Hello All.
First, I have been daily driving Linux(POP_OS) for nearly a year and outside of some frustrations, it has been a great experience. I expect a certain level of weirdness and quirks. I was using my Windows laptop to get some stuff done, and wanted to listen to some music over Bluetooth. This is where I messed up. I guess recent Windows updates just kind of break Bluetooth?? Every fix I have googled and tried failed to fix the problem. I kind of expect this behavior from Linux. I don’t expect it from an OS developed by a For Profit company.
Long story short, recommend me a distro that runs well on an Asus laptop with an Integrated and Discreet GPU. If Windows breaks functionality, then there isn’t a big reason to keep a Windows Machine around. If you say Arch, I intend to bully you but I’m open to any suggestions. Microsoft isn’t worth keeping around, even as a backup/standby.
I appreciate you <3
Quick Edit: This received a lot more engagement than I thought. Thank you all for the recommendations. I’ll spin up some VM’s and test them out. Thank you all for the guidance. May your day/night/other be most excellent!
Well, if you’re not going to go with Arch, might I suggest Gentoo?
(kidding… mostly…)
On a more serious note, Mint will run on most systems well, and Just Work for the most part, with the caveat that if you have really new hardware you might need to use a version with current Linux kernels (if they’re still doing that, I’m not seeing it at the moment though).
The main downside is they keep to stable LTS builds, which means software is often a bit behind, but for most things, if you need the most up to date, there’s always flatpak. The upside, though, is updates tend to not be as big or numerous or frequent as in a more up to date distro like Fedora or a rolling release like Arch. It also means updates are less likely to cause issues and your system is less prone to developing quirks.
Anyway, Mint is what I’ve been using, though I’ve also been using Fedora some at work… Both are solid, but I like Mint better. Could just be personal taste though so take that for what it’s worth.
Mint has the downside of not coming with mainstream desktop environments. Otherwise a great distro, but the message it gives to newcomers is that Linux still looks like it looked 10 years ago. Still very worth for some installs, and op is not a newcomer, but anyway.