My objective is to ditch windows & utilize my triple monitor desktop as a cockpit style dashboard for my homeserver & lan devices along with always open widgets like music, calculator, etc.
There was another post yesterday about this and the community recommended Mint & Pop OS the most. However, I am not looking for windows-like. I want a new & fresh experience like using a smartphone for the first time or switching from ios to android.
Distrochooser.de recommended kubuntu to me.
So I have some questions:
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What are the building blocks of a distro? Things that separate distros from each other. Like I know 2 - Desktop Env & Package Managers. Are there others, what are they or where do I find a list? I would like to compare these blocks and make it a shopping experience and then pick the distro that matches my list. Is this approach even valid?
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How do I find and compare whats missing from which distro? For eg. if I install mint, what would I be potentially missing out that may be a feature on another distro? How do I go about finding these things?
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What are some programs/ widgets/ others that are must haves for you? For eg. some particular task manager
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What are the first steps after installing linux? For eg. In Windows, its drivers, then debloat and then install programs like vlc, rar, etc.
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I read on some post, a user was saying that they want to avoid installing qt libraries. Why would someone potentially want that? I have never thought of my computer in such terms. I have always installed whatever whenever. The comment stuck with me. Is this something I should be concerned about?
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Should I not worry about all of the above and just pick from mint, pop and kubuntu?
The only other things that stick out to me are distro philosophy and release schedule. Like, do you want a completely community oriented distro, a corporate one, one with LTS-style releases, or rolling releases? These things may or may not make a difference.
The best way imo is to install Ventoy to a USB drive, then load it up with ISOs from distros you are interested in. Then you can boot into their live sessions and test drive them. But ultimately, you can almost always get Linux software running on any distro. The differences are whether a distro comes with something out of the box, or if it even has your desired apps in its official repos.
btop, Steam, Discord, Firefox. These are all available on all distros. Things like the file system browser - I don't care as much and just use what the distro provides by default.
Run a package update then install whatever other apps you want. For me, also set up auto mount of a couple network drives provided by my NAS.
You should not be concerned about this unless you are building things from source.
Probably... I used and gamed on Kubuntu for 2 years and had an excellent experience.