I just installed EndeavorOS on an HP Spectre360 that’s roughly 2 years old. I am honestly surprised at how easy it went. If you google it, you’ll get a lot of “lol good luck installing linux on that” type posts - so I was ready for a battle.
Turned off secure boot and tpm. Booted off a usb stick. Live environment, check. Start installer and wipe drive. Few minutes later I’m in. Ok let’s find out what’s not working…
WiFi check. Bluetooth check. Sound check (although a little quiet). Keyboard check. Screen resolution check. Hibernates correctly? Check. WTF I can’t believe this all works out the box. The touchscreen? Check. The stylus pen check. Flipping the screen over to a tablet check. Jesus H.
Ok, everything just works. Huh. Who’d have thunk?
Install programs, log into accounts, jeez this laptop is snappier than on windows. Make things pretty for my wife and install some fun games and stuff.
Finished. Ez. Why did I wait so long? Google was wrong - it was cake.
Yes, if you don’t have a computer that literally came out this year, don’t have 2 separate graphics cards and don’t need HDR, or specific Windows-only software, Linux generally just works.
Hopefully HDR can get crossed off that list soon
Hdr in games is the last frontier from me totally dumping windows.
It looks like it works in KDE 6, albeit a bit janky. Might be worth seeing if it works now, and if not come back in a year or so. https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/HDR_monitor_support
Yeah I’m using 6, it works well for desktop but not in most games yet
You should be able to get most games to work with some extra tinkering.
Got Armored Core running in HDR with this.
Also, I found it was enough to run the just the game in gamescope, no need to run the entirety of steam in a gamescope window. Just set the launch options for the game you want to enable HDR on.
Yeah I can get HDR to enable w game scope but it looks way off in stuff I’ve tested like elden ring or Tekken 8. Gets kinda blown out looking.
There’s plenty of laptops with 2 separate graphics cards (mine included) and I’d say it’s the ideal experience if you need an NVIDIA card. Everything related to your system is done in the integrated Intel/AMD GPU (which works perfectly) and games and GPU intensive work (like CUDA) gets done in the NVIDIA one.
“Generally” is the key word. I’m a linux user since slackware on diskettes. My daily driver is Mint, because lazy. I have 2 VMs with kali and kinoite.
A couple of days ago a kernel update borked my install. A problem with the Ryzen graphics driver.
For me it was trivial. Boot into the previous kernel, timeshift roll back, and back in business, but I can see how a newbie woul go into panic.
A satisfied “customer” will recommend you to a friend. A pissed off one will tell 10.
My issue is family control. I haven’t found a way to get Microsoft family type control yet on Linux, since my sibling uses my computer. The syncing time allowed across devices is the hard part.
Create separate user?
But I can’t remotely set their allowable usage time and access list. Maybe dual booting would work though.
What is the issue with laptops this year? I was planning to upgrade.
If you follow general newbie advice and install Mint, the kernel is older than your laptop and may not support everything.
Fedora, EndeavorOS or Manjaro would be a better choice then.
I use endeavour os so fine I guess.
You can always install a newer kernel, or move to something Fedora or Arch based. My son has ZorinOS on 6.8
I know. But I wouldn’t consider that “just works”.
It would mean installing the most popular beginner distro, finding out it doesn’t work, and then first having to google what is even a kernel…
True. PopOS has pretty current kernels, and is very beginner friendly. What I mean is that there are options, regardless of hardware (unless your on an m3 Crapple chip).
I just did that with hdr on alderlake n95. Easy as hell with NixOS.