bsergay

Hehe, consider to keep us updated 😜.

Thank you for the clarifications!

Regarding what you mentioned on Debian; ultimately, you're a lot more experienced than I am with it. But, IIUC, Debian 12 should have done a great job at easing (new) users into its ecosystem. Not sure if it's sufficient though.

I think immutable distros could be great for newbies, but I’m just thinking they’re still so new that if you go online to look for Linux advice or help, most things you’ll find are very much not for immutables and I doubt a true newbie understands what’s what.

I definitely agree. But, I think it's sufficient to communicate to new uBlue users that they should check uBlue's own documentation first. And, if they didn't find the answer there, that they should ask on discourse or on Discord.

I only addressed this for new uBlue users as I don't think other immutable distros are sufficiently newbie-friendly yet.

I'm well aware that both elementaryOS and its Pantheon DE were innovative and made major strides for user-friendliness a couple of years back. Hence, they rightfully earned a spot among the newbie-friendly distros. However, I might be wrong, but it feels as if they haven't been able to keep momentum. And therefore lost their significance.

If you think I'm wrong, please feel free to correct me; I would love to be educated on how elementaryOS has kept relevance (if they actually have).

but I don’t think immutable distro are a good place to start.

FWIW, the first distro I used and subsequently daily-drove^[1]^ was Fedora Silverblue over two years ago. The try-hard in me immediately started off (or at least tried) applying the hardening outlined in Madaidan's article. After banging my head for a week, I started actually using the system and it has been a very smooth ride ever since. The uBlue images are straight up better when it comes to the OOTB-experience without even mentioning the associated 'managed'^[2]^ aspect that comes with it. Therefore, I believe that they're perfectly suitable. They're not for everyone, but no distro is anyways.

1. I forgot to mention how simultaneously I quit Windows cold turkey as well.
2. The uBlue images are able to 'prevent' breakages that would otherwise affect everyone.

First of all, thank you for this! This effort is very much appreciated and will definitely make it easier to parse through Linux; especially for beginners.

Having said that, some personal nitpicks of mine:

• I absolutely love Fedora. But if it's named first on your list of beginner distros (presumably due to alphabetical ordering), then it better be easy as hell and work as expected OOTB. Unfortunately, that ain't the case. Hence, at least mentioning the Howto page of RPM Fusion would have been sensible to combat issues users might experience otherwise.
• I'm fine with the inclusion of openSUSE Aeon, but openSUSE Kalpa is literally in Alpha. Therefore, it's too early to be recommended.
• I'm personally not very bothered with Fedora Workstation on the list of distros geared towards beginners, while Debian is found on the list of power-user distros that beginners should avoid instead. ~~(I'm a die hard Fedora fanboy anyways.)~~ However, I am curious to your reasoning/justification.
• Alpine Linux was originally envisioned as an embedded-first distribution. Therefore, most of its design choices revolve around that; small, secure, simple et cetera. The way that you describe/depict Alpine Linux, is more in line with how I would for (what I'd refer to as) demonstrative distros like Artix and Devuan.

What was the last version of Windows you used before hopping on over?

Windows 10

So what’s your reasoning for the change to the reliable and funni penguin OS?

Freedom and privacy

TIL that Tails predates all the distros mentioned in my earlier comment and it also predates Whonix. So thank you for mentioning that! (It's by about 3 years if anyone is wondering; Tails in 2009; Kicksecure, Qubes OS and Whonix in 2012; secureblue in 2023.)

So, the reason I didn't even mention Tails, is because I (frankly) don't regard it as a daily driver meant for general use. However, I might be completely wrong on this. So please feel free to correct me.

However, even if Tails would be excellent as a daily driver, the problem related to reliance on backports for security updates still persists. Furthermore, while its protection against forensics is arguably superior to anything else out there (including Qubes OS), its overall security model is not something special. Even if -for the sake of argument- we'd regard its security superior over both Kicksecure and secureblue, it still wouldn't make a chance against Qubes OS' security model.

How do the 'offspring' of Mandrake/Mandriva compare to one another? IIRC, there's ALT, Mageia, OpenMandriva, PCLinuxOS and ROSA.

I've also come to the understanding that what set Mandrake apart from its peers was its polish and user-friendliness. Which, harbored a great community back in the days. Currently, however, this role is fulfilled by distros like Linux Mint. Furthermore, most distros are relatively straightforward anyways. So, my other questions would be:

• Could the argument be made that Linux Mint is the actual spiritual successor to Mandrake?
• Are the Mandrake-offspring's most compelling raison d'être that they're Mandrake's offspring?

Not the person you asked, but they might have referred to the fact that (technically) Qubes OS is not a Linux distro because it's based on Xen instead. Though, even then, we might refer to it as a Xen distro (if anything).

Got anything to back that up?

Compartmentalization buys you disposable VMs.

And more.

TAILS is amnesic, which is an improvement to this.

How? Please focus on the security merits.

Everything is lost between sessions

If this is your reasoning to justify your earlier statement, please explain how this outdoes Qubes OS when it comes to security.

Btw, it seems you're conflating protection against forensics with a proper security model. In terms of security, TAILS does not provide anything remotely comparable to Qubes OS. Qubes OS is literally built differently. In case you enjoy tables.