A lot of distro recommendation threads focus on the questions that novices think are important, but leave out the questions people would have after experiencing the differences (things that distro-hoppers might ask). As such, answers vary between “use _____, I found it very user friendly” and “use whatever, you can turn any distro into any other, and tweak it to your needs.”
What are some questions that newbies should ask when deciding on which distro to use as the basis for their system. Things like “what package manager suits my needs and how do I try out different ones without changing distros?” Or “what is a desktop environment/window manager, and how do I figure out which suits me?” Or “how does an init system affect my user experience as a newbie?” Or “how what are the choices made by such-and-such distro during install?”
Bonus points for also answering the questions you propose (I don’t have answers, picked a distro and stuck with it)
I’d say picking a desktop environment is the most important question you should make. Then, after that, pick a rolling release or something with a short release schedule (Fedora for example), because for most people, LTS doesn’t matter, and you’ll have a worse experience having old packages.
https://distrofighter.com/ A dumb but fun way to pick both
While old packages do ruin experiences, stuff changing too rapidly can as well.
Arch as well as OpenSUSE Tumbleweed a good example at this.
This is it exactly. For a typical new user the things that make them bounce are, in order:
The whole discussion of things like immutable, deb, rpm, systemd, Wayland vs x11, etc are somewhere between meaningless and a scary sounding distraction for normal people who are fed up with MS/Apple and thinkng about trying something else.
I’d say the opposite it true. Up to date packages doesn’t matter for most people but having to upgrade to a new release can be a hurdle for people.