NixOS is not guaranteed not to break, but if it does breaks, you can roll back to a previous working version of your system, which is pretty cool. The question is: for you, is that worth the hassle of learning the Nix language to configure your system?
Maybe atomic distros like Fedora Silverblue and I forget the others ones could do what you want more easily?
Otherwise I'd say debian, if you want stable you'll definitely get stable.
If six months from now you decide that you do need updates, Arch won't like the accumulated six months of updates coming all at once and might throw a tantrum.
Also not updating is a bad idea in general, you do need security updates for stuff like your browser. Please don't use an out of date system. If you want, install something like debian which will give you only critical updates that won't break stuff until the next release.
Right... sure... erm... of course I do, obviously 😅
Actually I always mean to do it but I keep forgetting... Recently I've resigned myself to the fact that I'll never remembering to do it so I've been trying to set up an auto-sync to my NAS with rsync and inotifywait so I won't have to ever think about backups again... But I really suck at coding so it's not going too well 😅
ProtonGE : it's a modified version of Proton, if games don't work with the default Proton versions you can try this one and sometimes it fixes the issue.
Don't bother installing it manually, though, just install ProtonUpQt with your package manager, run it, and have it install the latest ProtonGE for you. Then you go in steam, in your game's compatibility options, and you choose ProtonGE in the list. It's not needed for most games, but it's nice for those few cases where the game doesn't work.
From what I understand the package managers remove files they themselves created but not files created by the application itself like config files and other stuff
I'm the other kind of ADHD : "A package? Thanks for the kind gift past me, I wonder what you got me because I have completely forgotten about it!" Then "Ooooh it's the thing I couldn't live without then I forgot all about it! Cool!"
I'm actually amazed I haven't had any costly mistakes yet considering I'm the kind of person to say "it's just dd, what's the worst that can happen? it'll be fine no worries". Since I've installed Arch a year ago I've been constantly expecting to catastrophically break something... and my system is still running, somehow. It's very perplexing.
You can get a customizable UI on any distro, it will depend on which desktop environment or compositor you choose. Though if you use a slow moving distro like debian it might be a while until you get newer stuff unless you are on the testing branch.
A desktop environment will include everything you need (bar, power menu, notifications, etc) and be configured to work. If you choose KDE, you will be able to customize a lot. Or there's also Cosmic that's still in alpha but will be out soon I hope, it allows for both floating windows and tiling windows, so you can try both and see which you prefer.
If you choose a compositor instead of a DE, it will draw your windows but will not do anything else, you will have to install and configure a bar, a notification daemon, etc, or you won't have any. In that case you have several options :
Wayfire : Floating windows compositor (like on Windows, or KDE and Gnome)
Hyprland : Dynamic tiling compositor (the windows are automatically arranged in a grid)
Sway : Manual tiling compositor (you decide where the windows go manually in a grid)
Niri : Infinite scrolling compositor
The difference is in how the windows are arranged. You can look at demos to see what they would look like. No option is inherently better, it's a matter of personal preference. Personally I absolutely hate dynamic tiling, but I know a lot of people prefer it over manual tiling.
Not sure... I really like Arch, except for one thing that is also a problem on most other distros : packages creating files everywhere and leaving a mess behind when uninstalled. I'd rather have them isolated like NixOS does, and being able to switch easily between several versions of the same package is neat. Declarative configs are also very cool... but I really don't want to use a weird language for making packages, I'm just stating to learn how that work and I like that Arch packages are very straightforward and easy to understand.
Me trying to explain why I found 2001: A Space Odyssey an excruciating an confusing snoozefest without a single interesting point... while also insisting that Barry Lindon is one of the greatest films ever made : I SWEAR MY OPINION MAKES SENSE
Wait aren't those ADHD therapeutic help made so you can feel good about losing something that easily replaced by a paperclip for once instead of losing something actually important like your keys ?
Sure, but it takes extra steps and the results won't be as good as direct screen capture. It won't stop someone determined, but it's annoying enough that most people won't bother.
NixOS is not guaranteed not to break, but if it does breaks, you can roll back to a previous working version of your system, which is pretty cool. The question is: for you, is that worth the hassle of learning the Nix language to configure your system?
Maybe atomic distros like Fedora Silverblue and I forget the others ones could do what you want more easily?
Otherwise I'd say debian, if you want stable you'll definitely get stable.