Understanding that 1. steamos is arch-based and 2. it means it manages packages differently from debian-based distros just cleared up a lot of confusion

on SteamOS you don’t install things to your system (i.e. the equivalent to apt/yum/pacman/portage in other distros) because it’s immutable, but there is a store to install Flatpaks for your user which I’m sure you can install on other distros (or something similar enough)

That’s exactly what I didn’t understand without knowing I didn’t understand it!

SteamOS used to be debian based, it’s now Arch based, not that that should matter to you because 90% of using a Linux for day to day will be through the DE or with commands that are the same for all distros, so anything with Plasma/KDE will look and behave the same as SteamOS.

While that’s true, 10% is a big percentage!Especially when you first discover a distro, you spend a lot of time trying to understand how to install this and why is that not working, at least for me: not being unable to replicate what little knowledge I had about linux (from ubuntu and popos) on steamos really confused me, even though I tried to gather as much information as I could.

I guess steamos being immutable also played a big part in my confusion…

It was a great info dump and I’m thankful for it!

Thank you for taking the time to explain my muddied understanding of linux and its various distros! You’re completely right about the stuff around packages and updates being the important differentiators, and it’s really hard to grasp without using linux and testing different things. Coming from popos and typing apt-get in steamos, but wait I should use pacman and oh what are those AppImage I keep hearing about: that was really confusing because I didn’t know what knowledge I lacked and how to look it up. reason was and some information about it was just contradictory. I think the steamos thing changing from debian to arch actually confused me a lot too, plus contradictory information and command lines, etc.

From what I gather, and thinking back on my short and past, while appreciated, incursion into the linux world:

• I prefer KDE over gnome (I think that’s what’s bothering me about my install of popos at the moment)
• Typing command line doesn’t bother me (on the opposite: I feel like I understand what is going on better if I can actually type in commands), but I don’t fully understand the difference and advantages/disadvantages between pacman, apt, yum, etc. I’m more used to apt and I feel like there’s more information available, but that’s it.

Thank you also for the info about nitrux and the others, there is a lot of confusion between prettiness (or eye-candiness ;) ) and actually good ui/ux, and you were on the point.

The comment about the driver to support retina screens is appreciated, that’s the kind of thing that could make me go around in circle for too long. I’ll check it out thanks!

I used gnome a long time ago and didn’t really like it, but it might be worth a try. A lot of things change in ten years!

Thank you for the suggestions, I’ll besure to look into it. I think I had an intuition but completely underestimated the importance of the community around a specific distro. When you’re not actively using Linux, it’s hard to grasp what criteria should be favored and what significance they will have, not just for anybody but for me.

So I should try it, and I must say the more I hear about fedora the more interested I am.

I am really pleased with all the answer I got and surprised by their wholesomeness. You were able to bring some clarifications on important points that have been really obscure for me for a long time. I will take some time to reply and/or ask follow-up questions, but I wanted you to know that your help is appreciated.