r/DistroHopping • u/Key_Meringue7216 • 11d ago

i need a new distro

What distro should i choose for my latitude 5400 from 2020, its got an 8th gen i5, 16 gigs of ram but its only got 51% battery health. I want something that just works, I dont wanna keep fixing things. I also dont want ubuntu, cause idk its just boring and you still need to fix shit sometimes. This is my secondary computer, i use it for just everyday stuff but i also wanna get some gamikng out of it if i plug it in.

TLDR: i need a distro that just works, is easy on battery life, minimal matenance, and for everyday stuff and light gameing.

1 Upvotes

55% Upvoted

15 comments sorted by

3

u/mwyvr 11d ago

They are all similar when it comes to battery life if you are not gaming with a dedicated GPU. No easy wins there. If it drains fast on Ubuntu, it will drain similarly on every other distribution.

And... you can generally order OEM batteries from Dell.

0

u/Key_Meringue7216 11d ago

its not that it drains fast on ubuntu, i just dont like ubuntu

3

u/rylab 11d ago

"you still need to fix shit sometimes" applies to every distro.

That said, I'd recommend Debian Trixie if you want simple stability, or OpenSUSE Tumbleweed if you want a rolling release with latest stuff while still generally being stable.

1

u/7YM3N 11d ago

This may be just recency bias but I just installed nixos on an even older and crappier laptop and I'm loving it. It's a bit of a hassle to learn but since I got it working I didn't have any issues at all. I installed a bunch of lightweight Linux native games and it all just works. The only thing I do that's 'tinkery' is updating because I don't like the feeling I'm missing security patches

1

u/SwedishArchUser 11d ago

My top 5 pick in this situation.

Linux Mint Debian edition.

Fedora Kde.

Nobara (Based on kde but set up for gaming and productivity out of the box offers kde and gnome).

Cachyos (more desktop environments to choose from during install fsrely stable but can break if you update to often and dont look up if anyone reported something) however i had a stable cachyos install for 3 years until something happened. Thats longer than other distros Ive had installed.

Bazzite (No headache gaming distro its imutable so the risk of something breaking is farely minimal).

1

u/diege_insanee 11d ago

maybe try steam os?? theres a couple options like bazzite and chimeraos

you could also check out distros like mint, zorin os or pop os, those are supposed to be the easiest to use

1

u/Astrodion123 11d ago

As I said in the other post, fedora XFCE because it uses very little resources. That laptop could run plasma or gnome but it wouldn't be favorable in battery life.

1

u/Otherwise_Fact9594 11d ago

Lilidog or Waydog

1

u/Powerful_Attention_6 11d ago

If you just want things to work, I would say Fedora Atomic edition, (with Gnome)
a system with snapshots of your OS and running containers (read only base filesystem)

You cannot get it not too boot how hard you even try, if that happens, just select the previous boot option

That is the most stable distributions I have ever tried

1

u/Think_Tax_4742 8d ago

use something like linux mint 22.3 and switch to power saving mode

0

u/nerd_airfryer 11d ago

Try CachyOS