Fedora must’ve been during COVID, because I can’t remember the year.

That explains a lot of why you felt that way about Fedora. Thank you for enlightening us on that!

If things are better now, then maybe distrochooser has to be updated.

Can't agree more.

It’s on github, so if you believe it’s become user-friendly, do contribute.

Honestly, I've tried to contribute in the past; but it didn't feel as if they got implemented. Perhaps the maintainer contributed them without making any notice of it, but it doesn't feel that way. I've since given up on it.

Your experience

Just in case*, I’m just the middle-man that connects this specific article by Solène to the audience on Lemmy 😅. I’m sure you’re aware of this, but I just wanted to make sure.

I can’t believe you tried

Just in case*, I'm just the middle-man that connects this specific article by Solène to the audience on Lemmy 😅. I'm sure you're aware of this, but I just wanted to make sure.

But yes, Solène has done an excellent work with her review! Which is precisely why I felt the need that it needed some more exposure 😜.

It is a little sad that OpenBSD can’t optimize by P/E cores, I have been wanting to switch to OpenBSD but obviously Linux supports the most hardware, so I stay with Linux.

Could you elaborate on your willingness to switch to OpenBSD?

It is nice that the makers NovaCustom seem to have done a good job creating a mostly open, standards compliance x86_64 computing platform.

Definitely! I feel as if they might be somewhat underappreciated currently, but I hope their efforts to open source will receive similar mainstream reach like what we've seem for System76 etc.

I agree that Fedora's habit for pushing (sometimes breaking) changes is definitely something to keep an eye out. However, it has been so good over the last (almost) two years. I would even argue that Fedora has become more self-conscious of the consequences and (especially) how this might affect their more casual user base.

Btw, how long ago did you try out Fedora? FWIW, Fedora (Silverblue; to be more precise^[1]) was the first distro that I've tried and while I've had some experiences with other distros over time (mostly through dual boot), Fedora (Atomic) seems to have become the distro I call home.

1. It's probably not as masochistic as you might think for a new user 😅. Though I'd have to say that it took some effort, control and discipline to not instantly go back to Windows (or any other Linux distro for that matter).

While I get why distrochooser.de is romanticized, in its current iteration it's simply not very good and anyone that is somewhat well-versed in how different distros operate and how Distrochooser works, will tell you the same. At best, it provides some orientation into what some of the more common distros are. But it fails to answer some fundamental questions in the process; like:

• What is the relation between a distro and its derivative and (more importantly) how does that matter to a user?
• How exactly does a distribution's chosen release model affect software and updates? And while we're into that, what's even the difference between the "stable" used when talking about point release distros that opt to freeze packages over longer periods of time vs the "stable" that's brought up in conversations regarding update concerns and how they might break software (I'm honestly not even sure if the one(s) responsible for writing the parts of Distrochooser even know(s) themselves)^[1].

There are a lot of other fundamental questions that are involved in the decision for picking a distro that would have made a lot more sense than the ones found on Distrochooser. E.g. Do you use an Nvidia GPU and want this to cause no issues in the process of installation and is this your biggest concern? If yes: then just use Pop!_OS. Otherwise, move on to the other questions etc. I think the fact that a flowchart isn't used for some uses and that ultimately priorities aren't brought up to finalize the decision are the two biggest issues that Distrochooser has in its current iteration.

And we haven't even gone over the many distros that despite having little to no user base are still included in the results, while (more recent) 'staples' like Garuda and Nobara are clearly left out for reasons most likely related to the maintainers not being able to keep up with the Linux landscape. Which, to be fair, is quite hard; so I don't blame them. I, in fact, applaud them for their continued contributions and hope that some day it will become something that we can proudly present to others for their first orientation.

Allow me to end this with a question to OP:

• Do you feel the same way about excellent websites like DistroWatch.com and DistroSea?^[2]
  • If yes; Why didn't you make a similar post for either of the two instead?
  • If no; Why not?

1. Sure, there is some overlap in what they mean and how they're used, but it's a very important distinction; otherwise openSUSE's stable rolling release designation for their Tumbleweed wouldn't make any sense.
2. If anything, I think these two actually make more sense to be included.

Also, from what I understand, they accept Monero for their laptops.

That's very cool. I didn't even know that. Thank you for mentioning that!

Good to see more laptops being release with Dasharo/Coreboot.

Can't agree more. I hope that Framework will soon follow suit.

They said they don’t game.

GPUs aren't exclusive to gaming (as you should know).

Why GPU?

OP mentioned the intent to do video editing on the device. Unfortunately, the amount of good video editors on Linux is currently limited to just Davinci Resolve(; sure, the likes of Kdenlive (etc) exists, but none of them are very suitable for professional usage^[1]). While I'm thankful that Davinci Resolve works on Linux, it's -according to their own documentation- simply not possible to make use of it without a dedicated GPU (at least on Linux). Thus, warranting the need for a dedicated GPU.

That’s horrible for battery.

I'm aware that that's a concern. Thankfully, there are workarounds. And if all else fails, there's always the possibility to make use of eGPUs; which I've actually explicitly mentioned in my earlier reply for this exact reason (without mentioning explicitly for which reason it was mentioned*).

1. OP might not even need it for professional use, but I assumed they did*.

My two cents; if you want to use Linux on it, then do yourself a favor and pick a laptop from a Linux-first vendor. So the likes of NovaCustom, Star Labs, System76, Tuxedo and others found on the link over here come to mind. Besides that, it's important that the device in question either has a dedicated GPU (or at least supports eGPUs). Furthermore, choose a device with relatively high battery capacity; they go up to ~99 Wh, so pick something that's at least relatively close to that number.

But that's the nature of the beast. Unless one defines their threat model^[1], there's an ever-expanding list of improvements one might apply to enhance security; with -at some point- (mostly) diminishing returns and we've yet to talk about the amount of comfort that's sacrificed along the way. Therefore, before you do anything else, define your threat model. Afterwards, try to apply step-by-step whatever is required to protect your assets to a degree you're comfortable with^[2]. If, however, this seems like too much work for you, then consider either one of the following:

• Just go on with your life as if you hadn't become security-conscious. If you're just a random person that doesn't store anything valuable on their device in the first place and isn't a possible target to more sophisticated groups for whatever reason, then even in the worst-case scenario you can just reinstall your system and be done with it (assuming your home network hasn't been affected by malicious actors).
• Reconsider how you want to consume Arch and if Arch Linux is even the right distro for you. Distros like Fedora and openSUSE are better known for maintaining good security defaults and try to ever improve themselves in this regard. Sure, sometimes some of these changes are applied to Arch as well. However, by its very nature, Arch Linux is more akin to a blank slate.Thus, if you actually know what you're doing, then it's easier to get Arch Linux to wherever you want^[3]. But, becoming that knowledgeable is easier said than done.
• If you really like Arch, but also really care about your security, then it's probably best to look into the most impactful changes (security-wise) with the least amount of work associated to it. Simply not using packages from the AUR is one such change for example, if you can afford it...

1. Digital security and/or cybersecurity is actually just one part of it.
2. In terms of initial setup, (possible) maintenance and lost comfort.
3. This even applies to hardening your system.

Honestly, that's very encouraging! Thank you so much for providing me with very valuable insights and information! Have a good one! Cheers!

Thank you so much for your insights! Much appreciated!

Some packages haven’t been changed in 10 years, some are changed daily. It’s bleeding edge everything, and things don’t actually break that much. Lisp makes for (obviously IMO) beautiful, simple code, so most packages are a pleasure to fix, extend, or automate.

I want to have a better idea for much time is spend on 'management'; fix, extend and/or automate etc.

If you want to use Linux on your laptop, is there any reason not to go for 'dedicated' Linux laptops?

FWIW, I haven't seen these Linux-first vendors being mentioned under your post yet: NovaCustom and Star Labs.

This looks kinda cool. Thank you for tagging/pinging me! I'll take a look and perhaps bother you (or others) at a later moment with questions 😅.

Hmm, one I guess is that it is not “permanent” and deactivates after one command (in Kakoune, you have to explicitly do ‘;’ to collapse the selection to its end (which you can flip with the start using ‘alt+;’) or move around without extending the selection). That’s really the only thing I can think of at the moment and I feel like often it really doesn’t matter tbh, so maybe I was just talking out of my ass there a bit lmao.

Regardless; thank you for mentioning this!

Apparently you can quickly reselect it in vim with ‘gv’ though, which I never checked until now. That’s useful to know.

Hehe, thanks for sharing that; might become useful soon 😅.

One thing I’m really missing from vim though is that it can list directories, has a hex editor, and can read a bunch of other file formats. I think it can even edit remote files over sftp, but maybe I’m confusing that with Emacs. Kakoune just does local text files (though you can of course do stuff like ‘%|xxd’ to pipe the file through xxd to get a hex view, edit and then ‘%|xxd -r’ and save but that feels very very sketchy).

Until yesterday I knew almost nothing about Kakoune. But I've since tried to do some reading; while there's still a lot to uncover and/or explore, I feel as if it tries to offer a more focused experience (for better or worse).

Makes a lot of sense.

Thank you so much for chiming in and sharing your knowledge and experiences! Much appreciated!

I probably started with Vim

Hehe, I assume it has been some time since you started this journey.

Thank you for your contributions to the conversation 😊!

Thanks a lot for sharing your insights and experiences on this! Kickstart.nvim has surely caught my interest and I would like to play with it to see how much I can make it resemble LunarVim and the others in functionality and if there's anything worthwhile that remains to be missing. If not, then perhaps I'll be relying on Kickstart.nvim instead. Once again; thank you!

I'm not surprised to hear that you preferred Fedora Silverblue over openSUSE MicroOS. Don't get me wrong, I think that openSUSE Aeon/Kalpa (current names for openSUSE MicroOS Desktop) have a lot of potential. However, as it stands, Fedora's Atomic Desktops are just more mature.

With the amount of different distros you've tried (though mostly derivatives of Arch/Debian), I'm actually surprised to see that you haven't used any derivative of Fedora. Is there any reason in particular?