Try endeavoros and use flatpaks. That’s basically manjaro with the following differences:

• current with the aur
• doesn’t have a built in gui software installer
• no modifications-it’s basically just arch with the things you would have probably installed

I’ve been a dual / triple / god knows how many OS booted since the 90’s.

Windows has gotten into bad habits lately - it’s not staying in its lane. Meaning it hasn’t respected other boot partitions for a long time, and recently there seems to be a lot of people having problems with windows nuking their linux installs.

My strong recommendation is to buy a second hard drive if you dual boot. Then windows can be “over there” - I’ve never had a problem dedicating ssds to the OS. My second recommendation is to do this now, why wait until you’re forced into something? You’ve got a year to learn Linux and get comfortable with it.

Synology NAS. I really love that thing. I use their synology drive software to backup the Linux home folder, as well as windows PCs, iPads, iPhones etc. I use their photos mobile software to automatically backup phone photos and videos. I also synchronize a few select folders between PCs so certain in-use files are always up to date. I set the NAS to keep 30 old versions of every file. This works great for my college kids - dad has a copy of everything in case they nuke a paper or something (which has happened).

I stopped cloning drives long ago. Now I just reinstall the os and packages. With Linux, this is honestly faster than deploying a backup - a single pacman command installs everything I want. Then I just log into things as I open them. Ya I might have to futz around with some settings or redownload some big games on steam - but the eye candy and games can wait - I can be productive pretty quickly after an install.

I DO use btrfs with automatic snapshots (snapper and btrfs assistant). This saves me from myself when I bork an update (which I’ve done more than once). If I make a mistake, I just rollback a snapshot, and try again without my stupid mistakes. This has saved my install 3 or 4 times now.

Lastly, I sneaker net an external hard drive to my office. On it is a manual backup of the NAS. I do this once per month. This protects from catastrophic failures like my house burning down. I might lose a month or so of pictures in the worst case scenario, but I still have my 25+ years of pictures of my kids, wedding videos, etc.

In the end, the only thing that really matters is not losing my lifetime of family pictures and the good memories they provoke.

Little bit of a thread hijack. But maaaaaybe a recommendation for OP as well.

I’ve never tried a tiling wm before. What does it do that’s so much better than say, a gnome extension? For example, I’m running a gnome extension called grid and I LOVE it. I can tell it to break my screen up into rows and columns with a simple 5X8 or 4X4 command. Then set as many hot keys as I want to move things around and scale the size. It auto tiles and does intelligent window things. Basically I spend all my time with my entire screen tiled with random stuff, but I can move it around easily, not have to write scripts, and still have all the gnome interface stuff as well. What am I missing? If not much, maybe OP, you’re just looking for something like the extension I’m using?

For me I find endeavoros to be the goat. I realized that when I install arch and then the “essentials” for me - I basically recreated what endeavor does. Except endeavor does it with like three clicks on the installer. So now I just install endeavor. Gnome, nvidia drivers, pacdiff and meld, text editor, yay, you get the idea…. No bloat, no bs, quick install with exactly what I would do manually with arch.

I also know this take is controversial-but I like flatpaks as well. Sometimes you gotta mess with flatseal, and sometimes the AUR package is clearly superior. But they usually get the job done well.

It’s nearly impossible to break arch if you use the AUR as little as possible AND read the arch homepage for manual steps BEFORE doing an upgrade.

I’ve seen this one recommended in the past. I think it’s great for beginners yet still full of useful information.

https://linuxjourney.com/

I have secure boot and tpm disabled on my rig. I’ve been called a fool for this. But I don’t understand how it works, and this is an example.

If I was smart enough to code a new OS or a new boot loader (which I’m not) - how does it become different than a virus? Who approves my code is “safe” to run?

Clearly in this case Microsoft said “those versions of grub are not safe.” So what does that mean? I’m not allowed to run them now because Microsoft decided? That’s all it takes? The whole “what’s safe to run” thing baffles me.

Am I supposed to believe that a govt agency like the nsa could NEVER put malicious backdoors into Microsoft’s products, that Microsoft would NEVER allow that to happen, and that code would NEVER be flagged as safe?

I get it…. It helps with obvious viruses and whatnot. But in my experience, all secure boot has ever done for me is cause problems and lock me out of my computer.

I just tried installing this patch tonight on my windows drive - not because I use windows, just to… you know… keep it updated and secure I guess.

It literally won’t even install. It just fails out every time. Whatever. Microsoft releases so many bad patches lately. WTH are they even doing over there? Windows used to be king and they’ve been screwing it up since 8 came out.

I never “switched” in the sense that yesterday I was windows and today I am linux.

It just happened. I’ve always had some distro or other running on another drive or partition. This includes things like os2 warp that weren’t linux.

But about 4 or so years ago, my games were playable easily on steam, I was able to find Linux packages for work stuff (like teams), and things just generally behaved with no hassle (up until then things worked but they came with hassles).

Meanwhile, windows became a hassle. Microsoft borked my windows install because it forced their crappy store onto a game (literally trashed my installation by clicking “install” - PSO2), every time I turned the pc on I was faced with an update and restart, some of those updates failed (one of them still doesn’t work) - how does an OS update become so poor quality - it’s an OS update, and general enshitification such as ads, nags, and crappy OS design with the clicks…

I just found myself not wanting to use windows, and wanting to use Linux. It happened over time. The last time I logged into windows was three or four months ago just to update the install and keep it fresh. It was a painful 1/2 hour and I’m dreading going back.

EndeavorOS Gnome, light use of the AUR, heavy flatpak use.

1. there are things called gnome extensions that change things up.
2. it’s just that a lot of laptops are potatoes with wierd hardware and drivers aren’t always available. If you have a popular laptop you’ll have better luck. Can’t predict how it’ll go other than goggling your laptop and seeing if you can find a post saying what worked and didn’t. Can’t hurt to try either way…
3. yes. There are plenty with installed apps. Hard to believe you didn’t find any music or video players. Either way - doesn’t matter. Install VLC and it plays everything.
4. most Linux distributions will let you delete Linux itself if you’re so inclined. My vote is to just leave the default programs that install with the distro unless you’re in need of an absolute bare bones system/size (which it doesn’t sound like you are)
5. root is a user, nothing more. If you don’t know why you’re using root, then don’t. Based on your questions, I’d say you can do everything you need as a normal user with sudo privileges.
6. to be honest I’ve never actually done this. I believe you can even install multiples at once and switch between them. Most distros come with a choice of DE during install. Check them out in a vm and just install the one you want. If you’re hell bent on swapping on an existing install, best read a guide on how to do it for your distro.
7. this isn’t exactly right, but docker is kind of like virtual machines. Not quite full on VMs, but rather they are called containers. You can download a docker image, and fire up say, a pihole server. Or in my case, I run a preconfigured ubiquity WiFi controller. Don’t worry about these for now - it’s a later thing. Wayland is replacing X. Some distros use it, some don’t. X is very old - it’s stable and doesn’t get updates and just works. Until it doesn’t because it’s old and doesn’t get updates. Enter Wayland. New things of that complexity are hard to make so there’s bugs with it. Works for some people, not for others. Go watch some YouTube videos on the topic - it’s interesting.

Good luck!

Single person’s data point:

I’ve had numerous gpus-I’ve been all over the map for years. Sometimes amd sucks, sometimes nvidia sucks. Right now, I’m rocking a 4090 and it’s working better in endeavoros than I’ve ever seen nvidia work in linux. (I’ve always had problems with nvidia cards screen tearing, stuttering, and general installation issues).

But honestly, those complaints have been resolved at least with my distro. I think both brands are in a good spot right now. I think you’re safe to buy whatever floats your boat.

IMO

Agreed there were native linux games written for linux, but remind me because I forgot - I believe Doom had been ported or something. Because I remember running it both at home in linux and I remember people running it in the computer labs off the Unix mainframe.

I went to college in 93, and they ran a Unix mainframe with thin clients connected to it in the computer labs.

I didn’t really know much about any computers then, but I learned quick and had nerdy friends teach me a lot. Home computers ran DOS, but this fancy thing called Linux had entered the scene and nerds played with it.

I remember it being a bear. My comp sci roommate did most of the work, but he’d dole out mini projects to me to help him out. You had to edit text files with your exact hardware parameters or else it wouldn’t work. Like resolutions, refresh rates, IRQs, mouse shit, printer shit - it was maddening. And then you’d compile that all for hours. And it always failed. Many hardware things just weren’t ever going to work.

Eventually we got most things working and it was cool as beans. But it took weeks - seriously. We were able to act as a thin client to the mainframe and run programs right from our apartment instead of hauling ourselves to the computer lab. Interestingly, on Linux, that was the first time I had ever gotten a modem and a mouse working together. It was either/or before that.

It was both simultaneously horrific and fantastic at the same time. By the time windows 95 rolled out, the Unix mainframe seemed old and archaic. All the cool kids were playing Warcraft 2 and duke nukem 3D.

Frostpunk - seems fun. Played a few hours.

Armored core 6 - um I died like 4 times in the tutorial. I was shamed and put it down.

But ya - it’s been Elden ring pretty much 90% of the time.

I’ve actually had someone thumb their nose at linux because of that name. “You mean the hat OS? The one those weird guys use? No thanks.” I’m paraphrasing but ya, that association is there for some people.

Excellent, that makes sense. I’ll try that command tonight at home, see what it does, and report back. I kind of want to know what it’s doing just because I’m curious.

I say a relay, but I agree with you - I couldn’t imagine a relay being used. But whatever it is on my desktop, it sounds just like a traditional ice cube relay clicking - and it’s quite loud. But I have no idea what it is. I’m not sure I’ve ever had a computer that made that noise before. My laptop makes no such noise obviously.

I did some more digging on this last night. I’m more confused now than I was before, and I don’t know what it’s doing.

The arch wiki defines three states, suspend to ram (sleep), suspend to disk(hibernate), and a hybrid suspend(presumably what my steam deck does).

First there is the “turn off the display” behavior. Doing anything brings the monitor back alive and I’m presented with the Lock Screen.

Second is what I believe to be sleep. This happens when I select “suspend” from the menu or leave it alone for a very long time. This mode doesn’t happen soon (maybe at all) if the computer is doing stuff. It appears to be in a lower power state-but I can’t say why I think that (maybe it’s just because the fans aren’t running? I dunno). Wiggling the mouse or doing anything wakes it back up.

Third is another state. It’s just like the above state, except it will not wake up with mouse movement, or clicking keys on a Bluetooth keyboard. I must push a key on the keyboard, the power button, or open the lid. It’s weird because it responds to things other than the power button.

Interestingly, my desktop behaves exactly the same way. But what’s interesting on the desktop is that I can hear a power relay clicking on from this third state. It’s distinctly different than the 2nd state - exhibiting power cutoff, but still responding to the keyboard.

Neither computer enters any other state even after days of being left alone.

So I dunno. Are modes 2 and 3 like two versions of sleep, and hibernate never activates? Or is state three hibernation but it responds to things it shouldn’t?

I have no idea. But now that I’ve played with it some more - I don’t want to say hibernate is working because I don’t know what it’s doing. All I know is that it has the above three behaviors which are consistent with my desktop machine.

HA! True. Remember when Google was always right and always exactly what you were looking for?

Pepperidge Farms remembers.

It was a couple hours. Just like on my desktop, wiggling the mouse wakes it from sleep, but not so in whatever that second state is when it’s left for longer. It definitely was something other than sleep. What it was - I’ll let you guys decide. Whether it behaves long term with fans in a laptop bag, that I don’t know - I haven’t had enough run time with it.

I’m just sharing a positive experience. If I see it misbehave I’ll be sure to update the thread with reality. But so far, it really is behaving much better than I expected.

I left I alone, it went off. I came back and wiggled the mouse, nothing happened. I pressed the enter key snd it came back to life -same behavior as my desktop.

Did it again, this time I tried closing the lid and opening it - it sprung to life when the lid opened.

You’re right - not the most thorough tests, but that’s what I did/saw.