I’ve been using Linux as my main OS for a couple of years now, first on a slightly older Dell Inspiron 15. Last year I upgraded to an Inspiron 15 7510 with i7-11800H and RTX3050. Since purchasing this laptop I’ve used Manjaro, Debian 11, Pop OS, Void Linux, Fedora Silverblue (37 & 38) and now Debian 12. I need to reinstall soon since I’ve stuffed up my NVIDIA drivers trying to install CUDA and didn’t realise that they changed the default swap size to 1GB.

I use this laptop for everything - development in C/C++, dart/flutter, nodejs and sometimes PHP. I occasionally play games on it through Proton and sometimes need to re-encode videos using Handbrake. I need some amount of reliability since I also use this for University.

I’ve previously been against trying Arch due to instability issues such as the recent GRUB thing. But I have been reading about BTRFS and snapshots which make me think I can have an up to date system and reliability (by rebooting into a snapshot). What’s everyone’s perspective on this, is there anything major I should keep an eye on?

Should also note I use GNOME, vscode, Firefox and will need MATLAB to be installed, if there is anything to do with those that is problematic on Arch?

Edit: I went with Arch thanks everyone for the advice

  • fraydabson
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    1 year ago

    Yeah once I’m brave enough to move OS on my server (currently running Ubuntu server) I want to switch it to NixOS.

    I’m spinning up a VM first to better understand it.

    • lloram239@feddit.de
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      1 year ago

      Installing the Nix package manager on another distribution is also an easy way to get familiar with it without making the full switch.

      • fraydabson
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        1 year ago

        Didn’t even cross my mind. So I can install it on my current Ubuntu server to get familiar with it. Def gonna try.

        • zwekihoyy@lemmy.ml
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          1 year ago

          nix package manager works on all posix compliant os’ and doesn’t touch system directories. everything is stored in /nix/store and symlinked to ~/.nix-profile.

          personally I run an arch build and then only use nix for my packages.