I’m still not a Linux expert myself, but I’m gonna take a shot at answering this question as I understand it so maybe others can help correct me. I use Arch (btw) but the ideas should still apply,

You’ll want to use the Debian packages for anything foundational to your system. These packages are tested to work with the distro and can be considered a part of it, just ones you haven’t installed yet. This would be important for something like bluez bluetooth (or whatever Debian uses).

Aside from the space issues you mentioned, this is less important for heavy apps that sit on top of everything else, like a game. Especially if you’re on a slower moving distro like Debian this may be ideal for more updated versions.

Usually I go: distro repo (HIGH PREFERENCE), AUR (not really an option for you), Flatpak, AppImage, whatever other jank manual install is available (but only as a last resort if I really need the thing and there’s no other option, I like a tidy system). I find this offers the best stability and as someone who obsessively updates their system every day because they’re a bored tech nerd, I’ve had better stability on 3 years of Arch than I have with Windows (but that’s a low bar)

Mmm, this is kind of what I’m talking about. I’m certainly not knocking Nobara as a distro or people who prefer it, but taken from their FAQ,

1. Will there ever be other Desktop Environment versions? No. The ‘Official’ modified KDE release layout was designed for myself and my father out of personal preference.

5. I heard Nobara breaks SELinux, is this true? No. We have completely swapped SELinux in favor of AppArmor (this is what Ubuntu and OpenSUSE use).

6. Is Nobara compatible with SecureBoot? No. Nobara ships with a kernel that has been custom patched and is built and hosted on COPR.

7. Can I upgrade from Fedora to Nobara using the Nobara repositories? NO. This is a big large huge NO. The Nobara install ISOs have a ton of packages that get installed which are specific to Nobara, and not installed on Fedora on fresh install.

10. Just how modified is Nobara aside from what I can see? Heavily.

11. This project is quite new, is it going anywhere? Is there anything to say it won’t just up stop development? Is it something that is recommendable to daily drive? (I am quite technical, and can troubleshoot my issues). As long as I am alive and using linux this project will continue. It started because I needed something both myself and my father could easily use from clean install without time consuming troubleshooting or extra package and repo installation.

It’s been around since ~2022 compared to Mint in ~2006

These are exactly the kind of points that a casual, new user would stumble across and in attempting to troubleshoot things from a Fedora perspective could trip them up severely.

My point is that casual users are already averse to making the switch and they are likely going to do ONE install and it needs to be as vanilla and stable as possible. If they turn into Linux nerds who want to distro hop later, they’ll find their way, but we need to keep things absolutely stock and simple.

The biggest issue for most casual users starting remains picking a distro, and to that end I think we as a Linux community need to stop recommending flavors of the month. Even Bazzite has come up against some recent drama and having to break down distro drama for a new users is an absolute deal breaker.

Based on their skill level and needs just get them into a bucket: Mint, Fedora, or Arch. They’ve been around forever, they’re stable, there’s plentiful documentation and there are no weird opinionated decisions buried in them that’ll go off like a landmine or confound troubleshooting. Install the Nvidia proprietary drivers, I’ve had less issues with those (until recently I dunno, we can revisit this point) but overall just everything simple and smooth for a transition.

Once people are on Linux they can start to come up with their own informed opinions depending on how well they take to the environment but at the same time there’s nothing wrong with starting and ending with the above distros.

(I actually don’t know much about Fedora, there might be a slightly better variant recommendation but it’s gotta be something analogous to Mint. I’m pretty adamant on vanilla Arch though, if that’s the route you want to go. Anyone who starts with Arch will be able to better determine an Arch variant down the road for themselves and are also more likely to do multiple installs. Doing so much as even a single reinstall may be a deal breaker for casuals).

I have considered that possibility, yeah. I’m not an expert by far, but it seems less likely.

Breaking from the US is going to cause an initial upheaval to the tech industry that the EU won’t be able to just immediately assert new anti-circumvention on while they are in the active process of a smash and grab. It’s going to take at least some amount of time for them to re-establish that on their terms during which people will become a lot better familiarized and practiced at what all this jailbreaking is going to look like.

People can resist during that time and while I don’t necessarily delude myself into thinking that’ll be super effective, it will also require legal coordination and brand new anti-circumvention tech. Could still be wishful thinking, but I don’t assume it’s just a done deal.

I am personally betting a lot that this is where it’s going (career development-wise, not prediction markets, ugh)

US tech has been absolutely awful and stagnating for awhile. It’s one thing to continue to deal with it when it’s actually offering good value, but it’s not. Between the data sovereignty concerns and tariffs, the EU is positioned to jolt its own tech market if it’s ready to take the opportunity, and I think they are.

I’m not sure I’d expect anything big or grand, much like the “year of the Linux desktop” I don’t know that there will really be a breaking moment. Just slow building of momentum in that direction. And that’s all it really takes, once that momentum takes hold it’s not going to start flowing back to Microsoft. These greedy corporations overplayed their hand, they broke the agreements, and now there’s really no going back.

So I hope …