I didn’t intentionally pick Ubuntu, my pc went shit and I needed to install some os and the only one I had available in a usb was Ubuntu noble.
Laptop specs: I think a 7th gen inter i5, 8 GBs of ram and (the issue) a 125 GB M2.Sata SSD
I’m not really going to play games on it, it’s one of those weird laptops that folds and can use a stylus.
So what would you suggest for something light in size and good with a stylus.
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Recently install Fedora 42 KDE on one of those weird laptops with a pen - everything just works, no tinkering.
Looking at your specs - I have almost the same config, except in place of SATA SSD I installed a NVMe SSD, if course the laptop needs to support that. KDE Plasma is superior in the touch support, although the screen keyboard is a little buggy at times. But the situation in the GNOME ecosystem is a bit worse for touch/pen devices. Good luckIf you’re seeking something simple to use where you may never need to open the terminal, I’d say ZorinOS(Lite).
You can also test out Debian if you don’t mind a bit of tinkering on the terminal. You’ll have to add yourself as a user to the sudoers list first thing but there are plenty of 2-second video tutorials on how.
For both distros, if you are searching for support, you’d search “on Ubuntu” and basically the same would apply.
Slackware!
“slacktoid” recommedning “slackware”
cut him some slack
When you really wanna pursue slack
slack pursuer
And enjoyer
favourite part is when slacktoid said it’s slacking time and slacked all over the place
I went from Ubuntu to MX Linux maybe 6 years ago, it is a fantastic distro, systemd optional, no flatpak/snap, xfce, simple, fast, always up to date for apps (.deb) and kernel.
I recently installed Fedora on my own 2-in-1 flippy laptop, and it works well. The screen rotates when I rotate the device, touchscreen works, and the stylus works as well.
Zorin maybe, idk
There’s no big difference between ubuntu, mint or debian. I am not sure why people try to sell it to you.
Look up if fedora silverblue supports your stylus. Create a live image and test it. If it works, install it. If not fedora, then opensuse aeon.
I just went through this. LMDE: Linux Mint Debian Edition. It’s Mint without Ubuntu and it’s pretty great.
I would go Debian for stability.
I like fedora since it updates a little more frequently than Debian, but it isn’t a full on rolling release. I used opensuse tumbleweed for a while and it broke on me several times.
I also used arch for a while, but I’m a dad to young children and I just don’t have the time to fuck around with my OS anymore. When I have time to work on my personal dev projects, I just want to drop into tmux, launch neovim and go. After some distro hopping I landed on Fedora with KDE for my desktop and gnome on my laptop. I also have an old netbook running antix with iceWM and an old thinkpad running fedora i3. The latter 2 machines are my hard focus machines.
Third for fedora. IMO the new “it just works” distro in place of Ubuntu - but a little more current than Debian.
Big 2nd for Fedora. Fedora isn’t Debian stable but isn’t exactly unstable either, and I think having fresher packages in your main repo is worth it.
3rd for Fedora. Stylus support is great on the latest stable KDE Plasma release. So, I would go for that.
If you want stability, you probably can’t beat Debian, and you should be fairly used to the backend by now. I suspect the stylus use is just going to be figuring out what package provided your current access to it.
Before you wipe the laptop, I would recommend finding a command to list all the installed packages, then at least you’ll have a reference to what was in place before. And if possible, maybe grab a backup of the /etc folder (or whatever might still be accessible) so you can reference the current configs on various packages to recreate whatever doesn’t work by default.
There are a number of lightweight desktops you can choose from. I personally like Mate, but maybe you can play around with others on the new system and purge the ones you don’t like. And while you’re swapping drives, check the memory slots, maybe you can drop another 8GB stick in there to give the whole system a boost.
maybe you can drop another 8GB stick in there to give the whole system a boost.
I already opened my laptop before, it’s one of those silly ones that have RAM BUILT INTO THE MOTHERBOARD, the stupidest design choice ever.
Yikes, that sucks… but at least Linux is still usable.
I have a Lenovo Flex with Aurora, which is a version of Fedora Atomic with “batteries installed” (nonfree libraries included) and a KDE desktop.
If you prefer Gnome that version is Bluefin.
The advantage of an atomic/immutable distro is that it’s effectively impossible to break, but you can’t tinker with the internals like you would a regular distro. And that’s still with fresh packages hot from the oven about once a week.
Fedora Workstation
It sounds like anything with KDE Plasma will make you happy. If the underlying OS has been fine with you, then try Kubuntu. If you want a non-Ubuntu system, try openSuse or Fedora.
Debian proper. You’ll have issues with any stylus on Linux. Not to say it won’t work but may need more effort to get working.
Debian. You’ll have the same (amazing) package manager without the extra ubuntu stuff. Find a desktop manager that supports the stylus (I assume Gnome and KDE Plasma both will support it).
Just make sure to enable non-free packages.
