I’ve been working and testing to switch my main PC (used for work like audio recording, music, and general multimedia) and have been playing with Ubuntu Studio on my laptop. Loving it so far but I keep seeing people talk about CachyOS, Bazzite, or the new Debian Trixie.
I’m having trouble finding what’s really different about all these distros aside from how they look or slight changes in how they do things (I know Ubuntu Studio has a low latency kernel which seems important for what I need to do). Is there a big difference? Like, if I go with Ubuntu Studio am I gonna end up wiping everything and installing CachyOS or Bazzite or something in a month because it’s better? Or are all these distros basically the same thing with a different look and feel and as long as I choose one that gets regular updates, it doesn’t matter fundamentally?
I’m trying to grasp the Linux concept but being a Windows user my whole life I’m struggling to ‘get it’. Instead of trying to understand in the contex of Windows or Mac, is a better comparison Apple/Android? Like iPhones would be similar to both Mac and Windows (you don’t get to choose much) and Android would be Linux (I know it’s built on it haha) and it’s really just a bunch of different options to do the same thing?
Been using Linux for 20+ years, and I’ve found it is the Desktop Environment that matters the most to me. It is the part with which I have daily contact. I have a PC running Debian, another running Fedora, a laptop with openSUSE, all with the same DE. My wife runs PCLOS with a different DE on her laptop, so I instantly revert to the CL rather than spend time searching for stuff.
I’m in the same boat as OP. I just don’t understand why one distro over another. I guess the next questions would be - what made you choose Debian for one PC and Fedora for the other? Do you find that openSUSE works better on a laptop than other distros? If the experience is the same, why not have them all the same distro? Do you just choose a distro on a whim? Roll a dice? Flip a coin?
My Fedora PC was 8 years old so the wife bought me a new box for my birthday. I loaded Debian on a whim and now I’m too lazy to switch to Fedora. The laptop has always been my experimental machine where I try different distros. The wife first started her Linux journey with PCLOS/KDE and sees no reason to switch.