WTF are you guys doing with your PCs??? I've been running Mint for over a year now and the only time I've used the terminal was to open a port for Chromecast. I browse, I game, I watch shows, etc. maybe I'm just really lucky, idk, it's been nothing but smooth sailing.

The mindset of a true Slacker.

Well your arch broke, didn't it?

That huge chunk of learning required for arch when you've never used Linux before is really hard to imagine when you have years of experience working Linux under your belt. That does not mean it doesn't exist for new users though.

That shit's complex and long. Much as I appreciate the sentiment of "the distro doesn't matter" I really can't agree.

I realised the same thing.

When I was switching from Windows to Linux on my PCs (both at home and at work), I originally wanted to use Debian because I'm most familiar with it and have been running it on servers for 20+ years.

I have to use Fedora at work though - it's a lightly-modified version of Fedora that runs some automatic configuration on first boot and first log in for things like ensuring disk encryption is enabled (including adding randomly-generated secondary keys for IT support), 802.1x certificates for Ethernet and VPN auth, Chef, endpoint security, etc.

Anyways, I started using it and love it. I'm running it at home now too. I realised the difference between distros is much narrower than it used to be.

Yes and no for me

Distro doesn't matter because they only differ in package manager and initial configuration, you can always compile things if you really need it.

GUI doesn't matter because you'll end up with all KDE and gnome dependencies installed anyway because your applications need it.

Experience probably matters, but if it doesn't, it may be because there is just so much there to know.

Instructions unclear. I'm running Gnome on Mint.

Experience doesn’t matter because if you’re inexperienced you have to go outside your Comfort zone, if you’re experienced you got there because you like going outside your comfort zone and you will constantly stay in that state.

I was experimenting a lot during my early Linux months but then I found what works for me and settled with it. I don't leave my comfort zone much anymore.

a monad is a monoid in the category of endofunctors

Time for Gentoo

Can you define a basic understanding of the terminal?

Your basic and my basic could be wildly different.

This was my experience just setting it up as dualboot and not doing super much with it. Sure I failed installing it a few times but I came out with more understanding of file systems, and in the end the wiki told me everything I needed to know.

Arch + manpages + wiki is all you need

I installed Arch using archinstall and my system finished with missing KDE and important packages. I was also missing secure boot...

Staying on Debian.

Archinstall works until it doesn't. Recently I tried Luks and BTRFS more than 6 times leading to a script error each and every time. Could I have done something simpler and archinstall work? Possibly. But it offers those things out of the box and for it to fail each and every time ultimately led me back to the wiki to do it manually.

and you have a choice with Debian. You can run:

• Stable if you want stability, meaning it doesn't change often (minor updates only).
• Testing if you want newer packages that have at least gone through some level of testing. They've been in unstable for at least 3-10 days with no major bug reports.
• Unstable/sid if you want to assist the Debian project by reporting bugs (which is always appreciated!), or want the "breaks all the time" experience of other distros.

I’ve never had Debian or Arch completely break, but have had my share of annoying bugs with both of them. Biggest issue I kept having with Debian is it’d just get stuck and wouldn’t update. Think it was 12.4 I had this problem with. Way more annoying than anything Arch did to my system. I’m using Fedora now days.

Same issue as this person: https://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?t=156345. That’s not even mentioning the 12.3 debacle which I was thankfully spared of.

The only breakage I used to get was having to update the keyring because I had been away and not spamming pacman -Syyu for gasp several days.

I mean, some bird species have mothers that essentially drop their fledglings to predators to distract from themselves (and their insecurities), or just simply don't feel bothered to actually help raise them to maturity.

The only people I know who are still running Slackware are doing it via Unraid (which is built on top of Slackware)