Technically speaking: nothing really, provided you have time and skills.
Except maybe not having access to NDA-ed binary blobs or something…
If you are using Gnome distros: you can feel exactly what it feels like getting back to working in a restricted, overhyped, overbranded environment like Windows.
If you are using Ubuntu: you can get advertising during your system’s software upgrades. No, really.
If you are using Arch: you can post aroudn the internet saying you use Arch btw.
Depending on the distro, you can use some alternative software stacks, but that’s mostly the backend (eg.: systemd versus openRC, Apache vs Nginx, X vs Wayland); most “desktop app” level is mostly the same for each desktop environment, is kinda the point.
Compared to Arch(-based): Accesing the latest packages. It’s not impossible, especially if you go for Debian testing repos, but it’s definitely extra work.
Compared to special-purpose distros (i.e. gaming, portable, high security/privacy, pen-testing): Whatever their special purpose is will usually be harder to achieve.
Compared to huge corpo distros (SUSE/Fedora and derivatives): Ease of more intricate setups and maybe some security testing.
Compared to Ubuntu: Paying a corporation to not withhold security patches from you.
File-by-file integrity check against signed checksums upstream to trivially confirm validity of deployment.
But that’s probably not interesting.
Brag about being an Arch user (BTW.)
Acces to the AUR I guess? But not much really. If you like what you have just stick with it
Technically he or she has access to the AUR, but through website.^^ On a more serious note, one could install https://github.com/89luca89/distrobox and manager multiple package managers. Because each package manager is in a container, they do not interfere. I never used it, but imagine it like Flatpak, but actually using the package manager from the distribution (including access to AUR). And specific applications and programs can be “exported” to install them like a normal application, so you can access it with a single appname.
Also I use Arch btw
One could compile pacman and all the build tools if they really wanted to.
Serious answer? XFCE doesn’t support multiple monitors with different refresh rates. So that.
Some of the other answers (like Meta (aka Windows Key) not working for shortcuts) can be hacked around, but unless you switch to a DE that supports Wayland, you will never have stable multi refresh rate differences on multiple monitors.
XFCE doesn’t support multiple monitors with different refresh rates.
I have an LG TV and an old Asus monitor, i’d wager their refresh rates differ but i can’t confirm atm.
I’m not a fan of the xfce UX at all, and multi-monitor support still has a lot of issues (under Debian 12), but I am pretty sure having different refresh rates is possible
Maybe I’m missing something but I am running xfce4 and have per-monitor refresh rate setting.
xrandr does.
Btw, how do you do that in wayland?
Btw, how do you do that in wayland?
You don’t have to do anything to use multiple monitors with different refresh rates in Wayland, besides plugging them in.
But i want specific refresh rates.
What does that even mean?
20 fps on my notebook, saves power.
Serious answer? XFCE doesn’t support multiple monitors with different refresh rates. So that.
That’s more of a limiation because of X11. KDE and Gnome do not support different refreshrates on multiple monitors as far as I know. Its the main reason why I never used multiple monitors. But on Wayland, this issue is solved. So if XFCE is ported to Wayland, they should also get this support for free I guess.
waydroid (if you don’t install a wayland based de)
Nothing, at all.
Some things you can’t do easily in Mint, like create snapshots automatically and boot into them when something breaks.
But it’s all Linux and freely available software under the hood, and the lines between configuration, customization and forking your distro are blurry.ship of theseus
Use Pacman as your package manager, or something. Linux is Linux. If you use a mainstream distro it should be 90% similar to all other distros. You don’t really have to worry about FOMO when it comes to Linux.
Everybody giving a version of this answer makes me feel better about maybe switching to Linux.
Nothing, it’s all Linux
You can’t have your entire system configuration in a repository of plain text files, which has lots of advantages, but it’s not worth caring about unless you feel excited to get into it.
Found the other NixOS user. ;)
Why not? Isn’t this the whole concept of Bash Script, Ansible, Terraform, etc… I mean it can be as simple as a git repo that pulls down an install script then syncs your dot files. What am I missing? If you’re referencing Nix, you can also have that on Mint.
Yeah, I’m talking about not just Nix, but NixOS. Nix (the package manager) can do a lot, but NixOS + disko + home-manager can literally be all of the configuration for your machine from drive partitioning through to dot files. Throw in nixos-anywhere and impermanence and you can have an insane amount of control over all of your computers.
Ansible, Terraform, Chef, etc. do have some overlap, but the main difference is that those tools iterate through the system modifying it piece by piece and NixOS is declarative.
If something fails in some of my bigger Ansible playbooks, it could mean 30 minutes of just running through all the steps again. I could probably break it into sections, but then I have to worry about making sure they all get run when things get updated. In my NixOS install, it’s way faster, I can roll back to a previous state, and troubleshooting is way easier in my opinion.
Ah alright. My point is OP is asking what can be done in other distros that can’t be done in Mint and your answer was have the entire configuration be in plain text. I completely agree that if you want that kind of reproducibility NixOS is the most refined, well established, and best way to handle this. However to answer OP I would say this is possible in Mint but just much more painful.
Waste time configuring things and troubleshooting things when your ultra custom system breaks.
Running alternatives to Systemd.
Slackware!
Gentoo!
You can’t easilyy switch between different inages like on an atomic fedora system.
Do you have to switch now? No.
Hopefully we get an official XFCE Atomic desktop someday.
You can create a ublue version in a few hours if you’re down to it. Creating an inage isn’t that difficult 👍🏼
