HotCheeseNachozAndBurritoz

I mean the fully paranoid will use Tor rather than Firefox or Chrome but I digress. 

Just change your display manager to something else and that will fix the issue  if the issue is in the login screen that is. Hopefully Linux Mint 20 comes with a fix.

512 MB of RAM is a hard limit to live in 2020. As long as you won't be using the computer for web browsing and only for word processing like with Vim, you should be fine. If you want a full desktop environment - Lubuntu, Peppermint OS, or anything with a lightweight DE (please no GNOME!). If you are fine with a WM, which I would suggest for such a small limit, pick any window manager e.g. openbox, awesome, i3, or something else and roll with a distro that offers it. Manjaro has a decent selection of Window Managers and is easy for begginers. Arco has an even bigger selection of WMs and includes my favorite (Qtile). 
 
Don't expect to browse the Web smoothly on it. While Linux is fast, light, stable, and secure, the modern web isn't. The internet is bloated so much more than what it used to be when that laptop was made. If you can upgrade the RAM in your laptop, please do so (at least 2 GB or lightweight web browsing will be a hassle). Then disable java scripts or such things to make your browsing experience smoother.
 
Importing pictures from camera and then printing is doable with your laptop but I wouldn't trust it to be smooth. Make sure to use a lightweight file manager like pcmanfm, lightweight pdf viewer like zathura, lightweight text editor like Vim (it is great once you learn to exit it. Trust me here!), lightweight image viewer like feh, and most importantly your browser must be super light. Do not expect Firefox or Chromium to run on your 1900s laptop. For text based web browsing Lynx browser should be good altough limited. 
 
I am assuming your computer is x86_32. Install the image for that architecture then. Do not install the 64-bit image. 
 
Unfortunately, you will not get the most user-friendly experience out of that laptop with Linux because you will have to learn minimialistic tools that are more geared towards Linux powerusers than new-to-Linux users.

You will need to contact the LTT discord team if you have any questions or concerns about the rules of the LTT discord or moderation practices.

Thanks! I'll check those guides for seting things up, and protondb for the games I play the most.

Basically Ubuntu, Pop OS, and Mint are the same operating systems underneath the default Desktop Environment and stuff. It is just that Pop OS comes with the latest drivers out of the box. Mint and Ubuntu are equally capable of gaming. All you need to do is get the latest drivers, steam, and lutris and you will be all set. The lutris wiki contains excellent directions on how to get Ubuntu/Mint set up for gaming: https://github.com/lutris/docs/blob/master/InstallingDrivers.md . Also https://christitus.com/ultimate-linux-gaming-guide/ is good for tweaking. Add in Mangohud and you have yourself a fully capable gaming setup with Linux Mint.
 
Mint can be a great setup for gaming as long as the games you want to play work. Have a look at : https://www.protondb.com/ and https://lutris.net/ for gaming compatibility lists. If most of your games work in Linux, it will work in Linux Mint. If you need help along the way, join the Lutris Discord (https://discord.gg/dmZuXw ) and Gaming on Linux Discord ( https://discord.gg/hf4ZNt ).

Depends on the games you play. Most single player games work well on Linux. If you are big on multiplayer, try dual-booting.
Geforce Drivers are proprietary blobs. When you try to put something on top of the Linux kernel instead of in it, you get all sorts of issues. Certain DEs won't work with it and some weird issues can be experienced. There are the free noveau drivers but they have terrible performance. AMD has great free and open-source drivers on the other hand and actively contributes to it. Their free drivers as well as non-free drivers are very similar. They are supporting the free software ecosystem whereas, nVidia is full with corporate greed and deliberately makes it hard for the free drivers. Linus Torvalds and nVidia also have an interesting history.
 
Free software politics aside. If you pick up the nVidia image of Pop OS, it should work out of the box and all the games that work on Linux will run well. If you run Mint, you might have to add a PPA for the latest drivers and it will work great. It is only when free software matters to you or you tinker with your system, it is a problem. That is a deal-breaker for me but not for the average gamer.
 
If you want to use Linux long-term, I would still suggest getting an AMD card next time you upgrade unless nvidia fixes themselves and comes to their senses.

The statement that Linux does not perform as well as Windows 10 depends on multiple factors e.g. hardware support, the DE/WM being used, etc. If you have perfect hardware support and the ACO compiler is enabled, then the performance will depend. Usually rolling release distros are faster than release cycle distros. In benchmarks (for stuff other than games), Linux sometimes outperforms Windows. The ext4 filesystem is better than any Windows filesystem. BTRFS is my personal favorite and ZFS can also be used in Linux with LUKS encryption and LVM. I personally don't want my Linux to look like Windows 10. My workflow is much more productive currently in Linux:
https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=win10-debian101-intel&num=7

My main reason for switching is because I develop 90% of the time on my computer compared to a year ago where I didn't even try. And for me so much of the software that I used had better compatibility with macos and linux.

Linux isn't windows. sounds straight forward, but for me that took a while to really understand. Everything, except the graphical part, is fundamentally different and stuff you might regard as normal are actually windows specific. Installing programs is probably the most prominent example, but there is much more subtle stuff.
 
I am much more productive in linux, but that only works if you use linux as it is "intended", not as a thing that replaces windows. And of course that depends on what you are doing. Software development is much more streamlined imo, but there might be use cases where that isn't the case.

I don't know how can you make installing a browser difficult in Linux unless you are trying to make your life difficult. In Ubuntu, just go to the browsers website and they have directions for adding the PPAs and it is just copy and paste. With Arch, it is a lot simpler. It is in the AUR 999 times out of 1000. If you are using Manjaro, installing a browser is as simple as opening Pamac and searching for it and then a couple of mouse clicks as compared to Windows where you go to the browser website, click download and then click "Yes, I consent to selling my data" a trillion times and be careful not to download any malware or unwanted software. And then you repeat the process each time there is an update in Windows. You do not need to know about dependencies. Pamac will take care of it for you in Manjaro without even a single command. Ubuntu based distros do require some understanding of how repos work but it is mostly just copy and paste in Ubuntu. Most Linux daily-driver users use the terminal because they want to. Unless you are using vanilla Arch or Gentoo, you do not need to know how to set up system files. Linux on the server is meant to be for those who know what they are doing. Linux on the desktop is a far more user-friendly experience.

LEL nub LEL. No but really Linux isn't hard to use and I have a lot of trouble understanding how you did. I mean even Linus tech tips has been suggesting trying it out. Its not hard to set up. Something doesn't work google it and fix it. On Linux mint nvidia drivers auto installed and my wifi card was a easy install from a gui. Boom im done. Wanted vscode so I went to flathub and just clicked get and it worked with the built in app store. Everything on this distro has just worked. I'm not sure how you think Linux works but its not bad. Fixing things on Linux has always been 20 second things sometimes just a quick terminal line. I'm sorry but i've been on windows all my life until 2 weeks ago. It just works, its fast,  its light (mint xfce 550mb ram on boot), its powerful (runs all my demanding work fine and sometimes with cpu stuff even faster than windows), and sooo freaking CUSTOMIZABLE. I'm sorry it didn't work for you. I honestly though spent less time setting it up than windows with all the drivers and stuff.

Alrighty ill give it a look over, thanks!

I'd recommend setting it up as a service using systemd:
- https://minecraft.gamepedia.com/Tutorials/Server_startup_script
- https://teilgedanken.de/Blog/post/setting-up-a-minecraft-server-using-systemd/
 
Then you can configure it to start as soon as the server is started and you don't have to sign in to run it manually
 
 

The Arch Wiki is a great resource. If you are unable to read it, I would recommend against Arch. If you want the goodness of AUR and rolling release, try Manjaro. Arch is only good after you have some Linux experience under your belt.

I use arch

The Arch Wiki is a great resource. If you are unable to read it, I would recommend against Arch. If you want the goodness of AUR and rolling release, try Manjaro. Arch is only good after you have some Linux experience under your belt.

Took my post a little more seriously than I was intending.  I was just poking fun. 

Not everyone know that, but amount of penguins reflect the amount of available cpu thread.
8 Thread cpu = 8 Penguins
7 Thread cpu = 7 Penguins
 

Certainly a scam. They pose as MSI, offer "Corsair Vengeance" in addition to "Graphics card,", and have the world's sketchiest email known to man: shop@trgcvzsxz.ren

Linux not Windows 10 - I have Manjaro on a USB 2.0 stick and it runs the same as when installed on a HDD basically

Try deleting the LXDE config files. Or try this. Go into a TTY by using Ctrl + Alt + F2, or F3, ....., F12 (it is just trial and error until you reach a terminal login prompt). From there run
It should delete your lxde config files, I believe. This might reset your DE and it might start to work again.
 

How much VRAM do you have? Your RAM could be 5.8 GB out of which 2GB could be VRAM. Feel free to post your output for the "lspci" command without the quotes.

This thread is still going strong and also is almost through page 3. Thanks dudes!