I shouldn't, but I'm going to…
Define "Bloat".
Seriously. What do you mean when you say "Bloat" and why is this an actual legitimate technological concern of yours?
(This comment has absolutely nothing to do with Manjaro, or any other distribution. It's got more to do with the use of the word "Bloat")
I've never seen the show, but I did read the book a few years back, and yeah, it gets a resounding meh from me. I didn't hate it, but it wasn't anything mindblowing.
I mean, that's sort of what xdg is intended to accomplish, with making $HOME/.config be the place, but it's kind of up to the individual software developers to comply. (Yes, I know, this doesn't really apply to Windows/Mac OS) But yeah, it would really be nice if configs/config locations were even remotely standardized.
Doesn't matter what distro you choose. I'd suggest picking one with a large support base, and not a niche distro.
But ultimately, pick one, don't become a distro hopper, or one of these folks that's always asking "what's the best distro".
As a new user, if you try out a distro for a few months and it's just not "clicking" for you, there's nothing wrong with trying something else out.
More than anything else, once you do find the distro that feels like home, learn to tune out the haters, because they're going to crawl out from under their rocks every bloody time you mention the distro you use, and try and tell you why what they like is better.
You'll notice I haven't mentioned which distro I use. And that's for a reason. I happen to think it's pretty damned fantastic, but there's at least one other person that will read this, and feel its the worst thing ever, of all time.
As far as tips go? Learn to read error messages, learn how to use a websearch, learn how to ask intelligent questions when you need help.
I highly recommend giving this a read: https://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html Yes, it's old, but it's just as relevant as it was when Eric Raymond wrote it back in 2001.
This pretty much sums up my exact feelings about this whole thing. And saves me from having to write it.
I've been daily driving openSUSE Aeon/Kalpa for the better part of two years now. I don't see any good reason to return to a traditional distribution for a desktop machine. I very much know what I'm doing as a linux user/admin, having been using it for years, and the no-fuss/no-hassle nature of an immutable system is exactly what I want for my workstations. And ultimately my servers.
Wait a minute. Since when are LXQt and XFCE "Distributions" ?
I don't even know what that vaguely gear-like one in the top tier is, or the one next to the geeko in the second tier are.
(Just as a sidenote, as one of the openSUSE LXQt maintainers, and sometimes LXQt Upstream contributor, if we're providing our own distro somewhere, this is the first I've heard of it.)
Negative. If the seat is that untrustworthy, I'll just find a different toilet.
As I understand it, no. I could be all wet, but RedHat isn't under any obligation, I don't think, to provide their sources to anybody that wants them, and is perfectly within their rights to only provide them to "customers" under the GPL. They just aren't allowed to withhold them from those same "customers".
But I'm not any sort of expert on opensource licensing.
Element/Matrix can be E2EE, it is most decidedly not P2P
In general, while it makes for convenience for end-users, I'm just not interested in hitching my buggy to another "single point" social media platform.
I already have a Discord account, I don't really need to sign up for a Discord clone based on a "Trust me Bro" sort of guarantee that they won't enshittify it in the future. Because nothing really stops the Revolt developers (and I'm not trying to imply any evil intentions, or even plans on their part) from deciding to accept VC money, or just sell the whole thing outright to $corporation_with_a_dumptruck_full_of_cash, and there's not a thing that a User can do about it.
It's entirely possible that with Matrix, that an individual matrix server administrator (lets call it matrix.foo.bar) could get up to shenanigans, but as it's a federated chat protocol by design, I'm free to take my custom elsewhere (matrix.bar.foo), and basically have the same access to all the things I did before. There is no single point of control, or failure for somebody to break, or sell.
Hot Damn, thanks. That should get me headed in the right direction anyway.