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
You should try Fedora. It’s the one used by Linus.
Void linux xfce. Just uses so little ram I love it.
Did you try CachyOS ? https://cachyos.org/ I’m impressed by how snappy it is on older computers.
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 :(
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.
“Intel UHD Graphics aren’t really recommended”
Because Bazzite is gaming oriented and Intel UHD is barely good enough to render a display?
Well, it works for MC, older games, even stray runs somewhat (from my experience). It’s decent for a 300€ laptop with a quad core like the ones in the post.
I actually have tried it on the bigger laptop by now and somehow Bazzite runs Sekiro more smoothly than my “Gaming” Lenovo Legion Y530 that has an actual GPU and is from around the same time ever did. 🫣 It was completely unplayable on my other Laptop… which makes me think that maybe I misconfigured it to not actually use the GPU back in the day??? I’ll have to experiment with that a bit more haha
Ah, the newer UHD?
I have a Dell with UHD+Nvidia, took me a while to get Prime working to switch video cards. Even on UHD, it could do basic Steam games and Minecraft if you didn’t have high expectations.
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
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.
Suse has such a corporate feel to her.
If you are tach savvy want to tinker look for NetBSD or Ironclad OS
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.
This is the way.
The only way to find the right distro is to try them out, on the end device, with the end user.
I trialed several distros on my Precision 3550 and settled on Garuda. No regrets!!
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
so I might try something else first. Any recommendations?
try 'em all.
Edit: PS: distrowatch’s search is handy: e.g. https://distrowatch.com/search.php?defaultinit=Not+systemd [Edit: PS: maybe try {in approximate increasing ambitiousness] antix, devuan (or other respins of devuan, like expiron, peppermint, vendefoul, shebang, gnuinos), pclinuxos, salix, slackel, slackware, calculatelinux, artix, obarun, voidlinux, decibellinux, gentoo, crux (or kwort), sidelinux(?), milis(?),bedrock, guixSD, LFS. Or whatever… :) Have fun exploring.
Try out Debian. Stable, base of many other distros, loads of documentation, huge helpful community, just runs and barely ever breaks (I can’t even remember the last time I had issues).
For desktop I run debian sid (unstable), despite the name it very rarely breaks. And once in a blue moon when it does it gets fixed in a few hours/a day. Usually it is just some package that doesn’t play nicely with something else, so not like it is unusable during that time.
The unstable part is that they do not guarantee that it will work, it is still more stable than most other distros and you get new packages.
Why doesn’t anybody ever recommend Debian testing? It has stricter quality criteria than unstable while being almost as up-to-date.
I agree that Debian Stable is not a great fit for desktop as the packages get very old between releases.
debian’s netinstaller is great
welcome to the penguin. distro hop a bit, see what you like.
initially though, you should focus on what DE you are choosing rather than the distro itself, as it is the focal point of the OS, especially for beginners.
Good advice.
Can install any/all Desktop Environments on the same install, and switch to them at login. XFCE, Trinity, Mate, KDE, LXDE, LXQt, Enlightenment, Cinnamon, COSMIC, etc, etc. … And/or, Window managers, of which there are dozens and dozens.
I’ve been an XFCE loyalist for so long, finally gave GNOME a go and now that I’ve got something more simple and less customizable, it finally feels like Linux is a daily tool and not a project that I have to keep tweaking.
Yes, I’m a Debian person lol
I’ve tried a few desktop environments and ended back with XFCE… all the whizzy snazzy stuff breaks over time, or get’s "up"graded to something I don’t like… XFCE just works…
Yeah I’m pretty minimal on GNOME plugins for that reason too. XFCE will always be my backup at least. KDE is just too much.
I’d say try fedora. Then give Debian a spin as it will expose you to more technical details.
