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.

While I get why Linux Mint (with the Cinnamon DE) is regarded as a Windows-like, Pop!_OS is far from that. Furthermore, going from iOS to Android is arguably a smaller change than going from Windows to any Linux DE (so even the Cinnamon DE (on any distro)). Regardless, the Desktop Environment is the single most influential part of a distro to how you experience any distro. Therefore, if you actually want a new & fresh experience, then you should definitely check out DEs like Cinnamon, GNOME, KDE Plasma and Xfce^[1] on something like a Live USB (perhaps through the use of Ventoy). After you’ve experienced a bunch of DEs, you should have attained a better grasp of what you like and don’t like.

Distrochooser.de recommended kubuntu to me.

While Distrochooser is cool and all, you shouldn’t take it too seriously 😅. If possible, consider sharing your results on Distrochooser, that might at least provide us some pointers.

1. Too many to list actually 😅, and most of them shouldn’t be of a concern to a new user (or have simply become mainstays on most distros). The most important ‘block’ would be the Desktop Environment, though. Furthermore, design choices like release model, independent/derivative, opinionated/blank slate, traditional/atomic etc and a distro’s popularity are other important factors in making a decision; while we’d refer to none of them as “building blocks of a distro”. However, if there are any “blocks” that you would describe as a hard-requirement for you, then it does make sense to look for a distro that meets those. For example, in my case; a configured SELinux and atomic upgrades^[2] are required. As such, the decision already boils down to like two distros 😅. The shopping experience approach would perhaps make more sense if you chose a distro with little to no defaults (à la Arch (or Gentoo^[3])). Finally, perhaps it’s worth noting that ((Dynamic) Tiling) Window Managers’ capability of leaving you in awe for the opportunities and possibilities they provide are more substantial. Thankfully, while not as feature-rich, the more established DEs do offer means to engage with (dynamic) tiling (through extensions/add-ons).
2. That’s hard to find; obviously distros won’t advertise what they’re missing. Heck, I wouldn’t be surprised if they have good reasons for their respective design choices. Still, FWIW, resources like these might be helpful to some. However, you should only look at the tables, the texts found above the tables are at best outdated and perhaps even misleading otherwise. Beyond that, if you narrow the choice between just a couple of distros, then I’m sure the community would be more than willing to point you toward their differences.
3. Software I would recommend to anyone would be:
   • Distrobox; this excellent piece of software has single-handedly solved package availability across the Linux landscape. Other excellent endeavors like AppImage, Flatpak, Nix and Snap definitely have their uses and are in some aspects superior; but Distrobox’ ease of use (contrary to Nix) and (almost) boundless access to packages (contrary to AppImage, Flatpak and Snap) on top of how well it integrates with the rest of your system makes it my personal MVP.
   • Flatseal; must-have if you ever plan on using flatpaks (which you definitely should consider).
4. It depends entirely on the distro you install. Assuming that you start using a distro with sane defaults (like most new users do), then unless you’re using an Nvidia GPU^[4] (or other hardware known for causing troubles), you can start using your system however you’d like it; which for most would consist of installing the software they need. Furthermore, concerns related to bloat are a lot less significant/severe on Linux, so you should be fine unless you think the default installed file manager is bloat…
5. I actually don’t know. Perhaps it might be related to creating an as homogeneous experience as possible; apps on Linux either rely on GTK or QT for their appearance/looks etc. Therefore, by foregoing one, the ‘awkward’ ‘out-of-place’-experience that some might experience every so often would have been overcome. But this is a rare concern (I’d say). So unless you’re very into how your system looks and feels, it shouldn’t be a concern to you.
6. I think these questions show that you’ve put some thought into this and that by itself is already very commendable. And I’m actually of the opinion that asking these questions, especially for someone like you, is important. So I would definitely encourage you to continue with asking relevant questions in hopes of making the transition to Linux as pleasant as possible. As for the distros you’ve mentioned, chances are high that you’d be content with either one of them. However, I wonder if you’re making a conscious choice; like would you be able to state why any of these should be preferred on the basis of merit rather than popular vote^[5] or what happened to come out of Distrochooser.

1. Important distinction: these aren’t selected for how different they operate/behave compared to Windows(/macOS) but for being some of the more polished DEs found on Linux. For a more exhaustive list, refer to the one found on the ArchWiki; which still happens to miss DEs like Kera 😅.
2. I wouldn’t call atomic upgrades a building block as it’s ultimately a design choice.
3. Gentoo is a great distro, but I would not recommend a new user to engage with it; unless you believe you belong to the sub 1% that can make it work as their first distro. Heck, even Arch is often discouraged to new users. Though I think that Arch might be just up your alley; at least if you enjoy reading the excellent ArchWiki.
4. In which case, either the installer provided by the distro got your back and the proprietary drivers are installed or you’re required to install them yourself. Steps related to these are different per distro, but reading up on your chosen distro’s documentation should be sufficient.
5. Don’t get me wrong; I’m not dismissing the popular vote.

Good questions.

1. Absolutely valid, but also kind of misleading. For a new user the biggest issue is probably picking the DE. Package managers are important, but they all pretty much do the same thing with some syntax differences. There are some edge cases though. If you really want to go through picking your distro piece by piece, look up installing Gentoo. I don’t really recommend it, but there it is.
2. You’re not going to be really missing anything by installing Mint, I don’t think. Distros do have different packages in their repositories, but with Flatpaks, Snaps, AppImages, etc. it’s rare to not have something available. And you can always just compile what you need yourself.
3. Not really something you should be concerned with, honestly. I personally use KDE Plasma and favor QT based programs because I don’t want to pull in GTK libraries, but that’s honestly kind of silly. Some people just like to keep their number of installed packages low.
4. Just pick one, really. With experience, you can start to personalize your system. You can try different distros/DEs by booting from a flash drive in to a live environment. No changes will be made to your system and you can see if you like the DE.

1. 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.

2. 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.

3. 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.

4. 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.

5. You should not be concerned about this unless you are building things from source.

6. Probably… I used and gamed on Kubuntu for 2 years and had an excellent experience.

One of the things to consider is stability. For instance, if you want something that is always pushing out the latest versions of everything, choose something built from Ubuntu, but just keep in mind that the latest builds don’t have a lot of testing and can have problems show up. On the other hand, if you want something that will be rock-solid all the time, pick Debian – the releases are going to be much older, but they have been very well tested. However Ubuntu and Debian also have different levels of “newness” to choose from, so like in Debian you can choose ‘stable’ (the default), ‘testing’ (released for awhile but still might have issues), or ‘sid’ (brand new, not tested at all). Ubuntu I believe starts out somewhere between debian’s testing and sid releases as its base, and gets newer from there, but as you can see even within one distribution you can have a lot of choices.

Now how does that relate in the real world? Well all distributions will have security releases, so if there is an new exploit out, you will see patches for that right away. Otherwise, for a server you are going to want something that doesn’t blow up, but for a desktop you might want to see the latest updates and gadgets to play with.

Keep in mind that you can play around with various releases before installing them. Most will have a “Live CD” version you can download and boot from a memory stick, so you can see what their desktop looks like. You also have the option of installing them in a virtual machine – under Windows a good option is VirtualBox, and under Linux a good option is KVM (this might require you to use the command line but it is extremely lightweight on your CPU). Also keep in mind that most distributions allow you to install multiple desktops that you can choose from when you log in, so you could install Gnome, Mate, and others at the same time and then go back later and uninstall the ones you didn’t like. This is one of the most noticeable differences between distributions – how they preconfigure each desktop environment to look by default, but you can always find info to change the view of each one so you can copy the exact features that you like from other distributions. This is one of the great things about Linux, you aren’t completely stuck with one particular setup.

6. Any of the main distros will be good

5. Forget it. Qt is nice

4. Go through settings, read the doc of your distro, read arch wiki for anything even though you’re not in arch. The informatio there is invaluable.

4. install apps. Mainly as flatpaks. Ignore snaps.

3. If you choose GNOME, you have to install “extension manager”, not only “extensions”. From there you can install a lot of things, e.g. PaperWM which is a tiling window manager extension. It’ll blow your mind.

2. Very good question

1. Package manager, package availability and how everything is built from the ground up, e.g. btrfs. Should you choose the distro based on the package manager? No. You install distrobox on your system and install virtual distros in there and use any package manager you want on any distro.

We really need a sticky or something for all these switching posts. It’s like 99% of the content here.

I have a few blog posts that I think address most of your questions here, feel free to read, and I am happy to answer specific questions.

To start with an answer to question 6: please read How to pick a Linux distro, but in short, yes just go with Mint or Fedora, or if you don’t mind a corporate backed distro, go with Ubuntu/Kubuntu, and this article explains why and also might partially answer many of your other questions.

To answer question 1 and 2: please read The components of a Linux desktop environment, an article about “the building blocks of a distro.” To compare and contrast distros, Distro Watch makes this very easy. You have a big list of distros, click on each one, right at the top of the page you get a list of the components from which it is built. Don’t stress too much about which distro or desktop environment you choose, all of them have nearly identical functionality, just in slightly different arrangements.

Question 3: the answer to this depends on which desktop environment you pick. But again, don’t stress it, each desktop environment has mostly identical functionality. For me, app launchers, web browsers, office and productivity tools, and personal information management systems that integrate well with email and social media are all important. I wish I could be more specific here, all I can say is, “shop around,” try a bunch of apps, see how you like them all.

Question 4: the first steps involve downloading the ISO image for that distro, flashing it to a USB stick, and then rebooting off of that USB stick. In some rare cases, you might have to tweak the UEFI settings of your computer’s hardware (when you see the computer maker logo flash on screen they tell you a key like F2 or F12 to press to enter the settings menu). If you are ready to commit, use the installer program on the ISO to erase and format your computer and install Linux. Be sure to follow whatever specific instructions there are for that distro on their website when you download the ISO.

Question 5: if you want to write your own apps, and you do not want to be restricted to using only the C++ programming language for everything, then yes, avoid Qt based applications (used under the hood by all of KDE and Plasma applications). The major alternative to Qt is Gtk (used under the hood by Gnome, Xfce, Mate, and Cinnamon), and Gtk plays nice with all of the programming languages, so you can try writing apps in Rust, Python, Lua, Lisp, Haskell, Ocaml, or whatever. But if you are not interested in Linux app development, don’t worry about it – just use KDE and see if you like it.

If you want to try a different experience I would recommend fedora since its a distro that isn’t too much different to Linux mint which is good to prevent frustration in the long run, also the login menu has a option button that if you end up installing a different desktop environment or window manager its very easy to try it out without tinkering too much in the terminal.

If you don’t mind trying something different then I would recommend wetting your toes a bit into window managers, is different then desktop environments but it rewards you with more productivity in the long run if you don’t mind getting used to it. My recommendation would be sway or i3.

Each distro focuses more aspects then others, for example arch linux its all about control so you are going to have a lot more package variety but in exchange for having to know how to make each program work together by configuring them on the terminal and stuff, while for example Linux mint provides you with already a working environment that you don’t have to worry about it but in exchange you are not going to have the abundance of programs like arch naturally in the repos/aur. But in every Linux distro you can install everything including kernels if you wish to take time cloning git repos and using ‘make’ and configuring them to your liking. (Not to mention that some apps you can install setups online like VeraCrypt for example)

In regards to monitoring and killing process, I would recommend installing htop since it makes rather easy to see what is happening but generally speaking linux already provides tools for this with the default gnu packeges that come installed, and one of those is top which is the barebones version of htop (htop is better imo but you can try it)

For installing you want to flash a pen with the installer iso of the distro you choose in their website in the download section, then connect the flashed pen to the computer and reboot it to the bios, when you are there make sure you can boot into USB devices cause secure boot doesn’t allow you to do that, after disabling secure boot select the USB drive as the first device to boot from in the bios. After that its just saving the bios settings and booting the device normally and you just have to follow the installation guide provided by the distro. Make sure you save your files before installing a new OS, its going to wipe the data.

When it comes to installing stuff from the repos there isn’t really something you should avoid, its on the repos cause its trustworthy software otherwise you are going to see it elsewhere like on the aur and other places where its easier to post software and cause of it you shouldn’t install everything you see there (aka do always research before installing from these places).

1. Arch wiki - installation. You’re installing a lot of those components yourself, so it lists out common options.

Is this approach even valid?

Not really. People don’t replace an audio server for example if everything is working, and the default choices are almost universal.

2. Go to a social media like this one, and observe nerds arguing about distros.

3. Emacs, Firefox, kmonad

4. That depends on the distro, but something like (if necessary): enable nonfree repos, install proprietary drivers, install proprietary codecs, install stuff you need for work.

5. No, unless you’re a bloat obsessed supermodel.

6. You’ve got two main things to worry about at this stage: release cycle and preferred DE.

All three of those are Ubuntu derivatives so they get updates on pretty much the same schedule. But they’ve got different default DEs in cinnamon, gnome, and KDE. That doesn’t mean you can’t install xfce on mint, but their dev time is focused on cinamon so xfce looks like ass in comparison.

Take a flash drive, install ventoy, and try out their live environments. After a few reboots you’ll have a clearer idea of what you’re looking for.

I’d also try something slightly different and include Nobara. It’s also a stable workstation distro, but it’s got a shorter release cycle and it’s based on Fedora instead of Ubuntu. Also, it might be interesting to compare pop gnome, nobara gnome, and classic gnome.

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.

Be careful what you wish for or you’ll end up with guix running stumpwm, and you’ll sympathise with your grandparents using a PC for the first time.

But seriously, use gnome in that case, and maybe try out a tiling WM like i3. Gnome is the only big DE to go down a different UI route after being threatened with litigation by Microsoft. Tiling managers are IMO the best, but it takes a while to get them really set up.