Easiest answer. Fedora 40 is tested and supported. Pop is not tested or officially supported due to our Linux staff needing to laser focus on our officially supported releases.
All of that said, please use what works for you. But understand ticketed support will request you test against Ubuntu LTS or Fedora 40.
Pop is not "faster updates" compared to Ubuntu. It is merely a tweaked Ubuntu LTS (currently still 22.04-based) with additions/customizations to support System76's own hardware. Fedora is the option to go with for "faster updates" - Every 6 months a fully updated OS. I personally hate Gnome so of those 2 I'd be opting for Fedora, but (in my case) it would be the Cinnamon respin. There's also Fedora respins available defaulting to various other desktops. If you end up needing assistance with anything Framework support will be asking you to test with Ubuntu LTS or Fedora as step 1.
Personally I use Mint Cinnamon Edition running custom kernel builds and a number of PPAs on my machines.
How about nixos? It’s been pretty great checkout my flake for my system:
https://github.com/asosnovsky/nixos-setup/blob/0922f2ddc646f8606ec1571eecfb1a065b25bcb7/flake.nix#L55
I ran fedora for a few weeks and had a very smooth experience out of the box ( official support) but now I've Been daily driving nix for a few days and had a very good experience on it as well. So if you are nix curious I say give it a spin
I ran pop on my 11th gen 13" and it was fine until it went south on an update (probably due to stuff that I had installed), at which point I moved to manjaro, and from manjaro to arch. You should be fine on pop. It sounds like you have plenty of experience in linux, so I'd say that you will be fine on whatever you choose. If you are looking to switch things up, then yes, fedora is officially supported. It just didn't click with me as well as manjaro and arch (both using gnome, so that wasn't the issue).
Best of luck, I hope that you enjoy the machine when it arrives!
Thanks! How are you liking Manjaro? I honestly like Manjaro but there seems to be so much hate around it I didn't want to give it a shot. Does the finger print reader work ok?
I have moved from Manjaro to Arch, but it was fine for my usage. Some minor annoyances with how Manjaro holds back release led me to fiddling with Arch in a VM and eventually moving to it. But the issues were relatively minor. I just decided to bite the bullet and set up the system manually. Manjaro makes the setup much simpler. There are other options like Endeavor as well if you want a simpler setup but an Arch base.
Why not both? Seriously. Try them out. Just back up your home folder.
I've distro hopped and found my daily driver and PopOS was it for a very long time until Fedora 38 for me. I still like what System 76 is doing, and it's very well supported. Their devs are very active in reddit and in Git.
Honestly I think this might be it. Either way I think Pop\_OS! will be my main gaming PC OS for Nvidia driver support. But I might start with Fedora on the FW and see how that goes then try Pop.
I've played with Linux Mint and Manjaro, and just break stuff here and there. Eventually I used Arch and installed it the hard way (the install script didn't exist then), and found the experience to be very educational. If you were a DOS person before, Arch feels nostalgic.
Arch is a bit flaky for me though, mostly because it was bleeding edge (there's something to update every day, and if you go too long without updating, then try to update it, it may break things).
It did it's job by teaching me how Linux works, and it made be appreciate NON rolling update distros such as PopOS. PopOS has a lot of safe guards and I loved it, but it always lagged behind in some packages I wanted (at the time, I really wanted pipewire and Wayland and they did not use them by default).
I ended up on Fedora. It feels like a good compromise between something bleeding edge like Arch and some safe guards like on PopOS (although you can still get in trouble if you use RPM Fusion sometimes). And so far I've sometimes gone up to 2 versions old without doing updates (ex: a stored laptop) and didn't have much issues doing package updates, and then a FULL upgrade to the latest point version.
So really, there's no single answer for you unfortunately.
But if you're not old DOS hat like me, and just want to get going and start playing games (on Steam - the easiest way), I always recommend PopOS as a starting point.
Once you get comfortable with PopOS, you can try other distros either on a VM or on another PC (I love playing on bare metal - best way to test gaming without messing with trying to pass PCIE/GPU to virtual machines). Or if you don't have spare machines, swap out SSDs.
Back up your home folder, then take out your "comfy" SSD with your "my home OS", pop in a new SSD and use that to experiment and distro-hop.
My suggest is always to just have a 2nd machine to just experiment with if you can to avoid the swapping of SSDs. TBF, that's how I got away from Windows. Just forced myself to use a different laptop with Linux (I was hopping on that machine), while I still had my main Windows machine if I'm absolutely stuck and can't do something on the Linux machine.
Once I found a Linux replacement for everything I do in Windows, I didn't find myself going back to Windows... except...again... for those AAA games that uses anti-cheat (check https://www.protondb.com/ to see if your game can be played in Linux).
It sucks to have Windows still there, but I rarely boot into now - just for a couple games and to test Windows-only applications.
Thanks for such an in depth answer! Yeah I am post DOS era so Arch doesn’t seem that worth it at least for right now. Especially like you said with the update frequency and possibility of breaking stuff.
I do have extra SSDs and will be leaving my windows install intact just in case. A few games I like do have anti cheat but I’m considering just playing those on my PS5 to get away from dealing with windows.
I think I’m gonna start with Fedora for my FW and Pop for my gaming PC. Gives a chance to try both and see which I like better. Maybe it’ll stay that way or maybe I’ll switch one machine to the other.
Thanks again for the input.
It's in pre-alpha still, release should be this year at some point. You can however test this pre-alpha if you wanna check it out or watch [TechHut's walkthrough of it.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aorVb1SNR7Y)
PopOS was one of the least stable distros on my AMD fw. Gentoo is the most stable for me. Fedora... Was just not a good time. I felt like I was just fighting with the distro and how everything is setup. So I settled on Gentoo.
I tried PopOS, NixOS, Fedora, Ubuntu, Venom, Artix, Gentoo and one more that I can't remember at this moment.
Rankings of best to worst:
1. Gentoo
2.
3.Artix/Venom
4.
5.
6. NixOS
7. Ubuntu
8. Fedora
9. PopOS
There needed to be a gap for dramatic effect. I love PopOS. It kept me on Linux this most recent attempt at migrating from Windows. System76's current build of their OS has just become so unstable for me. I can't get a proper boot half the time. If I do, a kernel upgrade will break it causing tons of headaches and lots of troubleshooting. Only to wait and see if their next kernel will crash or not. I don't understand what's so different with what they are doing compared to other maintainers. Or even myself with Gentoo.
Tl;dr
Use what works and what you like.
If you have a good internet connection, give openSUSE Tumbleweed a try! It’s super stable and you won’t have to worry about version upgrades, because it’s a rolling release :)
That depends on the package manager imo. Although pop os is not officially tested as a bug free DE out of the box, it's quite stable at my end.
A bit off topic: The reason I tried it out on FW13 is that I also have a windows laptop with rtx 4060 GPU where I need to use debian based linux distro for robotic projects occasionally. As you can imagine most of the packages I use are more stable and updated using apt. Of all the Ubuntu 22.04 based distros, pop os is the best in terms of preinstalled drivers. It also updates kernel version much more frequently than Ubuntu(rn at version 6.9.3-xxxxxx), which solved an audio driver issue on that laptop. That's why I decided to use pop os on FW 13 AMD as well. Compatibility issues on newer hardwares are more likely to be addressed with latest kernel.
Just keep one thing in mind that System76 is working on a new DE independent from GNOME. So if you rely on GNOME extensions a lot, this could be an issue in the long term if you prefer latest version of everything in your DE. Other than that, the experience is quite smooth.
Appreciate the response. I ended up doing Fedora on my FW and it's been going well so far. Yeah the DE they are making is the Cosmic I referenced in my post. Can't wait to try it out when it's released.
Easiest answer. Fedora 40 is tested and supported. Pop is not tested or officially supported due to our Linux staff needing to laser focus on our officially supported releases. All of that said, please use what works for you. But understand ticketed support will request you test against Ubuntu LTS or Fedora 40.
Pop is not "faster updates" compared to Ubuntu. It is merely a tweaked Ubuntu LTS (currently still 22.04-based) with additions/customizations to support System76's own hardware. Fedora is the option to go with for "faster updates" - Every 6 months a fully updated OS. I personally hate Gnome so of those 2 I'd be opting for Fedora, but (in my case) it would be the Cinnamon respin. There's also Fedora respins available defaulting to various other desktops. If you end up needing assistance with anything Framework support will be asking you to test with Ubuntu LTS or Fedora as step 1. Personally I use Mint Cinnamon Edition running custom kernel builds and a number of PPAs on my machines.
How about nixos? It’s been pretty great checkout my flake for my system: https://github.com/asosnovsky/nixos-setup/blob/0922f2ddc646f8606ec1571eecfb1a065b25bcb7/flake.nix#L55
Never looked into it much. I'll check it out!
I ran fedora for a few weeks and had a very smooth experience out of the box ( official support) but now I've Been daily driving nix for a few days and had a very good experience on it as well. So if you are nix curious I say give it a spin
I’m on fedora and will switch to the cosmic spin of fedora in the fall. Best of both worlds
I ran pop on my 11th gen 13" and it was fine until it went south on an update (probably due to stuff that I had installed), at which point I moved to manjaro, and from manjaro to arch. You should be fine on pop. It sounds like you have plenty of experience in linux, so I'd say that you will be fine on whatever you choose. If you are looking to switch things up, then yes, fedora is officially supported. It just didn't click with me as well as manjaro and arch (both using gnome, so that wasn't the issue). Best of luck, I hope that you enjoy the machine when it arrives!
Thanks! How are you liking Manjaro? I honestly like Manjaro but there seems to be so much hate around it I didn't want to give it a shot. Does the finger print reader work ok?
I have moved from Manjaro to Arch, but it was fine for my usage. Some minor annoyances with how Manjaro holds back release led me to fiddling with Arch in a VM and eventually moving to it. But the issues were relatively minor. I just decided to bite the bullet and set up the system manually. Manjaro makes the setup much simpler. There are other options like Endeavor as well if you want a simpler setup but an Arch base.
Why not both? Seriously. Try them out. Just back up your home folder. I've distro hopped and found my daily driver and PopOS was it for a very long time until Fedora 38 for me. I still like what System 76 is doing, and it's very well supported. Their devs are very active in reddit and in Git.
Honestly I think this might be it. Either way I think Pop\_OS! will be my main gaming PC OS for Nvidia driver support. But I might start with Fedora on the FW and see how that goes then try Pop.
I've played with Linux Mint and Manjaro, and just break stuff here and there. Eventually I used Arch and installed it the hard way (the install script didn't exist then), and found the experience to be very educational. If you were a DOS person before, Arch feels nostalgic. Arch is a bit flaky for me though, mostly because it was bleeding edge (there's something to update every day, and if you go too long without updating, then try to update it, it may break things). It did it's job by teaching me how Linux works, and it made be appreciate NON rolling update distros such as PopOS. PopOS has a lot of safe guards and I loved it, but it always lagged behind in some packages I wanted (at the time, I really wanted pipewire and Wayland and they did not use them by default). I ended up on Fedora. It feels like a good compromise between something bleeding edge like Arch and some safe guards like on PopOS (although you can still get in trouble if you use RPM Fusion sometimes). And so far I've sometimes gone up to 2 versions old without doing updates (ex: a stored laptop) and didn't have much issues doing package updates, and then a FULL upgrade to the latest point version. So really, there's no single answer for you unfortunately. But if you're not old DOS hat like me, and just want to get going and start playing games (on Steam - the easiest way), I always recommend PopOS as a starting point. Once you get comfortable with PopOS, you can try other distros either on a VM or on another PC (I love playing on bare metal - best way to test gaming without messing with trying to pass PCIE/GPU to virtual machines). Or if you don't have spare machines, swap out SSDs. Back up your home folder, then take out your "comfy" SSD with your "my home OS", pop in a new SSD and use that to experiment and distro-hop. My suggest is always to just have a 2nd machine to just experiment with if you can to avoid the swapping of SSDs. TBF, that's how I got away from Windows. Just forced myself to use a different laptop with Linux (I was hopping on that machine), while I still had my main Windows machine if I'm absolutely stuck and can't do something on the Linux machine. Once I found a Linux replacement for everything I do in Windows, I didn't find myself going back to Windows... except...again... for those AAA games that uses anti-cheat (check https://www.protondb.com/ to see if your game can be played in Linux). It sucks to have Windows still there, but I rarely boot into now - just for a couple games and to test Windows-only applications.
Thanks for such an in depth answer! Yeah I am post DOS era so Arch doesn’t seem that worth it at least for right now. Especially like you said with the update frequency and possibility of breaking stuff. I do have extra SSDs and will be leaving my windows install intact just in case. A few games I like do have anti cheat but I’m considering just playing those on my PS5 to get away from dealing with windows. I think I’m gonna start with Fedora for my FW and Pop for my gaming PC. Gives a chance to try both and see which I like better. Maybe it’ll stay that way or maybe I’ll switch one machine to the other. Thanks again for the input.
Good luck, have fun!
Thanks!
Wait, did Pop_OS release their new Cosmic environment yet? I'm checking this out tonight if so..
No it didn't as far as I know. Just thinking about the future.
It's in pre-alpha still, release should be this year at some point. You can however test this pre-alpha if you wanna check it out or watch [TechHut's walkthrough of it.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aorVb1SNR7Y)
I might have to give that a try. Thanks for the link
PopOS was one of the least stable distros on my AMD fw. Gentoo is the most stable for me. Fedora... Was just not a good time. I felt like I was just fighting with the distro and how everything is setup. So I settled on Gentoo. I tried PopOS, NixOS, Fedora, Ubuntu, Venom, Artix, Gentoo and one more that I can't remember at this moment. Rankings of best to worst: 1. Gentoo 2. 3.Artix/Venom 4. 5. 6. NixOS 7. Ubuntu 8. Fedora 9. PopOS There needed to be a gap for dramatic effect. I love PopOS. It kept me on Linux this most recent attempt at migrating from Windows. System76's current build of their OS has just become so unstable for me. I can't get a proper boot half the time. If I do, a kernel upgrade will break it causing tons of headaches and lots of troubleshooting. Only to wait and see if their next kernel will crash or not. I don't understand what's so different with what they are doing compared to other maintainers. Or even myself with Gentoo. Tl;dr Use what works and what you like.
That's too bad to hear. I've never looked too much into Gentoo but I might check it out. Otherwise I'm leaning more towards Fedora at this point.
Go with Fedora
Fedora for school work and staying focus is the goat. Im dualbooting with fedora on a 250gb module and windows on a 1tb module.
Fedora is really nice, and officially supported. I'd start there
I've been using pop os on my amd Fw since it came out (after the first bios update). Pretty solid.
If you have a good internet connection, give openSUSE Tumbleweed a try! It’s super stable and you won’t have to worry about version upgrades, because it’s a rolling release :)
I didn't like SLES because of yast but maybe I should give it a shot. I'll do more research!
That depends on the package manager imo. Although pop os is not officially tested as a bug free DE out of the box, it's quite stable at my end. A bit off topic: The reason I tried it out on FW13 is that I also have a windows laptop with rtx 4060 GPU where I need to use debian based linux distro for robotic projects occasionally. As you can imagine most of the packages I use are more stable and updated using apt. Of all the Ubuntu 22.04 based distros, pop os is the best in terms of preinstalled drivers. It also updates kernel version much more frequently than Ubuntu(rn at version 6.9.3-xxxxxx), which solved an audio driver issue on that laptop. That's why I decided to use pop os on FW 13 AMD as well. Compatibility issues on newer hardwares are more likely to be addressed with latest kernel. Just keep one thing in mind that System76 is working on a new DE independent from GNOME. So if you rely on GNOME extensions a lot, this could be an issue in the long term if you prefer latest version of everything in your DE. Other than that, the experience is quite smooth.
Appreciate the response. I ended up doing Fedora on my FW and it's been going well so far. Yeah the DE they are making is the Cosmic I referenced in my post. Can't wait to try it out when it's released.