Is this eduroam?
To me, Endless OS seems to be the best fit for you; install it once and you never ever have to give it a second glance for troubleshooting or whatsoever. It achieves this through using "a read-only root file system managed by OSTree with apps installed using Flatpak.". This translates to:
- The most important system-related files being protected from change by yourself and others.
- Ensurance that your base installation is exactly the same as the one tested and used by its developers. And thus an (in-)direct quality control and maintenance by the very people that work on it.
- As the base system is not changing beyond what is provided by the devs, installation of applications is relegated to flatpaks (see Flathub for the App Store).
- Flatpak is a packaging format that doesn't interact with the base system to install software; think of it like how applications are installed on your phone. With this, you can still install software you need without compromising changes to the base system.
Nix, the package manager, is distro-agnostic. Add Home Manager on top of it and you're good to go; both packages and dotfiles are dealt with.
Unsurprisingly, usage numbers for distros are hard to get due to lack of telemetry and what not.
However, some measurements do exist; like data from ProtonDB. These are used by Boiling Steam for their excellent reports in which some representation regarding usage across distros can be found. Their most recent report can be found here.
Note, however, that the following, as has been excellently touched upon by Boiling Steam, applies:
COMMON MISCONCEPTIONS
Since we hear some of the following comments EVERY SINGLE TIME, let’s address them here and now:
- “Duh, it’s not representative of Linux usage in general!”: And nowhere does it claim to be. As often as possible we make it clear this is Linux usage in a gaming context. The usage of Debian and Ubuntu on servers is safe for now, no need to panic.
Read this for the most complete and comprehensive answer on the matter.
TL;DR: Like Fedora Atomic, it utilizes OCI images for its immutability. However, while Fedora Atomic combines this with libostree/OSTree for git-like management of your system, Vanilla OS (instead) keeps it relatively simple with just A/B partioning; which indeed is somewhat reminiscent to what's found on Android.
First of all, thank you for this! This effort is very much appreciated and will definitely make it easier to parse through Linux; especially for beginners.
Having said that, some personal nitpicks of mine:
- I absolutely love Fedora. But if it's named first on your list of beginner distros (presumably due to alphabetical ordering), then it better be easy as hell and work as expected OOTB. Unfortunately, that ain't the case. Hence, at least mentioning the Howto page of RPM Fusion would have been sensible to combat issues users might experience otherwise.
- I'm fine with the inclusion of openSUSE Aeon, but openSUSE Kalpa is literally in Alpha. Therefore, it's too early to be recommended.
- I'm personally not very bothered with Fedora Workstation on the list of distros geared towards beginners, while Debian is found on the list of power-user distros that beginners should avoid instead. ~~(I'm a die hard Fedora fanboy anyways.)~~ However, I am curious to your reasoning/justification.
- Alpine Linux was originally envisioned as an embedded-first distribution. Therefore, most of its design choices revolve around that; small, secure, simple et cetera. The way that you describe/depict Alpine Linux, is more in line with how I would for (what I'd refer to as) demonstrative distros like Artix and Devuan.
May as well contribute my own 😜.
I'm an absolute sucker for exquisitely hardened distros. Hence, distros like Qubes OS and Kicksecure have rightfully caught my interest. However, the former's hardware requirements are too harsh on the devices I currently own. While the latter relies on backports for security updates; which I'm not a fan of. Thankfully, there is also secureblue.
Contrary to the others, secureblue is built on top of an 'immutable' and/or atomic base distro; namely Fedora Atomic. By which:
- It's protected against certain attacks.
- Enables it to benefit from more recent advancements and developments that benefit security without foregoing robustness.
If security is your top priority, Qubes OS is the gold standard. However, secureblue is a decent (albeit inferior) alternative if you prefer current and/or 'immutable'/atomic distros.
In a lot of educational institutions over the world, they truly on eduroam for their bidding. While it's not perfect, it does offer a python script by which proper connection to the network is established. I guess it's unfortunate to know that it's not eduroam then, as I wouldn't know what the solution would be.