Maybe? Sounds like a tricky thing to automate and then you also have solvent as an additional consumable. This is a problem even with huge industrial inkjets.

I mean, commercial printing is typically 300-600 DPI…

A bunch of rollers that need to be cleaned fastidiously if you want them to keep working.

That’s just what happens when you have stuff dissolved in solvents.

That’s direct thermal, not laser. Problem is direct thermal prints don’t last very long and the paper is expensive. Thermal transfer uses expensive ribbons, and laser is super complex.

Mint, Manjaro, Fedora, Bazzite… there are plenty of beginner friendly distros these days!

“I could never leave the cave, climbing is just too inconvenient.”

Everything everyone else said, but also it literally has more features. KDE Plasma and apps like Dolphin make Windows look like a toy.

They’ve had a few embarrassing slip-ups that are largely irrelevant to users of the distro. I used it for years and my partner still uses it. It’s a perfectly fine distro.

I agree that the learning curve is surmountable, but the fact is that many people are unwilling to use a CLI, which is valid. It’s also very easy to bork your install with EOS, which is terrifying for people who don’t have the knowledge to even begin to troubleshoot issues and who just want their system to work. IMO new GNU/Linux users, unless they specifically request a more advanced distros that will help them learn how things work, should always be recommended a distro with the lowest possible learning curve in order to keep their data safe, their confidence high, and minimise downtime. They can distro-hop later if they want to learn.

I love EndeavourOS and I use it myself, but inflicting CLI package management and pacnew files on someone fresh from Windows is like throwing a baby into shark-infested oceans to teach it to swim.

My recommendation for new users is Fedora KDE:

• Almost never has any problems
• Works out of the box
• Up-to-date packages
• GUI package management and upgrades with Discover
• Lots of useful features vs. other desktop environments (such as GNOME that doesn’t even have a minimize button)

Mint is what I’d recommend for an elderly person who just needs to browse the internet and reply to emails, but for someone who needs to get work done it’s Fedora KDE all the way.

Fedora is a great distro. IMO it and Mint are the “it just works” distros.

Hard agree:

• Mint = “Just works”
• Fedora KDE = “Just works but also has a bunch of useful features and up-to-date packages”

IMO it’s overblown. If you even have an issue at all, 99.99% of the time it’s user error. And to mitigate that, you just use timeshift with BTRFS and snapshots on GRUB.

Those are photographs…

This. Based on my (elementary) understanding of laser printers, you have to have a laser zap a transfer belt to charge it so that it will elecromagnetically attract the toner, then precisely lay down a fine layer of toner onto the belt, then lay the microplastics + iron filings from the belt onto the page, repeat this four times, then roll the page through a tiny oven to bake on the thin, shiny layer of plastic. It’s very complicated, and have you seen the price of new fuser units or transfer belts?

I mean, toner is also made out of microplastic and iron filings.

Oh Lord, yea, I try to keep to the official repos for that reason. If not there, AUR, else Flatpak, else AppImage.

Nothing like that, no. Arch (and Endeavour) are advanced distros. I’d recommend Fedora KDE if you want something easier. You could safely run updates with Discover on Fedora.

Read up on Pacman on the Arch wiki or by using the man command to learn how to update and install software. With Endeavour there is also the eos-update utility.

Endeavour is not immutable. It’s Arch with a graphical installer and some convenient tools in the welcome app.

Yunohost