My crappy HP laptop works great with Linux I used Debian I had to install some packages to make things work but it was a decent way to learn the basics and now everything just runs. KDE makes things pretty easy and I often just use the app thingie.
this post was submitted on 27 Feb 2025
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I don't recommend bazzite. I am using bazzite right now it is great for gaming. But it is a nightmare to install any software via the terminal often times you have to use a virtual environment and even that doesn't work very well.
If your a little familiar with fedora then it is a very good distro still and it has a kde veriant. (take my advice with a grain of salt I am pretty new to linux as well)
You mentioned KDE as your preferred DE so I'd suggest the Fedora KDE spin. The Fedora team has been putting a lot of work into it lately and it's supposedly going to be upgraded to equal footing with gnome in the next Fedora release.
+1 for fedora here. In my experience, laptops don’t play great with Linux, but fedora has been very stable. Everything really “just works” on my laptop and it hasn’t been like that with other distros. It’s the only one I could actually recommend at this point.
I would suggest Debian. Rock solid and it usually has all you need. If you need newer software on it you can allways use backports and there is also a really cool project called distroboc that will let you run pretty much any application in a container.
Since you only mentioned 25% gaming, I'd recommend against a gaming-centric distro like Bazzite. Instead, use a generalist desktop distro.
Since you mentioned that you're rather new-ish, I'd recommend against Arch-based distros like CachyOS. Instead, check out e.g. Fedora, Mint, OpenSuSE. (Probably in that order of priority)
These aren't hard recommendations, so you can do whatever and probably be fine either way, but it still doesn't fit that well.
Why not bazzite? It's just kinoite with some extra stuff installed, some of which is very nice (patent things that make twitch work for example)
There’s nothing especially gaming-focused with bazzite that would interfere with general PC usage. I think it’s a great choice for “25% gaming”.
The only thing is that there’s not a lot of distro-specific guidance out there, and the immutable concept is a bit new and unusual.
The only thing is that there’s not a lot of distro-specific guidance out there
I'm genuinely curious to hear what's missing here.
Our documentation guy cooked so hard he got burnt out, please read them they're excellent.
I’ve been all over the gamut of distros, arch based, Ubuntu based, you name it, and Fedora is it. It’s more bleeding edge than Ubuntu based distributions like Mint and Pop_OS, but not as high maintenance as Arch based distributions. When a Linux noob starts getting Pacman notifications about unmerged pacnew files, they’re going to get turned off pretty quick.
Fedora is rock solid, clean, smooth, and generally free of issues for me for about two years now.
Exactly. I'm being downvoted for saying the same thing 🤣
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.
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.
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.
Are you using Bluefin DX? And a separate question, are you able to install additional gnome extensions?
I'm using the regular bluefin, not DX, and yes I am able to install any gnome extension.
Sweet. Customization can be tricky with immutable distros.
Just make sure you get one that uses Wayland for better performance. Gaming on Wayland vs the old display server makes a big difference for me
I like fedora for daily use. Bazzite is a version of fedora and works great as a gaming station, would hesitate to use it as an everyday computer though.
checkout Aurora too
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.
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.
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.
I'm very happy with my EndeavourOS installation. It's arch-based, but with easier installation and some apps to help maintain the system. I've had it on my T16 for more than 2 years now.
Fedora is probably the most obvious choice though, since you've already used it.
I’m using stock fedora gnome on my surface pro 3 from 2014/5? and it works very well.
Personally I'd recommend Linux Mint, as your likely to have a very positive experience with it.
All distros are fine.
You mentioned gaming. Hence, go for bazzite.
I highly recommend using Manjaro Linux.
It's great for practical usage by practical people.
KDE is also the best choice, in my mind. DE will probably have a bigger impact on your experience than distro.
is manjaro seriously that much easier than stock arch installed via archinstall?
No, but if you want an easy arch install EndeavourOS is much more reputable.
Reputable meaning you'll get brownie points from "people" on the internet who can't make decisions for themselves and don't want you to, either.
I haven't used Arch Linux in years so I haven't tried out their installer.
Manjaro doesn't require using the command line at all to install, so if Arch Linux can match that then it's probably at least as good.
i mean you have to "use the command line" for the arch installer i guess, but it's literally just typing "archinstall" and then having a TUI pop up where you can graphically set the install options and start the installation
Fedora is way different now, and has basically taken the old throne Ubuntu used to carry as the default to try. Clean, simple, rolling releases, it's good.
Ubuntu's reputation has been tarnished due to forcing Snap packages on users, sneaking Amazon-based software into default installs, and showing ads. I'd steer clear.
Arch is still Arch. Wiki is still amazing, but distro is work.
Ignore anyone who says anything about a "gaming" distro. There is literally no performance difference.
CachyOS is maybe the one distro that could claim performance improvements over the others, but like in the ~10% target area, nothing super drastic.
Since you're familiar with old school distros already, steer clear of immutable until you find a need for that complication in your life.
Ignore anyone who says anything about a "gaming" distro. There is literally no performance difference.
I’ve never heard of anyone suggest a gaming-focused distro for performance reasons.
It’s always for compatibility and shit-just-works reasons. And that is wildly different between distros.
That was a secondary point to just ignoring the "gaming" distros, but this thread alone has a bunch of people pushing Bazzite because someone simply said the word "gaming", and not recognize the majority of what OP said he would be doing is not gaming.
Immutable distros are a PITA for coders for a number of different reasons, so should not be recommended simply because of that. They have no benefits to workflow, only extra overhead to the other work OP is asking about,.who even said they are largely unfamiliar with anything except older releases. Suggesting they jump right into the fire with an immutable distro is bad advice.
Legitimately if you're a programmer and you think using a container is a pain in the ass, you should stop programming.
Source: 20 plus years software engineer, if I didn't have containers I would go ahead and hurry along my retirement.
Using a container isn't the issue. I'm an upstream developer on containerd and I just don't want to have to think about it. It's a needless hurdle. Containers have their place, and it's not for the desktop and doing desktop things.
Heya! I'm one of the ublue maintainers. I run the Project Pavilion at KubeCon, any chance you're going? I love to talk about this stuff in real life! Our project is based on bootc, which is going into sandbox into the CNCF, so there's lots of stuff to talk about!
Let's agree to disagree. I think it's the single best thing to come to the desktop in the last decade and using containers as build environments has made my workflow immensely better.
We don't even need to do that. Go and ask on any public FOSS project mailing list and see who is running immutable. Not many.
Using containers as a build environment is fine as long as long as that's the final step is distributing something. That's what containers are for. Not for desktop workflow.