrink my SSD to add a fat32 partition for the iso

I'm currently running windows 10, which obviously no longer receives any sort of security updates anymore, and every time I boot up my pc I get harassed by Microsoft to get extended security updates, which yes whilst it's free, I'm kind of just sick of windows 10 taking up most of my SSD, I am not eligible for windows 11 as I have a 7th gen intel processor and I do not have TPM 2.0, mostly just looking for recommendations for distros, mostly play video games (non competitive), all my games are via steam as well, with most having no form of anticheat at all

Looking for something that is going to give me better performance , or at least be more reliable than a now outdated operating system -> key needs are
- works for my steam library without too many extra steps if any
- works well given that I have a 1660ti graphics card paired with an i7-7700k, in 1080p