I installed Linux Mint for the first time on my personal Laptop just a few months ago, and it ran so well that I didn't want to mess with it to try out different distros.
But today, my company's IT department announced that they have some spare old Laptops to give away (technically because they didn't meet the specs for Windows 11, didn't stop the IT department from giving them out with Windows 11 pre installed though)
So now I got a few devices to play around with!! They're a Precision 7530 and a Latitude 7390 2-in-1!
I already got ZorinOS running on the little guy because apparently Zorin is nice for Touchscreen support. For the big guy I was initially thinking that I could try Bazzite, but the installer was like "Intel UHD Graphics aren't really recommended" so I might try something else first. Any recommendations? I mainly just want to try as many different flavors of Linux as I can haha
I've become quite the fan of Fedora with KDE. Running Fedora 43 on both my couch Thinkpad and my gaming desktop. Only issue I'm having with it is sleep functionality on the desktop, which just sucks (it likes to not wake up from sleep) so I have that set to not go to sleep, just turn the screen off when idle.
I had the same problem until I installed the nvidia drivers. KDE will install some that gets things to work but I had that sleeping problem you mention. I can't remember the exact package name but I can try and figure it out if you need help finding it.
AMD GPU over here.
I've had a really poor experience of Fedora and KDE. It really felt like third-class experience as they push so much for GNOME. Once you try a more desktop neutral or pro-KDE distributions you can't go back to Fedora.
KDE got upgraded to a mainline version in 43, not just a separate spin.
Yeah, I’m normally an Arch guy, but gave Fedora with KDE a shot when I bought Framework. It's pretty sweet, does everything I want and never bothers me
For some time... but nowadays I would never go for anything not rolling release anymore.
Because those distro upgrades were traditionally when something broke (or there were just too many changes requiring my attention at the same time), triggering a fresh install... usually combined with trying another distro.
Fedora's almost rolling though
Do you find that Arch bothers you in any way, would you say? How if so?
No, not really. If it's set up right, it pretty much just works. I use it on my work computer and never mess around with anything, just use it and sync packages every month or so.
Honestly a distro called Nobara was a huge let down for me compared to Arch. It was effortless to install and came out with cool tweaks, but in just 6 months of usage it randomly broke like 4 times, every time I was supposed to check their discord server to get info on what broke and how to fix it. From Plasma not loading and opening crash report window indefinitel, to bootloop with update screen, to experimental drivers being shipped causing hard GPU crashes. And this is recommended for newbies? I'd rather give preconfigured Arch (like CachyOS) to newbie than this.
Yikes on the Nobara experience. Will avoid. Not that I ever felt the need to explore or hop beyond Arch. Discord as the main communication channel? That screams immature project IMO.
I have the same experience as you with Arch. In probably a decade of use I've only reinstalled when buying new computers. It's just so solid. I use it both for work and at home. 👌
can you do gaming on fedora? like, run pirated games or use steam?
No Steam is SteamOS only!!!
You can on nearly all distros
oh sweet
yes, it's linux...
I play a bunch of Steam games on it. I also have some Epic and GoG stuff through Heroic Launcher. I haven't tried any pirated stuff.