I tried openSUSE a few months back because I wanted to be more closely associated with SUSE than Red Hat (I had to update to a new RHEL release at work about a year ago and really hated some of the shit they were pulling).

Here’s a list of issues I had:

• Was forced to not encrypt my system because for some reason the unlock screen rarely recognized my keyboard was connected and I couldn’t input the password. I would have to turn on the computer, then reboot at least once to get it to work.
• The absolute confusion surrounding YaST when I tried it out. The community made it sound like the best thing about openSUSE, but also don’t use it because it’s terrible. Apparently it’s being depreciated now. Don’t want to learn an entire system just for it to be removed.
• I didn’t experience any issues with this but it makes me nervous: Rolling Release + Required (for me) Community Repos. Meanwhile the standard release is slower than Fedora
• This one is a big “first world problem” but it really annoyed me. zypper, it’s one of the longest package manager names, and i can’t tab to autocomplete because there are other packages with similar names.

Now, all of these I problems I could probably fix. But it just wasn’t really worth the effort when my main issue was: “The downstream company associated with my Distro did some dumb shit that doesn’t really impact my system.”

I mean Chromium is an open source project, developers don’t have to do whatever Google demands.

I know Brave still supports it alongside their own ad-blocker, but apparently the CEO is a dick so people don’t want to use it for that reason.

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Rhythmbox has been my main music app for over 15 years now. Every now and then I’ll check out other options but I always end up back after a couple days.

I do wish they would give the UI some attention. Nothing major, just a few visual tweaks to bring it inline with modern Gnome (the alternative toolbar plugin is really close)

You mentioned KDE as your preferred DE so I’d suggest the Fedora KDE spin. The Fedora team has been putting a lot of work into it lately and it’s supposedly going to be upgraded to equal footing with gnome in the next Fedora release.

…smaller communities

So like it was before the dawn of Reddit and social media?

Sign me the fuck up. I miss my dumb little websites with a dodgy layout full of terribly cropped gifs.

More customization = Higher chance something breaks.

Admittedly, chances are it’s just something minor like your icons looking weird or transparency breaking, and it’s not like it happens very often. However I have had it happen while I’m trying to focus on something and it’s definitely an annoyance I could do without.

I like that I can customize on the off chance that I need to fuck with something. But defaults have been getting better and better so i’ve done it less and less.

This is Gnomes biggest advantage to be honest. They have a singular vision of how they want their product to work and they aren’t concerned with edge uses.

I enjoy elements of so many DEs but I keep coming back to gnome because it’s just so well executed over the others.

I want a clean, advanced, well designed desktop and Im okay with redoing my work flow

Use Gnome

Gnome is cool but can it be slightly more Windows?

Use Cosmic (PopOS)

I want lots of customization, advanced features, and a traditional windows desktop metaphor

Use KDE

I want Windows and don’t really care about customization

Use Cinnamon

Dude the Windows 9x look was fucking dope

Use Mate

Im installing this on a potato

Use XFCE

Bit of warning about KDE:

It is very customizable, but as a by product is also really easy to completely fuck up. The first time I used it (eons ago) I ended up removing the task bar and couldn’t figure out how to bring it back or launch programs.

Just spend a bit of time reading up on it and you’ll be fine though.

Qobuz and 7digital have pretty good libraries and high quality downloads.

That sucks and all, but to be fair this is entirely on you. They sold you a DRM-Free file and you chose to not actually use it and to rely on their servers which you have no control over. This isn’t a “DRM Free” issue.

Personal ownership means you take personal responsibility for it.

Fedora Silverblue.

Or really any immutable OS; they would have to go way out of their way to even edit system files, much less break the system. I just recommend Silverblue because gnome is really hard for an inexperienced user to break.

Any real benefits of jailbreaking a Kindle? I mean I know the “You free yourself from amazon!” elevator pitch, but what exactly does that mean?

I can already upload pretty much anything I want to it with Calibre. Can I add support for other ebook formats? Cooler utilities on my Scribe? Alternative ebook stores (yes I know where I am)? A user interface that isn’t absolute garbage?

Bazzite and Chimera are “SteamOS-like” distros that are more focused on providing a game console like experience.

They’re immutable operating systems, and the primary UI is Steam. Definitely usable as a desktop PC but that isn’t really their target niche.