I’ve been quite happy with my Steam Deck - both as a gaming console and as a secondary computer when it’s docked, but for newer titles I picked up a Rog Zephyrus M16 (2023) last year.

Now that Windows is going off the deep end with AI, I’m looking to dual boot/trial Linux on this laptop with the goal to give Microsoft the boot.

It’s a beefy laptop:

  • 13th Gen i9-13900
  • 32GB Memory
  • NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070
  • 1TB NVMe (Windows)
  • 2TB NVMe (Linux)

I added the second drive to avoid any issues with dual-booting with Grub/Windows Bootloader - instead making the Linux device the primary boot device and spamming Esc if I want to change to the Windows drive.

For distributions, I’m most familiar with Debian/Ubuntu - it’s the daily driver for my work laptop, and the vast majority of my home lab VMs are Ubuntu. With the Steam Deck, I started to get more into Arch with the Steam Deck, and now it’s the OS of choice for my HTPCs for simple streaming/Plex media player. I’ve also messed around with ZorinOS (basically a fancy skinned Ubuntu).

I need some advice on what to throw on this laptop - and some suggestions on how to squeeze the best performance out of this (Optimus vs. Proprietary NVIDIA vs. Open source drivers).

  • mox@lemmy.sdf.org
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    5 months ago

    I’d suggest Mint. It’s Ubuntu minus Ubuntu-specific annoyances, so it’s right in your zone of familiarity.

    Also, the Mint maintainers have a sound exit strategy (Linux Mint Debian Edition) in case Ubuntu ever goes too far off the rails.