Fancy laptop with discrete GPU? Afraid of the hassle of setting up Linux properly?

I’ve got a Dell XPS 15 9560. It’s beginning to get on now – 5/6 years old?? But still full of life and power.

The Windows drivers have always been a problem with all the new tech in these things. I’ve had several long episodes over it’s lifetime related to the nvme driver / storage subsystem causing BSODs.

Install Linux? That’s just asking for major headaches. OR IS IT?!

Enter Pop!_OS by System76. They sell Linux computers, but release their custom Linux OS (based on Ubuntu) for free! It’s got some nice polish in areas like handing discrete GPUs out of the box. Shiney gnome based desktop. Many slick features as default.

Installation was standard for Linux: difficult & janky. Stuff that should just work took a bit of tweaking. Wi-fi setup IIRC? Bluetooth keyboard had to be manually paired from the terminal to get it working solidly, stuff like that, but once in place you can get down to infinite Linux reconfiguration! See ya MacOS, you beautiful turd!

Now if I could just get Mac keyboard shortcuts working reliably in VSCode terminal under Linux…

Highly recommended distro. Check it out here! https://pop.system76.com/