u/Bill_Lumberg_TPS

I did a soft switch from windows a few months ago by installing Linux on my desktop pc, while keeping my windows laptop as a backup. I was looking for a relatively smooth and stable experience with access to plenty of programs that can be installed and used in short order (which has not been an issue in any of the distros that I have tried). Here is a beginner's review of about the different distros that I have tried over the last few months ranked in reverse order.

7. Kubuntu

KDE based Ubuntu? I expected this to be a KDE version of Mint (plus snaps of course). For me, this distro was anything but rock-solid. Kept dropping wifi connectivity, programs would crash randomly, and it was by far the buggiest implementation of KDE that I tried. I uninstalled after a day. Kubuntu is exactly what I did not want in a distro, because not only did it not perform well out of the box, it felt like the kind of distro where it would be aggravating as a daily driver, even though it is supposed to be beginner-friendly. I expected a lower relative effort than Debian/Fedora/Tumbleweed and ended up having to tweak a lot of minor settings to get it working well, and then issues kept popping up as I settled into my daily workflow.

6. OpenSUSE Tumbleweed

I had issues getting the wifi to connect during installation, which I ultimately solved. I wasted enough time setting up the wifi (research and implementing a fix) that I was knackered by the time I was ready to use the OS. It was very responsive, however, driver issues, menu glitches, and other fixable things all felt like they would take a little more effort than I was willing to give to get the OS running well. I'm sure it's a fine OS, it just didn't play well with my hardware and had enough glitches that I uninstalled fairly quickly.

5. GNOME - based distros

Plenty of them worked fine (Ubuntu, Debian Gnome, Fedora workstation) but I don't like the GNOME environment. The distros were fine otherwise.

4. Pop! OS

This distro probably should be lower because I think COSMIC still needs a little work. This felt like the OS that has the most potential because of the desktop. however, I had minor issues with tiling and certain applications crashing and they were enough to keep me away from Pop!OS as a daily driver. Maybe in the future when it's a bit more polished I'll look into it again.

I was very intrigued by the window tiling, and really want a highly-customizable or rules-based implementation (it may be included already but there were enough minor glitches that I didn't want to waste time throwing new wheels on a car that needed an oil change and a suspension refresh). I would love to be able to set per-desktop tiling rules with custom sizing and program placement (i.e. first three programs open in a specific configuration, and other tiles spill over to other desktops that I assign based on my pre-designed layout). Hopefully COSMIC gets better over time.

3. Debian

Overall, I liked this operating system and it performed well, installation was a little more involved than the higher-ranking systems, but once running, I didn't really have any issues. I think being a little behind in the release cycle, and somewhat sluggish performance is what turned me off of Debian in the long run

2b. Fedora KDE

I tried Fedora twice, the first time I didn't enable third party repositories, and it was more difficult to use. I'm not judging Fedora on that attempt.

Positives

1. Stable and fast (but doesn't launch apps as quickly as tuxedo for me)
2. tons of available apps and the newest version of KDE plasma, which was nice, but also a drawback when seeking to customize (because I accidentally downloaded themes that were no longer compatible)
3. For whatever reason, using terminal in Fedora makes more sense to me. I did not have to look things up as much.
4. The 'leading edge' advantage

Negatives

1. program launch speed is inconsistent.
2. I can't put my finger on it, but it always felt like Fedora was missing something that would make it easier to use compared to some other distros. If I did have an issue, the fixes were a little less intuitive than Mint or Tuxedo.
3. I had occasional boot issues after I partitioned my hard drive and installed another OS alongside Fedora.

2. Linux Mint

Positives

1. I love the layout of the cinnamon desktop the best. Especially the settings and applications menus
2. Almost everything just works out of the box
3. Mint does a great job of guiding the user through the experience and those tips are able to be toggled once you get the hang of things.
4. Burn my windows is sick and I miss it, so satisfying

Negatives

1. Not as many desktop apps available out of the box (mainly the proton desktop apps). This probably isn't an issue for most users, but I prefer desktop apps when I am doing a heavy workflow so that my browser tabs don't get jumbled. I used Vivaldi as a solution--web panels--but I had some minor issues with Vivaldi on Mint.
2. X11 is a bit annoying. My computer starts to chug a little if I turn the refresh rate up (barely noticeable but it's a review and I'm splitting hairs). Also, some windows/apps are blurry compared to KDE (looking at you vivaldi).
3. The file manager, Nemo, is not as nice as Dolphin.

1. Tuxedo OS

Everything works well, and this OS has been the fastest for me.

Positives

1. Ease of use - nearly perfect, a lot of available applications, launches applications faster than most other distros for my hardware.
2. Plasma desktop (see Mint review) is great for the most part. I wish I could combine Plasma and Cinnamon.
3. Tuxedo's Control Center is really nice, and seems like it would work particularly well on laptops. Of course, that's probably the point given Tuxedo's business model.

Negatives

1. The only negative that I can think of is that the settings menu and discover have crashed a few times--usually when customizing or downloading the system's appearance (icons, fonts, global themes, colors, etc.). Also, I don't like KDE's settings menu as much as cinnamon's, but it's not a big deal and I'm sure that I could customize it more. It's annoying but now that I have the desktop customized as I please, I don't really care.

Overall, I love Tuxedo OS. I downloaded it and ran a live ISO after some issues with Tumbleweed. Everything worked well. I got cold feet and went back to mint. I used mint for about fifteen minutes after reinstalling, stopped setting things up, and headed back to Tuxedo. Tuxedo (and at times Fedora) were the only two distros that made me consider permanently switching away from Mint.

Please send any suggestions for other OS's--if there are any--that do what TuxedoOS does for me, but better. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

Hello. I am a relatively new linux user. I have really been enjoying mint on my desktop. In fact, I have enjoyed mint so much that I want to run linux on my laptop as well. I currently have a snapdragon laptop and I won't be able to use linux on that PC so I plan on selling it and buying something else.

Are there any laptop brands to avoid on linux? Are there any brands that do not work well with mint specifically? Should I just stick with windows on my laptop?