As with everything - it depends. Sometimes the FOSS versions are not very good, sometimes they are better than the official. Sometimes they are better for privacy, sometimes they make no real difference at all, sometimes the web version is better. Sometimes there is no FOSS version, sometimes the official one does not support Linux.

You are going to need to go on a case by case bases and decide each time.

The only stupid question is the one you don’t ask.

First, I don’t like calling proprietary software “official”. Proprietary software is just software with closed source code. What makes something official is someone deciding “OK, this is what we are going to use” or that it definitely came from a particular source. Getting Docker directly from Docker repositories rather from a distributions repository for example.

My general take is if FOSS can do the job, I use FOSS. If FOSS can’t do the job I need, then I will go with the best proprietary solution to my problem. If I go with FOSS, I tend to prefer using the repository of the project in question rather than my distributions repository. The projects repository tends to be more up to date and there are fewer opportunities for ba actors to play with the code. Downside is that these repositories may introduce changes that may bork your OS when/if you upgrade to a newer major version. FlatPacks and AppImages help to mitigate this.

Hope that helps.

Please NEVER stop asking questions. As other have said, there really are no stupid questions.

If someone else acts like it's a stupid question, then it's their issue and not yours. NOTHING is easy until you understand it. The only way to understand it is to ask questions.

I've told numerous folks at work that before they do something if they have a question then let me know, because I'd rather answer a question then spend an hour or more fixing something broken.

I ask a LOT of questions. So many questions that when I first started in IT I had a lead that got used to me being in the office 2 hours before him so he knew I'd have a million questions and before he'd even go to his desk he'd stop by mine and ask if I had questions, which I always did.

Please please please please please ASK QUESTIONS.

I have been in IT for 12 years now, I have been on Linux for 16. Before this post I literally was in another thread and asked about BTRFS. I looked it up and it wasn't making sense to me, so I asked a question. You can NEVER know EVERYTHING. And when you start to get comfortable that's when something new comes out or you start digging deeper and have more.

It’s a matter of ideology.

This being said I think for you installing “official” apps via flatpak might be the best compromise. You gets apps that don’t need tinkering with and “just work” while those apps are isolated from the rest of your system via flatpak isolation.

If you are going into a period low fiddle time this might be your best bet ^

As someone who's been in the workforce for more than a decade, the one thing I wouldn't bother with FOSS is Office.

I know it's probably MS's fault, but at the end of the day I'm just trying to send this boring document to this boring colleague and get on with my day. Last thing I want is for them to come back with boring complaints cause something went a bit wrong with conversion.

A lot of FOSS alternatives are just as good or better than official, but it’s not as simple as just choosing the FOSS alternative always, as there will always be times where the official is better. Best way to find out is to read the GitHub or app description for why the FOSS alternative exists, and if the project has been around long enough to have the features you want.

Be careful with custom Discord clients as I’ve heard they are against TOS. I don’t think people get banned very often for it but it is something to keep in mind. WebCord is based on the browser version so it MIGHT be fine, but I don’t know enough about it.

On Mint go with the apps in the store. This OS is often recommended to beginners for two reasons 1. The familiar interface and 2. Stability.

You'll have less grief with store apps, and they're usually foss anyway. Flatpak apps are fine but can collectively get a bit disk and ram hungry. Either version will work fine though

For discord it will be better to install both official and webcord, in fact I use both, on the official client you have Krisp noise reduction and you don't risk a ban, but there are downsides to it for example the screensharing on wayland is broken and sometimes you get the annoying window "A new update is available download the .deb on our site" and you can't use discord for weeks with the official client.

For Discord specifically install the Flatpak option for your distro if you have it.

You can try out WebCord on the side too if you want, you have the freedom to install both.

I love OSS and use all kinds of software extensively, but personally, I'm not the type of person to completely eliminate everything proprietary out of principle. If it genuinely improves my experience, I'll almost certainly switch. Otherwise it's a toss-up

Depends on what you need. Personally, over the years I've been inclined to at least try a FOSS alternative when available and have found some really cool projects by doing that. It's also cool to see those projects evolve over time and trade blows with the "official" apps they're competing with.

However in some cases it just might not be practical to do so, especially if the alternative isn't mature enough to rely on. I'd say at least take a look at the alternatives and give em a fair shot.

I will mention in the case of projects like WebCord you're essentially getting a cut down version of Discord, with some extra features added in some cases. Basically custom clients like WebCord have to be based on the web version of Discord (essentially what you get when you open it in a browser) and because of that will be missing features like Krisp noise reduction and hardware encoding for video which can be dealbreakers for some people. Those features and some others are only available with the native Discord app which alternative clients cannot be built on top of. So there's a hard limitation there as to how much these alternatives can accomplish.

There are others like Ripcord which are entirely custom clients, not just loading web Discord and modding it. But something like Ripcord will be missing a lot of features that even the web version of Discord has, so not really an option unless you just need basic voice and text chat stuff.

I would transition to Linux slowly and use the official apps at first. Try it for a semester to keep things stable and simple, and then next semester you can gradually replace a few apps with FOSS alternatives and evaluate how well they work.