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
  • VirtualBriefcase@lemmy.fmhy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    9
    ·
    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’.

    • taxon@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      5
      ·
      1 year ago

      Pop!OS is great and ticks most of your boxes. Although, you’ll likely have to read into the battery optimization.

    • astraeus@programming.dev
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      1 year ago

      I’ve had a pretty good time with PopOS. GNOME is a bit rough at times (handling window sizes, font size changes, monitor layout updates) and I only had DisplayLink driver issues, which is probably trivial for most personal users nowadays.

    • evirac@vlemmy.net
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      1 year ago

      this really makes nixOs so good because I can just make others do the hard work of configing it for me and use it 😂

    • Steamymoomilk@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      1 year ago

      YESS!!! I just switched from vanillaOS to Nix and its been a learning curve but if you screw up you just go back a generation and rebuild. And I haven’t had any package manager BS like ubuntu.

    • DataDreadnought@lemmy.one
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      +1 for NixOS

      I’m a distro hopping junkie and NixOS has been keeping me on their OS for 8 months now. Highly recommend it.

    • Lanthanae@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      1 year ago

      Also running NixOS on my laptop. It took longer to configure than most distros since I had to learn more, but now that I understand the ecosystem better I feel like I can tinker with it so much faster that I’d be able to otherwise.

      Definitely a distro for more developer types who are fine figuring stuff out in their own, but if it works for you then it really works for you.

      • demesisx@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        I absolutely adore it. Today, I added a simple bash script to one of my config options that runs just before my nix flake update command that gets the sha256 hash for the latest release of the Cardano-node then writes that hash into my flake.nix file using sed. Then, when I do a flake update that little hash update (that I used to manually do) is also built in.

  • Justin@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    5
    ·
    1 year ago

    Do you really need to dual boot for office?

    I’m doing fine compatibility wise with the OnlyOffice flatpak. If you have a school account with Microsoft perhaps the PWA for Word, etc. will meet your needs.

    For a laptop distro with a good tiling DE out of the box you might enjoy Pop!_OS.

    • karlthemailman@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      File compatible is one thing, but I just can’t get over the difference in shortcut keys/workflow.

      Plus, creating and editing charts is still miles easier in excel.

  • BCsven@lemmy.ca
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    4
    ·
    1 year ago

    Add tlp package for battery life. And any major distro should be fine really

  • The Postminimalist@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    3
    ·
    1 year ago

    If you absolutely must use MS Office, and don’t want to use any of the alternatives like LibreOffice that use the exact same file types, why not just run MS Office with Bottles? If that’s the only reason for a dual boot, you probably don’t need to dual boot.

  • IncidentalIncidence@feddit.de
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    3
    ·
    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.

  • solidsnail@programming.dev
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    2
    ·
    1 year ago

    Some thinkpads have official support for Ubuntu by the manufacturer (lenovo), which means battery optimizations out of the box, amongst other things. Might be relevant for your laptop.

  • MashingBundle@lemmy.fmhy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    1 year ago

    In terms of optimization, Gentoo is the best you’re gonna get, but the word “convenience” makes me hesitant to recommend it to you.

    Arch is minimal, and has many resources/guides on battery optimization (Especially for ThinkPads), but if you’d like to learn something else, Void is the way to go.

    If you’re looking for a tiling WM, I can wholeheartedly recommend bspwm. Lots of control and customization, but pretty easy to configure when you understand it. Just know, it might be a hard change going from stacking to tiling.

  • cognitive@lemmy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    2
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    1 year ago

    Fedora and Debian are good choices. I’ve been using Fedora for more than 7 years and it’s still going. Very stable like Debian yet up-to-date packages.

  • marmalade@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    Debian is solid. You probably don’t want to have to fuck around on a laptop that you’re using primarily for getting shit done. Flatpaks can handle most of the extra shit you’d want to use. That said, I used to be an Arch guy for years too, and if you’re comfortable with it, it’s fine to use, but you’ll run into the same kind of annoyances. Not true breakage usually, but eventually I got tired of having new surprise bugs in shit that was working fine before.

    Also I can’t be sure, but I suspect Wayland is probably better on energy draw since it should be more efficient. Maybe try sway for your twm?

    • IncidentalIncidence@feddit.de
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      1 year ago

      Not true breakage usually, but eventually I got tired of having new surprise bugs in shit that was working fine before.

      yep, considering switching to nixos for this reason.

  • bahmanm@lemmy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    1 year ago

    OpenSUSE Tumbleweed FTW. I’ve got an old T530 (2012) who’s been happily on Tumbleweed since 2019.

    Nowadays I use vanilla Gnome but had a very good experience with Awesome on the same setup. You may want to check the default Sway setup too.