Neptr

Fedora offers a KDE version.

Mostly because Fedora is more popular. I like both.

openSUSE Tumbleweed gives you much more control of what gets installed by default (you can customize every package during the GUI installer). It has been the most stable distro ive used. It is a "rolling-release" distro, meaning that packages usually get updates quicker from upstream. If you dont like getting frequent updates it may not be for you. A key feature of openSUSE distros is the system management apl Yast, which allows you to manage a lot of stuff from a GUI.

Fedora is also quite stable. I think it's more user-friendly in my experience. After Debian/Ubuntu based distros, Fedora is the most likely to have packages built for it by developers (I'm talking 1st-party builds, not repacks). Fedora is a semi-rolling release, meaning updates are frequent but not constant.

Fedora is currently my distro off choice, but I may soon use Tumbleweed again. I daily drove Tumbleweed for a year on both my general PC and my admin computer.

glibc == gnu C library

It is the standard C library used on GNU/Linux systems. Basically, it is very important. I've also heard that the code is a rats nest. I wish standard distros would move to musl libc.

I saw this as well. I just use Flatseal (or KDE's builtin Flatpak permission manager) to remove any permissions I don't like. I do that for all apps.

If I was on my PC, I could reply with my Flatpak overrides. If I remember I'll reply here.

TL;DR Yes, go for it it'll be fine.

Build it yourself source-driven distros?

Double the pool, but they'll still have zero chance because 0 * 2 = 0. Such is the life of a bi

Bazzite is great Fedora-Atomic-based distro, especially for nvidia users. I had a friend move to Linux and that was the distro that worked. But in general, if someone is a programmer/Dev, they want to learn how to use Linux, or just install a lot of packages, I'd avoid Atomic.

Don't get me wrong, I use Atomic. But it isn't as straight forward as a traditional distro.

The equivalent of Bazzite but traditional Fedora is Nobara

For a distro, I recommend Fedora KDE Spin. Fedora is beginner friendly, is widely supported, frequent updates (so less outdated packages), rock solid stable, works with gaming or anything else.

People recommend Linux Mint often, but I am just not a fan of how outdated the system is and its reliance on X11 (deprecated and insecure display server). I've daily driven mint before for like a year and it was good but I'm not a fan of cinnamon DE.

When you mention Visual Studio, do you mean VSCode or Visual Studio. Cus VSCode is supported on Linux but Visual Studio is not. Confusing right?

It also has a Flatpak release, which I prefer for the ability to restrict permissions like internet.

I love Journey!

Actually, in the case of a web browser, Flatpak weakens both Firefox's and Chromium's internal sandboxing, possibly allowing for breaking of cross-site or site-host boundaries. Firefox is even weaker then Chromium as a Flatpak because it can't use the zypak fork server. Both are weakened, best to avoid.

For basically any other app, Flatpak can be beneficial as a sandbox.

Basically, don't sandbox browsers because its like wearing 2 condoms. The only sandboxing tool I know that doesn't interfere with the browser's sandbox (and also doesnt allow for the possibility of privilege escalation, like Firejail) is Bubblejail

PS: Since you mentioned you are on Fedora, Bubblejail is offered through this COPR repo from the Secureblue team. It provides a sandbox without interfering with the browser's sandbox. It comes with profiles for Firefox and Chromium. Only issue ive experienced is that the sandbox works, aka it means I can't access files from my home directory unless explicitly given permission to a folder.