Interesting. I wonder if it’s an incompatible UEFI/BIOS? Both of the machines I put it on were fairly new, one was first boot on a server I built, the other was a recent laptop that I decided to run it on for a while.

It still works for installing the OS though, at least in the case of Nix. I’ve not tried Guix so far, but I’ve installed NixOS on two machines in the past year using Ventoy.

I know my use case isn’t the standard for everyone, but at this moment I have six different Linux distros in use. I keep my most commonly used ISOs on a Ventoy so I can easily install an OS on a machine I’m rehabilitating, or maybe just because I want a change of pace. I could write the ISO I want to the drive every time I want to change something, but it’s a waste of time when I can have 15 or 20 of them ready to go on one drive. It’s just my particular use case, I’m sure others have other reasons they prefer it.

Sounds like the regular way still works for you then! I’ve given away most of my smaller drives, I’m pretty sure I don’t have anything smaller than 32GB right now.

Glad to help!

I’ve definitely done that before! I’ll use a Ventoy as a portable OS to test things I don’t want to break my main system, then shut it down to reset to normal. It’s nice to not need a second stick to bring in or save other files while doing that.

I’m going to do that, I didn’t realize that was possible! Thanks!

It would definitely be worth checking out, I wiped all of my individual sticks after I started using it. Also, I don’t know if the speed would make much difference in your use case, but SanDisk 32GB USB3.0 drives are usually less than $8.

Check out Ventoy! Unless you need a single ISO on the drive, it’s just something you install to it and then copy and paste ISOs to the folder on it. No flashing needed, it runs them for you. I’ve got 128GB drives almost filled with every ISO I could possibly want.

I didn’t realize it could be installed already, I’ll give that a go. Thanks!

I like it! It was the first distro I used when I started using Linux full time. It just works most of the time, (other than the Pop Shop) and fixes most of the issues I have with Gnome. I’m looking forward to seeing how Cosmic works once it is ready to go, and I’m hoping their new shop I just read about works well!

When I first started using it I wanted something that was far away from the Windows look, and it does it well. Maybe it’s weird, but having it look wildly different from Windows put me in a different mindset and helped me learn the Linux way of doing things rather than trying to make Linux work like Windows.

I’m still running it on my main gaming rig, but I’ve been doing a lot of experimenting on my other computers. I’ve gotten to really like both Budgie and Plasma since then, and I’m using distros with those DEs on them on two of my other computers.

I’ve been running stock Pop!_OS for quite a while now. The only thing I’ve done is pin the dock to the left side of the screen.

By the way, I see Toto coming up on your playlist!

I’m also curious if anyone has any recommendations on this. I’ve used it for so many years that it’s hard to switch to anything else! I’ve just been running it through Lutris on my main computer.

Pop doesn’t use stock Gnome, there’s a lot of modifications to it. They’re also working on their own DE for future releases, called Cosmic.

Linux is designed to give you freedom to change things to your liking, and Canonical and many other distro teams obviously feel they can improve Gnome.

The Thinkpad link that was shared below looks pretty nice, they tend to be fairly cheap and easy to get replacement batteries and parts. There’s a lot available in that $150 to $200 bracket on eBay. Edit: I just saw it’s 14", so a bit bigger than what you wanted. You can filter by screen size and price on eBay to give you an idea of what you can get. You may need a new battery depending on the age, so keep that in mind.

What price bracket are you looking at? The two laptops that I normally use in that situation is a used Thinkpad X1 Carbon I got on eBay, and a HP Dev One that works pretty well for that.

SteamOS is Arch with Steam components on top, so I would hope they support other distros! :-) It works great for me on Fedora as well.

Depending on their previous experience, a new user may be overwhelmed with any extra configuration involved in getting their computer running. In those cases a Debian/Ubuntu based distribution such as Mint or Pop is a stable foundation to learn what they want out of their system.

Thanks!

It does seem they lean pretty hard into the Intel/Nvidia combo, hopefully that will change in the future. I do appreciate the option of prepackaged Nvidia drivers for Pop though. Makes running my old laptop so easy!

Good to know. Which model do you have? I’ve been eyeing up something along the lines of the Pangolin when I next upgrade. I’ve been a fan of Pop for some time, and I’m currently running it on my three main computers. It’s great on my Dev One and I’ve also got it on an older Alienware laptop. Their customer support is pretty good, I contacted them about information on a keyboard a while back and it seemed they knew what they were doing.