I'm surprised to hear you don't like Fedora. I recently tried Kinoite and I wish I'd discovered it sooner. I've never had a Linux distro that felt so detail-oriented and complete. I'd be curious to hear your reasoning!
Ignore everyone here saying fix Ubuntu and try Fedora Kinoite (or Silverblue). Bazzite is probably great too if you are gaming but I haven't tried it.
I finally tried Fedora Kinoite after years of Ubuntu (and related distros) and I genuinely wish I had tried it sooner. Everything just works. I cannot reccomend it enough. It's what I always wanted Linux to be.
I've actually tried Zorin and was really impressed! My favorite use of GNOME I've seen for sure. Though it's technically Ubuntu based (which is Debian based).
requires a fair bit of post-installation configuration
This is crazy to me because of all the distros I've tested over the years Fedora Kinote is by FAR the one I've had to do the least amount of tweaking with. It's almost boring how "just works" it is. It's honestly changed my perspective of what a distro can be.
It works with Fedora, Windows and Macintosh. It worked with Ubuntu until a month ago. It doesn't work with a fresh install of Ubuntu with default settings.
There, now you have all the same information I have.
A bash script is like a shell script in Windows. It is a text file that runs multiple commands in order. As if you opened the terminal and typed them in yourself.
Udev rules I need to learn about but based on context I have to assume it's a tool for running scripts when specific events happen (like a monitor being plugged in)
In your opinion what makes a terminal program "more useful" than a GUI program with the exact same functionality? Genuinely curious because it's a perspective I cannot wrap my brain around lol
In other words, I can successfully install things like a windows user, I just have to go the extra step to open the file’s properties and make it executable with the GUI first.
Some programs can be installed this way, but it's extremely far from universal.
Config files can be edited in the GUI text editor
Not without opening them as root, which in every distro I know of, requires the terminal.
To test my claim and prove your third point, this link is the repository for a samba GUI
Strong disagree lol but I understand your logic. I am a visual learner and it is a lot easier for me to understand what the structure and options are in a given program when I have a GUI.
To me the terminal feels like a scalpel. It's a precise instrument, but only you need to know exactly what you're slicing into.
I'm surprised to hear you don't like Fedora. I recently tried Kinoite and I wish I'd discovered it sooner. I've never had a Linux distro that felt so detail-oriented and complete. I'd be curious to hear your reasoning!