requires a fair bit of post-installation configuration

This is crazy to me because of all the distros I've tested over the years Fedora Kinote is by FAR the one I've had to do the least amount of tweaking with. It's almost boring how "just works" it is. It's honestly changed my perspective of what a distro can be.

Ignore everyone here saying fix Ubuntu and try Fedora Kinode (or Silverblue). Bazzite is probably great too if you are gaming but I haven't tried it.

I finally tried Fedora Kinode after years of Ubuntu (and related distros) and I genuinely wish I had tried it sooner. Everything just works. I cannot reccomend it enough. It's what I always wanted Linux to be.

It's not a RAM problem lmao it rarely crashed on Windows and it's not crashed with Fedora either.

aaaaand it's gone

Ansible is most useful if you have a large volume of systems. It's a great tool for what it does but imo, it not worth learning if you're not going to be needing it frequently.

A bash script is like a shell script in Windows. It is a text file that runs multiple commands in order. As if you opened the terminal and typed them in yourself.

Udev rules I need to learn about but based on context I have to assume it's a tool for running scripts when specific events happen (like a monitor being plugged in)

I've actually tried Zorin and was really impressed! My favorite use of GNOME I've seen for sure. Though it's technically Ubuntu based (which is Debian based).

Auto-Login makes the most sense I didn't consider that. I'll just have to be careful not to log out without shutting down.

You don't have sensitive data? Would you mind expanding on that a bit for me? Just curious how you like, live, and stuff.

I actually don't mind the straightforward names! When I was a Linux newbie it was very helpful to get going. but it would be nice to have advanced info more readily available instead of assuming I "don't need it" as so frequently happens. I'm in the awkward space where I am by any measure an advanced power user, but not like systems admin level where I am more comfortable in the command line.

I say donate to smaller niche instances instead of the big ones that are just trying to recreate Reddit.

I appreciate the concern but odds are if someone is stealing my PC its not going to be a 1337 hax0r. I am not keeping government docs on here I just don't want someone to be able to rip out the HDD and have easy access to everything.

It's just useful to know the name of the app sometimes. With ubuntu default options, "Text Editor" (in the GUI menu), is "gedit" for example. "File Browser" is "Nautilus". These things are actually not easy to learn if you aren't deep into the Linux world.

On Windows, I would never need to know that the "File browser window" is called "explorer".

ctrl+L, there’s no button because Gnome is weird

Oh my gosh, this is so useful. The lack of an address bar was driving me insane. Thanks.

There's one in every thread.

It's almost as if human-powered platforms never went bad and it's all the capitalistic nonsense that made them shitty.

I have not but it was actually on my list of distros to try if Fedora didn't work out. I should give it a look.

Auto decrypt with TPM sounds fine to me but I have no idea what TPM is as this is my first PC with it.

Thanks for the great response though I'll look into these

sigh

Thanks, Zorin is based on Ubuntu so I have to assume it will be up to date with stuff like TPM which is 15 years old. The data on the page you linked is pretty advanced for me but I'll give it a shot. Appreciate you addressing my question.

I'm using GNOME thanks that link looks helpful

Nope, gedit opens fine but you can't save changes unless you're root. This is true of every distro I've tried.

Yeah I don't need a silver bullet I'm not storing highly sensitive data, I just mistakenly assumed this would be easier.

I don't suppose you know of a tutorial to get this set up? Google turned up nothing.

Megatron Death To Pixels

Thanks I'll check that out!

Also I'm currently running Big Box as my windows "shell" because I wanted to be able to do Steam Games as well. I've been curious about all the Linux distors, is there one you'd recommend?

Agreed on all counts! I really can't express enough how impressed I am.

Agreed!

I don't think so, they are both intel macs over 10 years old and Macs didn't start adding TPM until 2017. On Mac, when you check the box to encrypt the drive during install you're prompted for an encryption password which you never need to use again unless you remove the drive and put it into another mac (or in my case add a second hard drive and use the original as "extra" storage).

Strong disagree lol but I understand your logic. I am a visual learner and it is a lot easier for me to understand what the structure and options are in a given program when I have a GUI.

To me the terminal feels like a scalpel. It's a precise instrument, but only you need to know exactly what you're slicing into.

Thanks. I know my way around bash scripts but I guess it's time to learn Udev rules. Are you aware of any examples I can find online?

Then how come Windows and MacOS don't require two different PWs?

And apt is just the beginning of it. It's not that uncommon for apt to not work either.

Thank you for the advice I will take it under consideration.You seem educated in this area, do you know of an easy way to identify the real name of a program without the terminal?

Thanks, I'm aware of the XY problem and do appreciate everyone's concern. I am not trying to run a random app as root. That would be absurd.

This is awesome

Thanks Zorin OS uses GNOME with Wayland

That's a really good point. I also know that making GUIs sucks and there's a reason UX devs make the big bucks.

Obviously I would want to input a password.

Great idea in general to have a live USB laying around just in case. I should make one now.

The question is not about a specific use-case, but a general one. An alternative reading would be "Is there a way to run short commands as root without switching to the terminal?"