I installed Linux Mint for the first time on my personal Laptop just a few months ago, and it ran so well that I didn't want to mess with it to try out different distros.
But today, my company's IT department announced that they have some spare old Laptops to give away (technically because they didn't meet the specs for Windows 11, didn't stop the IT department from giving them out with Windows 11 pre installed though)
So now I got a few devices to play around with!! They're a Precision 7530 and a Latitude 7390 2-in-1!
I already got ZorinOS running on the little guy because apparently Zorin is nice for Touchscreen support. For the big guy I was initially thinking that I could try Bazzite, but the installer was like "Intel UHD Graphics aren't really recommended" so I might try something else first. Any recommendations? I mainly just want to try as many different flavors of Linux as I can haha
No, not really. If it's set up right, it pretty much just works. I use it on my work computer and never mess around with anything, just use it and sync packages every month or so.
Honestly a distro called Nobara was a huge let down for me compared to Arch. It was effortless to install and came out with cool tweaks, but in just 6 months of usage it randomly broke like 4 times, every time I was supposed to check their discord server to get info on what broke and how to fix it. From Plasma not loading and opening crash report window indefinitel, to bootloop with update screen, to experimental drivers being shipped causing hard GPU crashes. And this is recommended for newbies? I'd rather give preconfigured Arch (like CachyOS) to newbie than this.
Yikes on the Nobara experience. Will avoid. Not that I ever felt the need to explore or hop beyond Arch. Discord as the main communication channel? That screams immature project IMO.
I have the same experience as you with Arch. In probably a decade of use I've only reinstalled when buying new computers. It's just so solid. I use it both for work and at home. 👌