Ended up installing Ubuntu as I couldn't disable secure boot and lost patient faffing around the bios.
Am fully aware of the pain of installing Nvidia drivers but I think I've done that properly with the command terminal. Am going to download some games and see how performance is.
I recall trying to install Xubuntu and Linux Mint on two different occasions (two different PC's), and I ran into random issues that forced me to default back to Ubuntu. Ubuntu seems save the day, when all else fails.
Fuck yeah
Btw, if you run into issues with Ubuntu I recommend you try Bazzite before giving up. It's the modern "it just works" distro, with Nvidia drivers pre-installed and everything.
Ubuntu is fine, it's just that because it's not immutable like Bazzite, it's possible for you or some shitty software to accidentally break it.
Started playing some games and am now getting audio cracking. Now getting it when listening to music or watching videos. This is a proton thing or do I need to install some audio drivers? Have installed pulseaudio just now