SecondComingOfPheusie

Thank you!

1. I can understand why the random long load-times for apps is very frustrating. I don't recall other Bazzite users complaining about it. So I don't know how widespread the problem is.
2. I've effectively been on GNOME ever since I made the jump to Linux. So I can't comment on Dolphin.
3. I can 100℅ relate to windows not restoring their prior states. I've used a tiling window manager extension on GNOME just because it handled that more gracefully; I like them maximized anyways.
4. The audio sink thingy should have been available as a toggle by now. It's unfortunate that it seemingly hasn't. Though, I do wonder if pavucontrol would have been sufficient. There seems to be a flatpak for it if you're interested.
5. The developer experience on Flatpak leaves a lot to be desired 😅. FWIW, I prefer that within a distrobox.
6. For GameMaker, installing it within a Ubuntu distrobox would probably have been sufficient.

FWIW, I don't think any of these are directly related to "immutability"; i.e. in the case of Bazzite, some subfolders of / being read-only at runtime.

Thank you for the intro, that helped.

Glad to hear it was helpful.

Sounds like Mint not having it is relevant

Yup. FWIW, there's also the security argument; I.e. X11 makes keylogging trivial, while Wayland provides protection against it by default. Having said that, there is experimental support for Wayland in Linux Mint. But, ideally, it needs more time to cook.

since there’s several issues that have proven unsolvable for me

Could you be explicit? I think it's more beneficial that way. Thanks in advance!

Regarding its architecture, the table says about Wayland the following

Single unified Compositor handles everything

While this has been true in practice, this isn't dictated. For example, very recently, we're finally seeing the decouplement of the compositor from the window manager. Granted, this is still a very recent development and we don't know if others will follow suit. But I'm excited to see where this will lead us.

what is wayland

Basically, whenever an app has a GUI it wants to display, it communicates that to 'the system' with all the necessary details. After which 'the system' does the rendering and whatnot. Wayland is a protocol that defines a set of rules on how this interaction should take place. Hence, technically, it is only (the defining) part of the modern solution.

how important is it?

Very. Basically, either it or its 'predecessor'^[The term is used loosely here, because there's a very big difference between the two.] X11 is involved whenever you want to display/render anything^[Which, to be clear, happens literally all the time. Unless your display needs don't go beyond what was already available on MS-DOS*.] on desktop Linux. As X11 has been abandoned in favor of Wayland, some modern features like HDR or VRR are only found on the latter. On the other hand, I believe Wayland was never meant to offer full feature-parity with X11. Hence, some unsupported edge cases may continue to exist indefinitely. Thankfully, it has come a long way. What remains are some concerns related to accessibility AND the adjustment^[Like, how only very recently Electron got to become proper Wayland-native. Note that Xwayland is included with Wayland as a compatibility layer whenever something is not Wayland-native yet.] of the surrounding ecosystem.

Shortlist of traditional distros, ordered roughly in descending order:

• Linux Mint^[Attracts most noobs and is probs the most popular out of these; no-brainer. Lack of proper Wayland support and not offering (!) a (semi-)rolling release model are the only reasons why the others deserve to be on this list. Otherwise this would sweep clean.]
• Zorin OS^[If you want something slow-moving, but still need/want Wayland.]
• CachyOS^[Arch-based distro, but comes with very sane defaults. Recommended if you're on very new hardware.]
• Fedora^[Relatively bare-bones. Especially compared to all the other distros found on this list. But, if you want a more minimalist approach while preserving excellent defaults, then this is definitely it.]

~~Shortlist of~~ Only^[Technically, any of uBlue's distros qualifies. But Bazzite is a lot more popular than the others. Hence you'll have an easier time finding resources for it.] recommendation for atomic distros:

• Bazzite^[This probs deserves a footnote of its own in which I elaborate, but I got tired. Here, have a flower; 💮.]

As for deciding between a traditional or atomic distro, I'd personally suggest to try out Bazzite first. And refer to their documentation whenever something comes up during initial setup. If at any point, you're not able to get it to work even with the help of its community —^[I know using the em dash here makes me look sus AF, but I can assure the reader that no LLMs were used in the creation of this writing.] be it through their Discord, Discourse or sub~~reddit~~ — then simply pivot to the traditional distros.

Necessary pre-empt: I'm literally u/pheusie. But I got no clue how I can convince you of that beyond "Trust me bro." as I've changed the password of u/pheusie in hopes of never returning to it; kind of my way of dealing with this unhealthy habit of mine 😅.

Anyhow, without further ado...

Microsoft Surface

Hehe 😅, I hope you'll not be met with any problems. But, if you're concerned, consider checking this link out. Perhaps some distros take this into account and install the kernel for you (or at least provide a streamlined way of doing so), but I'm simply unaware of any.

I do prefer free software but I only hate giving corporations more money than I have to. I don’t mind paying extra to shop local, I donate to the fedi instances I use, gog’s preservation fund, Wikipedia, and a few other similar things. If the money is primarily going to the people who are actually doing the work or to the cost of equipment and maintenance then I feel a lot better about paying for something so I’m willing to consider paid software if it’s better and will probably make some kind of donation to any FOSS projects I get software from if it’s free.

That's great to hear. Unfortunately, I can't vouch on the effectiveness and reliability of any commercial product used for securing desktop Linux devices.

I’m not worried about keeping up with feature updates or always having the absolute newest version. I want it to be stable and functional so once I have it set up security updates will be the thing I’m most concerned about. I’m fine just setting an alarm and checking for updates every Friday or something like that. Background updates are nice but it’s not a big deal to keep up with it manually if it’s centralized into a repository.

I suppose this should have sealed the deal; i.e. we should have been able to logically arrive at a (set of) distro(s). But..., I'm clearly hesitant because the options aren't as great as I'd wish. To give you some insight:

• Logical choice would be: Debian (LTS) or Ubuntu (LTS), because they seem to offer (at least) decent~ish support for the linux-surface kernel AND both are slow-moving distros. But...,
  • Debian is only an excellent choice as long as you don't do a major release upgrade. Like, that page is SO MUCH MORE involved that it has any right to be. By contrast, the distro I'm on does automatic major release upgrades in the background. It doesn't even notify me 🤣🤣🤣. Like, that's how smooth it can (and perhaps should) be. Without receiving a major release upgrade, Debian is at best usable for three years. Which, ain't bad, I suppose. But it's definitely not great.
  • Debian LTS grants Debian some much needed longevity; 5 years instead of 3 years. But, they don't receive direct security updates and support by Debian's Security team. Hence, if you're concerned about security, then this is definitely concerning.
    • Note: There's also a Debian ELTS, that extends this further to 10 years. But it's commercial. Unsure if that's a desired solution.
  • Ubuntu's documentation suggests that upgrades are handled a lot more gracefully compared to Debian. But, the discourse will inform you that Ubuntu is plagued by Snaps. As that's a can of worms I'm not willing to open, I'll leave it at that 😅.
  • Unfortunately, Ubuntu LTS doesn't fare better in that regard.

So..., you might ask: "What about downstream?" The response would be that I'm unaware of any that are both popular AND known to have a dedicated security team.