I haven't used Linux in a couple of years after switching to macOS for work, including video editing. I'm considering a used Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i with an Intel Core Ultra 5, 16 GB of RAM, a 512 GB SSD, and an OLED display. I'd mainly use it for personal projects, drawing and animation editing, basic streaming, and light gaming such as Portal and other older titles.
Are there any major hardware, firmware, graphics, OLED, or suspend-related issues I should expect with this laptop and Fedora? I also remember Fedora occasionally having audio glitches in some games played through Steam or Proton. Is that still a common problem?
I'm open to other distributions too. Fedora appeals to me because it seems like a good balance between modern software and stability, but I'm not sure whether a gaming-focused option would offer any real advantages for a laptop that will also be used for creative work. I'll be keeping my Mac for work, so Linux would be for hobbies, gaming, and personal projects. I'm also considering dual-booting, although I've heard it may not be as seamless as it used to be.
3 Answers
Lenovo laptops generally have very good Linux compatibility, and this model should be more than capable for Fedora, older games, and creative applications. The main things worth checking before buying are the exact model’s Wi-Fi chipset, fingerprint reader, webcam, suspend behavior, and whether the OLED panel has any unusual power-management issues. Most core hardware should work well out of the box.
Fedora has worked well for me on several Lenovo, Dell, and ASUS laptops. Gaming under Linux is usually straightforward for older titles, but occasional Proton issues can still happen, especially with audio or particular hardware combinations. They tend to be game-specific rather than a general Fedora problem, so I wouldn’t treat an old audio glitch as a reason to avoid the distribution.
For a gaming-focused setup, a specialized distribution can include more gaming tools and preconfigured settings, but Fedora is a better general-purpose choice if you also care about drawing, editing, and everyday use.
The laptop should be a solid fit. If you want to compare distributions before installing, Ventoy lets you put multiple installer images on one USB drive and select which one to boot. That makes it easy to test Fedora, Mint, KDE-based options, or other distributions for display scaling, audio, Wi-Fi, sleep, and graphics support before committing.
A separate Windows installation is optional, but if your games and creative tools work through Linux, you may not need dual boot at all. If you do dual boot, install each system carefully and keep backups, since firmware updates and major OS updates can occasionally affect the boot setup.
That’s helpful. I’ll keep the Mac for work and use Linux for everything personal, so a general-purpose setup probably makes more sense than optimizing entirely for games.