I really agree with you about immutables. Not only are they awkward to use as far as managing and installing software, I feel like they prevent people from learning how a traditional Linux system works by keeping them in the padded cell of read only root.

As far as arch, it only really took me a year of fiddling and learning on Fedora and mint before I managed to get arch running. Yes there were hurdles and growing pain, but it made me a better user.

I commented elsewhere about endeavourOS, but I have some other wisdom to pass along.

Keep good backups of your personal files, stuff you don’t want to lose, and don’t be afraid to try something new. You dont like something about how your system is running? Nuke it and install something else. Installing Linux is a cakewalk in most distros and rarely takes longer than half an hour (your mileage may vary with the low specs on the laptop)

I’ve learned a ton about Linux by trying many different distros, breaking things, fixing things, and occasionally distro hopping to see how I like a different offering.

There’s a lot of great content on YouTube that can help you learn, and reviews of various distros so you can get an idea of how things work without having to install it yourself. Have fun and don’t be afraid to fiddle with things.

Absolutely. The desktop environment you go with will be the biggest factor for ram usage. Check out endeavourOS, it’s basically Arch with an easy installer with some basics preinstalled that vanilla arch doesn’t come with. It has a great community and runs like a champ for me. You’ll have to learn how to install software from the command line but a brief YouTube video can help with that. It also has one of the widest selection of desktop environments I’ve seen in a distro. XFCE would likely be your best bet for low ram usage.

Install your software from official repositories and flatpak and you shouldnt have any issues. My latest install has been going strong for about 6 months without issue. Linux in general is quite stable unless you’re mucking about with things you don’t understand, and if you do like to live dangerously in that regard, it’s a great way to learn a lot.

If you’re worried about stability, keep good backups. Back up your important personal files, as well as your config files so you can reapply any customizations you had in place.

If anything happens that’s too tedious to troubleshoot, reinstall, it takes like 20 minutes tops and gets you back to square one.

You could also use time shift to create system snapshots.

I highly recommend Hyprland if you want a truly infinitely customizable UI. But, there’s a big learning curve to even using it, let alone installing it and setting it up.

You could use endeavourOS as your operating system, which is Arch based yet easy to install. I can’t speak to setting up Hyprland on other distros as I haven’t done it, but I’m sure if you look around you’ll find out what you need to know.

Big 2nd for Fedora. Fedora isn’t Debian stable but isn’t exactly unstable either, and I think having fresher packages in your main repo is worth it.

Absolutely. One of the best parts of the Linux experience is the community helping each other in so many places on the internet.

EndeavourOS is terminal centric. If you try it out you might need to learn some new tricks, but its forums are fantastic and I rarely have issues with it. Cachy is supposed to be really good too.

I have never experienced ds4drv actually working. Maybe it is time for a distro hop if you’re feeling frisky. I highly recommend EndeavourOS as an entry level to Arch. I’m also curious about CachyOS and PikaOS.

Something like this just not working is usually what drove me on too a new distro until I found something that just works really well for me.

So yeah, this is the answer, or should be. I run EndeavourOS, an Arch based distro (btw) and I also installed ds4drv thinking I’d need it, and my dualshock4 wouldn’t connect. I deleted ds4drv, rebooted and tried again and viola, it connected immediately, with full support including rumble and touchpad. The drivers were in the kernel all along.

If FartSparkles is also correct about your old kernel after you sudo apt purge ds4drv, you can search instructions for how to upgrade to a newer kernel version, it isn’t very difficult to do.

Using literally anything that requires an out of tree kernel module, for one. Have some peripherals with features that aren’t supported by drivers already present in the kernel? Good luck getting any DKMS packages running on your machine.

I’m hearing a lot of very poor advice in here, at least from my perspective as a Linux user who’s been through the gamut of various distros over the years.

Fedora atomic desktops are not beginner distros. That is not their purpose, and their limitations make many things a person may eventually want to do with their machine a lot more complicated.

Debian? Are we joking here? Debian is an amazing distro for what its purposes are, but it’s not beginner friendly. Debian is bare bones.

Linux Mint is the easiest answer here. Ubuntu LTS (or its classroom based fork edubuntu) is another great answer. I know every Linux user on the internet recoils in horror at the mention of Ubuntu but it really is a drop in plug and play solution for kids and old people.