I'm currently using Debian Unstable. I used Fedora for a long time, but it got noticeably worse when IBM bought Red Hat. I also like Arch, btw. I have tried a bunch of other distros too, but they all have some quirk that annoys me (*buntu has Snap, Pop!_OS and Mint don't support KDE officially, OpenSUSE is based around YaST, Elementary is weird about software installation, Manjaro fails at basic security 101 and keeps DDoSing the AUR due to bugs, etc.)
I have not tried NixOS yet, but I keep seeing it recommended, so I'll have to try it.
They add a lot of stuff on top of GNOME and ship a few extra packages to help with gaming. Not sure how they handle snaps these days because I haven't checked in a while. It looks nice if you like GNOME, but it just isn't my cup of tea.
I'm currently running Debian Unstable with KDE on my System76, but I've also used Fedora and Arch on it just fine. I don't have nvidia.
Pop doesnt have snap installed in my recent install.
I don't like gnome in particular but I am too lazy to setup a proper WM on my work laptop for fear of braeking and losing work.
Have tried fedora gnome with their pop-shell it worked fine otker than a few differences. Some odd behaviors like move next workspace would move it to first or last.
Nvidia is a pita. It prevents my machine from waking from sleep and I can't even close the lid because I cant turn off sleep on lid close.
Pop doesnt have snap installed in my recent install.
That's good.
I don’t like gnome in particular but I am too lazy to setup a proper WM on my work laptop for fear of braeking and losing work.
Have tried fedora gnome with their pop-shell it worked fine otker than a few differences. Some odd behaviors like move next workspace would move it to first or last.
I used Fedora for a long time because they've officially supported KDE, XFCE, and MATE for a long time despite being known as a GNOME distro. Unfortunately, the enshittification that came with IBM buying RedHat was too much for me.
Nvidia is a pita. It prevents my machine from waking from sleep and I can’t even close the lid because I cant turn off sleep on lid close.
I've owned two computers (secondhand) that had nvidia and it was a constant thorn in my side... when it worked, it was still glitchy because nvidia likes to use their own libs for GPU rendering, which may or may not be compatible with the rest of the system. And of course the sleep issues and the driver not working half the time. I have no fucking idea why System76 is still selling laptops with that garbage built in. Mine just has the integrated Intel graphics, and while the performance isn't always that great, the video actually works 100% of the time.
I too prefer to have just iGPU which the recent ones are more than sufficient for most of my needs. But wanting to try some ML and that most configs with 16+ RAM offerings are mostly gaming laptops with nvidia.
Although I've had some display issues without nvidia too. Previous laptop had issues connecting external monitor. Only some distros had that issue so possibly a misconfiguration or incorrect library was used.