Arch Linux, rolling Linux distribution, would give you the newest stable software, with probably new application features, but you can use distrobox, podman-toolbox, VirtualBox, KVM (QEMU) or a live Linux cd image to play with Arch Linux every now and then, without having to install it :)
If you a home user with your computer or laptop inside a LAN you would not really need a firewall, unless you start to use applications which expose its ports to 0.0.0.0 rather than 127.0.0.1 (I believe Redis server software did this a few years ago) and do not trust other users or devices (smart home devices, phones, tablets, modems, switches and so on) inside your LAN.
If you are running a server with just a few services, for example ssh, smtp, https, some hosting company people I knew argue that no firewall is needed. I am not sure, my knowledge is lacking.
Application firewalls, watching also outgoing traffic :
If you compare Linux with some other Operating System you will see that on Linux for years an application firewall was non existing. But there is a choice now : opensnitch This can be useful if you run desktop applications that you do not fully trust, or want more control.
This suggests that if you can build the ROS 1 from source, you have Flatpak and Snap as option, and maybe also AppImage.
Besides that there is also Linux KVM (QEMU) which may perform better than VirtualBox. Cannot find a good page for Ubuntu on it, but here’s the KVM entry of the excellent Arch Linux wiki wiki.archlinux.org/title/KVM
Ubuntu uses LTS with five year support, which is why they like to keep a lot of software versions back. Linux Mint is based on Ubuntu I think. PPA is something you can add to Ubuntu or Ubuntu based Linux distributions to have newer or specific software repositories as extra on your system. Here’s a guide on PPA : itsfoss.com/ppa-guide/
Yes. I know Manjaro got bad press several times, about their SSL cert and about firing their treasurer but as a Linux distribution Manjaro is pretty decent for the average user, in my opinion.
Yes, agreed with the other comment. Did you check uptime command ? In your system info it shows Uptime : 22 mins. In a terminal you can also type uptime or w
Agreed on using Firefox/LibreWolf and uBlock Origin, I love that combination. I think the thing is that Google Chrome is much faster than Firefox on Android phones (I don’t mind, I hardly ever use mobile to browse), and long time habits can be hard to break for some people.
Where my curiosity lies is this, from my understanding Linux Mint is based on underlying Ubuntu as is Pop_OS, so how come both Pop_OS and Ubuntu recognise the wi-fi card out of the box so to speak but Mint doesn’t.
Different releases of Linux distributions come with different kernel versions (e.g. 4.x vs 5.x vs 6.x). And in the past sometimes for some devices (Like Android smart phones for mtp file transfer, or security keys) additional udev rules had to be added to make the Linux system recognize the device properly. Then there is firmware (closed source binary blobs) as well.
I remember a friend having issues with the WiFi card, with an old LTS version of Ubuntu, whereas a brand new Ubuntu version worked fine with the WiFi card. Glad to hear it all works for you, and welcome on board @ Planet Linux.