Linux

Fedora Atomic for the win, it's been my one and only ever since I first used it.

+1 for Debian, if you just want a stable, reliable system and don't care about the latest and greatest features there is no better choice

What are corporate users using?

Corporates are using ThinkPads, HP EliteBooks and MacBooks. OS being Windows, macOS mainly. Linux on workstations is pretty rare - mainly used by developers - and the distro being Ububtu LTS (which I do not recommend).

Since you want to use Linux, go for a ThinkPad. There are more Linux-friendly laptops of course (like Framework and System76) but I believe none of them offer corporate-levels of stability and build-quality like ThinkPads yet - as you have experienced yourself with System76.

Main pro-tip is to avoid systems that use nVidia cards - they're often responsible for buggy suspend/resume in Linux, and can break your OS sometimes when you do an OS/kernel upgrade. So if you're after stability, avoid nVidia like the plague.

For the docking station, I've had good experiences with the HP Thunderbolt Dock G4. The initial releases were in fact a bit buggy with suspend/resume, but HP have released subsequent firmware updates to fix those issues. In fact, HP have been really good at providing regular firmware updates for those docks, and the best part is that it's on the LVFS too - which means the firmware can be updated directly in Linux using fwupd. A lot of vendors don't bother updating docking stations - and even fewer update them via LVFS, so this is something you might definitely want to look into.

Finally, for distro recommendations, I would recommend a Fedora Atomic distro since they're immutable, and rollbacks are as easy as just selecting the previous image in the boot menu. Given your requirements, I'd recommed Bluefin - specifically the Developer Experience version, since it comes with virtualisation tools OOTB.

For reference, I mainly use Bazzite (another variant of Fedora Atomic) on my pure-AMD ThinkPad Z13, and haven't had any issues with suspend/resume, external monitors, or virtualisation dev/test workflows. There's virtually no overnight battery drain either when suspending. My system also supports Opal2, so my drive is encrypted transparently to the OS, with virtually no performance overhead. It's also nice not having to muck around with LUKS and the complexities around it. I use this system for both work and personal use (gaming), and it's been a great experience so far - both software and hardware. Happy to answer any questions you may have.

For the OS: Debian

Hardware: a modern thinkpad

Debian Stable, in my experience, can stay online for months, even over a year, with very little attention, and still work as well as you left it. You can also install RHEL or a rebuild, like AlmaLinux, RockyLinux, or Oracle Linux, as a workstation distro.

As for the device, my use case is fairly different so I'm not sure what to suggest. Maybe an Intel NUC, or a Framework laptop.

Another vote for Fedora. I’m a docker user so I find regular ol Fedora Workstation 40 to be a damn near perfect Linux distribution

What are corporate users using?

Windows on PCs, Linux is used mostly only on servers (RedHat/SuSe), hardware brands are usually HP, Dell and Lenovo.

I think that is my standard

Why? Do you expect companies to ask you to use your own PC for work instead of providing the tools you need? Be wary of those who do, using whatever personal PC for company work can lead to data breaches and that's a very serious problem.

I'd say that if you want a stable, "just works" experience, try fedora. It's the only distro I've had truly 0 issues or complications with...

I don't think it applies here, but I'd like to tell you my perspective in case you find it interesting anyway.

I am a developer and I often need relatively new versions of everything dev related.

Contrary to popular belief - I had the best experience in regards to stability with archlinux. I have it installed both on a PC (when I need to do some Blender or heavy Photoshop work) and on a thin and light Laptop (for a flexible work space and stuff on the go) - and I use both about 50/50 of the time.

To be fair, I am knoledgable in the Linux user libs/apps space and it took a lot of knowledge to set everything up in a reliable way just the way I want and need it. I'd say arch is extremely customizabe and there exists a narrow path where you can make it pretty reliable, but there are also many sidepaths which can be unreliable and break often.

After setting it up though, my maintenance times for archlinux were significantly lower than each of the following

• Windows (Going to ~30 different websites weekly to check for new releases and manually downloading and installing them)
• Mac (homebrew constantly breaking dependencies)
• Debian/Ubuntu (which I was upgrading to the newest release every 6 months and it was a PAIN)

But also take this with a grain of salt, because my so. also has a pretty similar arch linux setup on similar hardware and they have more issues than I do and we don't really know why :D

I think CentOS Stream, Debian or a tweaked Ubuntu LTS are good for stability and all free also as in freedom (after replacing snap with flatpak on Ubuntu).

OpenSUSE slowroll is a good model for better tested but not randomly held back packages.

Fedora has the older stable release, currently 39. It is more stable than the current 40.

As a workstation Desktop I can recommend KDE Plasma, but it is not bugfree. Plasma 5 has bugs that will not be fixed, Plasma 6 has those fixed but random other bugs and random missing features.

GNOME is unusable in many parts for me personally, but very very likely the most stable but also modern Desktop.

COSMIC will be pretty awesome. It doesnt really have bugs for me, but simply a ton of missing things. But the way they build the project, how well everything works and implements all sorts of "we have this new shiny thing" from various DEs like KDE Plasma, is really nice.

But that will take at least a year to be really finished.

workstation

fedora... workstation?

nixos is great - as long as the software you need is in nixpkgs, and it usually is. reinstallation is almost never necessary. You can switch your system to the unstable channel, and if you get tired of that, back to stable again, no problem. Experiment with software and remove it without a trace left in your system. If you mess up your config, you can roll back to the previous config in the bootup menu. Your system config is in a text file which you can put into source control if you wish, which allows you to replicate your config onto another machine, or revert to what you had 6 months ago, etc.

I love Fedora Sircea, however NixOS seems like a better solution (albeit with a larger learning-curve.)

EDIT: Just looked it up, I guess it was renamed "Sway Atomic", and iirc they've also released a Budgie Atomic version with Fedora 40!

Linux Mint Debian Edition would be a pretty solid, pre-customized distribution.

I've had great experiences with Linux on Lenovo over the years: would be my first recommendation.

I currently use a Dell Inspiron, while it's works great, I had to do some extra work occasionally. I love that I can get fingerprint login with it on Linux though.

For hardware stability you should check out:

https://linux-hardware.org/

Search for the Distro or Laptop you want and chrck the user reports for the other factors. I noticed that some Laptops work better with some distros than others so lock the factor that is more important to you.

For distro stability, something others have not mentioned:

Zorin OS has a pay once option where allegedly everything just works. Maybe thats interesting to consider as an option.

If you wanna try rhel they let you install to a handful of machines for free.

I personally run Pop! on a thinkpad for school and its rock solid. I've rebooted it maybe 10 times over the past 2 years, mostly when it ran out of battery in my backpack. I've never had any issue with it, I even installed KDE in addition to the standard GNOME and it worked just fine. If you've liked Pop! so far, I absolutely recommend it if it works on a non-System76 machine for you.

Windows 10, duh 🙄