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).

    • SpectacularDisaster@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      5 months ago

      I second this. I distro hopped for quite a while before I found Nobara and have stuck with it ever since. Based on Fedora, but with a bunch of fixes and QoL improvements. If you’re a gamer, I highly recommend Nobara. Created by the guy that made GE-Proton, so he def knows what he’s doing.

    • PotatoKat@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      5 months ago

      I tried nobara with my lappy and it just did not work with my GPU (gtx960m). No matter what i tried and installed it just wouldn’t work. I switched over to pop-os and it’s been working like a charm since. So YMMV with whatever os you try so don’t be afraid to switch it up to another if one isn’t doing it for you