Private Internet Access is just a VPN?

I’ve had no issues installing the flatpak for ProtonVPN and using it.

There are a few improvements in Aurora over Silverblue that you might like.

It ships with homebrew which is perfect for CLI tools.

It ships with distrobox instead of toolbx which is much better. You can install any distro while toolbx is just a Fedora. For example I’m using Arch in toolbox because of the number of packages and the fact that they’re usually up to date (no need to wait for a major release).

So far I never had to use rpm-ostree, and for VSCode I use distrobox precisely because of the permissions.

For me atomic distributions are the way to go.

You get a rock solid base system that get updated automatically, and every single user has the same image so you can’t get into a bug that’s only reproduced on your system because of your combination of system packages. If for any reason you have a problem with an image update, you can always boot on the previous image from grub.

Then user apps come on top of that, and can’t break the base system.

I know you tried Kinoite and got stuck, but there is always a way to unblock yourself and install what you want. If it’s not in flatpak there is homebrew (for CLI), and if it’s in neither there is distrobox. You can also do a rpm-ostree for native packages if all the others fail.

You can also check universal blue, Aurora in particular if you want KDE. It’s based on Fedora Silverblue but with an improved out-of-the-box experience.

https://universal-blue.org/

If I have a new PC with a blank hard drive, what should be the install order?

Windows, then rEFInd, then Linux?

FILEID.DIZ

I too prefer big distros, but niche distros are usually big distros with small tweaks in the default config or installed packages. It’s Debian/Fedora/Arch slightly tweaked.

Most places deploy to Linux, and for those knowing Linux helps a lot. Also a lot of places will give MacBook pro, expect you to know the CLI so a lot of Linux knowledge will be useful there.

Don’t forget the Ubuntu restaurant.

https://www.ubuntula.com/

Just be careful with the silverware, they can Snap if you’re too rough.

I really enjoyed the diversity of WM/DE back then, and the innovation when new ones like Enlightenment were released!

I don’t hate Windows, I don’t care about it. I don’t use it.

I have to say, as a Linux fan in the 90’s it was very cool to see Linux eating the whole server space, replacing older Unix while Microsoft tried desperately to grow Windows on the server market.

Unfortunately boring distributions don’t get recommended because users of boring distributions don’t bother commenting on distribution discussions.

And it’s really unfortunate that obscure distributions have more vocal fans, because boring distributions are much better for beginners.

Don’t try zsh, because you won’t be able to go back to bash after that 😉

You don’t need Windows for gaming.

Sure, some games only work on Windows but some only work on Switch or PS5 and you can still play video games without playing those in particular.

Yes, on the licensing front RISC-V is better.

How can you have a preference if you don’t understand?

It’s neither. It’s a specification that you can use to build your own chip.

So it’s more like MPEG where you can read the doc and create your own implementation.

No it’s not, anyone can get a license to create an ARM chipset but you do need to pay for a license.

Nothing in particular, for the past few years I didn’t like the direction Ubuntu was taking but I stayed because I was too lazy to switch and it didn’t feel that bad.

So I’m not sure exactly what was the last straw, maybe part of it was me getting a Steam Deck, discovering flatpak and understanding how bad snap was compared to it.

It just works, just like Ubuntu before they started pushing snap down everyone’s throat (which is what made me switch eventually.)

I had a bad image of RedHat/Fedora’s package management from the time deb was much superior, but no they caught up and are on the same level (I know, it’s probably been a while).

I also like how they mostly package upstream without too many changes. When Ubuntu started upstream was a bit lacking so making changes was necessary to get something that looks like a consistent OS rather than a patchwork of packages, but now it’s no longer needed. Ubuntu is no longer the only distribution with that level of polish.