Depends wholly on the situation. Right now, I needed Windows for a piece of hardware with no Linux support, so I installed Windows and just steamrolled my earlier openSUSE Leap installation. I will now dual boot with Debian for a while until I no longer need Windows.

When switching distros, you can usually copy your config files over. Or you can have a separate /home partition that doesn’t get wiped. This can cause issues though, due to version and structural differences between distros.

Personally, I only save what I absolutely need, like say browser bookmarks, and prefer to just get a fresh start. So, I just wipe everything. How you want to go about it is up to what you feel comfortable with, however. There’s rarely any one true way to do things in Linux. Free as in Freedom.

Always remember to backup any data before switching distros though. Always.

Oh yeah, gonna slap that bad boy on my laptop soon.

openSUSE and Fedora with Plasma will be fine choices for you, based your post. Tumbleweed will take a bit more work, but usually it’s nothing too difficult. You can also go with Leap, which generally won’t have the same issues Tumbleweed has. I personally use Tumbleweed and like it a lot.

Fedora is just an all around solid distro, endorsed by Linus Torvalds himself! In my opinion, since you already have some experience with it, stick with Fedora. It’ll be fine.

My choice of distro is just a compromise and close enough to serving my needs. All distros have pros and cons, and I use different distros for different use cases.

Gentoo is great. I used it for a few years 20 years ago and I still think the package manager is the best I’ve ever used. I wouldn’t use Gentoo today, but I’m really glad I went through the install and maintenance process. It didn’t make me a guru, but I did learn a thing or two about Linux.

Mandriva is gone, but there’s a couple of projects carrying its legacy. OpenMandriva is one of them, obviously. Mandrake was my first distro too, so I have a soft spot for it.

From my perspective, OpenMandriva’s biggest strengths are that it’s independent, non-derivative, community driven, and based in Europe. Unfortunately it’s also small, but the people behind it seemingly do a lot with very little, so the community is passionate about the project.

Personally I’m just happy that there are smaller, non-corporate distros still out there providing alternatives. And OMLx seems like a pretty solid distro at that.

For their selling pitch, you can check their FAQ.

I eventually decided on openSUSE Tumbleweed for a few reasons: rolling release, because I like to stay up-to-date; non-derivative, not a fork or dependent on other underlying distros; European, for (perceived) privacy reasons; a relatively well known and large distro with a decent community, for troubleshooting reasons; backed by a company, though that has both its ups and downs; lastly, support for KDE Plasma.

I actually had trouble finding a distro that suited all my criteria at the time, but openSUSE is good enough for now and I am pretty much satisfied.

Of those two, I think Fedora is the better choice since the packages are more up to date. Fedora with Plasma is a great choice anyway. It’s also a large distro with lots of online support. Try it out!

I landed on Claws Mail myself. It does look a bit dated, but the UI is functional and the client works. I’m content with it.

Librewolf, which is great, but I have been desperate for alternatives for a long time now. I also use Falkon and Gnome Web on the side and those are ok, but unfortunately not on the level of Firefox and its ilk. I’ve been considering Waterfox and GNU IceCat also, but honestly the overall situation is depressing. Currently, Librewolf ticks most of my boxes, but every browser has some issue or another that I’m not keen on. I have no idea what the next step is.

Distros packaging software means that it is available to install with the package manager from their repositories. No distro provides every piece of software out there. This can be mitigated with Flatpak, Snap, GUIX, AppImage or, in a pinch, by compiling the required program yourself.

Sounds like you’ve already done most of the work. From what you’ve said, Fedora with Plasma sounds great for your use case. Good luck on your journey and glad to have you aboard!

Yes and no.

I have also been very content with Posteo.

With low specs like that, the experience will never be great, but with a very light desktop you can make it work. Debian is fine, but with some set up, Alpine could be one option. It’s a really light distro.

Turns out this is also available in Alpine repositories, so I went ahead and installed it on my phone. Could come in handy when browsing from public Wi-Fi or such. Thanks for the tip.

I turn it off every night or if I’m away for many hours, so about 10 minutes right now.

I do have a Raspberry Pi that’s been up 12 weeks, 5 days, 19 hours, 59 minutes. I believe there was a planned power outage when it was lasted turned off.

Yup, Konsole is good enough.

Edit: Never mind, I misunderstood something. From what I remember, this post is more or less an accurate description of what to expect.

It’s a really good game. Check it out!

KDE Plasma. It makes sense to me and everything functions more or less how I prefer it to. If I need something, it’s usually easy enough to find. Plasma being flexible is a plus, but I rarely need to do any modifications.

I loathe GNOME. Any time I use it it’s like pulling teeth. On a touch surface I can maybe get it, but on desktop I honestly think it has some serious usability problems cooked in. And since GNOME extensions can break at any time, trying to “fix” GNOME is a losing battle. If I had to use GNOME, I’d install GNOME Classic which is ok. Or better yet, use XFCE or MATE. GNOME is highly opinionated and that’s fair enough, they can do their thing and people seem to like what they offer, but boy is it not for me.