Mint is the most mentioned choice and an extremely great beginner distro with an huge community.

ZorinOS will get a big update very soon and is also a very good choice. It was my first distro, especially because it looks very modern and pleasing.

If you’re a tiny bit more advanced and get the basics, then you might take a look at the immutable Fedora variants like Silverblue.

They have many advantages compared to traditional distros like the two mentioned above, but atomic Linux is a relatively new concept. I also find them easier to understand and use, and, imo, they’re even more user friendly, but not as refined.

You can always use Fedora Atomic with an Arch Distrobox.

Silverblue and the Arch container update themself, and you can always enjoy your Arch CLI if you want :) I wouldn’t say Arch is unreliable, but it won’t intervene if you do something stupid.
SB on the other hand is almost unbrickable and extremely low maintenance, which I like a lot.

But if you did your research and enjoy Arch/ it’s derivatives, then have fun! Arch is great and if it suits your taste, then that’s wonderful! 😊

There’s an extension for that afaik

+1 from my side for universal-blue.org, where Bazzite is part of.

@Ultimatenab@beehaw.org I often see Garuda and other distros like those appealing to newcomers, because they come themed ootb and look fancy af. Don’t forget that you can get every tweak of that by just installing a theme, which is a matter of seconds.

Garuda is based on Arch, which is known to be not as highly noob friendly as some others.

For “normal” users like us especially, who just want to game and do other normie stuff, the immutable Fedora variants are excellent. uBlue fixes some of their minor issues, and they run wonderfully.

They work just how Linux should do it as desktop OS imo, and how other non-Linux-OSs should supposed to be too.

Also, there will soon come a time where you begin Distro-hopping and reinstall your OS every weekend. On immutable Fedora, you can change your DE (the GUI/ desktop environment, which often defines the distro) with one command cleanly and switch from KDE to Gnome for example, which feels like a clean reinstall, but keeps your data and config.

It’s really cool to see some light themes from time to time!

What font are you using? It looks very legible

I wouldn’t use CentOS for private/ desktop stuff personally.

Do you really need its features? Afaik, the “security” features you mentioned are mainly for server use. At least that’s what I have in my mind right now when I researched possible candidates for my home server some time ago.

I think sticking with a “home use” distro would suit you better.

There are a few options as suggestions:

1. Stay on Kinoite

There’s barely any configuration drift compared to the mutable Fedora. Therefore, it should be less buggy.

Fedora Atomic KDE gave me the best Plasma experience yet. I often tested KDE (I’m a Gnome guy myself, but here and there hop to KDE for a few months) and on most installs on other distros like Suse/ Workstation/ Debian, it got more and more buggy after a few weeks due to updates and tweaks.
So, bugfixes often didn’t apply to my system, only the default one or the install from the devs.

I find Fedora’s release schedule to be the perfect sweetspot between reliable, stable and up to date.

If you’re really impatient, you can always switch to the nightly builds (on Atomic), which are more bug prone and rolling. Maybe, Plasma will be stable enough before it hits the official image. But you should keep at least one stable image in your bootloader.

2. Debian and Leap

Debian “just” got it’s new release and will be stale for the next years. BUT, many of those Plasma 6 bug fixes will be backported to 5.27. Still, many of the QOL-changes are 6-exclusive.

OpenSuse Leap also gives you a great KDE experience and is pretty similar to Debian, both in release schedule and when the last big update hit.

3. Distrobox

You can use an Arch/ Tumbleweed container on Debian/ slow release distro to get all the newest KDE stuff on the outside and keep your stable base beneath.

Why? Because, in my experience, Plasma only gets more refined each update. As long as there aren’t any new big features, there are about hundred bugs resolved weekly.

Or, you can do the opposite. Use something newer, like TW, Slowroll, Sid(uction) or Arch, to get the newest software under the hood, and use the Debian repo to get a stable DE.

Just what you prefer.

In your case, I’d settle with Fedora (mutable or Atomic, in your case the Kinoite version, as I’d prefer that one too), and just don’t upgrade to the newest version.
The older version is always supported for a year or two, and you don’t have to upgrade each release. The bug fixes always get backported if possible.

Yeah, of course. You’re right.

Nix is kind-of-immutable, and you can always roll back to your old build if necessary.

But Arch on the other hand is notorious to “just break” if you don’t exactly know what you’re doing. Of course it will work perfectly reliable (apart from the few paper cuts you get when using bleeding edge stuff) if you are experienced, and optimally, if you set it up with BTRFS and Snapper/ Timeshift.

But honestly, unpopular opinion, I absolutely see no reason to use Arch today. The only exception is the DIY-aspect, which I totally understand and respect. But, for every other use case, there are better options out there, may it be Tumbleweed or Nix for a rolling release, Arch in Distrobox on Silverblue, whatever. It sounds like way too much effort for what I would get. But each to their own.

Neither of both.

Both are more on the tinkerer-side, and for university you need something reliable and easy to use in my eyes.

And that might be Fedora Silverblue/ Atomic (or universal-blue.org to be more precise for QOL-tweaks).
It is definitely more simple, stable (release cycle) and also more reliable, since there’s only one base (Fedora packages + your DE), and therefore less configuration variability.

I’d also lose access to the AUR

No, you wouldn’t. Neither on Nix, nor on Fedora Atomic. Especially on Silverblue you layer and containerise a lot, and you can always use the pre-installed and self updating Distrobox to install Arch and use the AUR. That’s also what I do, and it works fine, even though I almost never feel the urge to use it.

I was at the same spot as you a few months ago and searched for the same.
Pretty much all of the FOSS readers sucked UX wise.
There were a few great proprietary ones on the PlayStore, but they were crammed up with ads and trackers.

Lastly I switched to Librera, which was the best FOSS reader I tried.
But even that wasn’t great.

So, I’ll give you a completely different advice than all the other commenters here: buy yourself an e-reader.

I did the same and couldn’t be more happy!
I’m a big fan of “do one thing and do it right” (I made my phone pretty dumb and also own a digital camera for example).

Readers feel superb. They have a very comfortable display (almost like reading on real paper), don’t distract you and the battery lasts for weeks.
You can also sync them easily via USB.

Just don’t buy a Kindle. Aim for a more open solution, like a Tolino or Kobo.

It sounds like your configuration is not sufficiently backed up.

It is backed up. 1x per auto-backup (Borg, included in the AIO) and 2x on different external drives.
The setup isn’t complicated too, basically barebones Debian with docker.

It’s just that setting everything up (once) again is annoying and highly inconvenient.

But, thank you for your tips on the LUKS-stuff, I will consider it! 🙂

I quite like your idea of just moving my data (not the other stuff) to another drive.

How can I decrypt my drive without a GUI, monitor or keyboard?

I’ve had quite a bad experience with police for example.

30 cops raided my home because of something trivial (I ordered a bit of non-psychoactive CBD-weed, which is, even in the most restrictive country you can imagine, ridiculous).

Of course, I got the whole experience-pack, including strip searches and confiscating all electronics.

Even though I believe them getting hold of any data wouldn’t have changed much, I’m still glad I had my devices encrypted.

Just knowing they didn’t see my cringy pictures of my teeny-me, where I discovered Snapchat filters, is a big relief. 😅

Yeah… that traumatized me a bit and maybe that’s the reason I’m worrying.

Also, you could never know what will happen in the future. Maybe my GF will turn crazy tomorrow and use those embarrassing pictures against me. Who knows?

I believe everyone should use encryption, even if they don’t have much to hide…

I had the expection that Linux is already set up as a multi-user environment and has that feature built in.

Of course that “isolation” of data, as I had it in my mind, wouldn’t be really secure, but it doesn’t have to be that for me. I just don’t want anyone to access it easily.

Crosspost. Click on it and you’ll land on my original post.

I didn’t want to duplicate it. You can always suggest me how to make the crosspost more visible, I just did it how my client set it up for me.

My threat model isn’t high. Just normal stuff everyone has, but that would be disadvantagely if someone else got them.

It’s more if a precautionary measure. It doesn’t have to be super safe, but better than nothing.

Even if firearms were legal in my country, I wouldn’t murder someone because of some embarrassing photos where I discovered Snapchat filters when I was 15.

Also, if they were legal, they wouldn’t help, since I’m not 24/7 at home

Wtf, no?!

If I had CP, I wouldn’t ask publicly and make myself vulnerable.

I just don’t wanna have anyone snooping around my stuff, just as everyone else.

Thanks a lot for your answer. How would you encrypt a server? Typing a password every time it boots isn’t possible for me, since I would need a monitor for my headless server.

Well… shit. Thank you for your great advice. I’m gonna look for how I can secure my data.

Safe in the context of someone stealing the hard drive and look through private photos and stuff by plugging the drive into another device.