Best Operating System (OS) for studies?

Privacy and Security Get Advice
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Hi Techlore community,

New here on Techlore forum, so yea…
I recently got a new laptop computer, alongside my desktop one. So, for compartmentalization, I decided to limit my old desktop to personal stuffs only and will use the new laptop for studies-related stuffs(found it more useful than iPad at university). And I am looking for a new OS for that. I want it to be:

  • Simple
  • Maximum productivity & privacy and security.
  • Solid performance
  • NOT Fedora(I use it for my personal desktop, it is great, though I want something different)
  • Apps availability(I need apps like Obsidian and Standard Notes)

Any advises…? Thanks for your time, folks!

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Hello and welcome to the forums you can you use either Windows or Mac os for your studies and for Linux you can Also use Unbuntu Based Distros like pop os or Linux mint for example they have the most software support in Linux

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Are you looking for exclusively Linux? If so, many of the recommendations tend to boil down to:

  • Fedora (I know you said you don’t want it, but out of curiosity is there a reason you want to avoid it aside from just wanting something new?)
  • Linux Mint
  • PopOS
  • Personally I don’t mind ElementaryOS :person_shrugging:

Is there any software that’s required for your studies that an OS needs to support besides Obsidian & Standard Notes?

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Thanks for your recommendations mr Henry You can also add Open Suse Tumbleweed and Zorin OS

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If you want to drop the training wheels, you can try Endeavouros (Arch but pain free install). Main plus point of Arch is the Arch User Repository (AUR).

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Overall i definitely recommend popOS if you want a pain free experience

Mint is good as well, but pop has that extra polish that people love/makes it feel nice to use

Honestly any distro would work, but if you don’t want to have to mess around with it id ref recommend Pop!_os + flatpak

You should be able to get 95% or more of what you need from the pop repos with apt install, or from flatpak via flathub

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I’m biased, but let me throw a few other Fedora options at you to pique your interest.

Fedora spin. Maybe use KDE or another desktop environment that you don’t normally use but stick with the Fedora base.

Immutable Fedora - Silverblue, Kinoite, Sericea. Give an immutable OS a try. I’ll mention openSUSE MicroOS as well as their immutable offering.

Nobara. Because gaming is… important for breaks? lol jk

Regardless, lots of the above options are also good!

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Fedora Spin

This is what I wanted to say. I doubt the thing you are tired of is your package manager or your kernel update cycle. A change of DE would probably be a bigger change than using to different GNOME distros.

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I tried my best with using Linux for my studies but I ended up going with Windows 11, here’s why:

Because the device is compartmentalised away from my personal activities I find the boost in productivity to be substantial enough to justify running Windows on that device.

Windows

You can remove most invasive telemetry by choosing to run Windows 11 Enterprise and running the https://privacy.sexy script to disable the telemetry.

  • Best app support
  • Windows 11 has good security* (TPM, Secure boot and Hypervisor-protected code integrity)
  • OnlyOffice and Libreoffice always cause formatting issues on my documents so I went with Microsoft Office for productivity
  • First class performance

macOS

If you can afford it I would also recommend running macOS as it also has similar app support but has better security and you will be able to have more control with an application layer firewall like Lulu or Little Snitch

  • Focus on productivity
  • Superior security when compared to Linux and Windows
  • First class performance and hardware support
  • Large app library

Generally I am of the opinion that when it comes to learning you want to reduce the amount of friction between you and your studies. When you are running Linux on your school device it can make it take longer to complete your assignments and in my opinion when it comes to your education you should choose the most efficient tool for the job.

you didn’t mention what laptop you had so that’s why I recommended two options…

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You forgot to mention Your recommended Linuxs Distros for his use case like Arco And Risi os

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Based privacy vs life goals tradeoff decision

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Yeah, for the layer of transparency, I prefer Linux over MacOS/Windows.

I really like Fedora – Have been a user for around a year now and been super happy with it, just want to try something different.

Not really other than these two.

Will probably settle on PopOS. Thanks!

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Thanks!
I personally prefer Linux but if needed I am free to use MacOS/Windows as well.
For the files formatting problems, it happens all the time, including but not limited to, PDF to Microsoft Word files, Only Office files to Microsoft Word files. Really annoying.

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yeah I have also setup a windows VM just because you really can’t live without it lol

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I like and would recommend Pop!_OS too, but be warned: I have experienced some minor annoying issues with a) not having the desktop as a place to place shortcuts, and b) problems with icons not appearing in the docker/not staying as favourites. Also, Pop Shop is unbearably slow, and you may be downloading unofficial versions of apps that don’t update.

For Standard Notes in particular, download the AppImage directly from their website. You then need to run something called AppImageLauncher if you want to be able to start up SN from the docker.

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so the elementary os store is slow because the last time i used pop it was a fork of that

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