• FumpyAer [any, comrade/them]
    ·
    edit-2
    27 days ago

    Any distro that uses GNOME as the desktop environment will have touch screen/trackpad gestures, an app tray, and virtual desktops, as well as a touch screen friendly interface.

    Fedora Workstation uses GNOME by default and I really like the way that distro feels. Their full drive encryption is very easy to set up during install process too, just check the box and come up with a password.

    If you haven't tried Linux before, make a Live USB and boot from that to check that your hardware works with it. There is no fully stable Apple Silicon Linux distro so it will have to have Intel, AMD, or ARM cpu.

    https://fedoraproject.org/workstation/download

    There is a popular GNOME extension that adds window gestures as well. Video demo and link to get it

    • CommunistCuddlefish [she/her]
      ·
      27 days ago

      Cool! Thanks for the suggestion :)

      That's fine, I don't have and I'm sure will never get Apple Silicon anyway, the new machines are extremely expensive, deliberately fragile and difficult to repair and maintain, and I hate the direction MacOS is going in (worse UI, genAI -- one advantage of not having apple silicon is the ai bullshit doesn't run on older chips!)

      • FumpyAer [any, comrade/them]
        ·
        27 days ago

        If your device has nvidia graphics you will need proprietary drivers, otherwise the kernel should "just work" without any tinkering. So if you have to buy new hardware, avoid an nvidia discrete GPU. But if that's what you have, you can work around it. Intel and amd integrated graphics work great out of the box.