ProtonBadger
Well, they're an Arch Linux user which is a special case. On Arch and derivatives it's the user's responsibility to manage the system so this doesn't happen, configure cleanup daemons, flush package managers, etc., alternatively it could also be a misbehaving application which would have to be reported. Arch is for hobbyists who likes to do this.
On other Linux distributions, Windows or macOS if this happens it's usually an application not properly managing its cache.
I don't know how long it will take but it should be much much less work now that gnarly UI elements as old as GTK have been replaced with modern toolkit ones.
I got that problem on a ROG Strix G733ZM. The solution was to install "hdajackretask" (sometimes in an ALSA tools package, sometimes elsewhere), select "ALC285" and "show unconnected pins" and map pin 0x14 to "Internal Speaker" and pin 0x1e to "Internal speaker (LFE), then install boot override and reboot.
Oh and after reboot I went to Configure Audio in KDE and selected a profile.
It looks like this.
I found it randomly online, don't remember where. I wish I knew how those pins were discovered in the first place because it may well be different for different laptops and also I really want to know....
Oh BTW, in case you need to know: My microphone was having an awful lot of static noise. The trick was to 1) reduce microphone volume to 50% and 2) enable the ladspa-rnnoise noise filter in pipewire (it was already in my distributions repo). I checked in Windows and it sends the mic through an "ASUS AI noise filter" - so they've basically saved money on the hardware and are doing the same thing.
Yeah a number of laptop brands supports it, it can often be set with commands such as "sudo tlp setcharge 70 90 BAT0", but as far as I can see system76 doesn't support tlp as they have their own solution.
I don’t get the issue with “maintaining Xorg”.
I think he explains it pretty well, he even gives some examples and mentions there are many others. For a company to support such a large component for its commercial customers has a lot of work and verification we wouldn't consider as end users. His comment also explains why you can't just maintain a status quo with it and make an automatic build and forget...
Same, I've used Linux since the late nineties and know my way around but I have other things to do. TW with Plasma/Wayland is great.
Not sure the lack of fan matters, as an app dev you probably wont be hitting hard both cpu and gpu simultaneously for long durations. You'll just be bursting the CPU for app compiles and simulator startup, that's not too bad.
I'd be more concerned about RAM. 16GB is probably a better idea than 8, especially if you have both web browser, IDE and simulator running. Look for a refurb or used anything with 16GB of RAM.
I don't use Ubuntu on my desktop but in my experience it performs on par with other distributions and it is not a RAM hog either.
I thing "bloat" is a big mythical monster people like to throw around because it's difficult to argue against and scares everybody.
I think snaps were slow to load to begin with but I also read that it was much improved recently, one can also install Flatpak.
So I think Ubuntu is a great distro, performant and stable.
Tumbleweed. I've used Linux since the nineties so I know my way around but I appreciate a sane default desktop install so I don't have to waste time fiddling too much.
People always talk about lean/fast/customizing, in reality most distros are performant and fairly lean/bloat free, it's just how Linux is. TW is no exception and like all the others it's easy to customize. I don't use YAST.
I can get comfortable almost any distro, though I prefer those with systemD+Wayland and Nvidia drivers in a repo so they update with the rest. I like rolling release, also considering the pace of Wayland and KDE development.
For new users I always recommend Mint.
I haven't booted Windows since February and at this point I'm afraid to.
Or
sudo systemctl reboot --firmware-setup