Linux Mint is often recommended to users coming from Windows, so… Kubuntu, Pop!OS and OpenSuSE are maybe also decent for that use case.

Manjaro isn’t recommended. They made lots of weird decisions and mistakes in the past, maybe still do. Wouldn’t trust them. Endeavour or Cachy are the current recommendations for “easy Arch”. If you’re able to install and maintain vanilla Arch, I’d recommend Arch though. Cut the middleman.

I’m only a little bit familar with the TUI browsers. I’m also not sure about gemini and gopher support so you have to look that up on each project page, but I can give some general directions:

• Lynx is basically the oldest TUI browser, so probably not the best and no modern choice, but still maintained I think
• ELinks started as a fork of Links (and Links started as an alternative to Lynx, so both ELinks and Links are newer than Lynx). It has a lot of features and is actively maintained, so it’s decent I think. Probably better than Links (and Links is probably better than Lynx)
• Links2: no idea, just know that it exists. If it’s still actively maintained I would suggest comparing it to ELinks because they’re both probably similar (both related to but newer than Links))
• W3m is the one I’d recommend, it’s powerful and can be integrated more easily into other applications. For the classic TUI browsers, it probably comes down to the choice between w3m and elinks
• There’s also a modern project called Carbonyl which is essentially Chromium running in a terminal, so this one might be “better” than all of the above in terms of features and modern website compatibility. But again, it depends on what you want out of a TUI browser - if you only need something basic this is probably overkill. But I didn’t try it out.

It’s for window management related hotkeys. Obviously. All about windows. With a lowercase “w”.

Tips for coping:

• Call it the Super key (actually the correct label I think)
• Bind window management related hotkeys to it

Technically, nothing you use in tech is ever really “simple”, there’s tons of complexity hidden from the common user. And whenever parts of that complexity fail or don’t work like the user expects it to, then the superficially simple stuff becomes hard.

Docker and containers are a fairly advanced topic. Don’t think that it’s easy getting into this stuff. Everyone has to learn quite a bit in advance to utilize that.

To play games, you went into the wrong direction when fiddling with wine directly, or even just indirectly by using bottles You COULD do that, but you’ve literally chosen the hardest path to do so. You should use something like HeroicGamesLauncher, Lutris or Steam in order to manage your games, install and launch them fairly easily. These will take care of all the complex stuff behind the scenes for you.

AI will just add more mountains of garbage to the web, on top of the already existing ones. But users will still find what they’re looking for because they first need to filter out all the slop. It will probably take longer to find the useful stuff, but the useful part of the web will continue to exist as a part of the whole web.

My view on the versions of Windows:

• 95 to 98: decent experiences because of a lack of competition back then, but bad at security and stability, but no one really bothered that much back then about such things
• ME: basically 98, just a low-effort cash grab
• 2000: promising new platform based on the superior NT kernel, but not mature yet for widespread consumer use
• XP: probably the first widely usable consumer OS, decent, but it took until SP2 to fix security and stability problems
• Vista: beta version of 7, sold as non-beta
• 7: the last decent Windows version. Windows dominance starts slowly dying after this one
• 8, 8.1: basically still 7 but with an UI experiment gone horribly wrong, plus the first beginnings of unwanted cloud integrations
• 10 (First Windows version with Nadella as CEO): okay so we just need to not do weird UI experiments and then we’re probably fine. Oh, by the way you can actually put spyware into everything with some opt-out options and not really get into trouble for it, and this will give us extra profit? Let’s fucking go!
• 11: okay so this spyware and cloud integration stuff went great overall, so let’s push even more! Also let’s add AI stuff which is also even more spyware and cloud integration stuff
• <next version>: will feature even more AI and cloud integrations and thus even more spyware that will be even harder to circumvent. It’s likely that at this point or the very next version afterwards, that your Windows will likely turn your once “Personal” Computer into a fully Microsoft-owned and operated one.

In 3 to 6 months, <AICompany> CEO says that in 3 to 6 months, AI will be writing 90% of the code software developers were in charge of. It’s always right around the corner. Just like Tesla’s flawless full self driving. In the meantime, please buy our stuff or invest in us, pretty please? It’s a very future-proof investment! Just wait a small eternity while spending money on our semi-useful products.

When I was new to the Linux desktop world (late 90s to 200x) I tried lots of different distros and (X11) window managers and tools and whatnot. Changed themes a lot. And so on. And I think there’s value in all that, because it expands your horizon of what’s possible on the desktop, how different UI/UX paradigms work out in practice for you, and you learn how to use different environments.

On the other hand, there’s also value in having a consistent, well-integrated desktop environment. It can mean less “pain points” in various circumstances, and it’s also efficient when multiple programs share the same libraries or code base instead of having separate tools all around.

In the end, it comes down to what works best for you. But this might also change over time. For example I’m really considering switching to Cosmic once it’s mature. I’m also considering taking a look at Niri because it seems well thought-out. But currently I feel cozy using Plasma at home and Gnome at work because Plasma is currently the least-annoying and at work I still use Gnome because it’s been historically more stable than Plasma for me. I’ve tweaked Plasma’s hotkeys so they work more like Gnome’s and since I also need to use a couple of Windows-based systems at work I’ve also configured common Windows shortcuts like Super+L, Super+E, Super+R so that they all behave the same everywhere.

Oh, and my distro is Arch everywhere because I’ve used it for ages now and I like its technical simplicity, stability and modularity. It’s the one distro that gets in my way the least.

I think one should learn enough to be flexible and be able to use everything, while also not being too narrow-minded and just focus on one solution too much. What works best for you now might not be the best choice for you in a couple of years.

• To learn Arch, install it from scratch (without archinstall), it’ll force you to read the Wiki and learn a lot of necessary commands in the process. After the installation, just keep using it. Using a Linux distro full-time as the only installed OS is the best way to keep at it and truly learn it over time. There’s no magic bullet here. Just keep using it and solving problems or issues as you go, learning more and more stuff as you go. If you need other OSses as well, run those in a VM. I don’t recommend dual-boot setups.

• Don’t blindly copy/paste commands you don’t understand. Always try to understand them first. Some commands can be very disruptive or even destroy your configuration. If you don’t understand it or are able to adapt it so that it fits to your particular configuration or system, you can EASILY damage a configuration, or even make your system unusable. Also, some people like trolling other people and deliberately share harmful commands. Generally, test potentially destructive commands or complex commandlines before actually running them.

• Document major config changes that you do. This is useful because you’ll be able to undo certain changes or even replicate your current system configuration fast when you change distros or have to reinstall in the future. For example my current Arch-based setup is fully documented in form of an almost-directly executable shell script. It does require some interactions but very little. If I ever have to reinstall this system, or upgrade my hardware, it can be done insanely fast and it’ll have the exact same configuration. This goes from basic partitioning and encryption all the way up to dotfiles and individual program configurations.

• Don’t feel the need to learn hard/advanced tools like Vim or Emacs unless you really think you’re getting an advantage from that and aren’t hesitant to put in the time and effort to learn them. Most people don’t need to use them. They’re amazing tools but you need to be prepared to lose quite a lot of time to learn them before you can become productive with them, and this might not be a tradeoff that’s useful for every single user. You can also get away with much simpler tools, like nano (as a console-based editor) or whatever programmer’s text editor you want.
• Similarly, whether a pure WM or compositor plus assorted tools compared to a full desktop environment is worth it for you or not, is up to you. There’s no wrong or right answer here. I’ve tried out pretty much everything and these days use KDE Plasma because I like the consistency and integrations and dislike having different, inconsistent stand-alone tools for panels, menus, notifications, wallpaper, file manager and so on. But again, there’s no wrong or right answer here. Just what makes more sense for you. It’s worth learning how to be able to configure and use a minimalistic setup, for sure. So trying it out doesn’t hurt and increases your knowledge overall. In general, in the Linux world it’s good to always know enough to not be screwed once some component suddenly doesn’t work anymore. For example, a competent Linux user should be able to deal with (temporarily) not having a GUI and fixing his system via commandline.

• A minimalistic, DIY distro like Arch can be amazing to learn everything, if you want to do that at least. If you just want a working desktop system with as little effort as possible, then don’t do that. But if you intend to learn every detail, then a distro like Arch is better suited for that goal than a “bloated”, fully pre-configured distro like Mint or Ubuntu is. Because Arch is much simpler on a technical level than those are. It’s much easier to understand e.g. the relatively simple package building process on Arch than it is on Debian/Ubuntu-based distros. But this “simple” explicitly refers to technical simplicity or minimalism. Most users expect something else when they hear “something is simple”. Arch is not simple as in beginner-friendly, but it is simple in terms of technical complexity, which is why many advanced users and tinkerers like it because it doesn’t stand in their way. It also means though that you HAVE to learn many things, e.g. how to configure a firewall, because it doesn’t come with any preinstalled by default. With Arch, the admin is supposed to know about everything and configure every component himself, at least on a somewhat basic level.

• If you want to go to even more details, you could also try out a source-based distro like Gentoo or Crux, which can also be a great learning experience, but it’s even more details regarding compilations of each package, dependencies, compile-time options, etc. you have to deal with than with a minimalistic binary-package-based distro like Arch, so whether that’s useful for you or not is up to you of course.
• While we’re at it: LFS (Linux from Scratch) is not a distro per se, it’s a guide on how to build your own distribution from scratch. It’s VERY time intensive and not recommended unless you truly want to learn how to build a complete distribution from scratch, or maybe start your own distro some day which isn’t based on another existing distro.