I’ve been quite happy with my Steam Deck - both as a gaming console and as a secondary computer when it’s docked, but for newer titles I picked up a Rog Zephyrus M16 (2023) last year.
Now that Windows is going off the deep end with AI, I’m looking to dual boot/trial Linux on this laptop with the goal to give Microsoft the boot.
It’s a beefy laptop:
- 13th Gen i9-13900
- 32GB Memory
- NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070
- 1TB NVMe (Windows)
- 2TB NVMe (Linux)
I added the second drive to avoid any issues with dual-booting with Grub/Windows Bootloader - instead making the Linux device the primary boot device and spamming Esc if I want to change to the Windows drive.
For distributions, I’m most familiar with Debian/Ubuntu - it’s the daily driver for my work laptop, and the vast majority of my home lab VMs are Ubuntu. With the Steam Deck, I started to get more into Arch with the Steam Deck, and now it’s the OS of choice for my HTPCs for simple streaming/Plex media player. I’ve also messed around with ZorinOS (basically a fancy skinned Ubuntu).
I need some advice on what to throw on this laptop - and some suggestions on how to squeeze the best performance out of this (Optimus vs. Proprietary NVIDIA vs. Open source drivers).
Optimus isn’t a driver, but a way for the laptop to use both the integrated graphics and the discreet card. It doesn’t work well with Linux so you’ll want to disable it in EFI. This will increase heat and energy use.
If you do end up wanting to use Optimus, the Arch wiki has a lot of good information. You should use the proprietary driver in nearly all cases.
As far as distros, take a look at Bazzite, it’s a gaming-focused distro and similar to the steam deck’s OS.