Frameworks cool if you can afford it, but if you want the best perfomance/deals, then laptops go on sale for half off or 70% off often, you just gotta check daily since they sell out within the day for those deals

Give yourself a month to look at deals, its around week 3 for me where I usually purchasep

I recentlly swapped to cachyos, works way better than windows, had hella driver issues on windows, I forgot and reinstalled my windows os (shrunken partition, just in case I need it) had the same issues.

All I’ve had to download is like two extensions in the package manager for the amd gpu to work in blender, everywhere else it workd well instantly (because of cachyos and all it installs)

I have an all amd alienware m17 r5 I got $2000 off at around 1200$ pretty fire, 6850mxt = 3080 laptop, ive had no issues running most things, msfs needs hella tweaking on windows but past that even vr stuff mostly works fine

Now ppl are gonna think I switched because of this start indian hate mf

Hyprland is technically more customizable, id check out the preconfigs, its more annoying to customize but some of those preconfigs have a lot of different options to start off

No added extensions, just default, id go with plasma, with extensions right now daily use Gnome (but without extensions its bland af, it really needs them and I wish it had more)

Gnome by default isn’t customizable, you have to install and turn extensions on, but its as simple as toggling on chrome addons, you goto the extension store and grab what you want, the store could be better usability wise, hate the ui, flathub is like the only usable ui for a store on linux, insane how its all stuck 20 years backwards. (tho I kinda like it lol)

I think gnome just feels good and is the most usable, but thats because I feel the constant need to tinker with plasma, while with gnome I just set my extensions on, tweak them a little maybe once if they have settings and don’t think about it again. It only takes a few to get gnome feeling personalized and it just works well. Plasma feels better swapping from windows, but gnome feels more like a different modern os on par with windows/mac but more minimalist.

I wish plasma was slightly less buggy, anytime I mess with a panel I have to clone a backup just in case it tweaks out and I need to delete it.

Thats prettt much all of what I needed to know, I see why they’re reccomended.

I overcomplicated mine before going back to the simple look, even abusively adding stuff it feels less crowded than windows

Yeah I dont think hyprland will become a mainstay for me, but I will be copying that super plus shortcut way of working over to the other DEs, im just not productive 24/7 (nor do I want to be) so fully commiting to a tiling manager doesnt make sense

Stremio grab every addon, configure em all for realdebrid, gets most obscure things, sometimes you gotta wait a day or two for rd to dload really obscure stuff (itll tell you torrent is dloading to rd) I found some random old movies I didn’t expect to be there.

I think if I reccomend linux kde to anyone new itll be gnome with a few extensions, since plasma is easy to break imo. A lot of default plasma configs are basically cleaner/customizable windows clones tho so it might be an easier transition, it immediatelt felt familiar when I was setting up cachyos. Feed like gnome couldve scared me off, especially since I didnt know about the extensions and how easy it was to get proper menu. Once I had like 3 extensions, it felt good, was using the computer like normal and forgot I had swapped to gnome to temporarily test it.

I really like gnomes look with a few extensions tho, with plasma I feel the constant need to tinker just because I can and its two clicks away, with gnome I just use my computer and the extensions just work, not as much customization, even for placement, but definitely a lot more useful extensions that just work.

After trying cinnamon, i think gnome reaches that middleground better with extensions than cinnamon, it feels more off to the side with older windows. Definitely was missing some of the settings tho, im liking cinnamon a bit more after messing with applets, not sure why it feels so corporate in comparison.

Trying cinnamon right now, Its definitely functional, closer to windows back when I liked it. Feels boring, but in a good for productivity way.

Plasma does seem to have a lot of small annoying bugs, like rnow I have to click a widget so it loads on my desktop before dragging, if I just drag plasma closes out of the editor and my screen goes black for a second.

I keep hearing good things, ill try it out, when I first looked it up it didnt seem as customizable based off screenshots but im seeing posts about how its more customizable than gnome

I keep forgetting tiling managers arent des

Hyprland is kinda cool since you can still have windows over windows if you need/want it, I was worried since the width can be off and its easy to just open a window and scale iy manually to see text properly, it doesnt solve any problem I have tho, just forces me to use the keyboard more than I want to.
I definitely want to spend a sunday just customizing and tinkering with it tho, sounds fun.

Rnow plasma works super well for me, love that you can right click windows and have them always stay on top or always be below, useful when using the transparent terminal. Hyprland has a top popdown terminal (at least the config I used) which is kinda sick, but not really necessary lol.

For the touchpad? I basically use my laptop like a desktop with a mouse, pluggedin to power. (it was more for easy transportation from college to back home, didn’t have a desktop and gaming laptops get insane deals if you keep track, got mine $2,000 off at like $1100 and it was the best all amd alienware config at the time (still handles everything), just preemptively explaining because im used to redditors giving me shit for using a laptop as a desktop)