My objective is to ditch windows & utilize my triple monitor desktop as a cockpit style dashboard for my homeserver & lan devices along with always open widgets like music, calculator, etc.
There was another post yesterday about this and the community recommended Mint & Pop OS the most. However, I am not looking for windows-like. I want a new & fresh experience like using a smartphone for the first time or switching from ios to android.
Distrochooser.de recommended kubuntu to me.
So I have some questions:
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What are the building blocks of a distro? Things that separate distros from each other. Like I know 2 - Desktop Env & Package Managers. Are there others, what are they or where do I find a list? I would like to compare these blocks and make it a shopping experience and then pick the distro that matches my list. Is this approach even valid?
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How do I find and compare whats missing from which distro? For eg. if I install mint, what would I be potentially missing out that may be a feature on another distro? How do I go about finding these things?
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What are some programs/ widgets/ others that are must haves for you? For eg. some particular task manager
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What are the first steps after installing linux? For eg. In Windows, its drivers, then debloat and then install programs like vlc, rar, etc.
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I read on some post, a user was saying that they want to avoid installing qt libraries. Why would someone potentially want that? I have never thought of my computer in such terms. I have always installed whatever whenever. The comment stuck with me. Is this something I should be concerned about?
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Should I not worry about all of the above and just pick from mint, pop and kubuntu?
From memory I think Qt has ties to proprietary software which doesn’t make it properly open source. I’m surprised the KDE team havnt looked at trying to move away from QT based on this
The libraries are completely open. There are 3 types of licenses - Qt Commercial (allows using qt libraries to make closed source applications), lgpl (2.1 with exceptions and 3.0) and gpl (2 & 3).
The KDE team has not moved away from Qt since the troll tech days because there is no need to move away from L/GPL libraries.
The bit about it “not being open source” is because Qt had its own Qt Free Edition License back in the 90’s which the FSF decided at one point that it didn’t meet their definition of free.
It then went QPL with a foundation that guaranteed a BSD style license if anything happened (like being bought out).
In 2000 they went GPL.