I mean they could add a diff thing, like how AUR helpers do it. It's not much, but it's something.

Nothing really. Arch is still great, I just kept having stuff happen where I’d suddenly find out there was a new bug in something at inopportune times. Just the nature of being bleeding edge. Nothing broke severely, but like if you want to join a Zoom call or play a game with friends or something, having something break randomly that you have to fix, even if it just takes a quick search or 5 minutes of troubleshooting can get tiresome.

Also, all of the customization stuff that Arch allows is not as appealing to me anymore since my skill level with Linux has reached a point where I can get super granular with pretty much any distro. Add to that flatpak reducing my need to depend on the AUR, and there you have it.

Used to be Arch, now I shill for Debian.

I kinda vibe with this. There was an odd wave of GPL hate that cropped up some time ago, and people started using MIT. It feels super weird. If companies want to use your code, they should probably have to commit back to upstream or pay for it.

Also I cannot have systemd without binary logs.

This is literally just false.

Yes, and?

Non free firmware specifically, since it's a really bad user experience for new users to just not have things work because they don't have the option to choose to use non-free firmware.

Not really true. You don't necessarily need open source drivers for Linux to play well. There was actually a period where NVidia was the better option on Linux because their proprietary drivers were better than the alternatives. If the company cares to manage those drivers they will work well. That said, it looks like AMD has embraced FOSS and NVidia finally opened their other drivers, so things are looking up at least. Having binary blobs for certain shit is not ideal either, but I'll take it if it means more people will move to Linux and everything else will still be open.

Shitty, but it’s not like NVidia didn’t do more and worse.

I’d prefer it if AMD wasn’t doing this shit, but I’ll probably be sticking with them as long as their providing a quality Linux experience.

Depends on what you mean for security/privacy. You can use Tails or whatever and have everything encrypted and then just be logging into your Facebook account on Chrome without an ad blocker.

Most Linux distros are secure enough for the average person who isn’t being targeted by some crazy state level actor. If you’re particularly concerned stick with a distro that has a security team like Debian. As for privacy that has more to do with the sites you browse and have accounts with but obviously avoid Google (I just use Firefox instead of Chrome) use an adblocker like ublock origin, along with maybe something like decentraleyes.

Debian is solid. You probably don't want to have to fuck around on a laptop that you're using primarily for getting shit done. Flatpaks can handle most of the extra shit you'd want to use. That said, I used to be an Arch guy for years too, and if you're comfortable with it, it's fine to use, but you'll run into the same kind of annoyances. Not true breakage usually, but eventually I got tired of having new surprise bugs in shit that was working fine before.

Also I can't be sure, but I suspect Wayland is probably better on energy draw since it should be more efficient. Maybe try sway for your twm?

Idk, on the one hand I could see the argument against organizations dodging the Red Hat fees by choosing free downstream, but then again, like, everything that RHEL does was always available? The reason you'd pay is for the support you'd get from them?

To be honest I never really understood why you'd specifically want something like CentOS over say, Debian - I mean, outside of I guess, .rpm packaging?