How does Arch run in a laptop? I have a solid Windows laptop that that I’d like to test with Linux but I’m concerned about battery life. I’ve tried Ubuntu and Linux Mint but they seemed to drain battery like no other.
It depends. It’s mostly good (quite probably better than under Windows), but if there’s unsupported hardware that’s less continuously (which it shouldn’t be) it can drain the battery pretty fast. But that wouldn’t be any different under Windows…
Nobara is great if you’re a gamer. Also if you’re not a gamer. ; )
Arch by definition is bare bones, you install what you want or need. Because of that, the installation process can be daunting for newcomers (hint: use the Install guide on their wiki), but you get full control.
I used Arch and Fedora with i3 on my old laptop, imo battery life with those was good.
