JAdsel

As a tinkering old nerd who mainly runs Garuda these days, I would throw in that the added GUI tools don’t have to be in the way. It is Arch under the hood, and you can totally ignore Garuda’s add-ons and just proceed like you would on vanilla Arch whenever you feel like it.

Best of both worlds, really. The GUI tools are still there whenever you do want to use them, but it’s also just Arch. I like MX Linux for similar reasons, as someone who started out on Debian back in the day. Useful for solving problems in both cases, too.

Garuda is actually my daily driver these days, and I quite enjoy it. It does mostly just work, and I also like their desktop theming. The GUI installer is great for easy hardware detection and setup. But, that’s coming from a more experienced old tinkerer who was initially looking for some lazy troubleshooting with NVIDIA graphics on a new gaming laptop, and liked the distro enough to end up switching over.

I wouldn’t necessarily recommend any rolling release to someone completely new to Linux. The devs have done a pretty good job at making some things more user friendly, but we are talking about Arch with some extra tools bolted on. You’d better be prepared for things to break occasionally, and to need to do some tinkering around under the hood.

On the plus side, you ARE dealing with Arch with all the info resources/user community built up around that, plus the Garuda community tends to be pretty helpful from what I’ve seen. You are going to periodically need to figure out how to fix stuff, however–and better to be aware of that going in. Some people are going to be more fine with the idea than others, but it is liable to provide a steeper learning curve for someone just getting started with Linux.

Yep. (Though I’m going through Chaotic-AUR rather than Mullvad’s own repo.) It does get a little annoying, but hey.

This is using a combo of a phone running GrapheneOS, and Linux on desktop. It’s an ongoing process.

1. Infomaniak KMail for anything that matters. I do still have a couple of Gmail accounts, and have continued to use one of them to give out publicly and catch spam. FairEmail as a mobile client for them all. Infomaniak’s webmail is decent, and I just use it on desktop.
2. Infomaniak KDrive / just physical backups. Considering self-hosting Nextcloud for some of it. KDE Connect helps with syncing across devices.
3. OsmAnd~ / OpenStreetMap where practical. I do occasionally resort to Google Maps on an old Android phone for navigation.
4. Mostly been using my distros instance of SearX on desktop, DuckDuckGo elsewhere.
5. Firefox still on mobile / preferably FireDragon on desktop / Vanadium is also good on mobile, but I missed the easy cross-device syncing.
6. Strictly local data Fossify Calendar on mobile, importing and sending .ics events as need be.
7. Don’t really have a need for contacts management outside of phone contacts and e-mail.
8. My own ad hoc ADHD Brain workaround setup that probably wouldn’t transfer well. Quillpad looks good on mobile though, with Nextcloud sync to take it across platforms.
9. LibreOffice whenever I do need anything like that these days, with KDrive sharing as required.
10. Matrix. Using a public homeserver that runs a bridge to Google Chat (among other services), with my partner still using GChat exclusively.
11. Rarely comes up, but probably also Matrix with the bridges.
12. Mastodon, Bluesky, Reddit, besides obviously Lemmy. I don’t really do social media these days.
13. Spotify. Prefer downloading/ripping and keeping MP3s locally.
14. Mainly still YouTube, but through Revanced where possible. One of the biggest gaps in other viable services right now.
15. AuthPass cross platform. Using the same format as KeePass, but I prefer their client.
16. Mullvad /AdGuard DNS on my phone, Cloudflare on desktop / Whatever my partner currently has set up on the network now plus my own firewalld configuration at home
17. Mostly stock GrapheneOS
18. F-Droid / Aurora / (Sandboxed) Play Store only where the others won’t do it.
19. Still need to get the archive away from Google. Considering just organizing locally with Immich, just doing local backups for a couple years now.
20. DMI / Vädret apps (more useful locally), KDE’s built-in weather widget on desktop.
21. We avoid “smart” anything in this house. The closest is Xiaomi’s (Graphene sandboxes) app handling the robovac.
22. It’s not Google specific, but I have personally been leaning toward FOSS software storing data locally wherever I reasonably can.

Also early 2000s here, but I was in my late 20s by then. Started out on Debian not that long before Woody came out, then before too long I tried Mandrake alongside it.

Exciting stuff for someone who first set hands (and started into BASIC) on a TRS-80, and then ran GEOS on a C64 for years. I was drawn to the opportunities for more tinkering, among other things.

NVIDIA mostly does fine with Wayland now IME. Running KDE Wayland on a Legion Slim 5 with RTX 4060 myself for over a year now, with minimal problems after the NVIDIA 550+ drivers came out.

I did have definite problems, including on X11, with the 535 drivers that the Debian repos were still using at last check. Your best bet is probably to install the latest drivers straight from NVIDIA’s repos: https://docs.nvidia.com/datacenter/tesla/driver-installation-guide/index.html

That’s what I ended up doing on a Debian-based distro, and it pretty much fixed my issues. There are specific instructions linked there for different supported distros.

My daily driver now is Garuda, which is essentially just Arch with a GUI installer and some extremely handy extra user-friendly tools bolted on. It’s aimed at gaming, and so makes it extra easy to get the drivers set up and kept up to date. That is basically why I decided to give their installer a go in the first place after I got this laptop, to at least let it run hardware detection and see how it was configuring things, to tell where I might have been going wrong in my then-main distro. Then I liked the experience enough that I stuck around. It mostly just works.

Note: This would be from someone with experience on Arch. If you’re not cool with rolling releases, that may not be a good choice. Garuda does default to a BTRFS/Snapper setup that makes it easy to just boot into a previous snapshot if anything does break, which does come in handy occasionally.

But, as other commenters have already said? The distro itself doesn’t really matter. That’s mainly just down to personal taste. The important part here is getting the right drivers and configuration going on whatever you do prefer to use. Some distros just make this easier than others

I’m also in the Nordics (so accustomed to the overall electronics prices by now), and going to echo that their prices are looking kinda steep for what you’re getting. Unless you’re somehow extremely uncomfortable with picking up a refurb machine somewhere else, and installing whichever distro(s) you want on it yourself. That should be a simple enough process, maybe especially dealing with a Lenovo–and really on just about any laptop you can find, as compared to 20 years ago. Or probably even the 10 since you were last using it.

Just getting a refurb elsewhere and making an install USB is the way I would suggest going. If you use Ventoy to write it, you should be able to try several different live system options off the same stick before deciding which to go with for now.

That site did not seem to be actually specifying what distro they’re installing for you, but their “Linux installation” service page (for the equivalent of $150US or €130+!) shows Mint and offers the option of several desktop flavors of Mint, Ubuntu, or Fedora. If you’re happy to pay that kind of premium for someone else to spend maybe 15 minutes on likely a Mint install set up however they decided was best? Sure, it might be a decent way to go. Doesn’t really seem necessary even for a complete beginner, however.

I came in just about as Debian Woody was coming out, in 2002. (Main reason I can even date it beyond “Idk, about 20 years ago?”).

Tried Mandrake a while after that, often recommended as pretty much the equivalent of Linux Mint at the time in terms of noob friendliness. I did enjoy that but stuck with Debian for my main system for years, though.

Very much agreed. I ran into some similar issues for a while on KDE Wayland, also with strange freezes–and was concerned that it might be a (fairly new at the time) hardware issue. No, it was evidently some weirdness involving the then-current NVIDIA drivers, which was thankfully fixed not that long after.

If you do have NVIDIA graphics, you’ll probably want to make sure it’s using the latest drivers from them–and maybe particularly on Wayland. More stable distros do tend to ship older versions.

Primarily Garuda these days. It’s basically Arch with some user-friendly additions. The major reason I tried it on a then-new gaming laptop was the actually really good IME hardware detection and minimal fuss NVIDIA setup using their latest drivers.

I was having enough headaches trying to get graphics actually working properly on the Debian-based distro I had been using, that I said fuck it and tried something that would hopefully get things working for me so that I could at least see that configuration to figure out where I’d been going wrong. Then I liked it enough that I have mostly just stayed there on this machine. (Did finally get things fixed on the other side, though.) But, I was already fine with Arch, which probably helps.

I still need to rack off another batch that’s taking up a good chunk of my brewing corner. But, the next batch planned for hopefully this weekend is a hoochy melomel concoction involving some frozen strawberries that need cleared out and compatible fruity-flavored black tea. (Kobbs Sörgårdste) It may also get some blackcurrant drink concentrate if that seems like a good idea flavorwise.

I was wanting to get a test batch of some Thai black rice and blueberry Franken-doburoku going, but the pressure cooker I’ve been using for glutinous rice has decided not to seal properly even after a gasket replacement. I don’t feel like messing around with steaming wholegrain rice on the stove, so that’ll just have to wait until I can troubleshoot and fix that/snag a second cooker. May need to wait for next month on that one.

Seconding this. I’m also using Infomaniak here with my own domain, and would definitely recommend it. Their free tier comes with 15GB cloud storage on top of the 20GB mailbox cap, which is better than a lot. I’m more focused on data privacy these days, and haven’t seen anything concerning about their service so far.

Infomaniak offers their own mail app for Android, but the accounts are easy enough to set up over IMAP in whatever client you prefer. I’ve been favoring FairEmail personally. The same developer is behind NetGuard, which you might also find handy if you’re on stock Android. (I’m using GrapheneOS now, which already has app network access control covered.)

I also use Garuda. While I wouldn’t normally suggest an Arch-based distro to someone newer, the developers there did a pretty good job at making it more approachable and user friendly for people who aren’t used to Arch.

The default BTRFS filesystem setup with automatic Snapper snapshots at each update also gives some extra stability insurance to the rolling release. If an update does temporarily screw something up (as very occasionally happens)–or you manage to do something to the system yourself–you can just boot using a previous system snapshot until the issue is fixed. Another reason I would recommend Garuda where I wouldn’t necessarily suggest Arch or most derivatives.

I was in a somewhat similar place when I first got a laptop with Windows 11 preinstalled. Decided to dual boot, set Windows up with strictly local accounts, and actually poke around in there out of curiosity.

Tbf, the last time I was regularly doing anything in Windows was during the Vista --> Win 7 era. This did not make 11 any more approachable or easier to get even very basic things accomplished. I didn’t like the UI (still don’t), and kept getting frustrated at those “little” things like the Bluetooth codec issue you mention. Haven’t even tried to do much gaming on that side, to compare, other than a couple I couldn’t get working properly through WINE/Proton. (A couple of other software packages too.) So I ended up rarely playing those, and only booting into there at all once in a blue moon.

I did recognize that a lot of that frustration was on me and my expectations, though. Doesn’t mean that I still don’t want to have more control over basically everything about my system. I probably could make even modern Windows work better for me, but why bother when I’m already happy enough elsewhere. ¯\(ツ)/¯

Same here. I started out on Debian Woody, then decided to try a side install of Mandrake specifically because it was supposed to be the most user-friendly option. I do recall liking the Mandrake experience well enough at the time–but stayed primarily using Debian, because I’m stubborn and rather enjoyed the sense of challenge.

(Also kinda setting the continuing pattern of keeping at least one side distro or OS going to try out. These days, they are more likely to live in VMs though.)

Gotta say, you have a point. Too lost in the privacy sauce to really notice it earlier. ;)

I caught mumps at around 30, during one outbreak thanks to the proliferation of antivax garbage. Only about half of kids in some London boroughs were fully vaccinated, centered around a couple of the wealthiest areas–and that was nearly 20 years ago. (Meanwhile, I was indeed fully vaccinated as a kid. It’s not foolproof, and especially not forever.)

Thankfully recovered just fine without complications, but that really was NOT much fun. Adults are pretty much guaranteed to get sicker, even if they’re otherwise fairly young and healthy–and lucky enough to avoid any of the serious complications which are likelier to occur.

I have found Mozilla’s sync across devices handy, but now I’m in the process of moving over to using Vanadium on my GrapheneOS phone and FireDragon on desktop.

FireDragon started out as a Librewolf fork, but is more recently based on Floorp. They are still keeping in sync with Librewolf’s privacy enhancements, with some of their own thrown in. I like that the default search engine is Garuda’s instance of Searx, with Whoogle as another option if you don’t want to self host. FireDragon will also sync your Firefox account off Garuda’s server instance if you like (which would be more useful if I weren’t going with a Chromium fork on mobile). The Garuda project is certainly looking more trustworthy than Mozilla these days.

Det här låter som ett hembryggningskit där ingredienserna har tillverkats till fasta briketter. Utan restriktioner! Jag antar att det inte skulle finnas några.

You might want to look into Snapper: https://documentation.suse.com/smart/systems-management/html/snapper-basic-concepts/index.html

Booting from snapshots has pulled my chestnuts out of the fire a few times–between using a rolling release distro as my daily driver, and NVIDIA graphics not always behaving well in conjunction with that.