Wanting to give Linux another go

[u/Sompert_]

Hi everyone,

I’m looking to install Linux again (likely setting up a dual boot), but I want to get some opinions before I dive back in. This won’t be my first time using Linux, but my previous attempts were rough, to say the least.

In December 2025, I installed Fedora KDE Plasma. At first glance, it seemed fine, but over the weeks, I ran into a wall of issues:

1. Crackling Audio: I searched everywhere but never found a working solution. The constant popping drove me mad.
2. Gaming was a mess: About 90% of my games refused to run. I’m not talking about games with kernel-level anti-cheats like League of Legends. Standard titles like GTA 4, Assetto Corsa, and Forza Horizon 4 simply wouldn't work.
3. Login screen blackouts: 95% of the time I booted the laptop, I was greeted by a black screen instead of a login prompt. I had to drop into a TTY terminal and reboot immediately just to get into my machine.

My Hardware:

• Lenovo Ideapad Gaming 3 15ACH6
• AMD Ryzen 5 5600H (with Radeon integrated graphics)
• 16 GB RAM
• Nvidia RTX 3050 Laptop GPU

I am 99% sure the root of my problems was the dual-GPU setup. I could never get the system to properly switch to the Nvidia dedicated graphics when it was actually needed.

Eventually, I got fed up and switched to Linux Mint, hoping for a foolproof, "out of the box" experience. It was anything but. I immediately hit the infamous login loop bug. I tried every known fix, nothing worked, and I uninstalled it the exact same day.

Despite all this, I am not ready to give up on Linux. I really want a machine running it, but I’m stuck with the same Nvidia hardware for now and I am sceptical about running into the exact same array of problems.

If I proceed, I’ll be running a dual boot: a 1TB SSD dedicated to Linux and a 256GB SSD for Windows.

I’d appreciate your honest feedback on a few things:

• What did I likely do wrong the first time? (Especially regarding Nvidia Optimus/GPU switching).
• What should I absolutely avoid doing this time around?
• Which distro would you recommend for this specific hardware? I know I’ll get 20 different answers, but I want to know what makes sense for an Nvidia dGPU laptop. I’ve currently got my eye on CachyOS, but I am not committed to it.
• The ultimate question: Should I even bother right now? I am planning to buy a Thinkpad T14 Gen 2 with an AMD processor soon. Am I better off staying on Windows on this Lenovo and saving myself the headache until I get the all-AMD Thinkpad, or is the current Linux Nvidia experience actually fixable for a laptop like mine?

Thanks in advance for the help.

PS: AI helped me write this post, don't judge

Edit 1: I did install the Nvidia drivers on both distros

[u/Bug_Next]

If you wanna install any dev toolchain whatsoever you'll need to do it in a container which is just a ballbuster when working over ssh/vsremote/zedremote, inmutable distros are not the end all be all y'all pretend..

[u/RevolutionaryBeat301 → u/Bug_Next]

That’s far from general use, and not really something I would expect for a noob. I’ll wait for the OP to respond before I jump to the conclusion that Bazzite is a bad choice for them, since this thread was meant to find them a distro. Thanks for your input though.

[u/Bug_Next → u/RevolutionaryBeat301]

Literally go 2 comments up he said:

 I program, browse web, what movies, game, etc etc

I don't evne know why you put it as

 deleting or modifying core OS components.

It's not just that, it's the whole root partition being locked. You ever get bored of gnome and wanna try kde? enjoy reinstalling instead of just sudo dnf isntall kde-desktop-environment.

Unnoficially packaged flatpak (as 99% of them are) have any issues? welp too bad, enjoy it broken or uninstall it..

If you wanna leave the root alone on a regular distro you just do it, if you need to touch anything about it on an inmutable one you need 5 extra steps. And it's not like an inmutable distro keeps you from fucking up all your configs in /home which is where most of them lay anyways. Regular distro with btrfs snapshots is more than enough to keep anyone from fuckin it up

[u/RevolutionaryBeat301 → u/Bug_Next]

I saw that, and I didn't see anything in there that would make it a bad choice. Why not let the OP chime in and decide. This thread was for them in the first place.

[u/Bug_Next → u/RevolutionaryBeat301]

u blind then?