Stable daily driver distro for a laptop (Dell Latitude 5431)?

[krondar]

Hey guys. First post here
My old and trusty Thinkpad T580 died on me not so long ago, and I just grabbed a Latitude 5431 as a replacement. I was running Mint and Debian on the Lenovo, so initially I was thinking about running it on this Dell too. BUT - maybe you guys are using something else and will recommend a different repo?
To be perfectly honest, I've became lazy with the years passing by, so if it will run out of the box without too much of a hassle - the better One downside that I have noticed - I have an additional nvidia GPU in this Dell, so I will probably have a fight with nvidia optimus. I'm not afraid of tweaking and tinkering, and I'm using linux for many years, but when I look at distro watch, there is a plethora of distros and I don't have time to install them all
This laptop is my daily driver, so it must be stable - maybe not 'Debian Stable' or RHEL stable - but you know, I don't want to face crashes with every update
As for the tasks it will face - running VMs, writing some BASH/Terraform/Python scripts, encryption. typical unix admin / devops stuff.
Any input is welcome!

 

[kghose]

I use Ubuntu, whatever the LTS version is. Works perfectly with my ThinkPad.

 

[KGIII]

Pick your favorite desktop environment and then pick one of the official Ubuntu flavors, perhaps.

Debian and Mint are also fine choices.

 

[krondar]

Pick your favorite desktop environment and then pick one of the official Ubuntu flavors, perhaps.

Debian and Mint are also fine choices.

I prefer XFCE and i3. Or Mate. I was a 14.04/16.04 Xubuntu user, before the Mint, why not - It's April, so there should be a new LTS in about two weeks I think Thanks, @KGIII and @kghose - It's worth checking out! Do you know if snapd is a must in upcoming 24.04? Or I can disable it, and live with apt like in the old times?
Ubuntu for starters then.

 

[Brickwizard]

my old Inspiron currently runs Mint-LMDE, Patrrot and MX-linux

 

[krondar]

my old Inspiron currently runs Mint-LMDE, Patrrot and MX-linux

Thanks. I'm looking at MXs site, and it looks cool. Debian backports + flatpack natively ? Nice. I will check it out.
And I'm little surprised with Parrot! This is something that I didn't heard of, to be perfectly honest - I was using Kali from USB-C SSD when needed (not very often though). I will show this distro, to my team colleague tomorrow at the office, I recall that he was searching for something 'Kali - like', but a little more 'user friendly'.

 

[bob466]

Welcome to the Forum.

I have Linux Mint Cinnamon 21.1 running on my 12 year old Laptop...works well...Linux Lite is another Distro that's also good for a Laptop.

 

[wizardfromoz]

G'day @krondar and welcome to linux.org from another Aussie.

...but when I look at distro watch, there is a plethora of distros and I don't have time to install them all

Quite understandable

That being so, you might consider the Ventoy approach if you have a USB stick of 32 GB or 64 GB.

With that, you can download a number of those Distrowatch isos, drag and drop them to the Ventoy stick, and boot them live and see what they have to offer. In particular, you can see how they go with Wifi, nVidia drivers, printers, sound, graphics and so on, before choosing to install.

We have a tutorial on Ventoy here https://www.linux.org/threads/usb-linux-boot-ventoy.29944/

and one for using it from a Windows environment here, provided via @KGIII 's site LInux Tips

https://linux-tips.us/linux-installation-usb-media-using-windows/

I run over 80 Linux, so chances are anything you try will either be in my stable, or I will have used, and can give an opinion.

Cheers

Chris Turner
wizardfromoz

 

[bob466]

At the end of the day...you can try heaps of Distros...https://distrowatch.com/

If you don't like one choose another...you're not struck with it like you are with windoze...enjoy.

 

[Brickwizard]

And I'm little surprised with Parrot! This is something that I didn't heard of, to be perfectly honest - I was using Kali from USB-C SSD when needed (not very often though). I will show this distro, to my team colleague tomorrow at the office

You probably appreciate Kali is a pig to set up and get running, even for most Linux experienced users, with Parrot you have the choice of a nice everyday desktop home edition, and 3 other pentesting builds including a special in conjunction with hack the box, for those who want to not only learn Pen-testing but also get recognised certification.

 

[krondar]

Welcome to the Forum.

I have Linux Mint Cinnamon 21.1 running on my 12 year old Laptop...works well...Linux Lite is another Distro that's also good for a Laptop.

Thanks!

G'day @krondar and welcome to linux.org from another Aussie.



Quite understandable

That being so, you might consider the Ventoy approach if you have a USB stick of 32 GB or 64 GB.

With that, you can download a number of those Distrowatch isos, drag and drop them to the Ventoy stick, and boot them live and see what they have to offer. In particular, you can see how they go with Wifi, nVidia drivers, printers, sound, graphics and so on, before choosing to install.

We have a tutorial on Ventoy here https://www.linux.org/threads/usb-linux-boot-ventoy.29944/

and one for using it from a Windows environment here, provided via @KGIII 's site LInux Tips

https://linux-tips.us/linux-installation-usb-media-using-windows/

Cool info! I have a 64GB stick, so I will create one today Thank you!

I run over 80 Linux, so chances are anything you try will either be in my stable, or I will have used, and can give an opinion.

Cheers

Chris Turner
wizardfromoz

Do you have any rolling releases on this huge list that you can recommend ? Years ago I was running Arch for few months, and was very happy with it... until that ended with a disaster, after an update. The fault was mine though - too many testing repos, and too much confidence in them

At the end of the day...you can try heaps of Distros...https://distrowatch.com/

If you don't like one choose another...you're not struck with it like you are with windoze...enjoy.

Well, I started at distrowatch to see what is going on right now, and what did I missed running same distros over the years, and well, I came here for some recommendations
Right now, I'm stuck with Win11 with my employers laptop, and to be perfectly honest - I don't remember when was the last time, I was so frustrated with simple daily tasks and operations

You probably appreciate Kali is a pig to set up and get running, even for most Linux experienced users, with Parrot you have the choice of a nice everyday desktop home edition, and 3 other pentesting builds including a special in conjunction with hack the box, for those who want to not only learn Pen-testing but also get recognised certification.

Already downloaded home edition after your first post Looks really cool!

 

[etcetera]

Nothing wrong with Xubuntu. I customized the xfce. You can add virtual desktops, etc. etc.

seems more apps can be installed on the ubuntu branch of distros vs. redhat branch.

 

[wizardfromoz]

Do you have any rolling releases on this huge list that you can recommend ? Years ago I was running Arch for few months, and was very happy with it... until that ended with a disaster, after an update.

Regrets that I missed this one/took so long to respond.

I run 6 Manjaro (just with different Desktop Environments), of them, three (3) go back to 2017, 2018, and 2019, so very stable.

Two Endeavour, 2 ArcoLinux. Erik Dubois of Arcolinux looks after his clientele with explanatory videos on the Net. He is also quick to publish fixes and workarounds if something upstream from Arch goes wrong.

Garuda is my only BTRFS distro, but I changed it from fish (or zsh maybe) to Bash shell right at the beginning.

I am currently putting CachyOS through its paces, and may do a review on it in future. It has more good things I like about it than bad.

Wizard

 

[wizardfromoz]

BTW - All 80+ of my distros run Timeshift, and I use it before and after updates.

It comes installed on Manjaro nowadays, which is progressive, in my books.

 

[kc1di]

Hello @krondar,
Welcome to the Linux.org forum, enjoy the journey!
You've already gotten much good advise. So won't add any here. Nividia can be a pain for sure.

 

[krondar]

Hello @krondar,
Welcome to the Linux.org forum, enjoy the journey!
You've already gotten much good advise. So won't add any here. Nividia can be a pain for sure.

Thanks!

Few days ago I did manage to revive my old Thinkpad. But after starting this thread I felt an urge to do some changes and kicked out my Mint
I was thinking about Manjaro, that @wizardfromoz is using, but after some more research and info i gave a chance to OpenSUSE Tumbleweed. And I really like it!
It looks stable (but we will see this after few more days or weeks), it's on btrfs by default which I really like - the OBS integration + zypper and snapshots by default, another advantage. We will see!
And for my Latitude I will try new Ubuntu/Xubuntu, or Fedora + Parrot as a second. That is the plan. I'm waiting few days, for 24.04 or Fedora 40!

 

[kc1di]

Thanks!

Few days ago I did manage to revive my old Thinkpad. But after starting this thread I felt an urge to do some changes and kicked out my Mint
I was thinking about Manjaro, that @wizardfromoz is using, but after some more research and info i gave a chance to OpenSUSE Tumbleweed. And I really like it!
It looks stable (but we will see this after few more days or weeks), it's on btrfs by default which I really like - the OBS integration + zypper and snapshots by default, another advantage. We will see!
And for my Latitude I will try new Ubuntu/Xubuntu, or Fedora + Parrot as a second. That is the plan. I'm waiting few days, for 24.04 or Fedora 40!

I've used tumbleweed and it is the best of rolling releases I've seen. Never liked Manjaro or arch but that is a personal choice. Bye the way @wizardfromoz has a setup with 80 or so distros installed at anyone time so Manjaro is only one of them.
Cheers!