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
Umm… With 2 free computers and nothing on them.
Run down the list and install all the different distros. Test them out for a few weeks then onto the next. Pretty soon you’ll one that you prefer.
Advanced distro hopping form, distro rotation.
Installing one distro on one laptop and then only using that laptop to figure out how to install the next distro on the other laptop! That would give me an actual goal in each distro I install too, since I’d have to get the wifi and browser working and figure out how to run that program that burns iso files onto a usb stick :0
… that would be such an entertaining youtube video concept too, I wish I was into video making haha
You should try Fedora. It’s the one used by Linus.
OpenSUSE is very less recommended but I would suggest it
https://media.ccc.de/v/5012-the-first-encrypted-steam-deck-runs-opensuse#t=0
Also check out their AEON it is still in RC but worth looking out for. Meanwhile Fedora immutable can be used with Intel.
If you are tach savvy want to tinker look for NetBSD or Ironclad OS
I’d say try fedora. Then give Debian a spin as it will expose you to more technical details.
I just got a new laptop for my work (which I also use for personal stuff, it’s a family business).
It came with Windows 11 but I’d got a bigger SSD which I’d installed before I’d even turned it on so Windows never even got a chance to boot.
I installed one of the Fedora atomic distros and it seems to be pretty good, though I’m trying to figure out how to tune battery life. I’ve setup TLP but haven’t noticed any improvement, though, it’s still much better than when I first tried Linux on a laptop.
I’d never used Fedora before, but the first distro I ever used was Ubuntu Dapper Drake and I’ve dipped my toes occasionally since then, but never fully committed until now
dont forget your programming socks
Man I wish I could participate in the programmer socks joke, but I feel like it just doesn’t really hit the same when an afab person does it :(
well, we can’t let you out of this, we’re all in this together. Let’s make programming “tidy whites” a thing! XD
Did you try CachyOS ? https://cachyos.org/ I’m impressed by how snappy it is on older computers.
Not yet, but I have seen that it is very popular on Distrowatch! :D It’s definitely in my backlog
Snagged a thinkpad today for just over 100$. Guy mentioned it was because of windows 11. Its hippie christmas for linux!
If you wanna have fun, i woild recommend bedrock linux, haven’t tried it, but it sounds cool and interesting. Also nixos might be fun to try in my opinion.
Nix might be a bit overwhelming when his first installation of linux was only a few months ago, I guess :D
It might be overwhelming but still fun to explore new things, right?
Ooh, Nix looks interesting, I’d be down for the challenge!
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!
You can, if you have far to much time in your hands, install arch, gentoo, vor any other distro with a non graphical installer. I believe its a great experience, especially because you learn a bit more about the internels, and a few cool bash commands.
Void linux xfce. Just uses so little ram I love it.
Very reasonable in this economy!
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And end with Vanilla Arch, for me atleast I distro hop every week when I got into Linux for the first time and I thought I’m going to use Fedora, Debian, OpenSUSE, EndeavourOS as my main but ended up using Arch Linux permanently instead. For me it’s the “just work” distro easy to use and troubleshoot
I trialed several distros on my Precision 3550 and settled on Garuda. No regrets!!
Well, Microsoft do the most of all for Linux.
