I’ve been using this hp gaming laptop with win10 since 2 years ago with an old dumb LG screen for coding/emulate (35%) or gaming (25%) and other 40% without the 2nd screen (browsing/documents).

I’ve used fedora/red hat in university but it was almost 10 years ago for specific software (emu/simulators) so I’m kind of noob in general terms and I’m afraid I’ll be leaving dual boot just in case.

I’ve read some posts before about out of the box distros (because the nvidia gtx 1650ti mainly) but I’m not sure if I should go for bazzite or cachyos or opensuse tumbleweed or a better distro that fits great in my case and about desktop, KDE (plasma) is my choice at the moment.

Thanks in advance.

Edit: I appreciate your comments and warnings (mainly about arch/gaming based distros and other tips). I didn’t want controversy but I use that laptop for almost everything at home and I’m realizing that I need to invest more time both learning and extracting backups because the machine is limited and I’m willing to become a full linux user in the mid term.

  • ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.netEnglish
    1·
    6 months ago

    Personally I’d recommend Linux Mint, as you’re likely to have a very positive experience with it.

  • Telorand@reddthat.com
    0·
    6 months ago

    I have Bazzite on a gaming laptop from 2015, and it’s been great.

    For something non-atomic, Nobara or PikaOS might be good choices.

    • themadcodger@kbin.earth
      0·
      6 months ago

      I have Bazzite on my steam deck and Bluefin on my laptop and have been very happy with them. The atomic part is great for not messing things up as a noob, but if OP does decide to dual boot then these distros won’t be the best choice as they don’t play well with other distros.

      • visnudeva@lemmy.ml
        0·
        6 months ago

        Same here, since I have found those immutable fedora based distros I never looked back, no more distro hoping. I am gaming with bluefin with an NVIDIA GPU and it is just good.

        • Telorand@reddthat.com
          0·
          6 months ago

          Are you using Bluefin DX? And a separate question, are you able to install additional gnome extensions?

          • visnudeva@lemmy.ml
            0·
            6 months ago

            I’m using the regular bluefin, not DX, and yes I am able to install any gnome extension.

              • visnudeva@lemmy.ml
                1·
                6 months ago

                I also created my own custom immutable distro based on ublue but with hyprland instead of gnome. So I can use it as I wish out of the box without needing to tweak it. It is called blupr and it is on github.

  • deadcatbounce@reddthat.com
    0·
    6 months ago

    Fedora seems favourite as you’ve used it. There’s a new version due toward the end of March so you may want to hang on, to avoid legacy stuff being upgraded. Maybe they’ll remove the x11 drivers. Fedora has changed a lot but you’ll want to install the other repos first thing and there’s also a large move towards flatpak (which works very well).

    There’s also the inst.sdboot install flag to avoid the legacy grub install.

    I don’t find the install very easy to understand, compared to things like Debian but it’s worth the fiddle.

    ArchLinux is the other alternative.

    • Coriza@lemmy.world
      0·
      6 months ago

      I’m kind of noob in general terms and I’m afraid I’ll be leaving dual boot just in case.

      ArchLinux is the other alternative.

      Never change internet. Never change.

      OP, don’t go with the hype, don’t go arch Linux as your first distro, you can change to it later when you get more comfortable and feels like having a more hands on approach.

      PS: I don’t think that matters but just in case, I am an arch user for at least 12 years already as my only OS (except work computer) and I find it wild that so many people recommends arch Linux (or any of its derivatives) for beginners. I can only guess how many people get burnt and give up on Linux because of it.

      • deadcatbounce@reddthat.com
        0·
        6 months ago

        Upvoted with caveats

        I choose clean OSs with minimal additional code and settings added by distro maintainers. Fedora is fairly good. ArchLinux is excellent.

        ArchLinux actually makes quite a good first distro if you’re willing to learn GNU/Linux. If you grew up with the early non-NT (DOS) Windows then you’re more than used to trying to squeeze the most out of Windows by learning how it works. That was a long time ago now.

        I moved from Windows to Linux just after the turn of the century because Microsoft were making it more difficult to use your own OS on your own machine.

        After Fedora Core 4+ I ended up using ArchLinux for the longest time. It’s early adoption of systemd was a factor, as was the rolling nature.

        • KubeRoot@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
          1·
          6 months ago

          Archlinux is good if you accept that you’ll need to spend time to learn it, and that those moments might be frequent and unavoidable early on. Definitely wouldn’t recommend it to somebody who needs their computer to work, since a new user with no experience might find themselves breaking their boot images and spending hours trying to figure out how to fix their computer not booting.

          So yeah, I think that’s an important caveat: if you don’t know Linux already, and you can’t afford to spend time learning and fixing your system, don’t use Arch.