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Modest laptop arriving, what new Linux distribution should I try?
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this post was submitted on 16 Jul 2026
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I use Aurora, done by the same guys who make Bazzite (de facto PC gaming distro) Aurora is immutable, a flavor of Fedora, meant as a general purpose workstation. It comes with KDE, but UniversalBlue has some distros with other DE's built in, as your post suggests you don't like KDE
I had tried Manjaro before that, but I kept messing up the network drivers somehow. Thus, I looked for immutable distros that are harder for me to break. If you're not as reckless as me, Manjaro might do you good?
i almost went with aurora here. in fact it's still on the other pc i was also testing on, sitting on a shelf unused the last several months. but after trying out pretty much everything i could get my hands on.. i ended up back 'home', on debian. where i started ~ 30 years ago.
solus os (independent 'semi rolling') and ultramarine (fedora based) were two other non-debian based ones on my short list. i already have a manjaro desktop so it wasn't on my list at all.. i already knew i didn't want it on this box.
I ran Manjaro over a few years and found it just fine. I appreciate that approach to Arch. Would you recommend Aurora when the system specs listed are i5, 8 - 16gb ram and old intel integrated graphics?
The only thing I'd hesitate on is the integrated graphics. Tbh I have no idea how that will behave. Aurora's system requirements lead me to conclude that if your laptop is later than ~2014, you should be okay.
My Aurora desktop starts using ~2GB memory at boot, so your 16 should be fine.
Before I forget, their GNOME workstation distro: https://projectbluefin.io/ if you're into that.
I recommend Aurora because I already use it, and think it's cool. I've only ever used it on one machine, so if you go that route, I hope your experience is good, too. I like KDE, and Aurora is immutable so it's harder to mess up critical components. Works for me.
I use Aurora daily on a second hand Ideapad with 8GB RAM and it's great. Flawless, to be honest. It comes with lots of great little quality of life features here and there and it just works.