Well, what do you want? You don't look at Linux and go "out of all these 1000s of options what's a good one?" Instead, you should say, "I want my computer to work XYZ way," and that will decide the distro for you.
Do you want a start menu and a bar? Probably want Xfce or KDE. Do you want an app menu? Well there's GNOME. Do you care about defaults or do you want to customize? Think about what you want from an OS and how it should work and let that guide you to your distro.
Why'd you leave Linux Lite? What made you decide on Fedora? You could always go back to Linux Lite.
There's nothing gonna happen to Fedora because of RHEL locking down, and there's no reason for Fedora to be leave, so staying there is a valid option.
LineageOS is Android. I think it was implied the user meant GNU/Linux distros on phones like Mobian or PostmarketOS which run on things like the Pine Phone since if we were talking about using Android, we could just keep our current phones, so that's what I was referring to when I said they had bad cameras
The big sticking point for me is the camera. It seems like they all have bad (or even non-functioning) cameras. I don't own a camera. My phone is my camera. I can't switch to a phone that can't be my camera.
It's a cool project, but I've used it, and man is it not going to be a replacement for Google Maps anytime soon, as much as I'd like to get to a FOSS alternative. I can't use it to navigate to a building down the street lol
It's not dumb to contribute though because it's already okay, so it can only get better than okay, and the way that happens is contributions
I discovered Linux when I was learning programming in my childhood. I used it side-by-side with Windows all the way through college where I started daily driving only Linux. I hopped this order mainly: Ubuntu > Elementary > Debian > Arch > Gentoo > Arch > Fedora > Nix. Probably not right when I started programming in 2007 when I was 8, but before I was doing Arduino development at 11, so like 2009-2010ish. Started daily driving in 2018 or 2019
I never went back and forth as I wanted to get away from Windows ASAP since it's such a terrible line of operating systems that do things the most backwards way possible. For a long time I was in the "I need to have Windows for my games" camp, which is why I maintained a dual boot or a computer with Windows installed, but then Proton happened, and there was no longer any need, and I could fully wipe my hands of that filth
Package managers are a godsend and there's nothing like them on Windows. Chocolatey is okay, but it's got nothing on Linux pms. This discontinuity between installing and upgrading some applications, other applications, Windows apps, drivers, and system software makes me want to cry.
Customization. Man is Windows lame here. Colors on Windows is about all you can do, and it's so limited. I bought the machine I should be able to set it up how I like. There are some deeper ways to theme and adjust things more directly, but they're hard to use and risk breaking your system. On Linux, customization is easy, even on a more pro-default-option DE like GNOME. I just want things to work, and Windows fights me to get it to a usable state.
Bloat, telemetry, ads, proprietary garbage, etc, etc, etc. I like FOSS and using FOSS software, and I can use it on Windows, but I have to have so much other stuff too. Debloat scripts exist, but they can only do so much. There's always gonna be something Microsoft owns on the system
Complexity and control. Linux is simple. Binaries go in bin, and the settings for them are usually in ~/.config or somewhere in /etc. Want to adjust some obscure setting to fix some issue in a program you installed? Oh go tweak this clear config and explicit setting to fit your hardware or whatever. Easy to fix. On Windows, all the system stuff is not only hidden, it's restricted, and also so many times on Windows when you run into issues the solution is you have to edit shudder the registry, or worse you have to do a PC reset. Overtime your system slows and blue screens become more frequent too, and there's nothing you can do. On Linux, you can learn 7 or so folders and understand how your entire system works, keep it maintained, and run it for years. Had a prof in college who was on like a 20yo Gentoo install.
Tiling. There are ways to do tiling on Windows, but they're all bad and glitchy. Nothing on Windows comes close to i3, and I can't go back to a non-tiling workflow. Windows wants you to do things the Windows way, and anything outside of that is always lack luster. People talk about Linux balkanization as a problem. It's not. Those people are just ignorant and stupid. No system can ever really fit all use cases, so it's important to support choice. Windows doesn't just promote one way to do things a la GNOME, it actively works against doing things other ways.
Programming. Compilers and dev tools on Linux are so much easier to install and set up than on Windows. If you want to program, you've gotta be on Unix/Unix-like
Windows weirdness. There's so many things on Windows that are just weird decisions. I'll be using Windows and be like "why the heck did they do it this way?" I'm constantly left scratching my head. Windows has made me lose all respect for Microsoft engineers. They're clearly stupid. On the other hand, everything on Linux makes sense and has good reasoning behind it. You need to learn very little comparatively to understand your entire system.
Stability. Not talking about applications/upgrades here, but rather Linux will never crash on you, but I can't go a week without Windows blue screening.
Freedom. I like owning my computer. With Windows, Microsoft owns your PC. Does this directly effect everything constantly? Is it the end all reason for me to switch? No, but it's icing on the cake. On Windows I feel stuck and miserable. On Linux I feel free and happy.
Idk about "new Gentoo," as they're going for different things, for sure, but a lot of the reasons people like Gentoo seem to be true for Nix. Definitely still give Gentoo a try some day.
I used it for a few months and only moved on bc compiling was taking too long and was annoying me :)
You have outdated information. There are no longer any tradeoffs to AppImages:
Yes there is no "official" default installation path, but like how XDG_DATA_PATH isn't technically a standard but practically it is, the de-facto standard is ~/Applications now, and most AppImage-based tools respect that.
They integrate fine with the system. Better than Flatpack and Snap, actually. I've had lots of issues with flatpaks not respecting themes, but never AppImages. Not sure where you got that from.
I solved the other problem with AppImages with a package manager I wrote. Centralized location pointing to AppImage urls, and it downloads and keeps them updated. And no, you don't need to write your own, there are multiple AppImage package managers out there.
On the flip side, there's no weird extra locations like how flatpak installs apps, you know exactly where the program is in case you want to launch it manually, you can mix apps available in your package manager with ones you download directly seamlessly, no dependency hell or version problems as AppImages are self contained (even multiple versions at the same time), etc, etc, etc all the benefits people spout about AppImages.
AppImages imo are the superior cross-platform package format as there are no tradeoffs and no downsides, meanwhile:
Snaps are slow and proprietary
Flatpaks suck to create and maintainers select all on sanboxing, so it's a complicated mess for no reason, and they also have bad theming that never works half the time.
Where can I find a cheaper mini PC? They all seem to be like $250+ on Amazon, Beelink included.
Before RPis went up in cost they were $35. Isn't there anything in that price range?