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).

  • derbolle@lemmy.worldEnglish
    5·
    5 months ago

    I switched from ububtu to fedora kde about a year ago. really solid for gaming and the differences are not that big.

    for work I also use debian and it is really cool to be able to understaand deb and “enterprise linux”(fedora/suse) differences

    • Dark ArcAEnglish
      1·
      5 months ago

      I’ll +1 the Fedora KDE for desktop usage and Debian for server usage … this combo is where I’ve landed after over a decade in the Linux space mixed with personal and professional usage.