You’re overthinking it. The hardest part is making sure you have a good backup. Get your files backed up, don’t forget about save games and whatnot that might be hiding in random folders. Take a disk image if you know how to do that.

Format the drive. Install an easy to use distro with gui stuff. Mint is great - feels windows-y. Ubuntu works - the drama is real but overblown for someone just starting out with Linux. Fedora desktop is the new Ubuntu. It just works. Gnome is different but many people like it a lot (myself included). It’s not hard to learn. Save the distro hopping and niche distros for later.

Install your nvidia drivers. (Look up Rpm fusion for fedora, mint has directions on their forums).

Install steam. Log in. Buy a game. Install game. See if everything behaves. It probably will. If it doesn’t - spend 15 minutes researching and trying the fix. If you can’t get it to work - just wipe the drive and try another distro. Generally newer distros will “fix” whatever issue you are having.

You can do all of this in an hour or two as a newbie and be playing games from the steam sale.

Yup

Once upon a time, seeing the high resolution on a 13 inch display would have been no problem. Now, the 16 is definitely nicer for that. :)

I have a 13. My father in law just bought a 16. So I’ve got good runtime on both. He uses the 16 AS a powerful desktop - one that can be easily disconnected and taken on the go. The 16 fills that use case perfectly.

But if you already have a powerful desktop - the 13 makes SO much more sense.

Honestly the thing I miss most about the latest Linux distributions. I understand screensavers aren’t necessary anymore, but they are fun and should still be a thing.

I’ve used it since the 90s, but windows was always my daily driver. Linux always worked, but games could be spotty and there always seemed to be to be the random breakage for no reason.

But that changed a few years ago. Games “just worked”, device support became really good, and if I’m being honest - I became a gnome guy. That interface is very very productive, especially on a laptop with a trackpad.

And then windows just, started sucking. They break machines with every single update, it’s like there’s zero qa anymore. And the little things became more and more annoying - the pop ups “upgrade to 11, try copilot, OneDrive isn’t working omfg let me help you fix that” the “where is that setting moved to now” game, the extra clicks everywhere.

My dual boot setup found a windows drive that was never being used anymore. I didn’t switch, I just stopped using. Eventually I just deleted the partition and use it for extra space and playing around with other OSs.

During this process I distro hopped quite a bit and eventually settled on fedora workstation. It’s been good to me on three PCs.

I should note that depending on which internal drives are used - you can use them like external drives for backups. You can copy files and images there, then easily disconnect the sata cable. Then you can’t overwrite it by accident during install. But you get to use the large size of the drive for images and whatnot.

It sounds like you have enough drives to do this super safely with zero chance of screwing things up :)

Um, let’s just clarify a bit more just in case.

You have your pictures, music, videos, and other personal files on what?

On the internal hard drives (hdd/ssd/nvme/whatever) and the backup/copy of those files on the external drive (external usb hdd/ssd, flash drive, NAS, whatever)? Presumably both are formatted ntfs?

What I described above is the ideal scenario. It could be as simple as formatting your internal drives and installing Linux, then copying those files back to your newly formatted internal hard drives. This is going to be fine as long as you are SURE your backups are good. Linux can read ntfs drives and copy files from them.

I’m always a bit paranoid though and I like to take extra steps. Sometimes, you forget to backup a file. Like a save game file sitting in a random game folder, a configuration file (like a blahblah.ini) files for program settings, or your favorites, you get the point. This stuff usually isn’t a deal breaker - you really only care about the stuff that’s irreplaceable like pictures and home movies. But it’s annoying…

So what I like to do is to take a drive image. Not a backup - a bit for bit clone of the internal hard drives. Then you can’t forget anything ;) Pick your program of choice - I’ve used macrium reflect successfully in the past and it was free - it’s been a while and there may be better options these days. Make that image and store it on a large external drive/nas/whatever. Then if you screw something up - you can simply restore your windows computer or go grab that file you forgot in your backup routine. I usually keep both my “backup files” and the drive image for a good long while after I reload a pc. Sometimes it’s months before you realize you’re missing something.

So in summary/my advice.

1. Get a big external drive
2. Make a disc image of your internal drives onto that large external drive
3. Make a solid final backup of your files double checking you’ve copied everything you think you need
4. Disconnect that external drive and put it aside
5. format your pc and internal drives as part of your Linux installation
6. plug your external drive into your Linux pc, mount the ntfs drive, copy all your files
7. Put the external drive away in a closet and don’t overwrite it for a good long time
8. if you screwed something up - no big deal, you can go backwards in time because you have that external drive stored safely away.

Fly digi apex 4

Seriously the best d pad I’ve ever used. Crappy software, but the hardware is top notch. I’ve abused it for probably a little less than a thousand hours, and still no drift or dead spots.

Imagine if we put as much effort into arresting pedophile politicians and priests.

JUST emulation? Why? Battery life?

I mean, you could always just download a full set of nes and snes roms and go to town on anything that interests you.

For non emulation games, and especially if recharging power is available - factorio is surprisingly good at running on low end hardware and if that’s your type of game, you can play for a very very long time.

I find roguelikes to also be good for trips - not necessarily in one super long session due to frustration-but good from a “play for a while, put it down, pick it up and play some more”. If you like playing cards definitely check out balatro. Also vampire survivors can play forever on a battery charge and is surprisingly addictive.

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I think (could be wrong), but I’m pretty sure I’ve seen the opposite too. Steam flatpak, or steam itself (via the little steam is updating popup upon steam startup), will update on its own - and my video drivers don’t work properly until I update the entire system (which fixes it every time).

Doesn’t happen often - but often enough for me to catch it. At least I’m pretty sure that’s what’s going on…

These stretch your categories a bit - but we have similar tastes in books compared to your list. Here’s my recommendations

• check out Blake crouch - dark matter was a fun read even if it’s a bit of a beach book
• the red rising series - right up your alley, you’ll love it. Book one has a bit of YA feel to it, but they keep getting better and it was still good.
• Enders game if you didn’t read that in school
• what about Stephen king? Some people hate him - but he’s not just horror and his books can be fun. Some are trippy weird. The dark tower series was excellent (although long), and under the dome was good and oddly in this category (without spoiling too much).
• dune
• sphere by crighton - this one was fun, not a masterpiece or anything

I’ll also plug my all time favorites to get you into other genres (from someone who might have similar tastes)

• lord of the rings
• unbroken
• the count of monte cristo
• a man called ove
• the book thief
• Frankenstein
• night

There’s three threads recommending framework 13. I commented in one. I actually own a new 13 with all the latest stuff. It comes close, but it’s not a Mac.

The trackpad works really good except it has a lot of play in it - it’s annoying.

I’ve seen better screens. Yes I have the newest one, no it’s not terrible - but there’s better out there.

The speakers are just ok. Not bad, just ok.

The 13 craftsmanship wise is amazing. My father in law just bought the 16. That one has fit issues with the trackpad and the spacers on either side of it.

Fingerprint readers on both and they work great. No touchscreen.

Battery life is good. Macs are better. My 13 goes about 6-7 hours of continual “normal use”. If I’m using teams for a video call, it’s significantly less - maybe 3 hours. Games - depends on the game but that can drain it in a couple of hours. You cannot under any circumstances go an entire day+ of continuous use without charging.

They are both fantastic linux machines (frameworks) and I highly recommend them. But the hardware is not Mac perfect despite what others say. Just trying to be real here - sounds like you have high expectations and I’d hate for you to buy an expensive laptop and be dissatisfied.

I have a framework 13 running Linux. It’s fantastic - but it’s not up to the high bar OP has laid out (IMO).

The screen is nice - but I’ve seen nicer. The trackpad works well, but the fit has a little bit to be desired - it’s no apple trackpad. The speakers are ok. Not bad, just ok. It’s also pricey.

If OP can compromise on those things, then yes, it’s probably as close to Mac hardware as he’ll get.

You want a MacBook. Apple has always made fantastic hardware. If you’re not willing to compromise, you’re stuck with macs.

Example, literally nobody else makes a trackpad like that.

For me, yes, everything just works. Fedora 42 gnome. Arch just worked as well. Nvidia 4090. Heavy flatpak user. I’ve had issues with mint and Debian distros being too far behind. My son runs Ubuntu today though - again no issues. And with a video card.

My vote is something is up with your install. Try another distro - maybe one of the gaming focused ones. Or just plain fedora workstation.

And the larvae are these giant gross green caterpillars with a horn on their butt. Big squishy things that love tomato plants.

I used to see both all the time on the farm. Both scared the crap out of me when I was small. (Thinking the caterpillar could sting and that the moth was a gigantic bee)

I’ve said it here before and I’ll continue to say it. All the Linux nerds (myself included) have strong opinions when it comes to distros or x vs Wayland, or flatpak vs repositories, blah blah blah.

But in the end - none of it matters. You could randomly eliminate all options except for one distro - and we’d happily pick that over windows. The trick is that you could make any distro like any other - it’s just that the distro did all the work for you. So pick the one that matches how you want to use your pc.

Maybe the only thing that’s not changeable is the philosophy behind the distro. Debian - older stuff for stability. Arch - bleeding edge rolling release. Fedora somewhere in the middle. You get the idea.