I have no experience with Linux, but I’d like to give it a try. I’m looking at the System76 Meerkat and Thelio with the Pop!_OS option.
I don’t see myself gaming on it because I have a Windows machine for just that. I’d mostly be using it for learning Linux and doing basic things like web surfing and word processing (Libreoffice perhaps).
Any recommendations or advice? Thanks!
I really Pop and think it’s a great distro for beginners. If you’re getting the laptop from System76 you know the hardware is compatible and you won’t have to mess with the installation which is also a plus.
Gaming on Linux have made great progress in recent years and quite a lot of games run great on Wine/Proton. I have a duel-boot setup but hardly ever boot Windows because I don’t need it much anymore. However if you’re playing online games with anti-cheat, that’s a different experience as they are less supported.
One thing you should note is that Pop works best with Cosmic DE, now running over Gnome but at some point as an independent DE, and it’s not a good choice if you prefer some other DE (technically possible to install something else but missing the point IMO). So try it first on a VM or something to see if you enjoy the Cosmic workflow.