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!
I always recommend Mint to wundows converts. It looks like the windows UI, just works out of the box 99% of the time, and has a huge user base that is happy to provide assistance
Distro choice matters less than it looks like, and it’s fairly subjective. As long as you stick to a serious and newbie-friendly distro, you should be fine - for example, you could simply keep using Pop!_OS, why change it?
That said, a few distros you might want to try:
- Mint - another newbie-friendly Ubuntu derivative. If you feel like you must try something else, but you don’t want it to be too far from your comfort zone.
- Debian - because it’s the grandfather of Pop!_OS (and Mint); it has some rough edges, but it’ll be a good learning experience. Note Stable tends to stick to really ancient packages.
- Fedora - it’s also newbie-friendly, but from another different family. If you feel like stepping outside your comfort zone.
Also note you can dual boot different Linux distros, just like you’re dual booting Pop!_OS and Windows. Or even multi-boot.
If you’re willing to run arch-based but not vanilla arch cachyOS is amazing in my experience.
If not that fedora is pretty ok. Could just run PopOS too if you like it.
Thanks for your thoughts. My experience with Arch has been weird. I can get everything mostly working, but sound has always been an issue on my current hardware. Black Arch was fun to mess around with because I didn’t necessarily care if sound output was borked. I will look into cachyOS and spin up a VM. Thank you friend!