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I would recommend checking out one of the Universal Blue images of Fedora Silverblue like Bazzite (for gaming) or Bluefin (for developers who are fans of Ubuntu but want something cleaner and less... Canonical). Because they're based on an image based distro they're incredibly resiliant and reliable, and they really use all the cutting edge (but proven) tech going into OSI-image based distros to the utmost to provide a really great user experience, taking care of all the pain points and rough edges of Silverblue and providing a really complete well rounded setup right out of the box full of stuff that's just done for you and full of nice little thoughtful touches. I've moves three friends to Bazzite (from Windows) and they love it. I use my own custom image based on one of their base images too, and run their version of Fedora CoreOS on my home server.

Your CPU should have a TPM built-in. It's most likely just disabled in the BIOS (it was often disabled by default on motherboard BIOSes in the pre-Windows 11 days). Have a look in the BIOS for something labeled fTPM or Firmware TPM.

On Ryzen, in particular with their use case (gaming), the fTPM was known to introduce issues. Lag spikes of some sort. I don't remember how or why, but there's a bit of a concert where this is concerned

I'm pretty sure it's fine now with updates applied...

I went and bought a discrete one since my platform was in a weird middle ground. New but not integrated

I thought every TPM has issues like that, because interaction with the TPM puts the CPU in System Management Mode to prevent the OS/application from performing timing attacks against the TPM. Or does that only apply to TPM 1.2?

I don't think there's any issues with TPM on recent CPUs/firmware, but people often misattribute random stutters from things like a bad over clocks to TPM. The old amd TPM stutters made games basically unplayable because it happened continuously

"You can only use our OS if you opt in to some malware that pre-empts the OS" - Microsoft having a normal one

The best gaming machine indeed runs Linux, and is called Steam Deck.

I don't like macOS, but I'd take it over Windows without much hesitation. MacOS is like an authoritarian but tidy country. Windows is more and more like a corrupt third-world country :(

I would compare them, perhaps at my own risk, thusly:

MacOS:Windows::Singapore:Brazil*

(*The US is probably a better comparison, in all honesty.)

I was thinking as a Mac user who quite likes Mac and also quite likes Singapore that that's quite an apt analogy. I gave up on Windows a while back. I guess Linux would be like the metaverse where you can be/do anything but not many people go there.

Windows is like Carthage right after it got burned and its earth got salted, if that actually happened.

Fenestrae delenda est.

Omnia systema in tres partes divisa est... Fenestrae, Linos, Pomum

Lini*

>But then... It won't f*ing run Windows 11 because it doesn't have a TPM.

You can keep using Windows 10. The LTSC version will be supported until 2032. Even the regular versions will get (paid) updates probably until 2028.

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/where-to-buy-tpm-2.0-for-w...

I recently started running Fedora KDE on my work laptop, and it has been pretty much perfect for me, so I'd recommend you give it a shot

Also try Fedora Kinoite if you don't modify your system packages enough. Immutable OS is a game changer. All app installs are Flatpaks. CLI applications run in OCI containers.

Honestly I run both a regular and immutable fedora on 2 different laptops and I wouldn't say it is "a game changer". There are pros and cons of both systems, but under most usage I haven't found a difference that I would call game changing. App installation and update is different, starting flatpak and toolbox installed apps from the terminal is different, your homedir is somewhere else...and that's it?

And while I have enabled the flathub repo, to have more choice over the limited but curated fedora repo, I am a bit wary of the flathub ecosystem as it:

- includes proprietary stuff - a lot of "community build" flatpaks for which it is not obvious in a quick glance who build it exactly? - I don't think the flathub packages are analysed for malwares?

I could see flatpak becoming a source of malware. Sure most flatpaks are setup to be sandboxed and you can fine tune sandboxing but most people would not know about it and a lot of flatpak already have access to your files otherwise they are not usable.

If your gripe with Windows is that it requires TPM, the Mac is strict too.

Default Ubuntu is still pretty good. I have been using the default Fedora Workstation for almost a decade and it works great for me. I also don't spend time on tweaking it anymore (used to be the complete opposite). The defaults work, I concentrate on my work, side projects and games.

Suggesting a GNOME distro to someone who's using Windows is a sure way to get them to hate Linux. I personally couldn't stand Ubuntu as a desktop until I tried Kubuntu and KDE which has a much more similar workflow and is actually customizable. I switch between 22.04 and Win10 a lot and on some days I almost forget they're different systems.

I switched to Linux Mint a couple of years ago and couldn't be happier.

So far I had one problem with a botched nvidia driver update, but with the magic of Timeshift, reverting that was painless, and I could upgrade properly later.

I haven't missed Windows a single time since making the switch.

I also love unity! I was devastated when it was dropped. It's been kinda revived recently iirc. I've since switched to Linux mint for my daily driver which I can highly recommend.

How were you able to buy a PC in ~2020 without TPM? I thought that's been built into every PC motherboard since ~2013ish (and ~2008ish for Intel).

Manjaro is pretty good for gaming. I found that arch based gives you access to more solutions and packages.

Try Fedora 40. If you love MacOS I would say you would enjoy the latest Gnome