I was hoping someone could give a recommendation for a noob friendly distro that works well on my laptop, an HP Envy x360 Convertible 15m-es0xxx, i7 16 GB RAM. Thanks for your help and I apologize if these questions aren’t allowed here
gave fedora a shot today (with kde) because i see it recommended a lot. i found it difficult to get a working guide for nvidia drivers, had to reinstall the first time because all i got was a black screen. had lots of difficulty mounting secondary hard drive, programs refusing to install and not launching or nowhere to be found after installing, and everything works ridiculously slow even though i have powerful hardware. after almost smashing my head through the monitor i gave up and installed kubuntu, which also seems to have little hickups like stuttering and lagging when downloading something. is it supposed to be this hard? mint is still the only properly working distro i have seen.
I personally haven’t ever had it that difficult. My laptop has an nvidia card running mint and is dual booting with Windows with no issues. I’ve previously setup an encrypted Ubuntu on an external drive that can be loaded on any computer without issues. I’ve used Bazzite on an all AMD modern gaming powerhouse, and Kinoite on two laptops with integrated graphics with no issues. Also KDE Neon on a crappy old HP Laptop with no issues.
So you may have done something wrong in the process of installation, maybe your USB drive was corrupted, or maybe you tinkered alittle too much while not knowing exactly what you were doing.
i suspected a corrupted usb too, but i used a different usb stick every time and with fedora i redownloaded the iso file when i reinstalled,
i am quite familiar with kde since i used nobara kde for a good while as my first daily driver linux os, but the experience has always been a bit broken. i can make the taskbar f-ck itself up by looking at it wrong and a reboot usually fixes it.
some really weird stuff started happening today in kubuntu too, like whatsapp web consumes 10 - 20% of cpu nonstop on every browser. and every time the internet connection cuts off (when suspending or reconnecting vpn), a popup says kded5 wants to add a new wallet… and i swear, this wasn’t my doing 😅
i found it difficult to get a working guide for nvidia drivers
I am saddened to hear that. Did you try the guide found on RPM Fusion?
As another user said, opting for a derivative with built-in Nvidia drivers might be another option worth considering.
rpm fusion guide was a tad confusing for me and my rtx 30 series wasn’t listed so i didn’t know what to install. i did find a good guide after some trial and error and a full reinstall.
i have used nobara in the past, and i quite liked it and would have kept it but it had (and still has) this weird issue when i suspend my pc and/or turn off the monitor (oled tv), it won’t get signal anymore until i reboot.
anyway for now i ended up going back to mint for the 6th time and everything works so maybe i just stick with it 😂
