I have a similar Mini PC as an HTPC. I have Debian 13 installed as the base OS. For something like this I want a rock solid stable base with long support. Doesnt get much better than Debian in that regard. KODI, Chromium, Firefox, and Moonlight installed through Flatpak. Works great.
I too was surprise to read the actual number being so low considering how much it's talked about. I never really saw the appeal as steam is pretty easy to get set up and running on any mainstream Linux distro with little fuss, but I recognize it was set up for newbies who want an gaming ready experience. It's an interesting project regardless.
Yes this. Been using mine for a few years now and it's proven to be dependable. It's comfortable to use and I love the side scrolling wheel (I work with loooong spreadsheets often).
I started my Linux journey with Ubuntu, then switched to Linux Mint for a while and dabbled with Manjaro for a hot minute, and ultimately found my home on Fedora Workstation for the past several years. Once set up with rpmfusion and 3rd party codecs it's a very solid and reliable distribution. The new atomic projects (and derivatives) look very interesting too.
You should be in a good place with a laptop with integrated intel/amd graphics, and an Intel wifi card. Graphics and wifi are the most common pain points when it comes to linux so you can narrow down and research from there. I've had good luck with Dell and Lenovo. Currently have a Lenovo yoga with touchscreen and everything except fingerprint scanner works out of the box.
There are some linux friendly OEMs too like framework, tuxedo, and ststem76 that are worth taking a look.
Curious, why the constant switching? You haven't addressed what you're specifically looking for or how many of the other distros failed to meet your needs. Or is it just for fun and to try new things (a perfectly valid reason)?
For gaming you want something with recent kernel and packages as the space is evolving rapidly. I'd say check out Silverblue or Bazzite as they seem interesting well maintained projects on a solid foundation. But I may be biased, as a happy fedora user. I'd avoid anything too niche but that's just me.
Whoa this is cool, but I'm finding the voice to text to be quite buggy. Sometimes it works and other times all I get a bunch of emojis and weird symbols??
I learned early on you can't rely on them for factual information for reasons you stated.
I use them for creative writing tasks (drafting up emails, letters, etc), generating ideas, for creating excel formulas, basic python, vba functions, etc.
I assume you're talking about the one found in samsung phones. It's basically like a launcher with shortcuts to apps you can access from any screen without having to go back to home or the app tray. Personally I found it to be too much also, not very customizable and inefficient use of space with only a few apps showing up there. It can be disabled in settings.
I like the idea though. I use the one handed+ module in goodlock where I can set another more compact app launcher when I diagonally swipe down from anywhere along the right edge screen. I have other shortcuts set to other gestures. It's handy for multitasking.
A bunch of gas stations and car washes. Car culture in my area is out of control. Feels like half the city's land area is dedicated for parking...
GNOME. It's what I happen to like but any DE should be fine.
I have a similar Mini PC as an HTPC. I have Debian 13 installed as the base OS. For something like this I want a rock solid stable base with long support. Doesnt get much better than Debian in that regard. KODI, Chromium, Firefox, and Moonlight installed through Flatpak. Works great.
I too was surprise to read the actual number being so low considering how much it's talked about. I never really saw the appeal as steam is pretty easy to get set up and running on any mainstream Linux distro with little fuss, but I recognize it was set up for newbies who want an gaming ready experience. It's an interesting project regardless.
Yes this. Been using mine for a few years now and it's proven to be dependable. It's comfortable to use and I love the side scrolling wheel (I work with loooong spreadsheets often).
I started my Linux journey with Ubuntu, then switched to Linux Mint for a while and dabbled with Manjaro for a hot minute, and ultimately found my home on Fedora Workstation for the past several years. Once set up with rpmfusion and 3rd party codecs it's a very solid and reliable distribution. The new atomic projects (and derivatives) look very interesting too.
You should be in a good place with a laptop with integrated intel/amd graphics, and an Intel wifi card. Graphics and wifi are the most common pain points when it comes to linux so you can narrow down and research from there. I've had good luck with Dell and Lenovo. Currently have a Lenovo yoga with touchscreen and everything except fingerprint scanner works out of the box.
There are some linux friendly OEMs too like framework, tuxedo, and ststem76 that are worth taking a look.
DNS filering alone doesn't work for YouTube in my experience.
Curious, why the constant switching? You haven't addressed what you're specifically looking for or how many of the other distros failed to meet your needs. Or is it just for fun and to try new things (a perfectly valid reason)?
For gaming you want something with recent kernel and packages as the space is evolving rapidly. I'd say check out Silverblue or Bazzite as they seem interesting well maintained projects on a solid foundation. But I may be biased, as a happy fedora user. I'd avoid anything too niche but that's just me.
Yes
I've been very happy on Fedora. It's been reliable and has up to date software and kernels.
Whoa this is cool, but I'm finding the voice to text to be quite buggy. Sometimes it works and other times all I get a bunch of emojis and weird symbols??
I learned early on you can't rely on them for factual information for reasons you stated.
I use them for creative writing tasks (drafting up emails, letters, etc), generating ideas, for creating excel formulas, basic python, vba functions, etc.
I assume you're talking about the one found in samsung phones. It's basically like a launcher with shortcuts to apps you can access from any screen without having to go back to home or the app tray. Personally I found it to be too much also, not very customizable and inefficient use of space with only a few apps showing up there. It can be disabled in settings.
I like the idea though. I use the one handed+ module in goodlock where I can set another more compact app launcher when I diagonally swipe down from anywhere along the right edge screen. I have other shortcuts set to other gestures. It's handy for multitasking.