data1701d (He/Him)

No.

I usually just use Bash; there’s a certain level of complexity where it begins to be more reasonable to just use Python.

Yes and no. I think connotation is important here; “stable” means different things in different contexts even within computing, and they both denote different but important things - kind of like free of cost verses freedom.

In the distro case, people need/want a distribution where they know a new version won’t come and break their config when they update at 2 AM and miss it in the changelog, and “stable” has been agreed upon as the term in that context. Of course, that can change, as all language does, but that’s just the current convention.

Also, Debian tends to make sure software is not unusable before stable is shipped (the Nvidia thing is an anomaly I’ll explain below); while they sometimes fail, as you’ve hinted, I find it quite rare that it actually happens. Also, the “static” of Debian isn’t absolute; if something really has a breaking bug or a security vulnerability that affects overall system usability (basically something that can’t be fixed by installing a Flatpak), they will put out a fix, like with the Linux kernel or a web browser (via the security repo, included by default in all installs).

Additionally, looking at this changelog, while the Nvidia situation is objectively a bit embarrassing, it looks like they were working on getting them updated, but just didn’t have much luck - I’m guessing a breaking change in the software that made it harder to package. Also, it’s in the non-free repo, which is on the back burner compared to the rest of the distro - something in the main repo will usually only be at most a few months behind at time of distro release.

https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/nvidia-graphics-drivers

I mean, I think static is stable.

I feel like stability in some contexts means more than just the software not crashing often (although that is the big part); it means being able to expect the behavior to stay the same until you’re ready to upgrade to the next release and confront the new behavior all at once, sort of like upgrading Windows XP to Windows 7.

There’s certainly a place for rolling release - I use Debian Testing on my desktop - but I certainly appreciate being able to go a month without opening my laptop without getting a daunting notification like “There are 1578 updates available “ (on my Debian 12 Thinkpad, it’s usually only double digit, very minor updates).

Unrelated thing - just found out something funny.

Apparently, Torvalds himself uses a 580.

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Radeon-RX-590-Torvalds

Someone else brought up Virt Manager here, which is my preferred; if you’ve ever used VirtualBox, you’ll probably be fine on Virt Manager. I like Virt Manager for using GTK3, as I’m in XFCE. I wouldn’t be surprised if both applications have similar settings, as they’re both LibVirt front ends, it seems.

Also, DistroBox, while a different sort of thing, is great for the sort of thing OP mentioned in that last paragraph. I usually just use command line, but there seems to be an unofficial GUI out there.

I always just booted the old kernel when I ran into the issue, but it was less than ideal, which is why I would prefer to run a stable distro in this case.

Also, isn’t ElementaryOS a stable distro anyway due to being Ubuntu-based?

I’ve never run an installfest, but I’ve been to my university’s Linux Users Group installfests, and here’s what they did:

• Brought USBs with Fedora and OpenSUSE, which are their standard noob recommendations. Personally, I’ve used Debian for a long time, but I can get why Debian might not be something they want to recommend for noobs.
• Be there to help them
• If they’re a bit squeemish about it, have them install in a VM software like VirtualBox on Windows or something like UTM on macOS.

Also, I’d recommend you bring extra USB peripherals in case the internal devices need a little bit of work; bring some extra mice, keyboards, and ethernet adapters. You hopefully won’t need any of them, but they’ll certainly make life easier if you do.

As for time, I’d imagine doing the basic install and ironing out some (not all) of the kinks probably takes less than it takes for a group to stat D & D characters, if that’s a helpful comparison for you.

It’s pre-T2, so it should be very easy to install a Linux distro on it. The only bit of misery you’re going to encounter, as others have said, is the Broadcom drivers. Except for a select few distros, you’ll probably need a USB Ethernet adapter for installing the operating system and adding the drivers.

Also, I’d rather put my hand in the circle saw than try running a rolling release on this laptop because the driver uses DKMS, meaning that kernel updates sometimes break it.

I only know this because the desktop I’m typing this on has a Broadcom Wi-Fi card from when I used to bare metal Hackintosh this machine. I’ve since moved to a nice house with an Ethernet port in every room; also, I just use macOS in a VM these days anyways.

As others have said, OCLP is a thing and a well-oiled machine from what I hear, but also, the oath I have made to the Church of Linuxology demands that I at least recommend Linux.

As said by @iii@mander.xyz, bog standard Debian Stable.

You really don’t want a rolling release distro for something like this - major software updates might change the behavior of your software, break your configs, etcetera. Stable distros do as much as they can to make sure that software behaves the same, only porting security fixes.

This way, you don’t really have to touch it except for updates with a nearly nonexistent chance of going wrong (and there’s stuff like unattended-upgrades so updates are automatic) and major upgrades.

You can go several years without a major upgrade just fine - Debian versions are supported for 5 years, and we’re only a few days from getting Trixie, which will last into 2030. New versions come out every two years, and it’s not that hard to upgrade between consecutive ones; I don’t think sitting down on a weekend every two years is that bad.

I kind of hate Ubuntu, but it’s pretty based in this case due to really long support. This might be a really great case for Rocky Linux though, as it also gets 10 years support.

I didn’t even know there were still cases bundled with power supplies! But yes, in general, throughout the history of PC building, I’m pretty sure included power supplies in any brand tend to be very low wattage. The power supply probably isn’t even broken - I’m just guessing the PC’s was upgraded to an RX 580, and the RX 580 was more power hungry than the original graphics card and the power supply just wasn’t designed for it.

Just a tip - next time you build or upgrade a PC, use this tool to estimate what power supply you need; https://www.newegg.com/tools/power-supply-calculator

You can get a 700 watt PSU that should work in the $50-70 range, although honestly, it might be worth it to go a bit bigger so you can cannibalize it for a future build when the time comes - even the RX 580, which is newer than your CPU, is getting a bit old and I hope to replace it if I build a new PC in 2028.

Just to clarify, this almost certainly won’t be better on Mint for several reasons. One, PopOS! and Mint are both based on Ubuntu, so they would likely run into a lot of the same issues. I also have an RX 580, and while I haven’t used either of these distros on that machine, I have run Debian Testing for several years, and since both these distros descend from Debian, I have run similar package versions and would likely have known years ago if a major bug occurred for my GPU.

As said by @Mordikan@kbin.earth below, I would be inclined to check the power supply, and maybe even make sure the PCIe card is properly seated.

I think that’s true, but permissions might come into play and really cause pain; it’s probably best to just reinstall.

On a more serious note, as others have said, you’ll probably burn through these weird storage limitations quickly.

Also, what do you mean by “sensitive matters” on Mint? Because almost any way you spin it, I feel like it’s not a great idea:

• If you’re talking professional, confidential work with clients, keeping it on the same device where you do anything personal sounds like a terrible idea, and it’s probably worth it to shell out for a dedicated device just for this.
• If it’s more personal things like government documents, medical records, and other things I’ll neglect to name here, running a separate operating system just for those just feels like unnecessary paranoia and will cause you unnecessary trouble. If you’re careful, it shouldn’t be a problem - the major browsers prevent file access through protections against cross-site scripting.

Also, as I said in another comment here, please upgrade that drive before you put a lot of data on it. If you don’t and you run out of storage later (a near-certainty on 256GB), you’ll have to go through the effort of getting everything copied, which may include equipment purchases and several hours of your time when you could jut do it right now while your important files are still small enough to fit on a flash drive right now. Save yourself the future trouble.

Anyhow, I wish you happy Linux usage.

This is less like buying a bigger car and more like upgrading the stereo in the car - 256GB in 2025 is somewhat akin to having only AM radio, and I’ve found it gets annoying real fast when doing anything serious.

I would hesitate to put anything smaller than 1 TB in something that’s supposed to be a daily driver.

Assuming she hasn’t bought it yet, please research that Yoga first. It might work fine, but it could also end up being a miserable experience.

You can check https://linux-hardware.org/ for the model or a similar one.

The no restart is kind of awesome. WebGPU progress is also great, even if not on Linux yet.

I spent 4-6 hours the other day trying to figure out the equivalent of Hello World for a MediaWiki parser function extension.

In theory, they have a quick start guide, but that documentation has so many errors, and I spent ages jumping between PHP and a JSON configuration file I barely understood.

At least it’s working now. Now time to figure out how the heck to properly interact with the MediaWiki database!

(Perhaps once I’m a bit more confident in MediaWiki development, I’ll see if I can tidy up some that documentation.)

Yeh. They really did C++ unnecessarily dirty.

I’d take a well-maintained native package for my distro over a Flatpak, but sometimes, a Flatpak is just the the easiest way to get the latest version of an application working on Debian without too much tinkering - not always no tinkering, but better than nothing.

This is especially true of GIMP - Flatpak GIMP + Resynthesizer feels like the easiest way to experience GIMP these days. Same with OBS - although I have to weather the Flatpak directory structure, plugins otherwise feel easier to get working than the native package. The bundled runtimes are somewhat annoying, but I’m also not exactly hurting for storage at the moment - I could probaby do to put more of my 2 TB main SSD to use.

I usually just manage Flatpaks from the terminal, though I often have to refresh myself on application URLs. I somewhat wish one could set nicknames so they need not remember the full name.

And that is still largely true - I’m still running XFCE with xorg on Debian, and I think the only issue I’ve had was Waydroid.

Will there come a day where what you say is true? Yes.

However, right now, a more apt example to convey your point is systemd; that’s true for most distros with a lot of community support. Even then, its hold isn’t absolute - Alpine seems like the most livable non-systemd distro, though I could be wrong.