Exactly. Arch on my laptops and desktop, Debian on my server.

This is the way.

What if I run both Arch and Debian?

My server is Debian. My desktop and laptops are all Garuda Linux.

I’ve had great success with Garuda Linux. I’m running the KDE “Mokka” version.

It’s quite opinionated, so be aware of that, but it’s been very reliable on my HP laptop (it even has hibernation support!) and the built-in apps are top notch.

Just be aware that Arch-based distros tend to shun things like Flatpaks in favor of their own repositories and the Arch User Repository (AUR), and there aren’t any friendly point and click app stores like KDE Discover or GNOME Software. You will have to install apps using the command line or tools like Octopi, which is great if you know exactly what you’re looking for, but terrible for app discovery.

Since I mostly use Flatpaks, I installed Bazaar. You can install Discover, but it only works for Flatpak.

I used to run Manjaro, but after it left two of my computers in an unbootable state after an upgrade a few years ago, I moved on.

They want to keep it because it’s a double recursive acronym, GNU Image Manipulation Program, where “GNU” translates to “GNU’s Not UNIX.”

So clever.

It’s 2026. Can we please change the name to something NOT juvenile?

If you enter it in at boot time it’s not permanent, so it’ll either work or it won’t, but it shouldn’t break anything.

So it looks like the touchpad problem is a known issue with that particular model. A web search turned up an Arch Linux forum post from 2017 with the same issue. Unfortunately, there was no solution posted.

Your touchpad shows up as a PS/2 device, right? I have a ThinkPad A475 with a PS/2 trackpad that won’t function at all in Linux unless I add i8042.reset as a GRUB argument.

Maybe see if that helps?

This. I’ve gone ‘round the Cape of Distros and found myself reinstalling Linux Mint on all of my older computers because it just fucking WORKS without complaint or issue.

Using Fedora on my newer laptop, but for a distro that you don’t have to think about at all and just USE, Mint is hard to beat.