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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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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.
this really makes nixOs so good because I can just make others do the hard work of configing it for me and use it 😂
Unless you want to run a stake pool on Cardano, you’d have to fork and modify my config.
Wow these seems really cool, good job and thanks for your contribution! I am gonna check it out!
Glad to help! I’m merely standing on the shoulders of the giants before me.
+1 for NixOS
I'm a distro hopping junkie and NixOS has been keeping me on their OS for 8 months now. Highly recommend it.
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.
Also running NixOS on my laptop. It took longer to configure than most distros since I had to learn more, but now that I understand the ecosystem better I feel like I can tinker with it so much faster that I'd be able to otherwise.
Definitely a distro for more developer types who are fine figuring stuff out in their own, but if it works for you then it really works for you.
I absolutely adore it. Today, I added a simple bash script to one of my config options that runs just before my nix flake update command that gets the sha256 hash for the latest release of the Cardano-node then writes that hash into my flake.nix file using sed. Then, when I do a flake update that little hash update (that I used to manually do) is also built in.
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'.
Add tlp package for battery life. And any major distro should be fine really
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.
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.
I've been switching my Excel tasks over to Python using Pandas and Matplotlib. Most of my data is .csv and OnlyOffice seems to handle large files just fine. LibreOffice Calc gives me issues with large files.
True, office compatibility is great nowadays on Linux. I use libreoffice and have yet to run into any issues. Unless your employer/class specifically requires something exclusive to Microsoft Office, than it's not worth the effort to dual-boot for it.
You really don't. Libreoffice does most things just fine. If you have weird files in your org, run windows in a vm.
Pop Os.
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.
Any guide for r3 3200?
I would use one of the tools listed in the archwiki; I have an intel chip so I've never used any myself.
Once you find a tool that can undervolt, usually the recommendation is to lower the voltage incrementally until you see unstable behavior and crashes, than raise it back to the last good voltage, then run a stress-test to verify.
Why not something like Debian Testing?
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.
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?
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.
Try the 'tlp' command on whatever distro you end up with. It really help with battery optimization. I'm a big Linux mint fan all of my laptops have always had it never had any compatability or driver issues with mint. Something I would maybe recommend is buying some external thinkpad batteries for the laptop off the internet. Else you can buy a big rechargeable car jumper batter pack with 12vdc car output and a car plug charger for laptop.
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.
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.
I've been running Debian for about 7 years as well, never an issue.* I use it for browsing, photo/video editing, coding, gaming with Steam with no complaints. Fedora has always been tempting for it's more up to date packages but Debian's usually have all the features I need.
*I have had self-induced issues by installing .debs from strange places but never with the default repos or even 3rd party repos.
I've been using Fedora on my Dell XPS and it's been great. Opensuse Tumbleweed was also fantastic.
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.
You can try using Linux Mint (it's Ubuntu like but pretty stable with regular updates) it's pretty light weight and you can disable gui
In terms of optimization, Gentoo is the best you're gonna get, but the word "convenience" makes me hesitant to recommend it to you.
Arch is minimal, and has many resources/guides on battery optimization (Especially for ThinkPads), but if you'd like to learn something else, Void is the way to go.
If you're looking for a tiling WM, I can wholeheartedly recommend bspwm. Lots of control and customization, but pretty easy to configure when you understand it. Just know, it might be a hard change going from stacking to tiling.
Hmm I'll check out the battery optimization guides. I understand Gentoo is probably the best for overall optimization but I'm not advanced enough to use it.
If you can set up and maintain an Arch installation, you can probably figure out Gentoo. It wasn't too bad when I did it. It's just not very convenient. in order to properly optimize, you have to set your use flags for each package. Not only that, but packages are compiled from source, rather than installed as pre-compiled binaries. So basically, you have to configure each package and updates take much longer.
The one you like.
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
That's literally the only relevant criterion. Search flathub for those packages, if they're not up there, search the repos of every major distro.
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.
following for the answers. I'm currently using Ubuntu on my Dell XPS 9330 and after 6 months as my daily driver I'm ready for something new.
Popos. Surprised no one has said it.
Mint LMDE (Linux Mint Debian Edition) is pretty good for laptops & convertibles, but it does lean into the Desktop environment pretty hard.
If you're among rhe Unafraid, Debian Sid.is a common laptop/convertible stack, but I wouldn't ever accuse of it "just working."
fedora or nobara with gnome de and that's it. I don't think you need to look for any other distro. You can if you want to but you won't go wrong with this. I tried linux mint, and I had two problems in it. a) no 1 to 1 gestures b) some packages were outdated. Then there's arch and opensuse where in both cases I got black screen with nvidia drivers.
fedora is the balance between stability and newer packages. And It's the distro I've been using for 3 years now. I sometimes try this and that but in the end, jump back to fedora always. If yast was a bit more user friendly, I'd consider opensuse
Arch is a barebones distro so it makes sense that you have one of the best battery life.
My old 2012 dell laptop is running Arch and so far : the battery which has been used extensively boasts ~2:30 of uptime (on KDE, no less!) compared to Win10 which has only ~1:25 or Fedora which gives me a meager ~1:15.
I cannot tell for OpenSuse because for whatever reason I can't even boot it on this PC. It was my main go-to distro before 2012.
Debian is also solid. I get almost ~2h of uptime.
I have also used Zorin OS which is nice but rather slow on older hardwares.
So overall go for Arch (again), Debian or take a wild guess at NixOS.
I guess you can run fedora if you want full features of a laptop. Im currently running LMDE5, is rock solid for me this past 2+ years, upgraded seamlessly from LMDE4. I guess LMDE6 will be released soon after LM 21.2 is released. I do think that at the end of the day , whatever you choose, you can change your desktop environment so it suites you.
If you do use any debian distro, nala is a great way to update your packages.
If you are familiar with Arch, you can use arch on your laptop. You can consider Garuda Linux which is arch with a graphical installer, preconfigured DE and WM plus confirmation and maintenance tools. They also have a PacMan repository called Chaotic-AUR: a repository with huge selection of precompiled air packages. They have - among others - Wayfire, Sway, i3WM and Qtile editions. You can try them out from a live usb and see what you think.