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I've been using Windows 8 as my laptop since it came out, though I hate it, I really didn't really have a choice since my school only allowed Windows, and since my mom bought me windows 8, I just put it on. I've used Linux since the summer of 2012 so I'm still a bit of a newbie. I use Linux a lot, much more than windows, it's just that I run Linux on virtual machines so I can get the Linux experience, and since I have 8 gigs of RAM, I can spare about 5 for the virtual machines. My main Linux distros are Arch, Ubuntu, and Mint. Though I use Arch the most because I love the customization it offers because I'm a diy kind of guy. And since my laptop crashed because windows experienced a problem and restored everything, I'm thinking of installing linux on my computer, so I have to choose a distro to download, I can't really decide which to put on. I really like Linux Mint because it's simple and uses apt-get, but I don't like MATE or cinnamon because of their simple interfaces. I like Fedora because its always on the latest software, but yum is a bit too slow. I like Arch becuase it has a really fast boot up, pacman is awesome,almost all packages are vanilla, but I don't like that it doesn't have defaults, but I'm probably still going to install it. But I need to find special drivers during installations for hibernating and nvidia. My laptops specs are: i7 3.3 Ghz 8gb RAM 2gb nvidia GTX 660 gpu 1TB hdd

So my questions are: Should I use Arch as my main laptop distro? If not, what should I use? What drivers should I include so Arch can run on the laptop? What drivers do I need to allow my laptop to hibernate safely? What nvidia driver do I need, is it possible to allow dual-booting of Arch and Windows?

toxemicsquire
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  • If you are looking for an official Ubuntu variant Kubuntu (KDE) feels closer to Windows than the others otherwise this question is off topic here – Warren Hill Jul 25 '13 at 05:50

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It depends on the person, and your personal Linux preference. I suggest a 64 bit version of the OS if possible, since your computer can easily support it.

Heres some websites with good in-depth evaluations of different Linux distrobutions.

http://www.techradar.com/news/software/operating-systems/best-linux-distro-five-we-recommend-1090058

http://www.pcpro.co.uk/features/382288/best-linux-distros-for-2013

Compman
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Whatever you choose, I would keep in mind that pretty much any distro can be customized to your liking. For instance, if you don't like Mint's desktops, you could install something else, such as KDE.

Personally I would choose Ubuntu, simply because I like the simple apt-get method of installing software, and have had too many recent problems with Mint 15. That's just me, though.

At the end of the day, only you can decide which distro you want. And, if you decide you don't like one, it probably won't be too hard for you to try another.

TSJNachos117
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