Oscar

That would be similar to saying you are assuming the user has opened the gui application, not just randomly clicking the desktop.

Of course I’m assuming they already know what application they want to use before exploring its capabilities.

$ command -h
$ command --help
$ man command

I have a lot of tab completions installed, too, so i can also just hit tab to get a list of all possible options, etc.

There’s definitively more to a distro than the shell prompt and wallpaper.

Besides the obvious package repos and how well package interoperability is maintained, there’s also differences for default configuration. OpenSUSE offers sane options for security OOtB, IMO.

Then there’s also linux itself. Some distros build the default kernel package with a set of patches to improve typical usability, while others just ship an untouched upstream version. Some offer alternatives while others don’t.

More bloat from flatpak overhead :^)

At least to my understanding. My model is the T14 Gen 1 (AMD). But I would recommend checking newer models.

A few points that indicates this:

1. It’s possible to order it with linux preinstalled:

   In limited countries or regions, Lenovo offers customers an option to order computers with the preinstalled Linux® operating system. - User Guide, Appendix C

2. Ubuntu 20.04 certification: https://ubuntu.com/certified/202006-27980

3. RHEL 8.3 certification: https://catalog.redhat.com/hardware/detail/71625

4. There’s a “Linux Certification” page (whatever that means): https://support.lenovo.com/au/en/solutions/pd500492

5. The BIOS software comes with linux instructions. Though I just use whatever is available with fwupd, which is a CLI application but has GUI support through Gnome with gnome-firmware.

More info about linux support here, under “Notebooks and Laptops”: www.lenovo.com/linux

A million edits later: I got confused by what the product ID was but I think I finally figured it out.

My thinkpad model officially supports linux, so there is no problem there. It is also much cheaper than any of those brands, and it’s also available from the regular stores.

I use debian 12 on my work laptop. I agree with your points but I still use it because I want the fundamental system to be stable, and then any software I want to be more up-to-date I build from source (tmux, alacritty, neovim) or download separately (vscode/slack/joplin).

I used to use ubuntu because it worked so well with my hardware ootb, but I got tired of snap.

I will sound really nit-picky buy the biggest thing keeping me away from using KDE is that accent-colored bar on each window in the taskbar, and the different coloring of open/focused/minimized windows. I want it sleek but not cluttery.

I’ve tried about a dozen themes but I couldn’t find any that got rid of that and looked good. I tried fixing it myself but editing svg files was too difficult for me.

I hope plasma 6 adds more options for this but I’m not holding my breath.

Something i especially appreciate about winget us that it will “index” (or whatever you want to call it) software that was installed outside of it. For example if I install app XYZ through an .msi setup file, I can update it using winget.

So it seems I can also use scoop or chocolatey to install new software and then keep managing them through winget.

Good point. But then if both the script and the command have the same filename, it will be important to make sure the script has a higher precedence in the PATH. Adding it to the end of .bashrc should be enough I think.

You could write a shell script:

#!/usr/bin/env sh

export SOME_ENV_VAR=value

command

Then place it on your path, for example /usr/local/bin/command_with_env.

I avoided overriding the command itself and naming the script the same, because then I think it would try to invoke itself.

When does it hang? If it’s after you log into your user, you could try to instead when on the login screen open a shell by pressing Ctrl + Alt + F2, uninstall Nvidia drivers and install mesa drivers. Or maybe at least investigate further.