1. The main fundamental differences are the package manager, the way the system is setup (partitons, immutable distros), and possibly software you don’t want installed. Aside from that, you can install basically anything on any distro. Some do make it easier than others to install new things though.
2. Canonical (Ubuntu and direct spinoffs) and Manjaro are the ones I recommend avoiding, because their marketing and “general sentiment” goes against my opinions of the distros/maintainers. However, switching Linux distros (especially to another one with a similar base) is not nearly as daunting of a task as switching from Windows to Linux. Some corporate distro owners might pull something like advertising, but there’s often an easy way out (except with snaps).
3. As for the distros you mentioned, Fedora, Mint, and Pop!_OS are all good options. Mint and Pop!_OS are both based on Ubuntu, which could cause issues in the future, but Mint is working on a Linux Mint Debian Edition. Aside from that, my general recommendation is to stay close to upstream. Distros further downstream tend to break more often (think spinoffs of Ubuntu, Arch derivatives, forks of Fedora, etc). There are exceptions to this rule, like when a distro stays close to upstream.
4. In recent times, it should all be working okay! We’re “in the middle of a long time switch” from X11 to Wayland. Those are protocols for the way applications display to the screen. X11 is lacking features, like HDR, and can have issues with “weird” multimonitor setups. Wayland is being actively developed, multimonitor works fine, and HDR is available for some desktop environments (like KDE or GNOME). Not all distros default (or support) Wayland yet, so if you need HDR, pick a distro with KDE or GNOME as its desktop environment.
5. This situation has gotten more complex with Wayland (one of the pain points still being worked on). The features you get partially depend on which DE (or wayland compositor) you choose. Previously on X11, this wasn’t the case. For Wayland DEs, KDE is moving relatively fast, with new features nearly every release. GNOME is moving slower, but should cover most people’s needs. As for tinkering around with your choice of UI/DE, there’s many options available, but KDE offers by far the easiest customization possible (it’s all in the settings menu). There’s more complex, more customizable options available, but I wouldn’t recommend them as a starting point.
6. As for nvidia, it has been progressively getting better, but there are still nvidia specific issues that come up from time to time. There’s not really much you can do about it, aside from following changelogs and updating when the thing you’re running into is fixed.

Now for your list of applications:

• Gaming (through steam) works great! There’s definitely still issues, but I’d argue there’s not really more issues than on Windows, just different issues. There is one category of games that’s still problematic, games with kernel level anticheat. They do not and likely will never play on Linux. Other launchers (EA Play, Ubisoft Connect, Epic) can have their own issues, although there’s often fixes/workarounds available rather quickly.
• Firefox works just fine on Linux.
• VLC works great too, although there are other options available that are more modern or better in some ways. It’s up to you to decide what to use.
• Spotify works just fine, there’s always the website in case nothing else works, but the “app” as a flatpak or even through repos works too.
• Discord has some issues accepting that Linux exists, but have recently started making some changes with that. Most people either use Disocrd in the webbrowser (to prevent too much system access), or run a custom client like Vesktop.
• Godot works great on Linux, I don’t have much else to say about it tbh.
• Visual Studio Code too, it’s basically just a webapp. Some integrations might be slightly different (like the terminal), but otherwise stuff “just works”.
• Git was quite literally made for Linux first (as a project, but also as a platform to run on).
• Photoshop is going to be difficult to get running, if it works at all. You can certainly try, but it might be a good option to find an alternative for this one.
• Audacity works great
• Davinci Resolve does have a Linux version, but the free version can be picky about codecs. There’s always tools to reencode your inputs, but it’s not always convenient drag and drop.
• Misc. tinkering is going to be much more fun, as things in Linux ecosystems are often open source. Not only can you mess around with tools that already exist, you can edit them, or even make your own. Some “niche” hardware might give you issues (like iirc the goxlr, or some capture cards).

https://ntfy.sh/

Easily set up, and easily attached to other things. Simple notifications about whatever is needed, like service health or updates, new posts on public platforms, etc. A simple curl is plenty to send and receive notifications, and it works on Android without requiring FCM (Google infrastructure).

I use mautrix/discord, it can work in both puppeting (sign into your account) mode and relay (bot account with webhooks) mode.

1. A puppeting (personal account) Discord bridge basically requires your own homeserver. You are trusting the homeserver owner / bridge host fully with your Discord account.
2. It is technically against Discord ToS. While I don’t think anyone’s been banned yet, several people have started receiving warnings that they “spammed”, most of them after sending an attachment. These warnings are on your account for 2 years, and could contribute to an account ban.
3. Voice chat is not, and probably will not be supported.
4. Do NOT bridge a “large” server. You are essentially re-hosting the chats, which can be extremely taxing for large and active Discord servers.

I use mine for a single channel in a “medium-size” server (~2k people), a friend group server, DMs, and a few channels that follow a bunch of announcement channels on other servers.

virt-manager only requires access to the libvirtd socket, as long as the flatpak.has that as default configuration (which I imagine would be the case), there’s zero difference beteween flatpak and native.

There’s several online sources that compile some of the reasons why Manjaro is objectively a bad distro, here’s one as an example: https://manjarno.pages.dev/

You’re free to choose whatever you want on your system, I just reccomend against Manjaro (and Ubuntu).

In the past, I would’ve agreed. These days, hardware compatibility for anything except the very latest is pretty much the same among distros.

I’ve got one friend who uses mint, but I’ve also seen memes dunking on it so who knows. I actually really only know what I’ve seen from you all shitposting in other communities

Every distro gets shit on in memes, because each distro does things its own way that some don’t agree with. As a new user, most of that doesn’t matter much, the biggest changes between distros are how stuff works in the background. What matters more is your choice of Desktop Environment (DE). Essentially “the coat of paint on top”. Most distros offer a couple different options when downloading the ISO, or when installing it.

I’d reccomend starting out by trying GNOME and KDE Plasma (if they’re easily available for your distro), with GNOME being slightly more macOS-like, and KDE being somewhat similar in feel to Windows. Those are “the big two” DEs, but there’s plenty of other options available if you don’t like them.

As for distros, whatever works for you is the option you should go with. There’s only two distros I recommend against using, Ubuntu (/ close derivatives) and Manjaro. Ubuntu is becoming extremely corporate, going against the “spirit” of a Linux distro. There’s “Ubuntu Pro”, a subscription for security updates, and “snap”, an “alternative to” flatpak that forces you on Ubuntu managed repositories, along with many other issues. Manjaro is often marketed as “an easy Arch-based distro”, but is in fact only very loosely derived from Arch. This combined with Manjaro team’s inability to maintain the distro properly, causes nothing but issues.

As for every other distro, if it’s being updated, and it works for you, then it’s a great option. Because that second one is very personal, there is no “single best Linux distro”. I would personally suggest to check out Mint and Fedora, those are often great options.

As someone else mentioned, with a “new laptop”, hardware compatibility may be an issue. Most distros allow you to try them off the USB before installing, that’s probably a good idea.

Ubuntu is horrible these days, including most derivatives that change nothing but the DE. If you want Ubuntu, use Mint instead. There’s plenty of other options available, like Fedora, Pop!_OS, etc.

As for testing, most distribution installers allow you to try them without installing first. No need to set up anything separate for that.

This issue is also visible on my firmware setting (BIOS)

That means it’s hardware.

That was a possibility with this exploit, but realistically that doesn’t affect nearly as many people as “All GNU/Linux systems”.

Even there, if the stars align (network access, cups being used), you still need to convince the user of the device to switch printer.

As far as I’m aware, the exploit requires someone to try printing using a malicious networked printer. It is a vulnerability, yes, but it affects essentially nobody. Who tries manually printing something on a server exposed to the internet?

Although for local network access, like in a corporation using Linux on desktops, the vulnerability is an actual risk.

If this was the case, the phrashing around the issue would’ve likely been different. Yet bitwarden remained very vague, and even locked github comments on the issue.

Especially considering that a move like this alienates their core target demographic (people who use FOSS), they would’ve been much more open and much quicker if it wasn’t intentional.

I will personally be switching, likely to KeePassXC.

“clean driver install”, which heavily suggests you installed nvidia drivers, probably from the website. That issue is entirely on you.

This person uses an 8GB mac, and tried to defend Apple in the debate, going as far as to say that Apple hardware is “not that expensive”, and within 2 months regrets buying the 8gb mac.

They think Open Source is “overrated”, insecure, and not important. They think Linux users are “normies” and fakers, Linux is not a desktop OS, and have explicitly stated “F*** LINUX”.

That’s a lot of terrible opinions in just 4 months, especially for someone who calls the internet “stupid”, and supposedly doesn’t have any education.

This is either a troll account, or someone with less than zero credibility considering their opinions and statements.

Depends on how it’s implemented. Anyone using a “media proxy” will see their discord bridged media probably fail to load (outside of possible caches) after a day. Anyone who has their bridge configured to reupload discord media to their homeserver should see no change.

I can personally vouch for how toxic the Discord server and its moderators/admins are. Went there for support (Hyprland was crashing on startup on AMD, sway worked fine), and was told something along the lines of “if you can’t figure this out you’re stupid and you should stop using Linux”. Figured out the issue on my own and stopped using and recommending Hyprland after that.