I’m on the market to buy a new laptop, and Lemmy has successfully coaxed and goaded me to give Linux a serious try.

I’ve never used *nix as my personal OS.

Which hardware/laptop do you recommend? And which OS to pair it with for a Linux newbie?

I’m a software engineer, and quit my job to pursue an MSc in AI. So my uses will be:

  • programming
  • study
  • browsing lemmy
  • gaming
  • cm0002@lemmy.world
    942·
    10 months ago

    The hardware doesn’t matter too much these days

    WiFi, Bluetooth and Nvidia graphics have entered the chat

    • agelord@lemmy.world
      10·
      10 months ago

      The proprietary Nvidia graphics drivers works pretty well in most distros. Just go to your distro’s driver manager and enable the proprietary driver.

      • cyberfae@lemmy.worldEnglish
        11·
        10 months ago

        Nvidia cards can still be tricky, especially on optimus laptops. It’s not nearly as problematic as it used to be, but I still run into occasional issues with it. If I ever buy a new computer for gaming, I’m going to go with AMD.

        • havokdj@lemmy.world
          2·
          10 months ago

          Linux gaming on laptops in GENERAL can still be tricky

          Source: have both optimus and advantage laptops.

          AMD mobile graphics tend to sometimes have less hiccups, but for the most part you are still going to have to tell the program to use the dGPU.

          • cyberfae@lemmy.worldEnglish
            2·
            10 months ago

            I don’t mind telling the game to use a dedicated graphics card and I don’t mind tinkering in general, but I want the graphics driver to work as expected. For example my Nvidia optimus setup doesn’t always play nice with the external monitor and I’m currently dealing an issue where an nvidia specific setting is needed to get some games working, but that same setting causes issues in other games.

        • ddh@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
          2·
          10 months ago

          I did, and I’d do it again next time. You can eventually convince NVIDIA cards to go, but relatively, AMD just works.

    • averyfalken@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      5·
      10 months ago

      WiFi and Bluetooth yeah, if you run Linux mint setting up the proprietary drivers us literally like 2 buttons in the drivers menu