I want to know your opinions on the best distro that is convenient for laptops. Main reason is I want to really optimize hardware performance and more specifically battery life for my University classes. I also want to try a tiling manager as they seem perfect for laptops.
Things of note:
- Convenience/Performance is key
- My laptop is a Thinkpad E15 w/ 16 gb ram
- On my home desktop I run Archlinux w/ Open box & no DE (I’ve been using Arch for years but haven’t used another distro since Ubuntu in highschool)
- I will likely dual boot with Windows 10 for Office
- I want to run a tiling manager
- I don’t video game
- I wont be using a mouse
- I don’t necessarily want to use Arch, want to try something new that I don’t have to rely on AUR updates for certain software
Ubuntu LTS or Debian Stable. Your skill level is good so you can go with Debian 12, I am loving it after 6 years of Ubuntu LTS. Performance, stability and hardware support is amazing, as is battery. GNOME is the best DE on laptops if you use scaling factor in GNOME Tweaks.
If your only need is MS Office, you can get away with MS Office 2007 in a Windows XP VM in VirtualBox. Otherwise, buy a M.2 NGFF SSD (check PSREF spec sheet file for your ThinkPad) for Windows 10 (preferably Ameliorated Project).