Fedora is on a six monthly cycle just like non-LTS Ubuntu; neither distro is on a yearly release cycle. The previous release is just supported for an extra six months, for one year of support per release for Fedora.

Fedora itself isn’t rolling but the kernel and mesa packages do roll between releases, and it is more bleeding edge than Ubuntu generally.

Manjaro has too many issues that are well documented with instability and security for new users.

Nothing. OP is being an idealogue that is doing a disservice to new users.

Snap can be undesirable for some, but honestly Ubuntu works very well for beginners and arguably has a more intuitive gnome interface by default.

Even then it is 200 series and up. 100 and back through to 900 will still not just work at this stage.

Isn’t turning off the screen better?

OpenBSD, NetBSD and FreeBSD all support or are planning to support Wayland.

FreeBSD runs Wayland just fine. I run it on one of my boxes.

OpenBSD is also working on Wayland support.

NetBSD I’m unsure of, as their development pace is quite slow.

Yes, FreeBSD already allows running Wayland. On my FreeBSD box, I have run it just fine.

OpenBSD are also working towards it.

I’m not sure about NetBSD.

That’s exactly the case.

You are describing a different scenario to myself here though.

There is nothing wrong with helping to direct people to the manual of course if it is genuinely of use.

There are many who are not as friendly as you in my experience who use these queries more a flex of their perceived superiority than any genuine attempt to be helpful.

It is these people who view arch as some sort of elite status symbol that makes them superior geniuses that are toxic.

Mostly to learn about it’s unique selling points.

I think it is very interesting in terms of the easy deployment of specific environments, and in terms of writing recipes for new packages.

Having said that, outside of these two rather niche areas for home use, I think it is rather unintuitive and offers no real advantages over more established players that offer a more polished experience, like Fedora for workstation and gaming use.

Is there something that attracts you to NixOS for that purpose?

I’ve got Nix OS running on one of my computers, and honestly, haven’t found it to be particularly notable for those usecases.

What is your usecase?

This is the key question.

While I don’t mind BSDs, that would lead to even worse outcomes though in my view. Companies wouldn’t even have to release the source code, and they routinely don’t.

What we need is more copyleft to ensure companies contribute back to the communities they leach from, not less.

How would BSD help in this situation? I’m not sure I follow.

I don’t think most Arch users are.

However, I do think a small portion of the Arch community are. There seems to be a segment that is quite aggressive with RTFM, even where the wiki is unclear, or are otherwise very condescending or even aggressive to new users.

People also really need to stop recommending Arch to new users, especially those looking to move to Linux for gaming.

As others have stated, as long as you are using a distribution with reasonably modern (and maybe frequent) updates of the kernel and mesa stack, it doesn’t matter much. The updates of these two packages are what will provide updated hardware support and performance improvements.

Steer clear of Nvidia. It can work on linux, but is a pain due to Nvidia not providing proper open-source driver support. I also highly recommend ensuring you have an intel chip if you need wifi, as realtek and broadcom can be a bit variable in terms of support and stability for wifi.

Wayland is also preferable in my view, due to its significant benefits over X11 - it is more secure, makes your computer much smoother, and supports modern niceties like better multi-monitor support, gestures, lack of tearing, HDR (in the future), etc.

This segues into my next point. It makes more difference what DE you use when gaming - GNOME currently doesn’t support VRR on Wayland (appears to be coming in next release at least experimentally), while KDE does. So that is something to think about. I would stick to either of these two DEs as these are the only two that are both user friendly for beginners, and have excellent wayland support. Cinnamon, MATE and XFCE all do not yet support Wayland.

I would steer clear of distributions that are not established, and/or only have very small or single person teams (as this has potential security, stability and support implications) and would recommend Fedora. Fedora has a bleeding edge mesa and kernel (that roll between releases), but stability elsewhere with a solid community behind it and a dedicated security team, built on cutting edge technologies throughout. If you need VRR I would use the Fedora KDE spin. OpenSUSE tumbleweed is also a great choice.

Many users will recommend Arch Linux systems, as this is the hotness, particularly as this is what SteamOS is based on. I wouldn’t recommend this even as a very happy Gentoo user, however, as relatively “pure” Arch Linux distributions (and Gentoo), will require you to follow notices on the website, and will require your knowledge and intervention at some point based on this notice; without your intervention, it will likely break your system. So as a beginner I would avoid Arch Linux and Endeavour OS.

Manjaro has had many too issues with the security and stability of their distribution to allow me to comfortably recommend it, and the Nobara and Garuda Linux teams are both too small for me to be comfortable recommending them. Zorin OS, Pop_OS and Linux Mint are all excellent workstation distributions, but their outdated kernels and software (they are based on a long-term support base) mean you may be either giving up some performance or hardware compatibility.

It is because of the tivo workaround to GPLv2. This was fixed in GPL v3.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tivoization

There appears to be at least an aspirational goal for GNOME 46 to land experimental support.

They are being downvoted because it is utter nonsense, spouted as authoritative fact.

Anyone who has ever used gnome seriously, knows that although it can be used for touch it is heavily keyboard oriented.

While not undermining the work of KDE devs who I have great admiration for, GNOME devs also work heavily on standards that benefit all of linux, and arguably do just as much if not more, as they are a very well resourced project.