Dil

What are the differences between the implementations? Does booting from a vhd using ventoy (external ssd not usb) let me avoid losing a partition to windows?

Wondering if there any forums, irc chats, etc. dedicated to pirating software on Linux, not games.

Seems difficult to find most stuff. I've beeb able to find Davinici Resolve, which was suprisingly simple, just download officially than run a terminal command. Houdini was on vfxmed. (a slightly older version, but 20) But thats about the extent of what I've found, no autodesk programs or any other expensive software with monthly fees, like boris fx, maxon, etc.

Everything I'm looking for has linux versions, but the price altogether is too high for hobby stuff I use one month out of the year sporadically and will never make money off.

How does rebasing work? If Universal Blue were to shutdown and Bazzite/Bluefin/Aurora were to suddenly stop development and updates, could I rebase to any other atomic distro without losing my files/apps and continue to get updates there? Using the same DE (since I heard there are some issues, fixable, but annoying)
Or is it just a way to swap to a new distro while still being able to swap back to a backup of your old one if you need to?

(It doesn't matter if them shutting down is illogical, being able to move provides a sense of security.)

After trying out Cosmic, Gnome,KDE Plasma, and Hyprland, I feel like plasma is the most usable for me coming from Windows. It solves the gripes I had about lack of customizability while still starting me off with a familiar homebar. I will be going back and forth with gnome for a while.

I really like gnome and the sliding desktops, and all the extensions seem to make it very customizable as well, but not directly like plasma, instead you mix and match (or make) extensions to get the look you want. (correct me if im wrong, I used it for a day)

Hyprland seems very nice for multitasking but the keyboard focus of the presets ive tried doesn't really appeal to me, I like being able to just use my mouse sometimes.

Cosmic, is definitely an alpha and im interested to see what it becomes, wont be using it now.

I was scared off by linux for a while since everything seemed so complicated, but after the initial setup for things it seems to be superior. I thought it would only be for the lock screen but it works for anything, its so nice.

Face unlock just works on my computer for logging in, so having to setitup was part of what kept me on windows. After setting it up with howdy in 30 minutes (I didn't realize I had to add the lines to the files for each login pam thing initially), the implementation is superior to windows, it literally works everywhere without issue and no reentry, feels like using my iphone face id.

I was getting so tired of typing in my password that I was going to find a way to turn it off, this works as well as turning it off since its instant, but is obv more secure since its face unlock.

Was looking into Nobara, realized its a solo dev, wondering if cachy is the best pick for compatibility. I play a lot of different stuff , use blender, controllers, flightsticks, etc. Not really into flightsims rnow and im dualbooting for now so its not a major issue on that front. Just want most steam games and controllers, drivers, etc. to work and get the best performance.

Update: Went with Cachyos for now, but first sign of any issues and I'll switch to bazzite since it seems to be safer and more reliable. Havent had any issues so far.