I installed Linux Mint for the first time on my personal Laptop just a few months ago, and it ran so well that I didn’t want to mess with it to try out different distros.
But today, my company’s IT department announced that they have some spare old Laptops to give away (technically because they didn’t meet the specs for Windows 11, didn’t stop the IT department from giving them out with Windows 11 pre installed though)
So now I got a few devices to play around with!! They’re a Precision 7530 and a Latitude 7390 2-in-1!
I already got ZorinOS running on the little guy because apparently Zorin is nice for Touchscreen support. For the big guy I was initially thinking that I could try Bazzite, but the installer was like “Intel UHD Graphics aren’t really recommended” so I might try something else first. Any recommendations? I mainly just want to try as many different flavors of Linux as I can haha
Nice! If you like tweaking stuff you should try Arch or Endeavour OS. Another weird but cool choice is Void Linux.
OpenSUSE is very less recommended but I would suggest it
https://media.ccc.de/v/5012-the-first-encrypted-steam-deck-runs-opensuse#t=0
Also check out their AEON it is still in RC but worth looking out for. Meanwhile Fedora immutable can be used with Intel.
Void linux xfce. Just uses so little ram I love it.
Very reasonable in this economy!
You should try Fedora. It’s the one used by Linus.
so I might try something else first. Any recommendations?
try 'em all.
Edit: PS: distrowatch’s search is handy: e.g. https://distrowatch.com/search.php?defaultinit=Not+systemd [Edit: PS: maybe try {in approximate increasing ambitiousness] antix, devuan (or other respins of devuan, like expiron, peppermint, vendefoul, shebang, gnuinos), pclinuxos, salix, slackel, slackware, calculatelinux, artix, obarun, voidlinux, decibellinux, gentoo, crux (or kwort), sidelinux(?), milis(?),bedrock, guixSD, LFS. Or whatever… :) Have fun exploring.
vendefoul
https://vendefoul-wolf-linux.sourceforge.io/index_en.html / https://sourceforge.net/projects/vendefoul-wolf-linux/ back on my radar, with its IceWM/Xlibre/OpenRC release, after seeing the intro to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGf5OeL4YHE
- Already a fan of IceWM, often recommending it. It’s super light and super simple and familiar to windows users since the 90s (meaning it has a panel and “start menu”).
- XLibre, a fan, though only from afar so far, yet to try. Glorious to see X11 & Xorg(fork) getting life extension, rather than euthanized by the corporation.
- OpenRC is thorough. :) Solid choice.
All this saves [computer and headspace] resources for what you really want to do. :)
Well, Microsoft do the most of all for Linux.






