Linux on desktop - first impressions

As I have posted earlier about my decision to buy a Linux-first laptop, I also decided to follow up with my first impressions of using it for a couple of weeks.

Hardware

It's an OEM laptop shell from a Chinese manufacturer TongFang, model GX4.

• Case - fully metal, no (exposed) plastic apart from keycaps and the screen bezel. Not exactly as solid as a Macbook (the external lid panel has a bit of flex plus the vents are larger and more visible), but close enough. A lid can be opened with one hand, the hinges are pleasantly smooth and allow the 'flat' 180 angle. Internals are easy to access by undoing only 6 common Philips screws which are conveniently exposed.
• Keyboard - good, I feel no difference with Macbooks. Nothing else to add apart that the arrow layout takes time to get used to (see the video above).
• Touchpad - probably alright (it's glass) but feels unsatisfactory. The physical 'click', which is needed to e.g. select text or drag and drop something moves it enough to open a gap between the surface of the touchpad and the case. Quite a stepdown from Macbook's haptic feedback, but if you previous laptop wasn't one you may remain less concerned.
• Camera - formally an HD one, but the picture quality is quite bad, almost no details. Will do for business calls with colleagues, an external one would certainly be required for anything else. It has a built in privacy cover though and can be turned off physically (will get disconnected from the USB bus and so disappear from the list of devices available in the system).

• Speakers - not very loud and have almost no bass. Very noticeable difference with e.g. Macbook, even bigger with a similarly sized Samsung tablet. Again, would do for a call or notifications, but for anything else you'd need headphones.
• Screen - very good! 3K and 120MHz with nice angles, nuff said. I also like the 16x10 aspect ratio. I've seen complaints about the response time being too slow and therefore bad for active gaming, but this is probably not a priority for Linux users and I didn't test it myself (or noticed in other applications). Warning: external screens are limited to 4K and 60Hz regardless of whether you use USB-C or HDMI.
• Ports - having a USB-A on board is very handy, but 3 of them feel excessive especially considering one of them is USB 2.0 (could do without that one for sure). Both USB-C ports accept charging. Having HDMI at the back rather than on the side is very convenient.
• WiFi - nothing to say apart from that it's fast as you'd expect, and like the camera, its module can also be switched off the bus and disappear from the system.
• Battery - ignore the "7 hours" claim, you'll be realistically getting about 4 hours of autonomy give or take (and up to 10% an hour drain in standby mode with the lid closed). Which again isn't great coming from the Apple world, but is the expected real life outcome with anything that has an x86 CPU and a decent screen. Installing Slimbook Battery tool is highly recommended, I find it to be more efficient in setting power consumption modes than built-in profiles.

Software

Distro

When order from LaptopWithLinux or other similar companies, you can choose a distro to be pre-installed. I chose Pop_OS! (with disk encryption enabled) more or less randomly, but so far I'm happy with it. Unlike vanilla Ubuntu it is based on, its window manager is close enough to what you'd expect after MacOS X (a very similar dock and a settings app, etc.), but still has its own style and character.

Need to mention that I had no problem with my external screen, both in it being the only active screen plugged into a folded laptop or a second used used with the laptop's own one. It didn't require any additional setup or messing with the text configs, it just worked. Both screens were running on their own native resolution and refresh rate, something I've read is a problem in Mint Linux - a way more popular Ubuntu distro also known for its out-of-the-box window manager experience.

Pop!_OS still being Ubuntu under the hood means that most of the issues you may face will be well covered by someone online, and that your LLM of choice is likely to be very helpful with solving them as well.

A lot of negative comments about Pop!_OS boil down to it being slow with updates (its latest stable version is still based on Ubuntu 22.04 while 24.04 is already available). That may become a bigger problem in the future, or I may not fully understand the implications of that, but to be honest I am not bothered and am yet to run into any tangible issue caused by it. And by the time I will, an even better 'Cosmic' GUI is likely to become stable.

In short, I have chosen this specific distro more or less randomly, but it still offered what I expected (a quick start with minimum extra tuning required). My gut feeling is that if you prioritise smooth user experience in GUI your choice is between that and Mint, and you should go with Mint if you would like a more popular distribution, or with Pop!_OS if you're feeling more adventurous. If you don't have a strong preference, don't overthink it.

Apps and external devices

So far I have only had problems with my Yubico security keys and my Audioquest Dragonfly DAC, both quite niche. Logging in and sudo'ing with security keys required dealing with text configs, as did avoiding high fidelity audio playback downscaling to 44.1kHz, but once you set it up once, it just works.

Speaking of playback, this is what you'll need (plus adjust the volume in alsamixer):

> nano ~/.config/pipewire/pipewire.conf.d/custom.conf 

context.properties = { 
    default.clock.rate = 96000 
    default.clock.allowed-rates = [ 44100 48000 88200 96000 ] 
    resample.quality = 10 
} 
 
> systemctl --user restart pipewire pipewire-pulse wireplumber 

My old printer and scanner worked out of box, and the standard scanning app was even more convenient than the special HP one I used on Mac. External camera and microphone also just worked.

You may be required to go through some extra steps with familiar applications though - for example, I had to manually make OneDrive sync run as a background service, standard installation didn't seem to allow that. Setting up default search engines in Brave browser also didn't work the same way. The only app I miss is a dedicated OneNote one, but its web version is actually fine.

Steam library has (surprisingly) more Linux games than it does on Mac but (predictably) still way fewer than on Widows.

It is also confusing that you'll have more than way to install your apps - Ubuntu 'snaps', Pop!_OS Shop 'flatpacks', standard apt and of course building from source. That means they may not be showing at the same lists at places or sit in the same parent folder, but that is a small thing.

Once you have everything installed and set up, your experience will be practically the same as with more popular systems. After all, a lot of what we do is now happening in browser anyway.

Conclusion

I still don't regret it going with both less traditional hardware and a less popular operating system. It could be different if it was my only computer, but as I have a separate Macbook for work, this fully satisfies me as a personal machine and looks like it will remain usable and relevant for many years to come.

The only thing I was anxious about was the lack of information - surfing various videos, forums and subreddits was time consuming and not always productive (said information was often either unnecessarily technical or too subjective). So the purpose of this post is to maybe pop up in someone else's search results to hopefully help them to choose in a similar situation.