Unfortunately, the required steps to rid your Ubuntu (non-pro) system from this and other forms of advertisements are a lot more involved than it has any right to be.

Or, perhaps, consider another distro.

Support for coreboot can't come soon enough. My fingers are already tingling in excitement for that day.

Furthermore, a CLI instruction is DE-agnostic. So you don't need to cover the same topic with explanations for at least 3/4 desktop environments. GUI instructions also change a lot faster than their CLI counterparts; so by providing the commands one provides the method with the best longevity. Overall, it's just so much more efficient.

You can divide distros into two categories:

• Independent distros; these are not forks of other projects (at least not in their current iterations). We may also refer to these as upstream-projects.
• Derivative distros; these are forks from the earlier mentioned projects. We may also refer to these as downstream-projects.

E.g. Zorin OS is a derivative of Ubuntu, which itself is a derivative of Debian. After the gargantuan effort it takes to make Debian possible, Ubuntu's maintainers 'grab' Debian, apply a set of changes and ship it as Ubuntu. After which, Zorin OS' maintainers grab Ubuntu, also apply a set of changes and ship it as Zorin OS.

Of course, not all derivatives are created equal; sometimes a single change is applied that by itself constitutes the fork. And other times, the changes are so massive that they blur the lines between independent and derivative; Ubuntu's changes to Debian is a good example of this.

Derivative distros can't simply change everything as they see fit; some things are simply essential parts. In most cases, these include:

• the release cycle of the base; rolling-release vs point-release, but also LTS vs bleeding edge and everything in between
• the (base) packages of the base

But what other factors/aspects that are important for the average user to know about each ‘base’?

I was about to write a long ass dissertation, but it became very unwieldy. Consider asking for specific bases and perhaps I will respond for those.

On a final note, it's worth mentioning that differences between different distros have never been as blurry as they're today. With e.g. Distrobox, one can install whatever package from whichever distro they want. Thus, we aren't as tied to the packages provided by the base distro as we were used to. Furthermore, most distros have different 'variants' that allow access to different channels or release cycles. E.g. for those who want Debian packages but bleeding-edge; there's Debian Sid etc.

Sure, a lot more can be said; like how corporate interest plays into all of this. But what has been mentioned above should suffice for now.

Why are you even considering Manjaro?

If gaming is the priority, then I honestly don't think anything out there can beat Bazzite in terms of ease of use, 'hands-off'-ness, robustness and stability.

Honorable mentions include: Nobara and Pop!_OS.

But have been wondering why I haven’t heard of any immutable distros from arch based distros yet.

If your question is "Why doesn't Arch have its own atomic/immutable spin/flavor like Fedora and openSUSE have in their Silverblue/Kinoite and Aeon/Kalpa respectively?", then the answer simply lies in the fact that Fedora and openSUSE have a lot more incentive for venturing the unexplored waters of atomicity/immutability as their enterprise counterparts exist and will benefit majorly from it. And I haven't even mentioned how most of the new stuff first appear on Fedora (systemd, PipeWire, Wayland etc) before they're adopted on other distros.

The enterprise counterparts also allow funding that is essential for erecting this from the ground. But, even then, the shift towards atomic/immutable is a difficult one with a lot of hardships and complexity. From the ones that have developed their atomic/immutable projects retroactively (so GuixSD and NixOS don't count as they've been atomic/immutable (and declarative) from inception), only Fedora's (I'd argue) have matured sufficiently. But Fedora has been at it since at least 2017, so they've had a head start compared to the others.

In contrast to Debian (through Canonical), Fedora (through Red Hat) and openSUSE (through SuSE), Arch has literally no (in)direct ties to enterprise. Hence, it will only adopt an atomic/immutable variant if the incentive is high from the community or if it's very easy and only comes with major benefits. But, as even openSUSE is currently struggling with their atomic/immutable variants, it has a long road ahead before it becomes something that can be easily adopted by Arch. Hence, don't expect Arch's atomic/immutable variant any time soon.

However, if any derivative suffices, then at least the likes of blendOS, ChimeraOS and even SteamOS are worth mentioning here.

Linux Mint Xfce Edition should be right up your alley.

Based on your history, I'll assume you're on Linux Mint; note that this is crucial information that influences the required instructions. Therefore, consider mentioning the distro you're using next time 😉.

From Linux Mint's release notes, we find the following:

apt install wine-installer

In case this doesn't do it, add sudo and it should work. So, instead we get:

sudo apt install wine-installer.

Tip: consider sticking to documentation and resources provided by the maintainers of your distro.

On a final note, I don't know exactly what your intentions are, but software like Bottles, Conty and/or Lutris are worth mentioning here as they're 'wrappers etc' for Wine.

We actually already have an experimental coreboot port on the FW 13 AMD.

And, from my understanding, Framework has sent over a device to make this possible.

However, I don't know if it will ever get official support. Though, surely, I hope it will.

Yup, as time went on, I simply felt less need to have proprietary software on my system. Steam remains as an exception; simply by virtue of having no F(L)OSS alternative (AFAIK).

For me:

• atomic updates
• reproducibility
• (to some degree) declarative system configuration
• increased security
• built-in rollback functionality

and their consequences;

• rock solid system even with relatively up to date packages
• possibility to enable automatic updates in background without fearing breakage
• (quasi) factory reset feature
• setting up a new system in just a fraction of the time required otherwise

are the primary reasons why I absolutely adore atomic/immutable distros.

Furthermore, it minimizes all kinds of issues related to or caused by bit rot, configuration drift and hidden/unknown states. (Note that you won't reap all of these benefits on all atomic/immutable distros.)

Small nitpick; layering is technically only a thing on Fedora Atomic. Not all immutable distros subscribe to it.

I’ve been bouncing between live versions of ubuntu and mint

Ah okay, is this problem on Ubuntu or on Mint (or are you going to tackle it on both 😜)?

I’m still learning, so thank you for educating a linux ignoramus like myself.

It has been my pleasure fam!

Ubuntu is no longer the user friendly everyman’s desktop system anymore.

Agreed.

Arch is extremely user friendly, just not the installation process.

I do wonder what your definition of user friendly is. Cuz I can't fathom how you can think that a distro that subscribes to what's quoted below can (by any stretch of the imagination) be considered user friendly.

"Note: It is imperative to keep up to date with changes in Arch Linux that require manual intervention before upgrading your system. Subscribe to the arch-announce mailing list or the recent news RSS feed. Alternatively, check the front page Arch news every time before you update."

Which simple means that you have to check if you can update before you actually perform an update. That's just wild.

And you know what's most curious about this, we've actually solved (within Linux) issues related to updating your system. You read that correct, it's a solved problem. And I hope that you'll benefit from these advancements even if you continue to use Arch.

Btw, please don't come to me with packages that automatically pop up in terminal to inform you about manual intervention. On my system, updates occur automatically in the background and with some black magic shenanigans (or just great engineering) it 'fixes' itself without requiring any manual intervention from me. That pop-up message in terminal can't compete with that.

I find it to be much less of a pain in the ass to use than Debian based systems.

That's subjective, but sure; you're absolutely free to think that.

For one, you have the Arch User Repository, so you’re very unlikely to need to not be able to find some software you want, and more importantly, so many packages in Debian are out of date and they take forever to update them, stuff often breaks because the version needed as a dependency for something else is not in the repositories.

Distrobox exists. Moving on.

and pacman is so much more robust than apt.

What do you mean with robust here? And what makes you think that pacman is much more robust than apt? Thank you in advance for clarifying/elaborating!

I get frustrated online when I see people saying “Ubuntu is the most user friendly distro” or “arch is not for noobs”, this stuff was true like 10 years ago, that’s no longer the case. Ubuntu is user hostile, and there are arch derivatives that are basically arch with a graphical installer, which is the only part of using arch that is hard for people who aren’t hardcore nerds.

Honestly, I actually agree with you. Ubuntu has indeed lost all of its credibility. And Arch is absolutely not as bad as people make it out to be. But! In an environment in which Linux Mint, Zorin OS, Pop!_OS, Bazzite are mentioned; Arch simply is (by contrast) the lesser option in terms easy of use etc. So, while in absolute terms, it's definitely not as bad as peeps make it out to be. It is, compared to the earlier mentioned distros, simply less newbie friendly.

It’s not like Gentoo or Void or Alpine or Nix or running a BSD system or something advanced like that.

Thankfully, no one ever bothers to recommend these to new users 😉.

So, to be clear, these are clearly too advanced and thankfully people never recommend these to newer users. However, while Arch isn't that bad and thus can be used by some newbie users, it should IMO only very very carefully be recommended to new users. If it's the kind of person that likes to learn as they go and enjoys reading documentation, then (by all means) it's absolutely fine to recommend it. But you won't find them that frequently...

Fam, with al due respect, make up your mind; because, unfortunately, it's not possible to keep up great security practices in conjunction with access to the AUR on a low powered system.

I'd argue that your best bet is probs Kicksecure. Though, I reckon you'll have a hard time on a VM regardless.

Why does your brother use NixOS in the first place?

Don't get me wrong; I think NixOS is a very interesting project with a very bright future. It probably wouldn't be an exaggeration if I said that NixOS has single-handedly inspired the current immutable revolution. However, it's also a distro that wants you to learn and digest its ways before it will return the favor.

But, based on my reading/understanding of your comment, your brother doesn't strike me as a seasoned Linux user. Am I right? Btw, NixOS is hard unbeknownst of how many experiences you got with other distros. However, I would simply never recommend a new user to use (Gentoo, Guix System or) NixOS. There are definitely outliers, but they would have to find it themselves then.

I've been on Fedora Silverblue for over two years now and I've never experienced such a thing. Would you mind elaborating? Like, does the system force itself off after the first reboot without any input? Or, instead, do you notice that the installed package is not installed and therefore succumb to another reboot by your own admission? Which, to be honest, seems like some broken interaction*.

Thank you for some much needed background information (and perhaps even some of Ubuntu's justification)!

There is literally not a single useful comment here.

That's a bit harsh 😜. Though, I agree the 'f*ck-Ubuntu'-circlejerk is very present.

It is an optional service, they warn you that you use outdated packages, and offer a solution.

I guess it's wishful thinking to argue that they should have included the security patches from the get-go.

Unfortunately, I can't take this seriously as 1% lows and additional variance due to difference in DE haven't been accounted for.

Furthermore, you bet that Tuxedo OS has done a splendid job at optimizing performance on a device that's sold by Tuxedo. Therefore, I wonder if it's even a fair comparison to begin with.

From the FAQ of Qubes OS (i.e. most secure desktop OS for general use):

"Why does Qubes use Xen instead of KVM or some other hypervisor?"

"In short: we believe the Xen architecture allows for the creation of more secure systems (i.e. with a much smaller TCB, which translates to a smaller attack surface). We discuss this in much greater depth in our Architecture Specification document."