Linux Laptops

For Christmas I bought myself a Lenovo Yoga 9i. This lovely 14 inch laptop had the 3 features I was most looking for: touch screen, light weight enough to use as a tablet, and pretty good support for Linux. That last one is tough because unless you’re buying a specific model from a manufacturer like System76 that’s not guaranteed. Lenovo has a history of good support for Linux and even offers some flavors of Linux directly, but none of the options are the touch screen/convertible form factor I was looking for.

Desktop Environment vs Operating System

So when looking at running Linux there are 2 big things you want to look at: the Desktop Environment and the Operating System. The Desktop Environment is how your user interface will look and feel – things like your file browser, application menu, settings, etc. This is usually the most important choice. For a full list of possible Desktop Environments, see this list.

The other big choice is the operating system. This is all about the underpinnings of your computer. How often does it updates? Does it update to the latest and bleeding edge or does it prefer stable packages? If you are a casual user, this shouldn’t mean too much to you however if you are an advanced Linux user, this matters a whole lot. The “which OS (or usually called a Distro) is right for me?” question gets asked almost everyday and everyone has a different opinion. I’m not kidding.

In my trials I found KDE Plasma wasn’t quite ready for a touch centered experience. However I have seen some work to that end recently. Hopefully as more Linux devices like the Steam Deck come out that use Plasma we will see some more development time towards that effort.

Wayland vs X11

While Gnome worked better I never found a setup that had it all. X11 worked great for some features like auto-rotation and on screen keyboard but lacked features like gesture support on screen and trackpad. Wayland on the other hand supported the gestures and ran smoother but couldn’t auto-rotate and I had to manually open the keyboard when I wanted to type. And if you’re using any kind of software KVM like barrier or synergy or something then forget about support coming for Wayland anytime soon.

So How Did It Go?

So for my touch screen laptop, I knew I wanted a Desktop Environment that had good touch support, large icons, and an Operating System that was stable since my laptop isn’t used constantly. For this I tried GNOME Desktop Environment versions of Ubuntu 21.10, OpenSUSE Tumbleweed, Fedora 35, and Pop OS 21.10. Here’s how each went:

• Ubuntu 21.10 - Overall was fantastic. Stable, had immediate support for touch screen, partial scaling for resolutions, and I’m already very familiar with Debian based systems.
• openSUSE Tumbleweed - Honestly this is more of a bleeding edge distro but I’m becoming more of a fan of Suse and wanted to give it a try.
• Fedora 35 - Good initial support, had to run some commands to get things working and never could get fingerprint reader to work. Good option.
• Pop OS 20.10 - Worked just as well as Ubuntu (no suprise since it’s based on Ubuntu) and had some extra goodies like Flatpack support right off the bat.

Due to Pop OS working just as well as Ubuntu, the extra goodies it had, and the recent trouble with Ubuntu I decided to go with it for now. So far besides an issue with Sleep mode, it has worked really well. Battery life is about 8 hours, all my applications run fast and smooth, and it’s easy to administrate. Let’s hope it stays that way!