A bit more plausible deniability

Interesting, and I see how other distros can feel foreign if you’ve spent so much time on Gentoo. Too much bloat, less control over your system etc.

True, but of something’s actually wrong, you’ll have less support with that. But I know many people run it without major issues.

That’s how well they integrated and hid this atrocity in plain sight :D

But it gets worse. When you try to use apt, it looks up if there is a snap package available, and may install that instead, so you may have used the store without being aware of it. They also consider phasing apt out completely.

Slowroll is certainly on my radar, but as things stand, there are two things that are stopping me:

1. It’s still experimental and it does break, which ruins the premise of stability
2. It is not community-driven, which, while not being a total dealbreaker, is considered by me to be negative

Thanks for the suggestion, though!

Fair enough - if you’re a fan of Cinnamon, LMDE will always be a bit more polished. I can see your use case :)

Mint not officially shipping with KDE is a source of my personal frustration. Would have checked it out more thoroughly otherwise.

Note that on the negative side it inherits most of the issues of Debian, including extremely old packages.

Also, Debian 12 finally got very user-friendly enough to the point I would recommend it over LMDE.

I see, thank you!

I’ve never considered Gentoo as an unironic daily driver on desktops - more like embedded systems/learning the ropes of Linux kinda thing.

What made you choose Gentoo in particular?

I tried Endeavour and Garuda, and they’re bad for me exactly the way Arch is - it’s a bit too bleeding-edge to run exactly as stable as I imagine my perfect system to be, and it’s also too easy to shoot yourself in the foot. It sure is possible to run it smoothly, but that requires a lot of user attention and consideration with updates and tools.

The premise of Manjaro is good - like, let the packets go through some testing before being delivered to a wide audience, this is pretty much common sense. Should they implement something like Chaotic-AUR, but with the delay for dependencies to catch up, AUR could actually work for most of its purposes. Combine that with more careful considerations here and there, and you might get your perfect Arch.

That said, I strongly prefer distros based on Debian (except Ubuntu and its derivatives) or Arch, as they are the only major community-driven options that are not exotic and obscure. Debian is too slow, Arch is too fast, and there’s little in between, which is my personal frustration. For now, the Arch edge was closer to my spirit, but the only sane premise on that front, Manjaro, is essentially even less stable than plain Arch in the long run. So…neither works, and I reluctantly go Fedora.

Snap

Stock Ubuntu is not the only and possibly not the most sane choice for newbies. An uncomfortably different UI with relatively complicated customization, a lot of catches, myriad of package sources, and little progress in general usability make it only preferable in terms of binaries selection and amount of accumulated knowledge specifically on Ubuntu.

Linux Mint is the most sane pick for an average newbie, though mileage will vary and other distros can be better entry points for some. For example, what clicked with me against all warnings was Manjaro, and if not for that, I could still be sitting on Windows today.

Nowadays, I use Fedora KDE Spin, though if a sane Arch-based alternative arises (think Manjaro done right), I would consider going back.

Ubuntu works just fine, the problematic part about it is how it shoves its proprietary app store down everyone’s throats, which is very much against Linux ethos, both in terms of proprietary software and user freedom.

If you don’t mind that and are comfortable with Ubuntu in other ways, hooray, you’ve just found your distro.

Mint fixes that. Based on Ubuntu, it intentionally disables Snap, and all apt commands actually use apt.

Or yes, just straight up use Debian if you don’t mind older apps outside Flatpaks.

“Whataboutism” is a term used to feel righteous while completely ignoring your bias.

Admitting both contries are bad and then taking a clear stance between them is hypocritical at best.

Not really.

Dems are primarily sponsored by the rich and have to align with their interests. Out of two major US political parties, neither one is the party of the people.

I respect the American people, their modern advancements in science and technology, their industry, their customs, and their rich history and culture.

I do not respect a hostile dictatorship of corporate overlords that rules over them all, and if they were smart they would not, either.

Every media is physical. The question is, where is it located.

A properly backed up and sorted digital collection is superior to a bunch of disks laying around, at least if we don’t consider the pleasure and pride some collectors take in having exactly the latter. But when we allow this data to be stored in a place we don’t own, real and serious problems arise.

Well, it is censorship.

People just wake up to a realization that some censorship should exist, and it makes many uncomfortable.

Other than that, don’t be tolerant of the intolerant, and you’ll be fine.