When I run arch, I end up building pretty much exactly what fedora does. Once I realized this, I just install fedora now ;)
Easier to maintain, pretty dang current, “just works” like mint/ubuntu does. But I don’t do anything crazy though so it works for me.
Love mine and daily drive it. Not janky, zero issues. Everything works on Linux. Not sure what you’re referring to.
Can you get more bang for your buck? Yes, to start. But let’s compare after a couple of upgrades on mine vs whole laptop replacements with other brands.
I really like the gnome workflow plus a couple of extensions. Notably I ran across a tiling extension called “grid” that scratched my tiling window needs on my desktop, and gnome is amazing on my laptop trackpad. I zing through desktops quick! Anything it can’t do out of the box, you can find an extension for.
I like the feel of something different than windows.
This is good advice imo. Some further comments:
Those are not normal problems. Linux generally does work out of the box unless you’ve got weird or new hardware.
Mint usually does the trick ez peasy and that’s why it’s recommended so much. BUT, sometimes it craps on your hardware. I’d actually suggest trying a different distro before you make up your mind. Some are newer than mint and might work where mint doesn’t.
Might I suggest fedora workstation or popos? Fedora and the rpm fusion team make installing nvidia a breeze and it’s running pretty recent kernels and code. I’ve never run popos but it seems to be gaming focused and people generally like it.
If your having the same issues, then you probably do have some hardware incompatibilities. And if that’s the case, you have my condolences-you’d be better off just sticking with something that works - aka windows.
But please do believe me/us when I say you shouldn’t have to work that hard - mint is either too old, or you’ve got wonky hardware that is going to be a pain no matter what.
I think Myersguy nails it. One addition: Manjaro comes packaged with a gui software installer/updater, endeavoros does not. Endeavoros pushes you to use pacman and yay.
I’ve used both. I was happy with manjaro for a long time, until I wasn’t. Manjaro fools you into thinking updating is like mint - click a button, poof done. And that’s just not what you do on an arch system. Eventually one of those updates tanks things and you don’t know how to fix it. Endeavor does a better job at teaching you - for example showing you the arch wiki news prior to update, automatically installing pacdiff and meld, giving you tools to handle the cache and old files, etc. All of this is accomplished on the welcome screen with buttons that fire off terminal commands - so it’s not sexy, but helps.
Congrats! There’s probably a few things not perfect that you haven’t noticed yet-but ya, despite what the trolls say, Linux pretty much just works these days. Oftentimes better than windows.
Sometimes you’ll run into a program that is windows only and that’s a pain. The first thing I do is try to find a linux alternative-sometimes you can sometimes you can’t (stuff designed to interface with your hardware can be a pain sometimes - controllers, rgb lights, fan speeds, motherboard stuff). Bottles works great for running windows programs. And if all else fails a windows vm.
I just bought one a couple of months ago. It’s my daily driver. My work issued laptop sits on my desk, and I carry my framework around. If you’re a Linux guy, fedora runs fantastic on it - everything works, couldn’t be easier. Battery life could be better, but it’s fine. Trackpad is great, I heard some bitchin about it, but I don’t get that hate. Some complaints about the hinges and how they bounce. Again, unfounded complaints in my opinion. The hinges are stiffer to open/close than I expected, but they are fine (just a little different feeling). New webcam is great for a laptop webcam. New screen is nice - but let’s be honest, not much touches an apple screen. Sound is ok, nothing special. The case is fantastic-people (engineers and nerds) drool over it. The swappable ports are awesome, that alone makes the laptop imo. But the real star is the serviceability of it. Five screws and the whole thing comes apart. Everything can be replaced and upgraded. They even give you the screwdriver you need to take it apart. Bios updates work with fwupdate in Linux and they update regularly. Keyboard feels good. It stays cool and fans don’t go crazy.
It’s expensive. But I love mine. But I do plan on keeping it and upgrading forever - or at least until I smash it accidentally, so maybe it wasn’t expensive.
The 13 doesn’t have a gpu. It’s capable, but if you want to game on it, look at the 16. If you have specific questions I’d be happy to answer or post a vid/pic or something.
Hard
94-95 school year for me. Prior to win 95. Honestly OS2 warp was the tits then, blew windows and linux away. But the cool thing about linux was that you could pull a session from the college mainframe and then run all the software off campus. Over a modem. Pro E, maple, matlab, gopher, Netscape, ftp/fsp, irc, on and on. Once you had X going on your 486, you were good to go.
But honestly, it was nerd sh$t. Dos was king until win95. And then nobody looked back until win8 made us realize Microsoft had started sucking.