I've been using Linux as my main OS for a couple of years now, first on a slightly older Dell Inspiron 15. Last year I upgraded to an Inspiron 15 7510 with i7-11800H and RTX3050. Since purchasing this laptop I've used Manjaro, Debian 11, Pop OS, Void Linux, Fedora Silverblue (37 & 38) and now Debian 12. I need to reinstall soon since I've stuffed up my NVIDIA drivers trying to install CUDA and didn't realise that they changed the default swap size to 1GB.

I use this laptop for everything - development in C/C++, dart/flutter, nodejs and sometimes PHP. I occasionally play games on it through Proton and sometimes need to re-encode videos using Handbrake. I need some amount of reliability since I also use this for University.

I've previously been against trying Arch due to instability issues such as the recent GRUB thing. But I have been reading about BTRFS and snapshots which make me think I can have an up to date system and reliability (by rebooting into a snapshot). What's everyone's perspective on this, is there anything major I should keep an eye on?

Should also note I use GNOME, vscode, Firefox and will need MATLAB to be installed, if there is anything to do with those that is problematic on Arch?

Edit: I went with Arch thanks everyone for the advice

  • super_mario_69 [he/him, comrade/them]
    ·
    1 year ago

    I love arch and I'm incredibly biased, but here goes. I have used Arch exclusively for the past n years. All of the things you've mentioned will work great. The AUR absolutely rules. It's rather similiar to Void in the sense that it's a completely blank slate, so it's going to be as unique an experience as you make it.

    Arch is really stable and reliable as long as you don't break it, really. Out of the handful of times I've fucked up my install, all of them have been my own fault. Fortunately Arch is (relatively) easy to fix: keep a live USB on hand and chroot into your physical drive with arch-chroot and unfuck whatever needs unfucking. I haven't ever had to completely start over from scratch a single time. It's a learning experience!

    Go for it, I say. Try it in a VM beforehand if you gotta.