From my limited research and understanding, Nvidia makes Linux drivers, but they’re closed source. These work fine. They open sourced some stuff but not enough to really change much yet.
There are also FOSS drivers, but the performance for those vary.
Is this correct? Should I stick to proprietary drivers if I want consistent performance?
I've been using Mint on an old laptop. It's fine, although I think I may need to reinstall it because I might've messed up some settings. It takes up a lot less memory which is great. So far the only issues I have is with trying to understand the different window managers (metacity, compton, compiz, etc.) because unlike the other options and features, there's almost nothing noob friendly on these topics.
I don't know why you are researching three dead window managers, but it's generally not something you need to think about. Just like how you don't need to know about dwm to use MS Windows. But if you have specific questions about WMs I can try to answer them here.
They're included in Linux Mint with the option to choose between them. I have a problem where when I close my laptop lid and open it back up, the unlocked screen will display for like a solid 2 seconds before switching to the locked login screen. I've tried all the different WMs but the only one that doesn't do that is Compiz, but it has screen tearing so I switched back to Xfwm4
I had assumed that Linux Mint (with Cinnamon) users Mutter, but apparently it uses something called Muffin instead. But if you are seeing these other options then I assume you did not install the Cinnamon version but the XFCE version instead. I guess they don't package it correctly or something, but XFCE and xfwm should be robust enough to handle closing a laptop lid correctly.
(in other words, i don't know what the problem is but I think I'd recommend just using the standard implementation -> Mint with Cinnamon)
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Never mind. It doesn't work lol.
damn.
Well if nothing important is on that computer, I would suggest a more conventional installation.* For instance, if you choose Mint I'd pick the option with Cinnamon, which shouldn't be that heavy even on an old laptop and would have the best support for that distro. I mean, I just run regular Gnome (in Fedora Linux) which basically has the reputation for being the heaviest desktop environment on my 12 year old Thinkpad X201 and it performs just fine. And certainly without any issues like the lock screen not working correctly when I close the lid.
*I'm implying a reinstall but you might be able to get away with just installing the Cinnamon packages and switching your display manager/environment to it.