Year of the Linux laptop

04 Jan, 2026

It looks like 2026 will finally be my personal year of the Linux laptop. I spent several hours today battling a screen flickering issue on my Dell XPS with no success. It’s an issue that has come up several times in the past, but I can’t remember exactly how I fixed it each time. I’m pretty sure it’s something related to Windows updates and the Intel graphics driver, but I tried reinstalling the driver and BIOS to no avail.

I’ve had enough. I’m just going to backup the files I want and install Ubuntu or something. I’ve been daily driving Arch Linux on my desktop for a couple years now and have been happy with it. For some reason, I felt the need to hold onto one last device with Windows in case I ever needed it for something, but I can’t think of a reason I ever would. There’s always LibreOffice, after all.

(Not to mention it’s on Windows 10, which has been deprecated, and it does not meet the “minimum hardware requirements” for Windows 11.)