I’ve been using this hp gaming laptop with win10 since 2 years ago with an old dumb LG screen for coding/emulate (35%) or gaming (25%) and other 40% without the 2nd screen (browsing/documents).
I’ve used fedora/red hat in university but it was almost 10 years ago for specific software (emu/simulators) so I’m kind of noob in general terms and I’m afraid I’ll be leaving dual boot just in case.
I’ve read some posts before about out of the box distros (because the nvidia gtx 1650ti mainly) but I’m not sure if I should go for bazzite or cachyos or opensuse tumbleweed or a better distro that fits great in my case and about desktop, KDE (plasma) is my choice at the moment.
Thanks in advance.
Edit: I appreciate your comments and warnings (mainly about arch/gaming based distros and other tips). I didn’t want controversy but I use that laptop for almost everything at home and I’m realizing that I need to invest more time both learning and extracting backups because the machine is limited and I’m willing to become a full linux user in the mid term.
Yes, I suggest you do it.
Personally I’d recommend Linux Mint, as you’re likely to have a very positive experience with it.
I really enjoy running nixos because there is very little uncertainty of what’s installed. I don’t run any games so I can’t speak to that, but the centralized configuration makes fixing problems relatively easy. The downside is a steep learning curve to writing your own derivations, the community is split between “flakes” and normal nix derivations, and sometimes you just have to accept that it doesn’t work on nixos without putting in the work to write the derivations yourself. (Don’t get me wrong, people have made derivations easy to build, but it’s an unexpected side quest when you just want to try some new software)
Just make sure you get one that uses Wayland for better performance. Gaming on Wayland vs the old display server makes a big difference for me
I like fedora for daily use. Bazzite is a version of fedora and works great as a gaming station, would hesitate to use it as an everyday computer though.
pop os
I have Bazzite on a gaming laptop from 2015, and it’s been great.
For something non-atomic, Nobara or PikaOS might be good choices.
I have Bazzite on my steam deck and Bluefin on my laptop and have been very happy with them. The atomic part is great for not messing things up as a noob, but if OP does decide to dual boot then these distros won’t be the best choice as they don’t play well with other distros.
Same here, since I have found those immutable fedora based distros I never looked back, no more distro hoping. I am gaming with bluefin with an NVIDIA GPU and it is just good.
Are you using Bluefin DX? And a separate question, are you able to install additional gnome extensions?
I’m using the regular bluefin, not DX, and yes I am able to install any gnome extension.
Sweet. Customization can be tricky with immutable distros.
I also created my own custom immutable distro based on ublue but with hyprland instead of gnome. So I can use it as I wish out of the box without needing to tweak it. It is called blupr and it is on github.
Nice! I saw another project called Sodalite which is uBlue with Pantheon (from elementaryOS), but with a few tweaks to bring some of their custom apps in line with Fedora.
I highly recommend using Manjaro Linux.
It’s great for practical usage by practical people.
KDE is also the best choice, in my mind. DE will probably have a bigger impact on your experience than distro.
is manjaro seriously that much easier than stock arch installed via archinstall?
No, but if you want an easy arch install EndeavourOS is much more reputable.
Fedora seems favourite as you’ve used it. There’s a new version due toward the end of March so you may want to hang on, to avoid legacy stuff being upgraded. Maybe they’ll remove the x11 drivers. Fedora has changed a lot but you’ll want to install the other repos first thing and there’s also a large move towards flatpak (which works very well).
There’s also the inst.sdboot install flag to avoid the legacy grub install.
I don’t find the install very easy to understand, compared to things like Debian but it’s worth the fiddle.
ArchLinux is the other alternative.
I’m kind of noob in general terms and I’m afraid I’ll be leaving dual boot just in case.
ArchLinux is the other alternative.
Never change internet. Never change.
OP, don’t go with the hype, don’t go arch Linux as your first distro, you can change to it later when you get more comfortable and feels like having a more hands on approach.
PS: I don’t think that matters but just in case, I am an arch user for at least 12 years already as my only OS (except work computer) and I find it wild that so many people recommends arch Linux (or any of its derivatives) for beginners. I can only guess how many people get burnt and give up on Linux because of it.
Since you only mentioned 25% gaming, I’d recommend against a gaming-centric distro like Bazzite. Instead, use a generalist desktop distro.
Since you mentioned that you’re rather new-ish, I’d recommend against Arch-based distros like CachyOS. Instead, check out e.g. Fedora, Mint, OpenSuSE. (Probably in that order of priority)
These aren’t hard recommendations, so you can do whatever and probably be fine either way, but it still doesn’t fit that well.
Why not bazzite? It’s just kinoite with some extra stuff installed, some of which is very nice (patent things that make twitch work for example)
There’s nothing especially gaming-focused with bazzite that would interfere with general PC usage. I think it’s a great choice for “25% gaming”.
The only thing is that there’s not a lot of distro-specific guidance out there, and the immutable concept is a bit new and unusual.
I use it for my general distro as well:
- atomic
- fractional scaling
- seamless background updates
- tiling window manger
All out of the box. Not something I’ve found with any other distro.
The only thing is that there’s not a lot of distro-specific guidance out there
I’m genuinely curious to hear what’s missing here.
Our documentation guy cooked so hard he got burnt out, please read them they’re excellent.
checkout Aurora too
