I have a relatively new PC and eventually I decided at Debian Stable.

Granted, I was already somewhat familiar with APT and Debian based systems, but I also was thinking to choose something different or even a rolling release distribution…

…but at the end of the day, I wanted a stable, useable, tested and functional system that I can’t easily fuck up or can restore if needed, because, well, it won’t be a first time I bork a Linux system with misconfiguring stuff or doing something straight out stupid. But this is irrelevant this case.

I ain’t that super familiar with Linux world, so I deliberately chose the safe way. My hardwares are working fine, I have the drivers that work for everything, games running amazingly well… in the past 2 years I use Linux as main OS, I had no problems not being bleeding edge. I kinda had some minor FOMO when Plasma 6 came out and I was “stuck” on 5 with Debian 12, but didn’t had to wait too much for Debian 13 that has Plasma 6 by default. Though, I reinstalled everything when 13 came out - but only because I wanted some changes on my partition table, I added a new disk and… I wasn’t quite happy how I managed some things with it so I wanted a fresh start - so wasn’t upgrading to 13, but I assume it wouldn’t be a problem either, not too long ago I upgraded my server from Debian 10 to 12, without issues. (From 10 to 11 and to 12. First I tried from 10 to 12, that was a disaster though. However, the documentation explicitly said not to do such thing, so it was on me.)

I was tinkering with my tech stuff all my life, I now really just want a stable, working OS. But it’s just personal preference, I have nothing against rolling release and I can imagine that there are scenarios where rolling release is the better choice.

No, I haven’t, but will check it out, thanks!

I didn’t know InputLeap is also abandoned. Heck, I moved to it from Barrier for the same reason :P

InputLeap is the only thing that keeps me on X at the moment. Especially since I need it between a Linux host and a Windows client. It just doesn’t work if I use Plasma with Wayland unfortunately and honestly, the github page of InputLeap is everything but helpful.

I assumed it meant using a separate device or software on the side

That’s what it is. I remember actually sideloading apps to my BlackBerry 10 devices (Z10 and Z30) (though it really wasn’t that long ago not to remember it…) using a PC with a Chrome based browser (though it worked on Firefox too with some minor fiddling) to push and install .bar files to the phone. That is what sideloading to me.

Now this term changed, so everything you install from a different source than the built-in appstore is called sideloading, which is ridiculous IMO.

Unrelated, but I had something relatively similar once with my Inspiron 7520 laptop. In theory, that machine only supports 8GB of RAM, but technically I could put 16 into it and worked fine. Later I upgraded to a different machine and put this laptop aside, but sometimes I set it up if I go to friends place and need a PC to do some light multiplayer lan parties or such.

For a while, the laptop has a strange locking up issue when I booted 64 bit OSs. Or I don’t know, after my testings, it seemed that booting a 64 bit OS would crash my machine sooner or later. Maybe even right after boot, maybe after when I logged in or used it for some time. Booting into Memtest also locked up eventually the laptop (but running the 32 version of Memtest didn’t). Pulling out either memory stick (2x8GB) solved the issue, it worked with both sticks on both slots, if I used only one. The two sticks together on the other hand made my machine crash after boot, no matter which stick went to which slot.

Difference is that every OS did this, not just Debian, though Windows seemed to keep up longer in this case, but it also crashed on me.

Now I don’t have this problem. It just… disappeared after not using the laptop for a while again.

So… if it’s not software issue, maybe try to reseat your RAM sticks. Or use some compressed air to clean up the slots, maybe check the contacts of the sticks and clean them with some isopropyl and a soft brush.

It also can be storage issue, if your Windows install works fine on a different drive. Once I had an Ubuntu installed to the same laptop I mentioned and its HDD was failing hard, but the system kept up for a while, just had some really weird issues popping up here and there. But then eventually failed completely. Amongst the weird happenings, random freezes were also a thing with my bad HDD.

RTX5070 works almost straight out from the box on Kubuntu stable. Had to try few of the drivers from the built-in utility to find which worked, but the latest version and open one did the trick. So no, it wasn’t hard to get it working properly :)

My gf recently built a PC for herself and just did moved her from Windows to Kubuntu stable as well. I was kinda surprised, she was the one who came to me and told me that she doesn’t want Windows 11 so she’s open to try out Linux. I changed to Linux (Debian) myself for a year and a half and she probably noticed that I still play my games and use it the very same way I did with Windows. I told her that most of the apps has alternatives, running games isn’t a big a deal anymore and if she really really need to run Windows software, there’s a great chance she can. (But this didn’t occured).

My only concern was full Huion Kamvas support and crativity apps, 2D drawing and all that… but she’s open to use and learn Krita, it seems she likes it. But if that won’t work out, my small research told me that ClipStudio Paint (the one she used on Windows) works well with Wine. The Huion tablet just worked out of the box, with pressure sensitivity and all that jazz. (Buttons don’t work though, but Huion has official Linux drivers which supposed to make them work, so that’s awesome.)

unfortunately, radontop doesn’t support relatively old cards. I get this error. (And the github page states that >R600 will work)

Unknown Radeon card. <= R500 won't work, new cards might.

Also, my AMD CPU has a integrated GPU too, radeontop just doesn’t know about it.

The GPU works on my system tho, just radeontop doesn’t detect/support them. Oh well.

and even then, for me at least, the dialog that pops up is broken and lot of times the “Allow” button literally does nothing

Can’t go wrong with Debian and some ligthweight desktop environment, like xfce, as someone also mentioned here