I want to know your opinions on the best distro that is convenient for laptops. Main reason is I want to really optimize hardware performance and more specifically battery life for my University classes. I also want to try a tiling manager as they seem perfect for laptops.

Things of note:

  • Convenience/Performance is key
  • My laptop is a Thinkpad E15 w/ 16 gb ram
  • On my home desktop I run Archlinux w/ Open box & no DE (I’ve been using Arch for years but haven’t used another distro since Ubuntu in highschool)
  • I will likely dual boot with Windows 10 for Office
  • I want to run a tiling manager
  • I don’t video game
  • I wont be using a mouse
  • I don’t necessarily want to use Arch, want to try something new that I don’t have to rely on AUR updates for certain software
  • VirtualBriefcase@lemmy.fmhy.ml
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    1 year ago

    My understanding is that it’s not really the disrto, but the software running on it that’d effect battery life and performance. Both Debian and Arch can come pretty bare bones on a blank install (Ubuntu and derivatives tend to come with a fair bit of stuff bundled out of the box).

    I’d personally reccomend trying a Debian installation (I’d likely say use stable, but testing or sid are also options if you need quicker updates and don’t care for flatpak/snap/appimage/distrobox). The installer plays nice with Windows, and you can skip installing a desktop during installation then CLI install a tiling window manager to really minimize ‘bloat’.

  • BCsven
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    1 year ago

    Add tlp package for battery life. And any major distro should be fine really

    • taxon@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      Pop!OS is great and ticks most of your boxes. Although, you’ll likely have to read into the battery optimization.

    • astraeus@programming.dev
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      1 year ago

      I’ve had a pretty good time with PopOS. GNOME is a bit rough at times (handling window sizes, font size changes, monitor layout updates) and I only had DisplayLink driver issues, which is probably trivial for most personal users nowadays.

  • demesisx@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    🧌 NixOS 🧌

    I use xmonad/polybar/rofi/alacritty/fish with Home Manager and flakes. You could just use my whole config and have it up and running in a day, deleting lines and adding others. Fork it and modify it to meet your preferences (as I did when I forked this amazingly slick config). I even made a custom typeface to add my favorite crypto logos to my Polybar.

    • Steamymoomilk@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      YESS!!! I just switched from vanillaOS to Nix and its been a learning curve but if you screw up you just go back a generation and rebuild. And I haven’t had any package manager BS like ubuntu.

    • evirac@vlemmy.net
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      1 year ago

      this really makes nixOs so good because I can just make others do the hard work of configing it for me and use it 😂

  • Justin@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Do you really need to dual boot for office?

    I’m doing fine compatibility wise with the OnlyOffice flatpak. If you have a school account with Microsoft perhaps the PWA for Word, etc. will meet your needs.

    For a laptop distro with a good tiling DE out of the box you might enjoy Pop!_OS.

    • karlthemailman@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      File compatible is one thing, but I just can’t get over the difference in shortcut keys/workflow.

      Plus, creating and editing charts is still miles easier in excel.

  • The Postminimalist@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    If you absolutely must use MS Office, and don’t want to use any of the alternatives like LibreOffice that use the exact same file types, why not just run MS Office with Bottles? If that’s the only reason for a dual boot, you probably don’t need to dual boot.

  • IncidentalIncidence@feddit.de
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    1 year ago

    specifically battery life for my University classes

    try undervolting your CPU/GPU. That was the first thing I did when I got my thinkpad and it improved the thermals and battery life significantly.

  • marmalade@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    Debian is solid. You probably don’t want to have to fuck around on a laptop that you’re using primarily for getting shit done. Flatpaks can handle most of the extra shit you’d want to use. That said, I used to be an Arch guy for years too, and if you’re comfortable with it, it’s fine to use, but you’ll run into the same kind of annoyances. Not true breakage usually, but eventually I got tired of having new surprise bugs in shit that was working fine before.

    Also I can’t be sure, but I suspect Wayland is probably better on energy draw since it should be more efficient. Maybe try sway for your twm?

    • IncidentalIncidence@feddit.de
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      1 year ago

      Not true breakage usually, but eventually I got tired of having new surprise bugs in shit that was working fine before.

      yep, considering switching to nixos for this reason.

  • solidsnail@programming.dev
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    1 year ago

    Some thinkpads have official support for Ubuntu by the manufacturer (lenovo), which means battery optimizations out of the box, amongst other things. Might be relevant for your laptop.

  • bahmanm@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    OpenSUSE Tumbleweed FTW. I’ve got an old T530 (2012) who’s been happily on Tumbleweed since 2019.

    Nowadays I use vanilla Gnome but had a very good experience with Awesome on the same setup. You may want to check the default Sway setup too.

  • Raphael@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Yes, the best distro I always recommend is Fedora Silverblue, especially the KDE version: Fedora Kinoite. I hate this naming scheme though.

    Sadly Fedora is controlled by Red Hat and it may get killed off soon.

    • Steamymoomilk@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      I used to enjoy fedora silver blue (daily drove on Lenovo t450) then I switches to Lenovo w540 I sniped of eBay and the DRIVERS ARE AWFUL FOR EVERY DISTRO. Tried manjaro, arch, gaurdua, Debian, Ubuntu its 22.4, Ubuntu 12 and fedora silver blue, and fedora the I tried nix and got the GPU working but the driver was so old I settled on windows (even though it pains me to use).

  • cognitive@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    Fedora and Debian are good choices. I’ve been using Fedora for more than 7 years and it’s still going. Very stable like Debian yet up-to-date packages.

  • RecursiveDescent@discuss.tchncs.de
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    1 year ago

    I liked using fedora Sway spin on my Dell XPS 13. Sway because it let’s you utilise the screen space well and fedora spin because it came working out of the box, you can use it in any distro really.