I've been quite happy with my Steam Deck - both as a gaming console and as a secondary computer when it's docked, but for newer titles I picked up a Rog Zephyrus M16 (2023) last year.
Now that Windows is going off the deep end with AI, I'm looking to dual boot/trial Linux on this laptop with the goal to give Microsoft the boot.
It's a beefy laptop:
- 13th Gen i9-13900
- 32GB Memory
- NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070
- 1TB NVMe (Windows)
- 2TB NVMe (Linux)
I added the second drive to avoid any issues with dual-booting with Grub/Windows Bootloader - instead making the Linux device the primary boot device and spamming Esc if I want to change to the Windows drive.
For distributions, I'm most familiar with Debian/Ubuntu - it's the daily driver for my work laptop, and the vast majority of my home lab VMs are Ubuntu. With the Steam Deck, I started to get more into Arch with the Steam Deck, and now it's the OS of choice for my HTPCs for simple streaming/Plex media player. I've also messed around with ZorinOS (basically a fancy skinned Ubuntu).
I need some advice on what to throw on this laptop - and some suggestions on how to squeeze the best performance out of this (Optimus vs. Proprietary NVIDIA vs. Open source drivers).
Linux Mint if you want a "just works" distro that isn't Ubuntu. It's Ubuntu-based, but with a better desktop and no snap.
Nobara if you want a distro that focuses on gaming. It's Fedora-based and maintained by Glorious Eggroll, known for his custom Wine and Proton forks.
If you want Arch, just use Arch. It's much less of a bitch to install with the archinstall script compared to earlier releases. EndeavourOS is another option -- basically Arch, but preconfigured with a desktop and a graphical installer.
I'm currently deciding between nobara and vanilla arch, coming from windows (but am a software engineer). I like arch because, as I understand it, its lighter and more customisable. I also like that it's not corporate driven which potentially has conflict of interests (which I'm to understand red hat might). My biggest worry though is how much time I may spend maintaining an arch desktop and the possibility of hitting fail states too frequently. Obviously I can overcome some of that with good a good backup system, but I'd like to spend less nights working on my desktop and more time working on projects my desktop should enable. So I've been recommended Nobara as still cutting edge but more stable.
If anyone has some strong recommendations or thoughts I'd appreciate it. I think sticking as close to main is important and if fedora really does introduce issues I can always jump ship to arch or Debian after I've gotten my feet wet - but I'd like to not for as long as possible.
@gusgalarnyk @rtxn hi! Started my journey (this time, tried a few distros end of the nineties and landed at Debian then) with Fedora, and the quickly switched to Nobara. Had some issues which brought me on to currently running Garuda (IT was my hardware, not the distros...). Nobara is definitely a solid choice. Haven't tried direct Arch yet.