Definitely use the Nvidia installer if that is the card you have. Nvidia’s drivers are a common source of problems for me over the years resulting in wasted time troubleshooting. Zero issues since switching to PopOS on 2 Nvidia machines. (1080 laptop and 3090 desktop). No green screens, no blank screen boots or wake up, no kernel module compilation issues. Far more productive and much less frustrating.

It’s great, I use it on 3 machines. Gigabyte Intel laptop with Nvidia GPU, Alien AMD desktop with Nvidia, and a Lenovo Intel desktop with AMD GPU. The separate installer for Nvidia GPUs is an awesome idea and took away my biggest headache (Nvidia driver issues). Installs were a breeze, performance is great. Laptop sleep /wake is very reliable. Intuitive UI and minimal fiddling meant I could get to work instead of troubleshooting issues. I only use Windows occasionally now for a couple games and Windows apps. I highly recommend.

For a developer, I’d try PopOS! It is built on Ubuntu, but doesn’t stray far from it. It has a lot of developer tools and packages either pre installed or easy to access. Simple install process and runs well.

https://pop.system76.com/

I agree with your review. I’ve been using Linux since Slack in the mid 90’s and I switched over most of my machines to Elementary. An Alienware with 3090, Airbus laptop with 1080, and a Lenovo with an AMD 550.

Except for NVidia proprietary drivers:

• Fastest OS install. I want to play games, not wait for an OS to install and give me 50 pedantic options to step through.
• Boots very fast, shuts down just as fast.
• Fast Sleep and wake up every time on desktop and laptop. WiFi works, video normal
• Clean, stable, consistent GUI that doesn’t do weird things
• Bluetooth and audio worked great with no fuss.

As you mentioned, Flatseal is a must. However, I use AppImages as much as possible. I get the security benefit of flatpaks, but all this sandboxing and containerizing creates too many problems with apps that need to communicate with one another, and accessing my files was a serious PITA because of permission issues that needed to be corrected. There are no permission issues with AppImage, but security benefits aren’t there either. However, both work wonderfully with Elementary.

• Use AppImageLauncher to automatically create your Application menu items

Heroic Games Launcher was written by wonderful humans!

Cyberpunk won’t work, need to dualboot to Windows. But many windows games work well.

Now, about NVidia: The proprietary driver takes all the horrible fiddling Linux has a reputation for, but reality, is that NVidia drivers are closed source and AMD works with the community. OOTB experience with AMD is flawless.

3090 came up and everything was green, a problem with the Nouveau driver.
1080 everything looked ok

Ran the install, installed the kernel headers, the dev/build packages, mucked around a bit and it works great. However, every time there is a new kernel, the new linux headers and Nvidia module aren’t automatically installed and compiled so it boots to the command line. I know how to manually install them and get back and running, but I haven’t figured out what the problem is yet. Never ran into this on Ubuntu, Fedora or RHEL before.

Such wide swings, especially for Flatpak, make it clear the sampling is low and data is inaccurate and spotty. I wouldn’t base much on this.