I have tried and tested Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Arch Linux and Windows. Recently I have come across Open SUSE.
I was wondering what are some Linux distros that are specially designed for laptops.
I am using HP Envy 4 Ultrabook - 1046 TX
Arch, while running good on my desktop, creates a lot of complications on my laptop and gives poor battery life even with all tunables turned good with powertop and laptop mode tools installed and configured well.
The same thing is with Ubuntu and derivatives - very poor battery life no matter what I do (I have tried almost all the tricks).
I don't like Ubuntu over Arch anyway because Arch is minimal and highly customizable which is a thing that I've always loved about Arch.
Recently I have come across Open SUSE and it works fine as a live USB OS, but I haven't installed it yet. Another thing that I would like to mention is that I tried 32bit of Open SUSE while my device is built on 64 bit architecture. So perhaps lowing down the process size made it seem so good at the beginning but might cause problems later.
I am looking for something with good battery life without compromising graphics (say for example KDE with Open SUSE), and also good software support.
A friend of mine told me that rpm based distros have lesser free software than deb based. Honestly, it's something hard to believe. Linux community is very wide and I don't think whether I use rpm based or deb based or even Arch, in most cases I'm going to get almost all the software that I need.
Anyway, battery life and good GUI (I like KDE) are most important for me. So any suggestions?