Curious if there are any Linux laptop users on FT. If so, what is your setup like? Are you happy with it? I'm a new daily user and would be interested to hear about how its worked for others and if there are any apps or tricks that I should be using as a fellow road warrior. More on my journey below.

TL;DR: I got myself a Linux laptop and I'm never going back to windows or macos.

Background:
So I've been a Macbook user and proponent for the last decade or so. Great hardware, good enough OS (even if Apple treats all its customers like children), and as we all know awesome integration between their other devices and services. I've always been disappointed in the desktop experience and lack of customizability, but it was still much better than a windows PC. Most of my company's software we sell is also windows based, so the ability to run windows was a must. I ran VMs in Parallels at first and then VM Fusion in the later years. I was pretty happy, and then the Apple Silicon came along... I bought a tricked out 14" MBP the last year they had intel processors, but it's almost 4 years old now. So the search for a new laptop began back in June...

OS Search Begins:
I've always been a huge Linux fan for servers and I run multiple headless Linux VMs and containers in the homelab. However, all my earlier forays into using Linux have ended in disappointment with the clunky desktops and lack of support for many drivers that have been in Win/Mac for years or more. So I started testing some Linux desktops in VMs and decided I loved the KDE Plasma desktop. It has tons of features built in and one can customize almost everything. I was originally planning to go Ubuntu, because they seem to have the best support for laptops AND are derivatives of Debian which is my favorite Linux distro*. Debian is by far my favorite distro for servers, and I was more than thrilled when rave reviews of Debian 12 came out, mostly centered around how Debian is now a legit option for laptops.

Hardware:
So I had my OS and Linux desktop, the hardware search began. I was interested in some of the Linux only laptops like System76 or Pinebook and I love supporting open source and small outfits, but ultimately I just couldn't seem to find the right fit. So I looked at the usual suspects. Ended up going with a Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Gen10 with i7-1280P and 32GB RAM. A month in and I can say this is the best laptop I've ever had and it's not even close. It's super fast and I rarely hear the fans, unlike my Mac or my colleagues work PCs which also have a 12th Gen Intel processor. It's lightweight (significantly lighter than my same screen size Mac), thin, and I'm amazed at how efficient and stable Linux is on a laptop (and I'm using the Debian testing repo). Virtual Box does everything Fusion did and it's significantly faster. I've enjoyed tricking out the desktop and the fact that I can basically do anything I want with the OS. If I get tired of the KDE desktop, I'll just install Chrome, or LXDE, etc. I love that about Linux.

The only real downside is that there's no way to have iMessage on my desktop. I'll just have to get over that.

*I've learned that Linux users get really defensive about their preferred Linux distros and desktops, and now I get it!