Same. I still have Solus on my old laptop but I mostly only use that when I travel. Its the same install I’ve been using since 2018 with no issues. I did not install on my new laptop because hardware wasn’t supported on available install image and it seemed like Solus was on its last legs and not worth jumping through hoops for.

Aptitude has a GUI? I’ve been using it purely CLI for years.

Sounds like someone didn’t learn to socialize or use Linux.

I think that’s the scroll wheel or maybe the bearings.

They do use an optical sensor… PMW 3360.

Check out ploopy trackballs. They have a wired thumb track ball.

https://ploopy.co/thumb-trackball/

We have 13 inch and 15 inch inspirons at work. The 15 inch is absolute garbage with an awful screen and feels like it’s going to fall apart even though it rarely gets used. The 13 inch is actually pretty nice, almost as well built as my old XPS. Good screen, all aluminum build etc.

Ubuntu - Loved it in 2006-2012ish but I jumped ship when Amazon appeared in search. Great place to start my Linux journey at the time.

Manjaro - Only distro to ever break entirely on me. I didn’t care enough to try and figure out why.

Tried endeavor and stock arch but they weren’t my cup of tea. No real issues with them though.

Fedora - I liked for a few years but abandoned after the RHEL drama this summer. Seems to be going the way of Ubuntu. Maybe that’s just my opinion.

I use and like Solus a lot but they didn’t update anything for 2 years until this summer. I use it on my gaming PC and an old laptop for web browsing but nothing important. It’s always been solid for me, I just worry about it going extinct. They do have an updated road map and seem re-energized though. I also think it’s a good beginner distro because you don’t have to dive into terminal much, and a good distro if you are a pro, but kind of bad if you are an intermediate user because there aren’t a ton of resources on it that bigger distros have.

I mostly use Debian these days. Stable on my server. Testing on everything else. I don’t see me abandoning it anytime soon.

I don’t recall ever having spent a lot of time messing with Bluetooth so I think it’s worked just fine for me for a while. I’ve used Debian, Fedora and Solus on a few different laptops and desktops. I’ll give a few headphones and speakers a go tonight and see what happens.

I used Solus on my old laptop. Same install for 7 years!

Once proton became good I moved my gaming PC from windows to Solus as well.

Though I use Debian on everything else these days.

It split from Solus, but yeah.

https://buddiesofbudgie.org/

Most of what you are missing out on are games that require some form of anti cheat. Most other stuff just runs. Most new triple A games just run these days.

I have an older 6th gen Intel XPS that probably lasted 7 hours max on windows and I get 6+ on Linux. Not really noticeable to me. I should have gotten the 1080p screen instead of this 4k monstrosity and battery life would have gone up 50%. The thing is also a beast at sleeping and will go well over 2 weeks before the battery drains. Which is great because I just use it on the couch now and will open it up for a few minutes here and there before shoving it back between the cushions again.

Last year I got a 12th gen framework and battery life is disappointing under Linux. Maybe 5ish hours. I can live with that but when sleeping it still drains like 25% a day.

I thought I had civ 1 and 2 on steam but I was wrong. My memories of playing civ 2 on Linux were really of freeciv. I find it scratches the civ 2 itch. I’ve certainly played 3-6 on Linux through steam. Though 3 is a hit of a hassle and not worth it to me when I prefer 2, 4, 5 & 6.

I’d say about 95 percent of my steam collection works with little to no tweaking required these days. Skyrim works, throw any mods you want at it. Witcher 3 runs great. RDR2 and any civ 1-6 all run perfectly. Baulders Gate 3 runs smooth as butter.

There’s the odd game here and there that doesn’t work well or at all but most things just work. I think the main thing that doesn’t work is anticheat enabled online games. I don’t play those though so I can’t really comment on their state of play outside of that.

Wouldn’t let it touch my system. Try Endeavor if you want to hop to an arch based distro.

You could also try aptitude upgrade instead of apt-get. It tends to handle packages that are kept back better.

I had an XPS 13 non developer for about 5 years. Ran any distro I threw at it. Upgraded to a frameworks last year though and not looking back. It’s all about that 3:2 display for me. The main thing I miss on the XPS is that it sipped power while suspended. I could leave it with the lid closed for a week unplugged and it would still be at 50% The framework 12th Gen is not so forgiving. If it sits in my bag all weekend it will be dead come Monday.

I was hesitant for the last few years to recommend Solus. They stopped communicating with the community and there hadn’t been a new iso in a while. Software was still being updated behind the scenes but it seemed like it was dying. Now 4.4 was released a few weeks ago with short term and long term plans announced so I feel good recommending trying it. The only issue is it’s software repository isn’t as big as other distros. But I switched to Debian and have been happy with that. Probably the way to go if you are familiar with it from using Kali.

Have you tried Geany? It’s been my go-to editor.