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
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 It seems so out of date.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.
Is there something wrong with mint?
Personally the ui looks a bit outdated and there’s less customization than most other distros
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The installer if pretty nice as is the post install I will give it that. Maybe that is the most important part.
I guess I just am surprised by how many people choose it as their “windows replacement” when it is very non windows like.
Also: it is ubuntu tainted, that is never good. Then cinnamin, mate, or lxde which are kind of a pain in the ass unless you are willing to put up with it because you like it.
Lack of any real searching in the ui, a terrible file manager, an older kernel, and so on.
I migrated my mother to GNOME (on Debian), that’s very much unlike Windows, but she immediately got it. The overview of open programs is similar to what she knows on Android, for example. She is someone that struggles with email attachments from time to time, but GNOME works well for her.
It does not have to look like Windows to work for people. People use phones a lot more these days and those do not run Windows (hopefully, at least, cause that’s dead).
If they have never used windows, most things will work. It is people coming from windows and doing more than email. Gnome is fine… If you don’t do anything with it. If you do you are adding extensions.
Oh, you can do serious work with GNOME, most people try to force it into something that it is not.
This video gives a good overview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbDLfRjam0E
I know many people that prefer GNOME for their work in IT. I prefer Sway, but use GNOME on phones and tablets, where it works great for me.
Yes I know gnome. Linux has been my primary OS since around 2001. It is funny because even in the video you shared, he suggests adding Gnome tweaks, which was kinda my point.
Personally, Gnomes constant movement drives me nuts, and the focus on one thing at a time is really a pain in the ass. But I do happen to have a laptop with it on it, and given the smaller screen real estate and the type of tasks I do with it, it works ok. Like you mentioned.
But for a windows user coming to linux It is all the little things, particularly the file manager and context menus. Why do I need to open an application when I should be able to right click extract to zip folder name, delete zip in one move?
Clipboard: Gnome has no clipboard. Unless you add an extension. This one drives me a little crazy because the clipboard I use is shared with my phone and tablet and has functions and actions.
And if you are fancy (like using Windows attempt at tiling) Gnome doesn’t do that either.
I get people use gnome, but I find it tries to hard to be not enough. Why isnt the terminal in the file manager window when I want to work that way for example.
A lot of beginners (like me) use mint because it is very simple out of the box and user friendly. It just works (unless, like me, you try using commands from arch on mint, and you break it)
Except when it doesn’t. And really people are missing out, because there is so much more out there. I was playing with it today and I wonder how many people think that is what linux is? Fedora Gnome or KDE is even simpler and also just works.
But choice is good. I am just always surprised how often it is the default linux for new people. When it would be pretty low on my choice of distros. I set it up as a spare computer for guests a few years ago and it turned out to be more of a chore than I wanted to deal with.
…yeah it does break sometimes. Right now my grandma has it on her spare computer, which is a potato, and she said she didn’t know it was linux on there, even though I told her when I installed it. It’s mostly used as a bootloader for the browser, and it’s dual booting whichever windows and mint
It doesn’t always work, I agree, but for some people it does what they need.
If it’s broke, I will absolutely try to fix it anyways, but not on anyone elses stuff.
I have mint as a safe distro, so if I mess up my stuff trying to use a distro I’m not ready for, I can take 3 minutes(ish) fixing it and hoping I didn’t wipe the bios or anything else important off my computer when I tried installing arch with no clue how.
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.
can you do gaming on fedora? like, run pirated games or use steam?
I play a bunch of Steam games on it. I also have some Epic and GoG stuff through Heroic Launcher. I haven’t tried any pirated stuff.
You can on nearly all distros
oh sweet
No Steam is SteamOS only!!!
I had the same problem until I installed the nvidia drivers. KDE will install some that gets things to work but I had that sleeping problem you mention. I can’t remember the exact package name but I can try and figure it out if you need help finding it.
AMD GPU over here.
I’ve had a really poor experience of Fedora and KDE. It really felt like third-class experience as they push so much for GNOME. Once you try a more desktop neutral or pro-KDE distributions you can’t go back to Fedora.
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.
It’s called unstable because packages are constantly upgraded, unlike Debian Stable, which stays the same until the next release and only gets patches. It is NOT called unstable “because they do not guarantee that it will work”, for that you’d need paid enterprise support from some company.
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.
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.
You should try Fedora. It’s the one used by Linus.
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!
I use NixOS myself and I love it, i’ll never use another distro again. plus with distrobox I don’t even need to use another distro, I already have all the major ones on my NixOS System.
If you do decide to go the Nix route keep in mind there’s really no right nor wrong way to have your system set up. it’s all personal preference. Some people will say flakes are the way to go, some people will say the opposite. Some people like having their system in modules, some don’t. Some like using the home-manager, some don’t. It’s all up to you. All I will suggest though is if you do try Nix set up a Git repo somewhere like on codeberg for it. Just makes things easier.
Snagged a thinkpad today for just over 100$. Guy mentioned it was because of windows 11. Its hippie christmas for linux!
“Intel UHD Graphics aren’t really recommended”
Because Bazzite is gaming oriented and Intel UHD is barely good enough to render a display?
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.
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.
Ah, the newer UHD?
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
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
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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
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
That seems to be something a cheap Raspberry Pi 4 can easily handle. I even use mine as an SMB share. Sure, the speed is limited by the network port and USB port sharing data lanes, but it’s fast enough for my needs. Needs tiny amounts of eletricitiy, so I don’t burn the planet that quickly.
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
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
GL! Hope you have a great time.
Check out https://www.wesnoth.org/ and https://supertuxkart.net/Main_Page :D
