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  • Thanks for the great answer! It gave me a good perspective on the matter, but it also opened room for more questions haha so here it comes: Commented Sep 2, 2018 at 21:57
  • "Linux desktop environments decided to invest on creating a better experience, also adding more eye candy" I know that Ubuntu tries to sort of duplicate the mac/windows desktop UI...but did you mean all popular distros? I really don't care about eye candy, I wanna run my applications smoothly and I want them to give me feedback quickly. That's it. I was considering using Debian precisely because it focuses on the systems effectiveness, and not on things like UI. Commented Sep 2, 2018 at 22:03
  • I've also looked into Gentoo, and it seems to be more or less like Arch: // The biggest difference is that Gentoo is primarily a source based distribution with some support for binary packages tacked on, and Arch Linux is a binary distribution with a some support for source packages. This distinction has a lot of side effects. // I really like Arch's idea, I just didn't pursue it further because I don't know if I would be able to build it myself. Do you think Gentoo would be a easier alternative? Commented Sep 2, 2018 at 22:08
  • Finally, I updated my question: it seems my Samsung laptop won't be up for running Linux. Do you know of any laptop models/brands that could run Linux well, for instance Lenovo's Thinkpad? Commented Sep 2, 2018 at 22:11
  • " It's hard to talk about performance without more specifics on what part of the system you're measuring performance of. " You're definitely right, and coming from my perspective, good performance would be: Cloud9 IDE(on browser), Jupyter notebook(on browser) , and Hotmail all open on the same browser while I'm running sublime text with a few tabs open and R. That's it. Commented Sep 2, 2018 at 22:22