I also made a very similar comment, but with uBlue (Bazzite, Aurora, Bluefin) instead.

They are still pretty vanilla, but include a big list of QoL stuff added in, like staged updates, Distrobox, a huge list gaming tweaks in Bazzite, and much more.

It’s basically stock Atomic made right!

I’ve used them for a year now, and they’re fantastic!

Just a small heads up for OP: You have to do quite a lot of (advanced) things differently from now on if you choose Atomic. Use containers (Distrobox, etc.) for everything you can, avoid installing stuff on the host if possible, etc.

Because others already suggested Arch/ EndeavourOS, I’ll be suggesting something else: Bazzite.

It’s part of the image based (“immutable”) Fedora series and is basically Fedora Kinoite, with all drivers and codecs already set up for you, self managing, with many gaming tweaks included.

It’s rock solid and basically unbreakable, while also being extremely modern and updated. On Arch, even if it doesn’t break, you always get the newest stuff, which might not be as polished. On Fedora, it matures a few months, while still being very modern.

The main target group is “For Linux users who don’t want to use Linux”, meaning, it runs all your favourite stuff (KDE, etc.) without having to care for anything. It even updates itself automatically in the background without any interference.

If you prefer something with less “bloat” (a lot of optional tools and software to choose from, but nothing mandatory), then check out Aurora, which is basically the same, but without gaming stuff.

For more information, check out universal-blue.org

Just a small heads up for OP: You have to do quite a lot of (advanced) things differently from now on if you choose Atomic.

Use containers (Distrobox, etc.) for everything you can, avoid installing stuff on the host if possible, etc.

Just use Flatpaks for 95% you do graphically, and for CLI stuff or software that isn’t available as Flatpak, I would recommend you to create an Arch Distrobox container (already set up IIRC) and use that. You can even install stuff from the AUR and export it, so it works just like it is supposed to.

Maybe, another consideration might be to not run Linux on Windows in some way, but the other way around.

Linux offers great virtualization, maybe you can use QEMU with KVM and GPU passthrough, and then run Windows inside this box.

I find Linux more powerful and less annoying to use day to day, and having those annoyances inside a small virtualized container I can just shut down is more peaceful.

WSL can be restricting, since Linux can’t access anything, and I think getting “the real and proper thing” might be better.

And dual booting, by having both Windows and Linux on the same drive, is something I would advise against. Windows doesn’t play nice with others and often “accidentally” breaks the bootloader and hard drive permissions, leading only to trouble. If you dual boot, install them on a separate drive and select the booting drive manually in the BIOS.

Also, why do you want to run Ubuntu specifically? Did you also look up for alternatives, like Fedora or Debian?

Dual booting Pros: a full-fledged Linux OS Cons: Harder to install and to mantain.

Also, sometimes Windows being an ass and “accidentally” breaking the bootloader.

I advice anyone to have just one OS per drive installed. Keep Windows and Linux separate if possible, or some Windows update may break GRUB.

Then how do you explain the continued success of Mint?

Because Mint’s philosophy is to make a friendly, simple and usable system for everyone.

That may be for people who came from Windows before, or those who like their OS to be a bit more conservative, meaning no flashy stuff, boring, and just working. Just like Windows was “in the good ol’ days”.

This makes it accessible and usable by everyone, including Linux sysadmins who come home after work and don’t want to deal with annoying computers and fixing things.

Everything on Mint feels high quality, functional and cohesive.

ElementaryOS on the other hand feels like a cheap MacOS clone, but nothing works. Those who want Mac, buy a Mac.

Mint/ Cinnamon on the other hand is similar to Windows (XP, 7, etc.), but not a copycat. It’s familiar enough to be intuitive for Windows users, but much enough it’s own thing.

Mint’s main focus is to get a uncomplicated, and usable system, while Elementary’s focus is to just do what Apple does. … Well, did. 15 years ago. They totally forgot how much work maintaining a distro and a desktop with a whole app suite is, and just stopped working on it.

While Gnome and KDE (and other WMs/ DEs) got magnitudes better in just one year (e.g. Plasma 6), Pantheon (and Elementary) just stagnated the last 5 years or so.

They don’t even offer/ work on Wayland yet, or other new things.

Either they’ll stop working on Elementary, and focus only on Pantheon, so it can live on on other distros, or it will just continue dying like it does currently.

I will give the font a try!

I’m not dyslexic, but I think legibility is super important and underrated on most distros. This one looks both aesthetic and very readable.

Do you know if it is already in the Fedora repos? If not, how can I install it?

Maybe Logseq? It also has a whiteboard function for drawing diagrams and stuff.
The last time I tried it, it wasn’t Logseqs’ flag ship feature for sure, but as an addition to an already great note taking software, it was good.

Just FYI: While Arch isn’t “For experienced users only”, it still might require some more work after your install.

It usually comes pretty minimal by default, and then you might wonder why printing doesn’t work out of the box for example.

It also makes the inexperienced user very easy to bork the system, and then you have to fix it.
I often hear from other users, that sometimes, this just happens out of the blue too.

If Arch works perfectly for you, then congratulations! Keep using it.
But if you notice, that you have to fight against the OS too often, consider a different distro that is supposed to just work.

One of those might be Bazzite (if you game) or Aurora. Both are almost the same, but Bazzite is more for gaming, while Aurora is more for general, non-gaming use. But you can use them interchangeably.
They belong to the uBlue project, which is a customized Fedora Atomic.
They are already set up for you with everything you want and need, are zero-maintenence and basically indestructible.

So, if you’re done with Arch, consider them.

GrapheneOS is probably the best option out there.

As you said, it’s only for Pixels currently, because

1. They are more secure than most other phones. They have some kind of chip built in that makes them superior. I don’t know the specifics, but other commentators might add some information if needed. Something with encryption if I remember correctly. The GrapheneOS team is a bit …picky… when it comes to security, and most other phones don’t reach their requirements for a secure device.
2. Google is one major contributor to Android, and their phones are fine tuned to work perfectly with it. Other manufacturers’ phones feel less polished.
3. It’s easier to maintain one line of devices that are very similar, instead of keeping hundred phones up to date and secure. Pixels are similar to iPhones, they get updated almost simultaneously and are similar. If you now add a phone from a different line, e.g. a Fairphone or Nothing Phone, things get more complicated. If you look at Calyx (more onto that later), the FP4 caused quite some headaches for the dev team.

Pixels are cheap(ish) for what you get, and I believe Google makes them so cheap because 99% of users don’t care which ROM/OS is installed. Those are the advertisment-cows that will get milked. If you buy a Pixel and install a custom ROM on it, they will loose money.

My experience with GrapheneOS has been great. My Pixel 5 hit EOL a while ago and still gets maintenance updates almost weekly.
Many security additions are overkill for me, but quite some make a lot of sense.

I used CalyxOS for a year too, but now that I don’t get full updates anymore, I don’t feel safe anymore with it.

I think GrapheneOS is technically superior to Calyx, especially due to the sandboxing they do. MicroG has full root privileges and can do with your phone what it wants, while also breaking some apps due to missing dependencies. If you choose to enable Play Services on GrapheneOS, they are user level and heavily restricted, and only you decide how much access you want to give them.

Regarding Calyx, since they don’t limit themselves as much in terms of security, they also offer a ROM for the Fairphone. Maybe check that out too.

DivestOS also seems to be a good option. AFAIK it’s based on LineageOS and supports a lot of devices, while being more secure than LOS.

Regarding Linux phones, I don’t have any experience with them. I tried Phosh (Mobile Gnome) on an exhibition a while ago, and it felt great and interesting, but from what I’ve heard, they are nowhere as good as Android.

My personal ranking:

1. GrapheneOS on a Pixel. Get an used/ refurbished device if you don’t want to support Google. Best price-performance ratio, great OS, and very good hardware (battery life, camera, etc.)
2. CalyxOS on a Fairphobe. Modular device with good repairability. Nowhere near as good in terms of what you’ll get for your money. Better security than 95% of other phone ROMs, oh, and you can just swap your battery in seconds if you want that :D
3. DivestOS on a random supported phone, e.g. a China device. Nowhere near as sustainable (short lived update support, no spare parts, etc.)
4. Linux phone. Only a good option for a tinkering device right now imo.

There are a few “grandfather”-distros out there, for example Debian and Arch. They’ve been around for a few decades now.

Then, they got kinds, because some people said “I don’t like xy, I will do it better”, but granddaddy disagreed, so they split apart.
That’s what Ubuntu is to Debian for example, that’s why Ubuntu is Debian-based. They are related to each other (e.g. the same package manager), but differ in some things (e.g. update cycle).

This cycle of forking continues, that’s how Mint got there for example. Mint is based on Ubuntu, and Ubuntu is based on Debian.

But nowadays, the gap between distros gets smaller, with things like Distrobox, Nix, Flatpaks, and more. I wouldn’t mind working with a PC that has Mint on it instead of Fedora. Sure, there are reasons why I prefer one over the other, but in the end, they’re all the same.

One example I can think of where the base matters, and not the package manager, is when adding an user to the sudo group. RedHat distros need another promt than Debian for example.

But other than that, the thing that defines a distro are the packages, they make a distro unique.

That sounds so useful if I can stick with it enough.

That’s my main issue for private use. At my job, I never had problems sticking with the habit of writing everything down. I work in a science job, and documentation is key there. So, I basically get paid for exactly that.

But in my free time, the whole concept of task management, knowledge offloading, and more, is a bit harder for me, especially when I come home tired.

Welcome in the life of someone with ADHD. I need my life to be organized, but have a hard time with exactly that. It’s like needing to find your contact lenses because you dropped them…

Yeah, definitely, especially at work.
It really helped me to switch off my “work brain”, because I know, that everything I did today is written down, and I don’t have to keep things in my mind anymore after work. Doing that was a blessing for my stress level and mental health.

It also gives me the edge above my colleagues that I “remember” everything I did in the last months, which is nice when my boss wants to know details of a project I did a year ago.

I basically can’t even remember what I did 5 minutes ago (ADHD says hello), but I know exactly where I can find that knowledge. This frees up my working memory (psychological term, not related to work) immensely. It’s basically like transfering more tasks onto your hard drive instead of keeping it in the RAM.

It’s also great to give me an graphical overview of all I think and work on all day, and unveals connections I never thought of between different topics.

For private use, it’s also great as a journal, though I gave up on that because I’m too busy for it and it cost too much time in my everyday life. But I still use it daily for normal note taking, e.g. results of some experiments at home, hobbies, thoughts, and much more.

Logseq.