Quick example: When I install a new OS, the first thing I want to do is install Brave. That should be as easy as “click on this thing, type in brave, select Brave, install.”
Why would you expect that from Linux, that's not even how it works on Windows lol. Basically every Linux distro comes with a software center these days, so that shouldn't be a concern.
Someone who wants to be able to get up and running without having to learn how to manage the OS using the cli.
Your usage of the CLI will be determined by how much stuff you want to do. If all you want to do is use a browser, than any distro will work. If you are a techie that uses a bunch of peripherals and like the latest greatest hardware, I would recommend Endeavor because your hardware will be better supported and installing drivers from the AUR is easy. If you are OK with a slight learning curve with the benefit of having a stable distro you don't have to mess with, I would recommend Fedora Silverblue or Kinoite.
freed from Microsoft's monopoly. Valve is still a corporation.
They have a lot of work to do before they can publicly release it. They really messed up basing it on Arch, IMO. Whereas Fedora has their Silverblue and SUSE has their CoreOS, Valve is really treading new ground with an immutable Arch distro. As it is now, the immutability is a major barrier to doing even very simple things. If I want to install an external driver on Silverblue, I just navigate to it's folder and run rpm-ostree install -driver-. SteamOS has no rpm-ostree equivalent, so you have to disable read-only which is more complicated and defeats the purpose of immutability anyway.
Valve will have to develop a bunch of brand new tools or (more likely) contract the work out, which as far as I know hasn't happened yet even 1.5 years after official release.
I think GNOME being minimalist with extensions is a good thing, but I disagree with what GNOME considers basic functionality or not. Two things that stick out:
an app launcher. Literally every other desktop on the planet has one, how this isn't considered basic functionality is beyond me. Give your grandparents a vanilla GNOME computer and tell them to get to Facebook and you will see how necessary this is in real time. Default should be dash-to-dock with intelligent autohide so you only see it when you need it. This would fulfill GNOME's hangups about it while also improving usability, so I fail to see a downside.
tray icons. GNOME treats background processes like bugs to be squashed. Let's just get real here for a second: sometimes you want programs to run in the background and sometimes you want to be able to see what they are doing in real time. I want my email clients to tell me when I get emails, I wan't my Nextcloud to tell me when there are sync issues, and I want Discord to tell me if I get DMs. This should be considered basic functionality.
Well I hate to disagree with all the doomers here, but I don't think flatpaks are the devil. Flatpaks are as good as the person shipping them, there are not many flatpaks that actually have official dev support so a lot of these programs are packaged by volunteers in their spare time. So no, they may not have the best default settings.
That said, I run flatpaks almost exclusively on Kinoite I've never had an issue with flatpak theming or my cursor changing. Some applications are very obviously made for GNOME or KDE explicitly but flatpak doesn't have anything to do with that. Of course if you are running a WM rice or something with very specific theming then that's another story. You can customize a Linux desktop in countless ways, you can't really expect these applications to keep up with that by default (flatpak or not). It's the same concept as something like Discord or Steam, it will look the same for everybody but you can theme it if you put some effort in.
IDEs are another issue, the whole concept of an IDE is antithetical to a sandbox in the first place so it's simply not a very good use case of flatpak. Flatpak isn't a one-size-fits-all solution, that's why even the Fedora immutable desktops give you additional options like rpm-ostree, podman, buildah and toolbox.
So far as I know, Red Hat did not violate GPL. Oracle didn't do anything wrong and neither did Red Hat. As I said, there's no "good guys bad guys" here just companies trying to make more money.
Are there any plans for tray icon and desktop notification support? Those features are the only reason I would run a desktop email client, without them I'll just use a browser. I know Birdtray exists but I can't get it to work with flatpak Thunderbird.
Oracle's OEL is the reason all of this happened in the first place, lol. I don't think there are any good guys or bad guys in all this, just corporations doing what corporations do: make money. Oracle and SUSE smell blood in the water and are trying to capitalize as much as they can. I don't blame them.
lol "competition". Oracle doesn't contribute 1/10th that Red Hat does to open source. This whole controversy is BECAUSE of Oracle copying Red Hat's homework with OEL. Now they are pissed because they can't have a free lunch anymore at Red Hat's expense.
Why would you expect that from Linux, that's not even how it works on Windows lol. Basically every Linux distro comes with a software center these days, so that shouldn't be a concern.
Your usage of the CLI will be determined by how much stuff you want to do. If all you want to do is use a browser, than any distro will work. If you are a techie that uses a bunch of peripherals and like the latest greatest hardware, I would recommend Endeavor because your hardware will be better supported and installing drivers from the AUR is easy. If you are OK with a slight learning curve with the benefit of having a stable distro you don't have to mess with, I would recommend Fedora Silverblue or Kinoite.