To me, Endless OS seems to be the best fit for you; install it once and you never ever have to give it a second glance for troubleshooting or whatsoever. It achieves this through using “a read-only root file system managed by OSTree with apps installed using Flatpak.”. This translates to:

• The most important system-related files being protected from change by yourself and others.
• Ensurance that your base installation is exactly the same as the one tested and used by its developers. And thus an (in-)direct quality control and maintenance by the very people that work on it.
• As the base system is not changing beyond what is provided by the devs, installation of applications is relegated to flatpaks (see Flathub for the App Store).
  • Flatpak is a packaging format that doesn’t interact with the base system to install software; think of it like how applications are installed on your phone. With this, you can still install software you need without compromising changes to the base system.

The pursuit of Freedom led me to Linux.

Are you referring to Qubes OS? If so, what do you mean exactly with hardware support?

Whonix is an OS exclusively meant to be used within a VM; at least, until Whonix-Host is released. Therefore, I didn’t include it as it’s not actually competing within the same space; as it can be run on any of the aforementioned systems within a VM. Finally, it’s worth noting that by its own documentation, it’s desirable to do so with Qubes OS.

I daily drive secureblue; or, to be more precise, its bluefin-main-userns-hardened image.

“Why?”, you ask. Because security is my number one priority.

I dismiss other often mentioned hardened systems for the following reasons:

• Qubes OS; my laptop doesn’t satisfy its hardware requirements. Otherwise, this would have been my daily driver.
• Kicksecure; primary reason would be how it’s dependent on backports for security updates.
• Tails; while excellent for protection against forensics, its security model is far from impressive otherwise. It’s not really meant as a daily driver for general use anyways.
• Spectrum OS; heavily inspired by Qubes OS and NixOS, which is a big W. Unfortunately, it’s not ready yet.

Nix, the package manager, is distro-agnostic. Add Home Manager on top of it and you’re good to go; both packages and dotfiles are dealt with.

Thanks for sharing that video. It’s one of the most ambitious ones I’ve seen out there. However, if I understood correctly, only average fps is compared right? So not the (more important) 1% or 0.1% lows.

Thanks for clarifying!

That’s pretty strong language

I agree. But in this case it was 100% justified as OP just (hopefully reversibly) destroyed their installation.

and what I was responding to.

Thanks for properly nuancing my stance. Though, perhaps consider to do so right away next time 😜.

Perhaps you were being hyperbolic.

It was deliberate. But I wouldn’t refer to it as hyperbolic. Perhaps more in the style of an elder sibling scolding their younger sibling to be better next time 😉. Apologies if I missed the mark, though.

😂. Thanks for the clarification!

Yes. Not everything I have is installed through the Google store.

I understand from this, that it is implied, that the majority of what you have installed, has been done through the Google store though. By extension, I assume that -by default- you entrust installing software to the Google store. Hence, if all of the above is correct, then you actually don’t commit to ‘the Windows-way’ by default; but only by exception. Which is exactly my point.

But you’re acting like one needs to have some expert skills to install things outside of the package manager.

I feel you’re reading too much into it. In my first comment, I didn’t even mention package managers. In the second comment, I only wrote -and I quote- “Those should first and foremost be consulted. And for 99% of the cases; this is the intended, supposed and supported way of installing said software.”. I don’t see where expert skills are implied if one chooses to go outside of it. Please feel free to help me understand where I did.

It’s generally preferred for a number of reasons but it’s not bad “per se” to install something outside of it.

I never implied otherwise.

On your phone, do you search the software you want to install through your browser? After which, do you download the install script and try to run it?

No, of course not. Instead, you pay a visit to the accompanied software center. Searching, installing and upgrading all occur through that.

Similarly, on Linux, your chosen distro comes with a (or perhaps multiple) package manager(s) and a software center. Those should first and foremost be consulted. And for 99% of the cases; this is the intended, supposed and supported way of installing said software.

This should suffice for the sake of brevity. If you’ve still got questions, please feel free to ask them.

1, directly from the website Link

I hope you’ve now understood why -on Linux- you should never try to install stuff like how you were used to on Windows. Unless, you 100% know what you’re doing.

Thank you for sharing your experiences!

May I ask you what made you pursue an Arch installation in the first place?

Can I run KDE and Gnome on bazzite?

Both GNOME and KDE Plasma are supported on Bazzite.

How can I install and manage multiple images?

Multiple images can only coexist as follows:

• Dual-boot
• Rebase to second image -> pin second image with sudo ostree admin pin <insert digit> -> rebase back to original image. From now on, you can access this second image from GRUB. It’s recommended to designate a different user to the second image; and only access it through that. While what has been just described technically works, and you could even keep the second image up to date with a super cumbersome upgrade path, managing a system like this is not supported and could lead to unforeseen circumstances. Though, it is valid to pin your original image -> test another image through rebasing (and a new designated user) -> rollback to original image. Pinning the original image is not necessary, but I like to play safe. Note that rpm-ostree reset might be needed sometimes for rebasing.

Now I suspect that perhaps the game freeze wouldn’t happen with Gnome either. So I want to have both on bazzite, but can’t figure it out.

So, IIUC, you’re just interested to know if this problem persists on GNOME or not. So, consider the following:

• Pin your current deployment with sudo ostree admin pin 0.
• Create a new user, but don’t use it yet.
• Rebase to Bazzite’s GNOME image.
• Reboot
• Enter through the new user (or create a new one).
• Test out whatever you want.
• Rollback through rpm-ostree rollback
• Reboot
• Continue using your original user.

Wonderfully laid out. Couldn’t agree more.

I’m also curious to find out how effective welcome screens are.

I suppose the most effective would be if the user is told how to act whenever they’re about to commit a ‘mistake’; after which they’re friendly reminded what they should do instead 😅. But I believe that’s a gargantuan effort to effectively gameify the distro 😂. Cool idea though; hopefully some iteration is already in the works.

Hehe, consider to keep us updated 😜.

Thank you for the clarifications!

Regarding what you mentioned on Debian; ultimately, you’re a lot more experienced than I am with it. But, IIUC, Debian 12 should have done a great job at easing (new) users into its ecosystem. Not sure if it’s sufficient though.

I think immutable distros could be great for newbies, but I’m just thinking they’re still so new that if you go online to look for Linux advice or help, most things you’ll find are very much not for immutables and I doubt a true newbie understands what’s what.

I definitely agree. But, I think it’s sufficient to communicate to new uBlue users that they should check uBlue’s own documentation first. And, if they didn’t find the answer there, that they should ask on discourse or on Discord.

I only addressed this for new uBlue users as I don’t think other immutable distros are sufficiently newbie-friendly yet.

First of all, thank you for this! This effort is very much appreciated and will definitely make it easier to parse through Linux; especially for beginners.

Having said that, some personal nitpicks of mine:

• I absolutely love Fedora. But if it’s named first on your list of beginner distros (presumably due to alphabetical ordering), then it better be easy as hell and work as expected OOTB. Unfortunately, that ain’t the case. Hence, at least mentioning the Howto page of RPM Fusion would have been sensible to combat issues users might experience otherwise.
• I’m fine with the inclusion of openSUSE Aeon, but openSUSE Kalpa is literally in Alpha. Therefore, it’s too early to be recommended.
• I’m personally not very bothered with Fedora Workstation on the list of distros geared towards beginners, while Debian is found on the list of power-user distros that beginners should avoid instead. (I’m a die hard Fedora fanboy anyways.) However, I am curious to your reasoning/justification.
• Alpine Linux was originally envisioned as an embedded-first distribution. Therefore, most of its design choices revolve around that; small, secure, simple et cetera. The way that you describe/depict Alpine Linux, is more in line with how I would for (what I’d refer to as) demonstrative distros like Artix and Devuan.

It is slower than btrfs

What evidence supports your statement, given that it contradicts the overall results of tests conducted in the past year by both DJ Ware and Michael Larabel from Phoronix?