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).
I daily drive Arch for about 7 years, therefore I’m clearly biased. But I love Arch for the AUR and the ease of getting packages. For me, it is the best OS on desktop to get things done. For other use cases, I would probably choose a different OS, but desktop is Arch all the way.
But you’r mileage may vary.
No. I suggested Arch and its variants for years, and I see the error of my ways. Merging pacnew files and resolving issues are well over the head of most newbie users. Arch is a great place to end up, not a place to start.
I recommend Linux mint to start, and Fedora after you’ve learned a bit. Nobara is cool too, but it’s a version behind Fedora, so I don’t use it at the moment. Linux mint is hands down the best place to start your journey.
I agree, I wouldn’t suggest arch to a newbie either, but OP said he has experience with arch
My brother, I have been caught, I didn’t read the last paragraph. Damn. Okay yeah, use EndeavourOS, on a BTRFS file system with timeshift auto snap and grub snapshots. Boom.
I will say I have an RTX 3080 and AMD CPU and had issues gaming with fedora, Nobara and PopOS just a few months ago, endeavorOS is the only thing that hasn’t had or caused issues. Been running it for a couple months now
My experience with endeavour was much the same, I switched after building a team red system. Endeavour and Arch are wonderful distros, but eventually something breaks if you don’t closely follow release notes. You either gain that level of awareness and competence to fix things yourself, or it breaks and you just wipe and reinstall.
Not a good direction to point a fresh Linux user.