Resistent to rust.

Debian is fine distro and many people rely on it as strong foundation including the people that build ubuntu and mint. Maybe Debian is the hidden champion.

When Ubuntu became popular, it had some advantages like reliable release cycles, slightly newer packages, better integration of proprietary drivers. Stuff that was not wanted in Debian stable main at the time.

Other non-debian-based distros also brought some advantages.

Personally, I’d love to see Debian as the base distro with Mint, Ubuntu and others building ontop of it. I like my apt update. I just won’t send novices straight to Debian when the derivates have more desktop users.

How to install Linux software using GUI?

On your GUI Desktop Environment, you use your GUI Application Launcher to start the GUI Terminal emulator. Then you simply type “apt install foo”. Easy.

See, the GUI is not harder then the normal way.

Well, if you prentend iterm does not exist, you can probably still use a mac to browse the web.

You don’t have to switch if you like what you found. Some people distro hop, some stay on the same one their whole life.

Too answer your question: Keeping your data is not hard and you should have a backup. Keeping your configuration/customization is a different story; if you don’t like the defaults, the tweaking is practically lost when you swap distros or DEs.

Too address the elefant in the room: Those beginner-friendly distros (e.g. Mint, Ubuntu, …) that you “start with” are actual full-fledged Linux distros under the hood. They usually try to create a UI that’s easier to navigate for someone switching from Windows (rarely from mac) and have a friendly community. They are opionated on some design choices but otherwise 99% identical to the underlying generic purpose distro.

Ubuntu is based on Debian. Mint is based on Ubuntu. Most Everything build for Debian will also work on Ubuntu or Mint. If you like Mint and it works on your hardware, there’s no objective need to switch to Debian (or Arch or Gentoo) ever. People switch as a learning exercise or for bragging rights.

The main purpose of trying different distro is to find your style. Experts could probably configure Debian to look and behave just like Mint, but it’s easier and more consistent if you get it all of the box.

I could live on 50% my salary now – after building my retirement funds. I’m probably a lot older than you are. I’m not married. In Germany if this matters.

Progressive taxation and health insurance costs help a lot. You’ll earn half the brutto, but the interesting question is the netto. You can run your numbers here: https://www.brutto-netto-rechner.info/teilzeit.php (in German)

1400 net can be a perfectly liveable depending on location / housing cost, but you need to think about retirement savings!

It’s Secret Intervention Group, but close enough.

SIGKILL does, though

Third-party email clients would work if not blocked for employers configuration.

Teams works on Linux and i think OneDrive is technically webdav. I avoid mixing Microsoft and Linux, but i believe the modern (web) applications should work everywhere.

PhD candidate

A pointer?

20 years too late?

You can create a VPN through HTTPS. Bad idea performance-wise, but it’s harder to detect.

With or without lemon slice?

You can eat it. Proof: me.

We shall hope so.

A few tests failing in beta, when this can be fixed before the release, is hardly newsworthy.

However it leaves a bad taste to even consider replacing coreutils when it’s nur clear that the replacement is rock solid. Those commands are used in millions of shell scripts distributed alongside applications. Should coreutils break, we’d learn the hard way.

This depends on the goal. Sure, installing Linux in a VM is easy and will always work. Also working within a VM is usually just fine. However you still have to keep Windows underneath with all it’s problems like end of 10.

Take any distro you fancy, Mint is a good start. Create a bootable USB stick an try it out. This is does not modify anything on your computer, just loads linux and let’s you test it. I usually play a youtube video. This shows that wifi, video and sound work out of the box.

For me, if a water fountain exist, it had always worked, especially indoors. Why would someone waste space for a broken water fountain?

Germany