Works fine for me in KDE when icons are also set to Breeze Dark. Page goes dark, icons go light, toolbar goes dark.

I would suggest holding off on buying an ARM laptop specifically for Linux at the moment (maybe not too long from now though). Although there is an increasing amount of support, it’s still not fully there, and there is most likely going to be quirks here or there that can throw some issues you would rather not deal with on a daily driver machine (e.g. having to extract firmware from the Windows partition in order to get some features working for the Snapdragon devices). Probably your best combination of power efficiency and performance on x86 at the moment will be something like the Ryzen AI 300 series CPUs. If you like ThinkPads, I would suggest the Ryzen version of the T14s Gen 6, which is essentially the same as the ARM version bar the CPU. I’ve been using a P14s (very similar to T14s just with some tweaks as it’s marketed for mobile workstation users) Gen 5 and even with the lower capacity 39.3Wh battery (compared to the 57Wh battery you can get on a Gen 6) I’ve easily been able to get 6 or 8 hours in the balanced power profile with ~70% brightness on Fedora, so probably the T14s Gen 6 can do 10 or 12 hours on a charge.

Without a doubt. Very good MS Office compatibility now, alongside a user interface that gets me to what I need and is heavily customisable, and very well done integration with Zotero (the best thing ever for citations) through an extension comes together to being by far my most preferred office suite even when I have to use Windows. In addition, Draw has saved me at least a few times when I’ve had to deal with some PDFs that other software finds difficult to work with.

I do wonder what console manufacturers will do in order to keep at least some all-physical releases around as game sizes grow. Blu Ray has topped out at 128GB on the highest end discs, and flash storage isn’t dropping in price as quick as before for making larger cartridges. Maybe we will see more cases like Mario Kart World where the physical version is more expensive? However, I do think there might be less key card games as Switch 2 goes on, as likely a big motivation for key cards at launch is the current low production volume and high price of SD Express cards (which the cartridges are based on). Shelf space and shipping are a considerable cost to publishers, so they would have some motivation to avoid any costs related to the eShop hosting if possible.

Pre ordered the day it was available here in the UK, so excited for release day! Just wondering from everyone who pre ordered in the US, did you have some stores do in person pre orders only too? Here, Currys (major electronics retailer) did in person pre orders only, which I thought was a good idea to prevent scalping as the online stock everywhere was bought up nearly immediately.

On the gaming side, it depends a lot what games you play. Generally the rule is (at least for single player) that it will work through Proton or a native version, unless otherwise specified. Personally, pretty much all of my Steam library works perfectly on Linux, even some games on launch day (Persona 3 Reload was flawless day 1). For modding your mileage may vary but if the game runs there’s a very high chance the associated modding tool will work too, although it might require some more tweaking than you are used to in order to get it to work properly as quite a few tools will assume you are running Windows. Multi player games are where there can be some trouble - for example Fortnite is a notorious example of a game that refuses to run on Linux because Epic Games does not allow its anti cheat to work on Linux. ProtonDB and a good old fashioned go on your favourite search engine should be able to tell you if what you play works, doesn’t work, or needs tweaks to get working.

Running non-Linux apps is a mixed bag. Some things (most notably games through Proton) can work through compatibility layers perfectly fine, even if they need you to install .NET or some other dependencies. Others will be totally unusable, at least for now. Make sure you check all the applications you need to work on a regular basis work before jumping in, so search up their compatibility with tools like WINE (translation layer to let Windows apps run on Linux, also what Proton is based on).

For updates, you’ll love it far more than Windows. Since almost every app you could ever need is installed through either a package manager or Flatpak (closest analogy I can give is like a phone app store, but allowing you to install pretty much anything, including system stuff), your updates will all come in one place. For example, on my Fedora KDE install, all I need to do for updates is go into the Discover app (KDE’s package management software) and into its update section, download, and install. This not only updates system software (desktop, kernel, drivers, so on) but also your applications. This means updating your system and apps is a breeze that’ll take far less time than the usual pain that is Windows Update.

For security, you’ll have a lot less to worry about than Windows, and I have to admit part of it is because Linux has a fairly small user base. Few malware writers are going to care about a few Linux desktops compared to plenty of unpatched Windows systems out in the wild. However, the open source aspect also helps a lot - rather than showing vulnerabilities to hackers, it’s been valuable more to show these vulnerabilities to people who can fix them since the software is on public display. There’s more eyes on the code, and more people who can fix problems before they become major vulnerabilities. For most regular desktop users, you will not need any antivirus. If you’re really worried about viruses, I have heard ClamAV can scan for some things, but I haven’t tried it myself as it really isn’t necessary for desktop use.

GPU drivers can be a bit complicated. AMD and Intel are incredibly simple, since (at least for anything made within the last 10 or 15 years, if not older) the drivers are built right in and need zero configuration (it just works!). NVIDIA cards can be a bit more of a challenge. On a lot of distros, you can install the NVIDIA drivers usually during or right after install fairly easily, but they will be separate from the rest of the built in drivers. You can have a good experience with NVIDIA on Linux, but just expect there to be anywhere from a bit to a lot more effort needed to get some things working compared to AMD and Intel GPUs due to this separation. Of course, this will depend on your exact set up.

There’s no real risk of damaging your hardware installing Linux, the only real danger is deleting files already on your main boot drive during installation, so make sure to double check your installer to see if it’s doing what you want it to. Make sure you have a back up of your important stuff too, just in case. The only thing I can think of maybe is extreme overclocking through LACT or something maybe causing damage, but that’s part of what you sign up for with overclocking even on Windows anyway.

Distros are a very debated topic, and there’s no real “best” one, just one that fits your needs. If you’re new to Linux, my personal recommendation is to go with something boring and well supported like some variant of Fedora or Ubuntu. There will be plenty of documentation for both to help you with things, and they both are fairly solid distros with good track records. However, one thing to keep in mind is what kind of desktop you want. Linux has multiple desktop environments (DEs) that can provide differing experiences (different way of launching applications, arranging icons, file managers, that sort of thing). If you’re used to Windows, KDE definitely has the smallest learning curve, as a lot of things will be as you are used to, so it may be best to go for either the KDE variant of Fedora or Kubuntu. The main difference between Fedora and Ubuntu you will notice is that Fedora has a far faster update cycle, which means you get new features quicker, but you will have to restart for updates more often. In addition, I have heard that the NVIDIA drivers can be easier to handle on Ubuntu, so if you have an NVIDIA card it might be more optimal to go for an Ubuntu variant.

I’ve been daily driving Fedora KDE on two different systems (both all AMD, one laptop and one desktop) for nearly half a year and have experienced almost zero crashes or other issues. Maybe it’s something to do with your hardware? I do know of some issues with NVIDIA graphics cards on KDE, so that might be a cause.

I haven’t tried it myself yet, but there is a GPodder sync server app for Nextcloud that can let you sync subscriptions and play time to any compatible app. This would probably be the best solution as it would use your existing setup.

openSUSE Leap has been amazing on my home server. YaST makes tasks like setting up a Samba share or even something like a DHCP server incredibly easy, and for anything I can’t do in YaST there’s a massive variety of command line tools I can use (for me mostly Docker). SSH access was a breeze to set up too, as it’s just an option in the installer or in YaST after setup.

Died 1990s, born 2025 - welcome back Mac hard drive firmware lockdowns

Just a heads up, in a lot of motherboards the WiFi module is just an M.2 card in a special case. Therefore, it would probably be better to change out the card inside for something like an Intel AX210, and keep a PCI Express slot free for other things.

If you’re on the 24.04 LTS release it might be worth upgrading to 24.10, as it has a lot of bug fixes and improvements from upstream, especially if you have a recent Framework board. Although it isn’t your preferred option to change distros, it may be worth giving openSUSE Tumbleweed at least a test drive to see if it’s an issue with your laptop or just an Ubuntu issue, as I have had Ubuntu have issues even on fully certified laptops, and openSUSE has been pretty plug and play for me on a secondary machine even with its faster update cycle. Might be worth checking your hardware too, as random hitches and reboots could indicate that you might need to reseat RAM or that the CPU/GPU is for whatever reason unstable.

Usually it should fail over and just use the iGPU, but if worst comes to worst shorting the CMOS clear jumper on your motherboard with a screwdriver or something else metal will reset the settings and get you back in.

For the iGPU issue, there should be an option in your setup utility/BIOS on your motherboard that either allows you to disable the iGPU entirely (usually in the settings for CPU or chipset, can vary from board to board), or (in the case of my Asrock board at least) there is a “dGPU only” mode that automatically disables the iGPU when a dGPU is detected. For the RGB, since the 9070XT is a partner only card (so many different manufacturers make them), the RGB implementations can vary a lot between models as there is no standard design (would be wise to edit your post to say which specific brand and model of card you have in case other people with that brand have experience with it). It might be worth just installing openRGB anyway and seeing what it detects automatically, as it could pick it up.

Same on AMD as well. vaapi acceleration, after installing the appropriate packages, works nearly flawlessly on all brands of GPU I have tried.

Definitely agree on the used ThinkPad. You can get some surprising deals from businesses offloading even relatively recent machines that are still in very good condition (used to daily drive a T14 Gen 3 that was half the price of when it was new despite being only two years old and still in warranty). However, new ones do still retain very good compatibility (no issues on my P14s Gen 5), although the price point does make a Framework the obvious other option to look at, especially due to the better upgrade and repair situation (soldered WiFi modules on newer ThinkPads are really annoying).

I use Pika Backup (GUI that uses Borg Backup on the backend) to back up my desktop to my home server daily, then overnight that server has a daily backup using Borg to a Hetzner Storage Box. It’s easy to set it and forget it (other than maybe verifying the backups every once in a while), and having that off site back up gives me peace of mind.

Definitely agree. The KDE spin used to have some quirks and bugs, but have been running it on my laptop as a daily driver for nearly six months with no real issues and it is rock solid reliable. Fedora also has a ton of community and commercial support so pretty much any Linux app will work fine on there.

Strawberry for music transfer and GPodder for podcasts works perfectly on my iPod Photo, although both of them do have slightly clunky interfaces that may take a bit to get used to. Rhythmbox also works great, although I haven’t been able to get it working on my current Arch setup yet.

If you aren’t trying to run anything too crazy (like AMD HIP compute, HDR, really bleeding edge hardware) I would probably recommend giving openSUSE Tumbleweed, Fedora (only the regular GNOME version, for some reason KDE spin was buggy in my experience), and Pop OS a test drive off live USB drives. Each has their own merits, so it’s worth trying all of them. In terms of NVIDIA support, I personally do not have much experience with NVIDIA cards, but when I was helping a friend format an iPod Fedora booted off a live USB on an RTX 4050 laptop with little fuss, and if you install it gives options for installing the full proprietary NVIDIA drivers. I know there is also an NVIDIA installer option in YaST’s software manager for openSUSE, and Pop even has an ISO with the drivers baked right in for full compatibility. However, your mileage may vary, although I have heard the whole NVIDIA situation is pretty good right now as long as you have the proprietary drivers installed.