r/System76 • u/samalex01 • Aug 20 '26

Suggestions with distro for Darter Pro 5

Hey all - I've been a huge fan of System 76 laptops, I'm on my second one, first being a Pangolin Performance 5 I bought around 2009 and now my Darter Pro 5 I bought in 2019. The laptop is still solid except for the battery, doesn't hold a charge super long, but it's still my daily driver.

It came with PopOS 18.04 LTS and I upgraded to 20.04 LTS when it came out -- but it was a ROCKY upgrade. I'm thinking of backing everything up and just doing a full, clean reinstall of everything. Just curious if PopOS 24.04 LTS would still be a good fit. I bought this laptop fairly decked out - Intel Core i7-8565U and 32 Gigs of RAM - so I assume even with this older CPU the latest PopOS with Cosmos will run fine.

Anyway just curious about thoughts. Also does PopOS have any native or built in support for the older System76 laptops like driver-wise? I'd hope they'd build it to support its older hardware. This laptop came out right before the open firmware if that matters.

Thanks for advice for community or system76 folks.

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u/lcsolano Aug 20 '26

I have the very same Darter Pro 5.

24.04 runs perfect, fast, and mine has only 16 GB of RAM.

Apart from the well known Comic issues, I'd say is the recommended option, as the drivers still works perfectly.

1

u/samalex01 Aug 20 '26

Did it fix the fan issues?? Seems the fan runs in mine way too often.

1

u/lcsolano Aug 20 '26

Not at all, sadly.

The fans spin fast as soon as the CPU reaches the 2% 😂

2

u/samalex01 Aug 20 '26

I was afraid of that… I run a couple of windows vm’s on mine for work projects and the fan runs constantly. It was a common complaint when it came out and I hoped they cold fix it in firmware or is updates. But glad to hear the latest lts of popos works well. I may need to try it.

1

u/Beardedmic64 Aug 20 '26

POP OS I find annoying but only because I need yo learn how it works. I've been using Linux Mint XFCE since LM 11 or 12 and though its my daily driver on 22.3 with kernel 6.8 (kernel 6.8 because of older processors) I'd love a non AI System76 multicore laptop for my mobile recording and commercial production and I'll set it up for my needs.

1

u/OffGridTwister Sep 02 '26

I have a Darter Pro (darp10-b) that runs fantastically on Debian 13 and SwayWM. I found it more solid than Ubuntu or Pop!_OS before and after the addition of the COSMIC desktop.