you can automate a lot of the basc profile stuff in your dotfiles with some automation such as github.com/anishathalye/dotbot to bootstrap a new install. it makes your new distro right at home, and if you combine this with github to store your dotfiles, you’ll also have a backup of your environment.
This was already fixed in 6.1.66. Both are “old” kernels, so it’s nothing to worry about, unless you/your distro was deliberately staying on 6.1 for some odd reason (yes, I’m aware 6.1 is LTS, but so is 6.6).
Does your laptop have a replaceable wireless card by chance? Could get a combo board with wifi and bluetooth like the intel ax series of boards if you can. I use a m.2 ax200 in my desktop.
I believe there are m.2 to pcie adapter boards. It’ll feel weird putting laptop components in a desktop, but the important thing will be that it works.
If your system has a free PCIe slot you should be able to find a wifi card that will work. I personally am using an intel wifi board for bluetooth and have not had any problems with bluetooth. Their driver seems to be really stable on linux and in kernel and should be stable on windows as well. I got my m.2 card for about $20(usd) and wouldn’t expect that big of a difference for a standard PCIe card.
I can really recommend those cards! They come in several sizes for laptop and desktop. I am not sure about USB. Just make sure you get the regular PCIe version and not the CNVio version (unless you have a compatible Intel Mainboard and somewhat recent processor). They differ in the naming, e.g. AX210/AX211 if I remember that right.
I don’t know what’s available in Europe, but I’ve used Pluggable and StarTech dongles. They both work fine with Ubuntu without configuration. One of them is a Class 1 device, the other one Class 2. The Class 1 receiver has much better range and better connection stability. So the only useful thing I have to say is - look for a Class 1 receiver if you want the best range possible.
The only complaint I have, and it's not really a problem with the OS itself, is that the Realtek driver is unstable at best, and will crash every five minutes.
I’m not personally familiar with PopOS, but in reading up real quick it looks like it’s selling point is baked in proprietary drivers.
If you want a “just works with my hardware” distro, that sounds like a solid choice. But, since you’re technically inclined I might suggest avoiding it. Proprietary drivers come with their own problems and I think there’s value in having to consciously choosing to use them, which will make you more able to handle/remove them if needed. There is some personal bias in this I admit. I don’t care for proprietary anything if I have a choice.
At the end of the day, the distribution is not that important for gaming, unless you need those 1-2 extra fps. Debian is a very good choice for workstations nowadays. I was a long time OpenSUSE user, always had joys with Debian, but yesterday switched to Garuda Linux (Arch variant optimized for gaming) and I love it so far very much.
I was daily driving arch for 5 years and decided to switch two months ago just like you now and running Debian 12 happily, tried fedora, set subvolumes to timeshift btrfs to work because it was not installed out of the box, and after update from 38 to 39 with official gui update tool, it broke and locked away ssd so i had to recover data, after that i installed Debian 12 and had no problems at all, machine ALWAYS ready to work and stable as fuck, heavenly experience so far actually
While I did not figure out a solution yet, but I found out some additional information and came to the conclusion that nixos must have built something weirdly. Thus I posted on the nixos forum and will likely only update there: discourse.nixos.org/t/…/36643
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