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
Yeah! I was just coming here to recommend GuixSD or NixOS! Not because they're normal, but because they're not, and you have an opportunity to screw around 😅
Fedora and Debian are different but also pretty similar. Arch or Gentoo are more different. The atomics like bazzite and silverblue are even more different. And then there's NixOS and GuixSD that are basically a completely different paradigm of how to setup a system. And that might be frustrating if it doesn't work for you, but as a test computer go wild! Heck, try NixOS and GuixSD to experience their differences from each other!
The only other thing I might recommend for a challenge is something like Linux From Scratch where you don't have any distro and you just build everything yourself. Definitely not recommended for normal people! It's a project rather than something you can just try out for a weekend. And it may be frustrating, who knows. But if you're into that kind of thing it may be enlightening!