Nov 30, 2015

So, you got yourself a Lenovo y50-70, and you are wondering which distribution of Linux to use? Hopefully, you will find an answer in here. I wrote this having in mind that you already did your research and understand most of the terminology used.

I have tried every distribution of Linux on my laptop, not every Linux has good drivers for a specific laptop model, not every Linux is for you, maybe you prefer one over the other. Furthermore, I love eye-candy, so choosing a Linux distribution which is stable, aesthetically pleasing and functional was hard.

After a lot of searching, I found it. Meet Antergos a modified Archlinux distribution.

Why Arch? Why not apt-get? Well, Ubuntu is nice and all, but I, personally, dislike it and every flavour of it just didn’t seem to work well with this laptop and for me. I am not bashing Ubuntu, everyone has different taste. Not to mention I had INSANE screen tearing in Ubuntu that I just could not get fixed, I have no idea why but the drivers just didn’t work well with this laptop (have in mind this was months ago, they might have fixed it) or if you managed to get Ubuntu to work well with this laptop, please link or comment down below.

Now, moving on to Arch. It uses a rolling release model, such that a regular system update is all that is needed to obtain the latest software; the installation images released by the Arch team are simply up-to-date snapshots of the main system components. The drivers seem good too me, Wi-Fi works well out of the box, and no screen tearing. I haven’t tested the Nvidia drivers because I had no need to game on Linux, I just needed it for work/school. Arch also has a pretty neat thing called AUR or Arch User Repository, a community-driven repository for Arch users, and it is AMAZING when combined with yaourt.

“But Arch is so hard to set up, it's a pain” – most of the people who want to take a look at Arch. Well, you are saved, this is where Antergos comes in. It’s effortless to setup Arch with it. It’s an installation like any other operating system, you don’t have to take a single look at a terminal. Just download the installer and flash it to a USB (hopefully you know how to do this).

And that marks the end of this post since it just a suggestion of which Linux you should take a look into and hopefully use in the future. I will write a guide on how to change themes, mouse cursors(since it doesn’t always work) and some general tips and tricks for Arch.

Thank you for taking the time to read and have a nice day 🙂

Update, January 2017: Now using Elementary OS

Cover Photo by Christian Salas on Unsplash