Others have answered your dual-booting question pretty well. However, along the lines of “minimal” Windows, it’s not generally recommended to fuck with the system as that can break things. There are scripts that can strip a lot of the problems, though. I can’t remember any off the top of my head.

As for not requiring an account, I have old ISOs of Win11 and Win10 where the unplugging my ethernet cable trick gets me around signing into a Microsoft account. Not sure if it works on the ISO you get from Microsoft now, however. And if you have built-in WiFi, I think there’s a way to disable it in the command prompt before you install.

Edit: Win10 is going to hit EOL in the near future. I am going to use it until then. It’s got a lot fewer concerns (for me) than Win11, unless Microsoft keeps filtering Win11 shit into it.

Yep, dual disks with the Windows installation done first is how I did/do it. GRUB/systemd-boot worked just fine from then on, and I am not on Windows 11, so I didn’t get hit with that fuck-up Microsoft did just a few days ago.

Yeah, VMs are a good route since the OP didn’t mention gaming.

I don’t know what to tell you. We need more information.

Are you on Nvidia, AMD, or Intel for your GPU? What other symptoms? Have you done any other research on this in your troubleshooting? What does your config file look like?

I ask because I have a ThinkPad on Fedora with Hyprland and it’s doing just fine. Like another commenter said, help us help you.

High school crush. I married her.

Mattermost is a lot like Slack, right?

ThinkPads are my go-to. I just got an X1 Carbon Gen 9 (i5, 16GB) for $350 and put Fedora on it after upgrading the SSD to 1TB. It’s a beautiful laptop.

Of course, there’s the tried and true T480. Love that thing, especially if you get the right display panel and touchpad upgrades. Swappable batteries, upgradeable RAM. Those laptops can be had for cheap on eBay. Also check r/hardwareswap or the Discord for ThinkPad deals.

XPS 13 units can do well with Linux, too. I’m just a ThinkPad fan.

I’m definitely checking this out. I’ve been on the Audiobookshelf beta for a while and it’s not bad, but I want CarPlay support. And I really love this UI. It reminds me of that third-party Plex tie-in for audiobooks that did this same thing, Prologue.

It never stops. Distro hopping is an addiction for me.