Why this laptop? Why this distro?

Why this laptop?

I wanted a laptop with a GPU.  Because of gaming, and because of 3D development software like Blender.  I did seriously consider that I may be better off with a thin-and-light with no GPU, since I'm more likely to do heavier work on my desktop.  But I wanted the option on the laptop.  And it turned out, since I got this on sale, it wasn't much more expensive than any of the thin-and-lights that I would have seriously considered.  Sure it's a pound heavier than some of those thin-and-lights, but it is also a pound lighter than the aging HP Probook 4540s it replaced.  And smaller in all dimensions despite having the same screen.

And since I knew I wanted to run Linux, I wanted one with an AMD GPU.  AMD contributes drivers to the linux community that are free and open source.  And they seem to be doing so aggressively, not merely as an afterthought.  None of the drama of Nvidia proprietary stuff.  I wanted to reward that effort from AMD.  This basically meant one of the AMD Advantage laptops.  This very much limited my choices, or as I like to see it, made the decision tree MUCH simpler.  Of these, the Zephyrus G14 is arguably among the best, but it has a smaller screen and I didn't want to go that small (I'd have gone for a 17" if they didn't look so ridiculously huge, and I seriously considered a 16.1").  Of the remaining contenders, the MSI Delta 15 had the best specs.

UNTIL I noticed there was a very much unnoticed 2022 refresh of the AMD Advantage edition of the HP Omen.  I had been underwhelmed by the HP Omen's slower CPU, slower GPU, higher weight, and larger dimensions.  The only thing it had going for it was the 16.1" display.  But with very little fanfare, they did a refresh of this in 2022 that upped the CPU to either a 6800H or 6900HX, as well as the RX6650M.  Ultimately I chose the MSI Delta 15 because it had a more professional finish, was lighter, and a hair smaller, and the bottom of it looked like it would be more comfortable in my lap.  And because the difference in person (the local Best Buy had both on display) between 15.6" and 16.1" screens was not very noticeable.

I should also mention that I was fine with this regular, full HD resolution.  I'm over 50, and while I do sometimes use prescription glasses specifically for computer-distance, even with these I just don't think the retina-density displays do me very much good, and they give a lot of busy work to the GPU.  And it's higher than I had in my HP Probook (which was annoyingly low-res).

Honorable mention goes to the just (about to be?) released Corsair Voyager.  Wow.  This is THE most powerful AMD Advantage laptop out there.  But at over $3000, no thank you.  And it is big and heavy, too.

If you like you can peek at my Google Spreadsheet on the laptops I considered, and the notes.

Why switch to Linux?

As I said in the introductory posting, I'm a long-time hackintosher.  But I chose OS X long ago not because I love the easy interface designed for clueless people.  I chose it because it is very Unix-like under the hood, but very professionally packaged on the outside.  At the time I made that switch, yes, there was Linux, but it was MUCH less mature.  There were just a lot of things it wouldn't (easily) do.  Linux is still not an OS for any random n00b, but it is now getting SOOO close.

One of those things, ironically, was gaming.  If I wanted to play a game now and then, Linux was nearly a desert.  Mac was no Windows, but it was vastly better than Linux.  To play real games, you needed a "real" operating system back them.

So for these reasons, I used a combination of actual Macs, and hackintoshes.

But I revisisted those decisions this past year because Apple just keeps making their computing environment more and more closed, and more and more annoying.  And because I wanted to use my expensive GPU on my desktop in Blender, but there was no GPU support there (and the supposed solutions you could download from AMD to fix this never did anything besides crash for me).  So I started thinking about all the things I use my computer for nowadays, and Linux came out equal or better than the Mac on every point.  (For me!!!  Your milage will vary.)

And then there was the Steamdeck.  Gaming on Linux is becoming very, very close to as good as gaming on Windows, and has for a couple of years at least been far, far better than gaming on the Mac.  The Steamdeck made this a real.  It means there's commercial, corporate support behind gaming on Linux.

So the laptop is my first step, and once that's settled in, I'll set about converting my desktop (a bigger task, because it's an existing system that's already doing things, like being a server in our home for certain things).

OK, So Why this Distro?

I'm generally conservative.  I want a stable system with no drama.  BUT because this had the AMD GPU, and because I picked it because of the good kernel support for all the fresh hardware I was buying, I wanted a distro that would keep me close to the freshest kernels, while still sticking to the stable releases.  That meant Arch or Manjaro.  And since I'm a Linux sysadmin at work, sure I could handle Arch, but I don't WANT to.  If Manjaro does more hand-holding, that's exactly what I want.

So far, it's working out great.  (Although the pacman and pamac installations blew up on me a couple of times and I had to google how to rebuild them.  Somehow the digital signatures got all messed up and nothing would load.)

I'm running the KDE flavor.  I've been doing X11 configuration stuff for decades and from what I'd read this would offer me more options, and more familiar options.  It works fine, but I'm not married to it.