IMO you’re thinking too much as an advanced user for a simple user. The only point I agree on is the NVIDIA GPU. If you feel up to it, contribute. The website’s code is on Github github.com/distrochooser/distrochooser
I’ve never heard of nor used Garuda. As I said, feel free to contribute.
Do you feel the same way about excellent websites like DistroWatch.com and DistroSea?
Never heard of DistroSea. It seem like a good complement to DistroChooser. It works for most usecases:
narrow down what fits for you by answering a questionnaire (DistroChooser)
if you feel like it, test a few of the suggested distros from the questionnaire on DistroSea
DistroWatch as useful as statista.com for suggesting your next travel destination. If you had to travel somewhere and had a list of criteria, but didn’t want to spend all day researching, would you go to a travel agent or open an encyclopedia?
I think many in the community, like yourself, have forgotten what it’s like to give just enough of a fuck to change something but not to want to be too invested. A beginner isn’t going to want to understand why a system is stable or not: they just want a stable system. You don’t have to explain to them “Yeah, so the configuration is a file, you see? Only you edit that file. Then you run this command that interprets the file and build a dependency tree, downloads everything necessary, to a partition that’s temporarily mounted as read-write, symlinks to…”. Nobody cares. The average user DGAF.
Imagine if you just wanted to get a vacuum cleaner at the store with 3 criteria. Imagine you don’t give a rat’s ass about vacuum cleaner. You just want to point the thing at the ground, let it succ all the bits, but as quietly as possible, and not break down in 2 years to force you back out here. But the sales person you get harps on about the genius of the person who invented some internal component you’ve never heard of, goes on to explain why, ideologically, getting a certain brand is the only way because blablablabla. Maybe you’d buy a vacuum cleaner just to shut them up or walk out of the store.
My optimal experience would be the sales person listening to me, lining up the best candidates, and explaining, in bullet points, why they are there. Then finally, ask me if I have a favorite and to give me a test environment. If I don’t understand something, I can ask more questions.
NixOS’s documentation is dog. It’s not absolute dog, but it’s dog. The learning curve is brutal.
But… the (mostly) declarative management is its strongest feature. It’s very solid and you can easily unfuck you system if you haven’t done stuff like mess with partitions or delete files manually.
If NixOS had better documentation and GUI to manage the system, it would be a no-brainer, but unfortunately, it is about 5-10 years away from that. The community is very top heavy, but it’s easy to just do your own stuff.