Do you know of a sketchup alternative

They look cool, but give me a Toledo sabre any day

What in hell is comforting about that picture?

Corel was, and still is, used in a lot of industries, like signmaking, embroidery, etc. It has been losing share in the general vector graphics space for years though.

How about Music players, Sequencers, studio, DJ, Drum machines, Guitar software amps, software radios…

The fact that you simply ignored music players disqualifies your list. Also considering that Arch’s AUR, for example has over 90.000 packages, the idea of one person compiling a useful general “best of” list is deluded and doomed from the start.

I don’t write this acrimoniously, I simply state the fact that unless you enlist help (and a lot at that) your endeavor is useless.

Not to disparage your effort, but I looked into music and I only see:

Audio & Music

Audacity Audire Audile

Aaaand I’m out.

This is so lopsided it should be titled “A random collection of free software that has caught my eye”

Quick question: is Aurora dev desktop plus dev stuff, or less desktop stuff?

The good, the bad, and the ugly . Tapas or hamburger.

Not being able to say “I run Arch BTW” is a dealbreaker.

It’s comparing hardware, not OS

Slackware was my first distro, in the 90s, installed from diskettes, downloaded with a 9600 baud modem, FUN! (actually it was, wizard stuff at the time). I moved to Mandrake I think, then RH or another, and whenever I took a look at Slackware, it felt ancient when compared with these “glitzy”, for the time, distros. Maybe I should take a look again.

You being unable to install something in kinoite is just lack of research on your part,

OFC, That’s what I implied in my post. That I don’t want to tinker more than necessary. I’ve been doing Linux things since the 90s, installing from diskettes, spending hours and hours on the CLI, compiling shit on a 40Mhz 486… Right now I want something that mainly just works, mainly being the key word here. I don’t mind doing the odd tweak here and there, I just don’t want the tweaking to be a main feature.

The only problem I have with Mint is that they are super conservative, which translates to stability, which in turn makes it less up todate in certain applications. While based on Ubuntu it un-shittifies by using flats instead of snaps, for example. I have not noticed any shennanigans like Ubuntus

I know SUSE’s been around since forever, but how is package availability?

Ubuntu was very good, changed a lot of people’s perception of Linux, and made the user experience much nicer. It still is very good, but many have caught up, or are surpassing Ubuntu in user experience. The issue with Ubuntu is the progressive enshittification.

Mint is, so far, the un-enshittified Ubuntu alternative. Plus it’s main DEs. Cinnamon and MATE provide a fairly Windows like experience for those landing from the Windows world.

I doubt that. I’m going to guess that Google is going towards a sort of “P2P AI”

I’m genuinely curious. I’ve learnt to never trust Microsoft when they do something “nice”. In my experience they work the long con. I have learnt to never trust them initially. Free windows licenses?, fairly decent Windows 10 initially? This is the last windows 10 version, we’ll keep improving? History can be a bitch.

Your entitlement is Karen level.

Does Microsoft contribute to Linux in no evil ways?

Repairs of pro tools are so expensive, especially for old, obsolete tools, with Ni-cad batteries, that it’s usually economically absurd.