I totally get why this is being put forth. Watch Brodie's videos on the Wayland portals (after binging on LUS, of course ;-) ), and notice which DE is more actively helpful in making the portals better...I guarantee you it doesn't start with a "G." They actually mention this in the change proposal, and I doubt that Red Hat is blind to this difference.

It'll be interesting to see how this plays-out.

I really like emerge/portage, even w/out the "candy" feature enabled. Great color highlighting, and verbose messages about any config change(s) needed.

Having not read the article (I know, breaking Rule #__ of The Internet ;-P)...

It doesn't surprise me that some autists are drawn to doing stand-up. Having seen the documentary "Misery Loves Comedy," comedians often use stand-up as a way of processing chronic mental health issues or other forms of divergence.

I could never do it myself, I have to stim like crazy just to (barely) make it through a phone/video call, without the pressure of actually being funny...not to mention that anytime I say something that I think is funny, I'm often the only person that actually laughs. lol

I definitely prefer it over Snaps or appimages. Straight-forward to update, and Flatseal provides a nice GUI to control permissions (if needed). Themes may not work properly, but whatever, not a big deal for me.

The distro's repo is always my go-to. If it's not available there, then flatpak, and I'll use appimage under duress. If that doesn't work, I'll figure out a different solution.

I second raptir's note about running zypper dup in the terminal to do system updates. Zypper's a bit slow because it lacks parallel downloads, but it provides good info if there are any issues.

If you plan to use flatpaks, add the flathub repo with the --user option, and use that one to install. If I didn't go that route, it prompted me to enter my password for every flatpak app with an update. I'm also a deplorable Plasma user 😜, I don't know if the same behavior happens with Gnome software, it may be a weird Discover thing (shrugs).

Also, if you need the non-free multimedia codecs, run the following commands:

zypper install opi

opi codecs

Automates adding the Packman repo & switching the relevant packages.

Those are the main quirks I learned with Tumbleweed.

The biggest one for me was difficulty getting jobs. I've lost count how many times my parents had to deal with me venting frustrations at falling short in the interview phase.

I can't "read between the lines." Like at all. If it's not spelled-out to me in nearly granular detail, it gets lost in translation. This has definitely contributed to my romantic difficulties.

The only other thing that comes to mind is random social interactions that just turned really awkward because I don't really have that much of a "socially appropriate" compass. lol That happened more often when I was younger.

Yeah, I've been using dark mode for everything for at least 2 years. I also use night shift to adjust the screen to a warmer color temp. I've dealt with chronic migraines for years, and light was a big trigger.

I never recommend Manjaro, even for experienced users. Multiple times, they've let their ssl certificats expire, and renewing those has been easy to automate for a number of years at this point. There have been a number of cases where they ship work-in-progress versions of software as part of their default install, and there was an open letter posted calling this out: https://dont-ship.it

So in my opinion, Manjaro leaves much to be desired from a project governance standpoint.

Now, using an Arch-based distro that does the install process for you doesn't absolve you from learning what it takes to maintain an Arch install; at some point, something will crop-up that requires manual intervention to get back up & running again after an update.

If that is what you're looking for, I suggest EndeavourOS.

If you want a rolling release, I suggest going with openSUSE Tumbleweed. The installer allows you to pick & choose what you do/don't want/need, and has a great rollback system in case an update causes problems.

Otherwise, I would suggest Fedora. Stays very current, and the in-place upgrade process is very seamless at this point.

Yeah, the average user: 1) doesn't care what's running under the hood, and 2) doesn't want to control what's running under the hood.

I'm definitely not an "average user." I like specifying that I don't want wifi, bluetooth, or dvd functionality on my desktop when I have no need/desire to use them. So use flags are one of the main reasons I use Gentoo. Occasionally, it causes some mild irritation, but it's a net-positive for me.

Can't say that I've really used any of the features mentioned in this list, so doesn't really affect my experience negatively. Also, updating some icon sets to fit with the overall theme would provide a more unified experience. So two thumbs-up from me for removing code that, by & large, wasn't getting used, should help maintaining it in the long run.

I've read articles that were clearly created using ChatGPT, there was no extrapolation to add context/details to illustrate their points, and parts of it read like it just pulled from a Wikipedia page. The tone felt more robotic than pieces they published 6~8 months ago.

ChatGPT can be useful when it's part of a larger writing process, but I have a feeling that sites that create prompts and paste the output as their articles will slowly die-off because the quality isn't there.