that doesn’t keep packages installed between distro reinstalls or swapping between entirely different distros. I’m talking about the actual packages and app data themselves that are contained in home.
It’s auto installed because everything is portable
Then you didn’t explain it very well. Your former comment clearly states that copying the files keeps the packages (so you don’t have to redownload?) and the data, but “doesn’t keep packages installed” (hinting that .desktop files don’t get found)
Okay, after removing all the preinstalled media players plus firefox and reinstalling them through Flathub it might be possible to skip the official tutorial.
Fedora should just preinstall everything as flathub flatpaks.
the problem will only be delayed on Mint because Mint’s underlying Ubuntu core is just older. Once a newer security policy comes to Mint, it will have exactly the same problem.
That is a valid point. Although I can imagine that Mint devs would rather leave legacy TLS enabled to be more user-friendly.
It’s his laptop after all, so I believe your appreciations on the beauty of desktop environments are secondary.
You are right. I was thinking that the Fedora workflow might give him some Linux-exclusive benefits over Windows so he might consider switching his main laptop too. Mint is rather a drop-in replacement for Windows so the advantages of Linux are not very visible/important for a newcomer. At least compared to a DE like GNOME.
I haven’t tried Ubuntu yet myself, but generally I’m turned off by some decisions Canonical makes, especially the whole Snap thing adding complexity, slow app startup and proprietary store. Not very trustworthy.
But you are right, Ubuntu is the most popular and things like eduroam will likely work.
Procrastination is good, it takes you were you naturally want to be and what you intuitively think is right. Starting early and forcing yourself through things you don’t care about is not productive.