I’m resetting windows 10 on my Thinkpad T580 for work but would like to create a partition for linux. It’s an older laptop and really chugs through games like Minecraft or RuneScape but I enjoy playing relaxing games while I listen to audiobooks at night. I grew up using windows which is why I’ve mostly used Ubuntu and ZorinOS in the past but I’d like to expand my horizons to something like kubuntu. I value good UI/UX design and something lightweight for my old potato. Any recommendations on Linux distros?
** Thanks for all the input! I tried Fedora first but it felt kind of clunky to me. Then I tried out Mint xfce and it’s right up my alley! I can run a separate Firefox profile right off the task bar that runs outside of my VPN which is perfect for Netflix and other sites that have issues. So far loving how customizable it is. Minecraft runs ok off GDLauncher, and lutris is really cool. I forgot I had a boat load of old GOG games that are perfect for this laptop. I really fucking love Linux 😆
Check out Fedora Silverblue.
I really think having a stateless root is the future of computing. Silverblue has a big focus on using Flatpak and containers to cover most use cases.
The only issue is the default Gnome would probably be too heavy for your hardware but (as others have mentioned) you can overlay KDE and use that instead.
Edit: as others have said below check out Kinoite for a Silverblue spin with KDE by default.
I think plain, vanilla, mutable Fedora is still a more solid choice for newcomers, it’s just easier to find help with a “regular” distro.
I’ve been trying uBlue on my daily driver laptop, and so far, the immutability of the system has not really hindered me, but I still think it’s not ready for primetime yet.
Probably true, but I find that new users tend to try to solve problems by installing random RPMs they find online and tainting their systems.
Pushing an immutable OS puts up a barrier that may be annoying, but forces them to do things in a more reasonable way (or they can overlay those random RPMs, with the advantage that they are easier to track since
rpm-ostree statuswill always show a list of manually overlayed packages)Or rather go on with Fedora Kinoite (Silverblue but KDE)
Can you explain what is meant by “stateless root”? I can’t find a decent answer online.
The root filesystem is read only so neither you or applications can write to it. If you wanna find better results it’s probably more often referred to as “immutable” since calling it stateless is maybe a bit loaded on my part.
Flatpak apps are a PITA for interoperability and modifications though, so I’ll stick to traditional RPMs thanks. I prefer the ease and flexibility of tinkering with my system more than anything else.
I actually disagree. I use Flatpak and also maintain a Flatpak myself and I think nowadays they’re mostly af parity with regular applications.
They also solve dependency issues in neat ways which is nice. For example the application I use makes use of a Wine extension that tracks an older Wine, which is something that is particular annoying to deal with outside of the Flatpak environment IMO.
Then let’s agree to disagree, in my experience they’ve been more of a hassle to deal with. Eg trying to fix the weird DPI/tiny cursor issue in the flatpak version of Steam was a pain, same with trying to pass custom flags to flatpak Edge. It’s just one hassle after another. I can deal with a couple of apps here and there, but I can’t imagine having the entire system depend on Flatpak as a crutch.
As for your Wine example, I’m not sure which application you’re referring to, but Wine is basically portable and doesn’t need installing, eg for Wine-GE, you just need to download and extract the tarball and set the correct WINEPREFIX/path, so you can easily have multiple versions of Wine on your system without Flatpak or anything complicated.
I switched to silverblue a few months ago and then again a few weeks ago kinoite. I think the immutability and revert updates super easily is great. I think ostree is the future and I’m looking forward too seeing how it matures.