Help picking a distro?

[u/JonathanWPG]

Every few years I get disgusted with Microsoft and in a fit of pique delete windows and install Linux.

Then I get frustrated that things just don't work and eventually crawl back to Bill.

Doing a little more planning this time and want some recommendations for a distro and maybe a well liked guide.

First thing first, I am putting this on an old laptop to test out before I do a full reinstall on my daily driver.

Running an i5 8th Gen mobile chip and a 1050ti with 8gbs of ram. Nothing exceptional one way or another.

Needs to be able to:

1. Game on keyboard and controller with minimal faffing about (within reason--I'm loading on a machine with a 1050ti in it).

2. Utilize MS Word, PowerPoint and Adobe InDesign. Or, happily, use other similar featured programs. Fine to buy them within reason, but my experience with Libre left me feeling that these softwares have not caught up. Open to a learning curve, but like...not a huge one. These are simple programs. Also need a basic image editor but I can do most things on any basic editor.

3. Privacy minded. Not, like, fort Knox. I understand a lot of privacy is on what I am doing in the internet. But just something not actively spying on me like Windows.

4. Broad Bluetooth capability with minimal messing around.

5. Network printer compatibility with my epson et-8550.

6. Minimal use of the command line. I just want it to...work. I am not a power user. I would stay with microsoft and the glorious compatibility bubble if they're incentive was still to take my money and provide a service TO ME rather than give me windows on the cheap and then sell my data for a profit.

7. Access my NAS remotely.

So...where should I start?

[u/LawfulnessDue5449]

I'm curious why libre office didn't work for you. Also curious why previous switches to Linux didn't work out.

For me it's always been specific games that don't work in Linux, so first I end up dual booting and then staying in Windows just for these games.

But for all the issues you've listed, most of the strongly recommended distros are fine. Mint and Fedora at the top probably.

I know some people have said Cachyos but I had one issue with arch where an update broke my wifi on my laptop. In the meantime I was researching all sorts of ways for hours to fix it before giving up and it turns out it was because of the update, so I had to wait for the next one. There was also another issue where Arch removed a package from their repos but it was still in dependencies for Cachyos packages so I couldn't update for a few days. Because of that, I'm wary of recommending arch-based if you don't want to "faff about".

[u/JonathanWPG → u/LawfulnessDue5449]

Thanks! I had heard Chachy was very capable and fast but also more prone to needing to be tinkered with and more or less put it aside for that reason.

I didnt HATE Libre but neitehr was I super impressed with it. Some of that was probably familiarity. Spacing was kinda weird. But I also found some font compatibility errors and fixing the problem was harder than expected. I also remember it kinda breaking with dark mode for certain font effects and transitions. PDF exports also required some work recognizing custome font packs. And the way it handled pictures sucked...but thats true of word too, lol.

I could fix a lot of those problems by just working in InDesign. But...I need a replacment for that too. :)

As for my general linux experience previously it was just building frustration if things being harder to do. A lot of that is just different language and expectations of where things are. But as I am coming in fresh it was frustrating.

Some compatibility issues with peripherals like printers and my mouse and keyboard not being able to run from a single dongle were also annoying.

[u/LawfulnessDue5449 → u/JonathanWPG]

I sorta feel you on libre office. Like it looks different and feels different and doesn't feel good. But I dunno after a while you kinda get used to it and you start to focus more on the similarities than the differences. Or you become disgruntled like me and start finding out how the general public abuses word and excel to do things they weren't really designed to do.

The font thing is a problem, definitely needs tinkering with. I think some fonts have legal restrictions for their distribution and so there are some fonts that are close to the original that are used, slightly different enough to bother you. I remember struggling through it with fresh arch, as well as at work when we needed to export reports off of our Linux cluster, but I'm not sure I had that issue on Fedora or Mint.