I want to know your opinions on the best distro that is convenient for laptops. Main reason is I want to really optimize hardware performance and more specifically battery life for my University classes. I also want to try a tiling manager as they seem perfect for laptops.

Things of note:

  • Convenience/Performance is key
  • My laptop is a Thinkpad E15 w/ 16 gb ram
  • On my home desktop I run Archlinux w/ Open box & no DE (I’ve been using Arch for years but haven’t used another distro since Ubuntu in highschool)
  • I will likely dual boot with Windows 10 for Office
  • I want to run a tiling manager
  • I don’t video game
  • I wont be using a mouse
  • 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
  • demesisx@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    🧌 NixOS 🧌

    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.

  • VirtualBriefcase@lemmy.fmhy.ml
    1·
    1 year ago

    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’.

  • IncidentalIncidence@feddit.de
    0·
    1 year ago

    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.

  • slimsalm@programming.dev
    0·
    1 year ago

    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.