Linux Mint is the common suggestion and a solid option.
I tried a lot of distros myself and I’m 10 months into switching to Linux. My personal suggestion would be OpenSUSE Tumbleweed.
You can also have a look at suggestions here: https://distrochooser.de/
For keyboards, 60% layouts can be bought prebuilt. If you want something smaller than that then you’re likely looking at DIY build territory or maybe a one handed gaming keyboard.
For a mouse, you can get really tiny portable mice that are low weight. If you want something that doesn’t tie you down to finding desk space, then you can look at trackball mice (fine for strategy games, not great for FPS).
A YouTuber explained it as follows:
On Linux, Anti cheat runs on the user level. The cheaters are on Windows and spoof their OS as Linux, so they can run anti cheat on the user level, not flag as suspicious and then run kernel level cheat software.
I have no technical knowledge myself, have no idea of this is true and will not be able to answer questions about this.
We have Linux workstations at work…and these can only be used to access a remote desktop of a Windows 10 virtual machine. 👍
My wife’s HP laptop does this as well (she is running Windows). A previous laptop did this and a BIOS update fixed it. For most laptops the official response from manufacturers seems to be: eat shit.
I love Linux. I’ve moved both my PC and laptop to Linux this year and gotten rid of Windows completely and I’m loving it. OpenSUSE Tumbleweed doesn’t get enough love.
That being said… Linux is not easy guys. This guy is full of shit. But I would still recommend trying it if you’re an enthusiast with this sort of inclination.
PEGI 18 for gambling imagery 😐
“People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware.”
The only way to make sure Linux works like that is to have a closed hardware environment. But it has to play nicely with other hardware and services (e.g. printers, webcams, etc + office documents, etc). It has taken a very long time for MacOS to get to this point, but people put up with Mac compromises because enough things worked smoothly.
I’ve just commented about this in another thread…but I’m pretty convinced that Linux is not close to being ready for normies.
I have an anti-glare LCD version. My brother has a glossy OLED version. I would recommend going for the glossy version and using an anti-glare screen protector if you feel the need. Then you’ve got the option for either.
The Steam Deck + OLED revision are pretty recent and nowhere near the age of a normal console cycle. The OLED revision was a pretty big upgrade and <1 year old. The internet is already desperate for a Deck 2? Valve could print money by doing what phone manufacturers do with miniscule yearly upgrades and forever creeping price. People would fall over themselves to avoid FOMO for the newest console. I’m really glad Valve is doing better than that.
It’s great that the devs are doing this and great that people enjoy this…but WTF did they turn this game into? When they dropped an item that turns you into a Guacamelee chicken, I felt like they were straying too far from their own game’s identity. I still play the game, but I’ve got it locked to just before the patch with “Everyone’s here”.
I stopped trying to dual boot entirely with all the problems it caused me. I’m surprised the community universally seems to recommend dual booting as an easy to setup option for beginners.
Sorry for the loss OP.
Maybe not what you want to hear right now, but I’m really glad Steam cloud minimises the impact of a loss. When I had a Nintendo Switch I was terrified of losing hundreds of hours of Dead Cells or Enter the Gungeon progress. Losing a Deck is obviously a financial loss (and the emotional attachment of someone special giving you yours), but at least there isn’t insult to add to the injury the way Nintendo would do.
You’ve basically described my situation exactly. I built a PC 6 months ago for Linux. I distro-hopped for a good while and settled on OpenSUSE Tumbleweed. Now I’ve put OpenSUSE on my laptop too. I would highly recommend it.
I went for an AMD GPU and have never had any problems with it. Linux is not as painless as Lemmy would have you believe though. Be prepared to learn some hard lessons and keep your data physically disconnected from the PC while you do it.
You’ve asked about WiFi drivers further down…on my PC, the only distros that had the correct WiFi drivers out of the box were EndeavourOS and ZorinOS. The rest all needed wired LAN to get them going.
I know it has the ability to, but I don’t recommend it. I’ve recently commented on this so I’ll paste it here:
DO NOT dual boot as a beginner. I did this when I started and would screw up something with the bootloader and be unable to boot one of the OSs (data can still be copied off, but installed app data isn’t easily recovered). Being a noob at the time, I even accidentally wiped the wrong drive during a distro hop.
For a beginner I would recommend you remove your Windows SSD and keep it safe in a drawer. Or clone the drive first. Then you can mess around all you want while keeping your original SSD safe.if the data and OS/app installs are valuable then don’t fuck around learning a new system with the drive in situ. Certainly don’t try to learn to partition and dual boot off the same drive. The noob risk is just too high.
In order to use dual boot, one must be able to set up dual boot. This guide is addressed towards people who have never used Linux.
If you’re lucky enough to have more than one device, then I’d just say use Linux on your secondary device. I used my Steam Deck as my PC for a month before I made the change.
I fully support people playing around and possibly soft-breaking their things just for the heck of it.
Space cadet pinball can be installed on any system you have and is still a blast to play.
That city is one of many in civilisation 6.