I’ll second tumbleweed. I use it on 4 separate devices and its rarely given me any issues. If it does, it has built-in recovery snapshots - it takes 30 seconds to roll back a bad update.

New thinkpads are trash unfortunately. Lenovo really cheaped out on their build quality. I’ve had to fix multiple lenovo laptops and one of their all-in-ones and the corners they cut made the repairs either impossible or extremely difficult.

One new ideapad had to go back to them twice with motherboard issues.

Replacing the keyboard is impossible, you need to replace the whole front panel of the case becuase the keyboard is plastic rivited in place.

The all-in-one started as a simple ram and storage upgrade, but in order to do that the whole back panel needs to come off. Its snapped on but the LCD panel itself doesn’t have any subframe around it, so when opening the back panel theres a very high chance of you cracking the display.

New thinkpads are trash unfortunately. Lenovo really cheaped out on their build quality. I’ve had to fix multiple lenovo laptops and one of their all-in-ones and the corners they cut made the repairs either impossible or extremely difficult.

One new ideapad had to go back to them twice with motherboard issues.

Replacing the keyboard is impossible, you need to replace the whole front panel of the case becuase the keyboard is plastic rivited in place.

The all-in-one started as a simple ram and storage upgrade, but in order to do that the whole back panel needs to come off. Its snapped on but the LCD panel itself doesn’t have any subframe around it, so when opening the back panel theres a very high chance of you cracking the display.

As others have said, nvidia will work but you’re better off with amd for the GPU. CPU brand doesn’t really matter.

If you’re duel booting, I definitely recommend two separate drives, one for each OS. Use the bios boot selector to boot between the two. It makes things much much easier if they’re not sharing a drive

But we know based on OPs usage requirements, he’s not one of those people doing everything in the browser.

Updates are important regardless of fomo. They’re not only for adding new features, they’re for fixing bugs and improving stability and these changes rarely get backported unless their critical.

The core Debian might be stable, but, for example, plasma 6.3 is much more stable than 5.27

Debian is stable and will work, but there are other options that are basically as stable and have much newer packages - improving desktop stability and user experience

Debian 12.9 was released a few months ago based on kernel 6.1 LTS, the latest kernel is 6.13, with 6.12 being the new LTS.

Debian packages are updated for bug fixes and security updates, but they generally don’t update to new versions.

If you’re running KDE Debian, your version is plasma 5.27, meanwhile 6.3 was just released.

There are a massive amount of quality of life improvements that debain 12 stable will never get. Sure you can backport some, but then it’s not really debain stable is it?

Meanwhile there are plenty of other distros that are almost just as stable, but have newer versions of everything. Not to mention the stability improvements of the newer software (one example is plasma 6.3 is a massive improvement over 5.27)

Like I said, I love Debian, but if you’re doing daily driving of the computer, I think there are better alternatives

Have you looked at tumbleweed? Its a rolling release so its always up to date but opensuse’s testing is fantastic. It’s very stable and on the off chance there’s a regression that impacts usability, it has built in version snapshots. It takes literally 45 seconds to roll back to a previous working version.

I keep seeing people recommending Debian. Its a great OS, especially for server stuff (which I use in multiple VMs in my home lab), but I wouldn’t recommend it on a computer you’re actively using. They take so long to update packages you’re always multiple versions behind. This really makes it difficult to get bug fixes and patches for software that you’re using on a daily basis. The hardware support is never as good as other options.

Opensuse Tumbleweed is great, I’ve been daily driving it for ages on 3+ devices. It’s a rolling release and has all the latest packages, but is extremely stable. It has a built in recovery tool called snapper that allows you to roll back to a previous state before an update on the off chance you get a bad one. Ive only had to use it a few times over the years but it’s been great to have.

Really underrated distro imo

Super awesome. The android bit is particularly interesting

Man that’s a hard sell when the starlite is going for $627 https://us.starlabs.systems/pages/starlite

$70 cheaper with better specs is a no brainer

The success of KDE depends on maintaining and attracting new developers. C++ is decreasing in popularity, with less people becoming willimg to learn it overtime. Adding more modern languages to the mix that are more pleasant to write with will help keep KDE popular with devs.

I think moving beyond C++ is critical for the long term success of KDE, glad to see it’s a new goal

Like many others, I have mixed feelings on this. If anyone is stopping by and doesn’t want to read through the linked forum thread, this is frameworks goal:

This isn’t a program to get people to go to conferences and rep Framework, it’s a program to give people who are already going to conferences and showing off their Framework some swag and opportunities to talk with the team. It’s not assigning work, it’s just saying thank you to people who are excited about Framework and active in the Linux community.

This isn’t a joke. Often times rewriting features like this will allow the code to be more streamlined and use the latest KDE library features. This is brining new features using modern and more maintable code that solves long standing issues. Fixing the old code sometimes isn’t worth the effort for a variety of reasons (based on unmaintained libraries, the original code might have been written a while ago so it’s had many revisions of fixes that necessarily complicated the code, etc.)

I have no complaints with the framework keyboard, is there a particular issue you’re concerned about? The track pad is almost apple quality. Certainly better than most laptops I’ve used.

Love my 11th gen framework, but there is an issue with the 11th gens where the CMOS battery will die rather quickly. If it does die then the laptop needs to be plugged in to turn on, even if it is fully charged. Framework is aware of the issue and will send a free replacement battery or, if you can solder, a mod that will eliminate the issue for good.

Still love framework and would definitely recommend them - but the 11th gen line (their first product) has a few gotchas

Not sure your budget, but you might be interested in one of these https://us.starlabs.systems/pages/starlite

I’ll start this by saying I’m not familiar with either model, but as a general rule, always go x86 when you can. The Intel processor is going to be much better supported. You might get the snapdragon version to run, but it likely isn’t supported by mainline Linux.

That being said, touch screen support on Linux is improving rapidly, but still isn’t quite there. Make sure you’re aware of the user experience before buying so you won’t be disappointed.

Also, my unsolicited 2 cents, I would try to avoid buying lenovo. I’ve had the unfortunate responsibility of fixing a few of their products (an all-in-one and a few laptops, including a new thinkpad) and can confidently say their reliability, and repairability have greatly diminished. They use cheap parts and are in general, poorly designed.

Onshape hands down. Browser based so there’s no compatibility issues. It’s super easy to use and pretty powerful. Its free for hobbiests (the caveat being your models will be publically accessible). We use it exclusively at work and it’s been awesome.

Onshape.com

I’d love a good Foss CAD package but there are too many issues with the current ones for me to make the jump.