Sounds good in theory, until you want to install scikit-image or other Python libraries which need complex builds.

I keep meaning to try Gentoo out but haven’t gotten round to it. I think it didn’t like VirtualBox or something?

They’re between releases right now, but once COSMIC desktop is ready and they release Pop 24.04 I’ll probably try it out. More likely that I’m moving to Xubuntu Minimal 24.04 on the daily driver though.

PopOS is great OOTB but I’ve become attached to rofi and XFCE recently and like the old-school “apps are utilities” style of Linux desktops over PopOS / Mint which try to bundle everything together.

I’ve tried Arch and others as well, even stuff like Slackware, Bodhi, Void, but I’d say that my preference has generally moved away from doing tinkering / maintenance at all other than for fun or profit. I’d still consider Nix for a server / workstation setup but just not as a daily driver.

I actually can’t remember as it would have been 6+ months ago now. The issue is probably fixed already by the Debian maintainers / Elementary Team / both.

Likely something with Meson build / apt not playing nicely.

Debian really doesn’t like installing different versions of GUI libraries & their dependencies.

I really like Pantheon Files.