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:

  1. 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?

  2. 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?

  3. What are some programs/ widgets/ others that are must haves for you? For eg. some particular task manager

  4. What are the first steps after installing linux? For eg. In Windows, its drivers, then debloat and then install programs like vlc, rar, etc.

  5. 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?

  6. Should I not worry about all of the above and just pick from mint, pop and kubuntu?

  • beta_tester@lemmy.ml
    0·
    10 months ago
    1. Any of the main distros will be good
    1. Forget it. Qt is nice
    1. 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.
    1. install apps. Mainly as flatpaks. Ignore snaps.
    1. 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.
    1. 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.