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?
As a general reply to everything, just pick any distro you've been recommended and start using it, you'll learn more about what you like and dislikes and the differences between distros once you know one. Trying to answer those questions now would be like trying to explain to a person who's never been in the water the differences between swimming styles. The main thing I would recommend is grab something geared for newcomers, Ubuntu, Mint, Pop, all are good examples, install it, use it, and eventually you'll want to try different things. There are two things everyone who's using Linux for a long time can tell you:
The differences between distros matter less and less the more you know
We've all tried several distros before finding the one we use now.
With that out of the way, here's the actual answer to your questions:
1.1 Some distros vary in philosophy, this is the least important for someone who's starting, but the most important for when you know Linux. An example of this is Arch and Manjaro are very close in most aspects, but they're philosophically very different. I'll not dive deep into this, since it shouldn't matter now, but it's something to bear in mind.
1.2 Some distros only change what comes preinstalled, for example Ubuntu and Kubuntu are essentially the same OS with different Desktop Environments pre-installed, you can install Ubuntu and install a few packages and have Kubuntu.
1.3 Other distros change the packages that are available, for example Ubuntu and Debian, they're mostly the same but use different repositories so they'll have slightly different packages versions or patches.
1.4 A major difference between distros is their package manager, which is why we'll say Debian based (for everything that uses apt or Arch based for everything that uses Pacman.
You don't, there are too many differences, you start using one distro and then you find out things that you would like different and find a distro that does them.
Depends, my servers have a very different setup from my gaming machine.
Depends on the distro, some will be bare bones and you'll need to build them up, others will be ready to roll and you might not even need debloating. But checking drivers and programs you use regularly are a good idea.
You can ignore that, no idea why he wouldn't want to install Qt, possibly concerned about space, if I were running my OS from a small disk, e.g. 5GB, I would be picky about what to install, since I usually leave at least 60GB to my root partition this was never a problem.
Yes, just pick one, the differences will mean more once you have a parameter for comparison