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.
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.
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
Do you find that Arch bothers you in any way, would you say? How if so?
can you do gaming on fedora? like, run pirated games or use steam?
I ran bazzite on a Lenovo flexpad with Intel und 630 graphics and it ran perfectly. I even ran mechwarrior 5 on it, albeit with the graphics details turned down so low that it looked like a mechwarrior game from the 1990s.
I’d give bazzite a go. Learning about how to install and use distroboxes is also lots of Linux fun.
Edit: also, you literally cannot break any of the immutable fedora distros. Very newbie friendly.
warning for bazzite: It’s very restrictive and doesn’t let you actually manipulate it like most distros. if you’re even remotely tech savvy and want to explore/play around in Linux, do NOT install bazzite.
if you don’t care, and want their team to ‘protect you’ from doing pc damage, the. use bazzite.
(backstory; I went to modify my fstab, it allowed me to with no issues. I broke the file… fine, went to edit it to revert back… root access was revoked and I was told to f myself by bazzite. I had to enter grub? (can’t fully remember) to modify it back which worked but was a pain in the ass I should have had to do. promptly uninstalled and never looked back.)
if you don’t care, and want their team to ‘protect you’ from doing pc damage, the. use bazzite.
I would say that most people fall into this category. They just want to install the operating system and start working or gaming.
You do a massive disservice to the overwhelming majority of computer users.
To everyone else: if you want a computer that just works and don’t want to fuck around with the command line, Bazzite is perfect. It should be recommended over Linux Mint.
Well now I want to install it just to try to break it lol
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!
Nix is such a cool project. If I had more time I’d definitely give it a go.
dont forget your programming socks
I always wonder why mint is the one people try. It seems so out of date.
Fedora these days works really well and is really up to date.
Mint is very boring and middle of the road, exactly as a default recommendation should be. They are also very protective of the user experience. They are unlikely to embarrass me.
Mint has a familiar UX if you are new to Linux. It is not nearly as foreign or locked down as GNOME. It is not as configurable and complex as KDE. There are good GUI tools for most common tasks.
Mint does not change too rapidly or have too many updates but the desktop and tools are kept up-to-date.
They are being very conservative with the Wayland transition. But nobody on Mint is moaning that Wayland is not ready. They are very protective about the user experience.
And there is really no desktop use case that Mint is not suitable for.
I do not use Mint but it is a very solid recommendation for “normal” users.
I think Pop!OS is back to being that too and COSMIC is Wayland only (so no future transition to manage).
Mint has a familiar UX if you are new to Linux.
See this one is confusing to me. It is very different.
You are greeted after install to configure mirrors. What is a mirror? The dialog offers no help, there is no apply, or maybe this one. so you click “restore to the default”. What does that do? And then down the side what is a PPA? Should I have a PPA (answer is NO, you should not). Additional Repositories, auth keys, maintenance…Fix merge lists…
Where is the clipboard? Oh there isnt one. And typing clipboard doesnt offer one. Typing clipboard into software sources offers too many (25 of them!).
Mint is alright I don’t want to come across as bashing them. I just am surprised it is so highly recommended that is all.
I always broke it before long, but that is the Ubuntu curse: super fragile and always breaking.
I always broke it before long, but that is the Ubuntu curse
There is a Mint based on pure Debian if you think the Ubuntu-based one is “too fragile” as you put it. You actually made me curious in how you keep breaking Mint, I’ve been using it for several years, incrementally upgrading it since 2021 with little to no breakage at all.
So trying it again recently on a VM, seems like they changed their upgrades? Used to be a series of priority ranks. I think that confused the users. I think the ppas confused the users.
And making poor choices there broke it.
Ubuntu is just broken out of the box on the other hand. Every damn time since version 4 something stupid happens.
Yeah, PPAs usually complicate things. IIRC the advice is disabling them before upgrading major versions, but this can be a pain if you use many repositories simultaneously
Is there something wrong with mint?
Maybe not exactly what you are asking for but try out yunohost. Since you have some spares, one can be self-hosting stuff
That’s a neat pointer! I have been meaning to look into self-hosting anyway since my AWS free tier is running out pretty soon and I need a new place to cheaply plant down my in-development website project haha
Computertruhe could be happy about well working laptops! Dont hoard ;) you can try distros with external SSDs
That’s actually an awesome project and I’m coincidentally moving close to one of their locations soon :o
Entry point: Manjaro. Yes, many will tell it’s not super stable in the long run, but since you plan on jumping from one to the other, this doesn’t matter. What does matter is that it’s simple, fast, and gets you up to speed with latest Linux developments without any stress. It’s easy, it’s fun, and you can go anywhere from there
After some experience: OpenSUSE Tumbleweed. This thing is a tinkerer’s paradise. Solid foundation and the newest software, snapshots beautifully configured by default so you could unwind everything, and no unnecessary guardrails so you can do whatever you want. However, it expects the user to know at least a little of what they’re doing, so it’s not a novice choice.
