nice to have choices. new users are better off with a polished install so they can get back to scrolling. takes work to do some desktops. ran a minimal thing for years at work. forget the name.
While many can agree with a desktop environments importance, the desktop environment is rn closely tied to the distro’s philosophy. Many who venture outside the major distros will need to set up their own environment.
Linux users fall into three categories. People who want stability over everything else, people who want everything to be bleeding edge, and people who don’t use desktop environments.
The most important thing for a new user is understand which of those three they are.
I’ll be honest, unless you have been using Linux for…a long time, of your job requires you to manage servers, your probably not that last category.
If you enrolled in the windows insider/test doohickey then you might want look into the rolling release distros. If not, something with a standard release cadence will be better.
I my self? All of the servers I manage have no desktop environment (core infrastructure does not need graphics). But if I am on a workstation? LMDE - Because I care about the graphics getting out of my way so I can do my job.
Since you do want to game, I’d recommend going with a computer with an amd DGPU. Nvidia is mostly fine from a driver standpoint. Also Nvidia does have cuda so you might actually want to get one with an Nvidia dgpu.
Get something with an Intel wireless card, that’d be the best case scenario. I’ve had weird issues with both realtek and Broadcom. Lots of amd laptops come with mediatek based wireless cards, idk if they work well in Linux.
Tbh I’d rec any laptop that fit your requirements and install your distro of choice. (bunsenlabs for me).
linuxmemes
Top
This magazine is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.