(which I find fun because im a geek but sometimes quite annoying

thats the perfect way to describe arch.

Linux mint is great and if I ever had to reinstall my computer from scratch I'd consider using it instead of arch (which I find fun because im a geek but sometimes quite annoying) .

now that i think abt it windows isn't even that user friendly with all the bullshit

once you start touching to registry windows becomes hard. luckily for them the defaults are easy to use and u can gamble and run hacker scripts from the net as root that probably won't fuck up your computer.

As long as you don't need software without a linux version and aren't super into non foss games linux is better than windows. I personally don't use linux mint because with my thinkpad had a conflict with the brightness I didn't wanna fix.

Welp, looks like Manjaro flooded the AUR. Again. https://gitlab.manjaro.org/applications/pamac/-/issues/1135

This CVE is worth mentioning too. "Local attacker" here actually means anyone with access to /tmp (like a user over SSH for instance). There was also this fiasco where they were planning to push a proprietary office suite onto new users but changed their minds after backlash.

Expired certs and bugs/vulnerabilities aren't unheard of and aren't reason enough to avoid a project on their own. However I don't think Manjaro has a good track record or a good model of rolling out updates (and doesn't appear to have their users best interests in mind), and I don't think the service it provides is worth any risk at all since I don't think it has value. Newbies can use user friendly distros, others can use other distros, like Arch in this instance. I'm not aware of any niche that Manjaro fills that other distros don't.

(Yeah the treasurer drama probably shouldn't have been brought up here. It might be relevant for prospective/current donors, but I'm not in that demographic so I haven't bothered to form a strong opinion.)

Not convinced these are good reasons to choose a different distro. Two of the points boil down to "the humans who made this made mistakes", and one point is an instance of internal drama/corruption (which is somehow important to outsiders?). Only the stability section comes close to making a good point.

An offline paper book.

Security by obscurity.

This is about USB connection, as opposed to Ethernet network. The user has to work at the command line. And they need to understand concepts such as a workgroup. This article therefore is not for the technically clueless!

I find Linux cleverer than DOS.

It is, in the sense that it has too many unnecessary applications/components pre-installed (even more so now with Snaps), usage-wise it's on par with modern OS.

I thought that Ubuntu was reputedly bloated.

What the fuck? I knew about the latter but wth

Plus his eugenics and pedophilic views.

He regrets it?

said some sh!t we now regret?

weird way of spelling "harassed women in free software circles for 30+ years"

I typically like to install an 'easy' to set up distro first (eg LMDE) and follow it up with a proper distro like devuan.

kde neon

the biggest reason i stick with manajro/arch based distros is the repositories and community support. gotta love dat aur

Are you looking for a distro recommendation? I think Manjaro is the best choice for you, although not specifically privacy focused. For point 7, you could change how any DE looks yourself. For point 3, you could just uninstall gnome, or whatever. A lot of your points don't really matter unless you just want the distro to just work ootb.

You kinda just asked this, unless you're asking specifically for criteria now.

If you get a FOSS USB wifi adapter. This one was last time I purchased it, but that was a couple years ago: https://www.amazon.com/TP-Link-TL-WN722N-Wireless-network-Adapter/dp/B002SZEOLG/ref=sr_1_8?dchild=1&keywords=tp+link+usb+wireless+adapter&qid=1596407661&sr=8-8

Takes a bit of fiddling around, but basically you download the firmware and put it in a folder on the distribution

I currently use GNU Guix System (GuixSD). Previously (i.e. in the previous decade) I used Debian, Trisquel, and Ubuntu.

My criteria for GNU/Linux distros are more or less the GNU free distro guidelines, plus whether it is easy for an intermediate-advanced user to install and use. I don't really care about systemd.

it's fine. If I were using an old computer I'd use openbox.

Kde neon