Updates taking that much space is a bit surprising. I used to run linux mint on a 20 gb partition and usually had 3-4 gb space free. Does Linux mint comes pre-installed with flatpaks (you check with flatpak list)?
But 20 gb is on the very low side, you will run into issues on updates. You probably need to extend the linux partition by at least 10 gb.
For the printer issue, check the status of the cups service (sudo systemctl status cups).
Currently most cooperate linux companies are not in the business of selling linux desktop itself. Rather its linux for servers, administration, embedded things (like cars), and other enterprisey stuff. So at least at the moment they are not looking to profit of linux desktop users directly which has saved us from enshittiffication attempts.
But even if they in the future attempt to do something fishy, that most users dont agree with, I think by the virtue of how stuff works on linux it will be very easy for people to move to something else or a fork, and still get 95-99% of the same experience. This in turn will force companies to think twice before doing something like this.
A good example here is canonical/Ubuntu who has made questionable decisions in the past and each time they had to take it back. Even now, Snap due to its use of a centralized store is almost universally shunned by the linux community and is only supported maintained by canonical. While Flatpak is supported by the wider linux community with people from different projects contributing to it (though I sometimes worry about everyone centralizing on Flathub to the point where they are actively discourage other projects from launching/maintaining their own stores/repos).
This is why we need to build and champion tech that is resistant to control and enshittiffication. Then we dont have to worry too much about who is developing it.
Also, related note, how easy is it to migrate from one distro to another? I am thinking about trying something else - maybe base Fedora or Arch - to hopefully have better performance.
You can backup your data and restore but will have to reinstall all your apps.
Also have you tried asking in the nobara discord? GE and other devs are in there so you likely to get help there.
Anything with LXQT 2.1 available should give the same experience however right now it seems only rolling distros ship with 2.1. Lubuntu 25.04 will ship (in ~April) with LXQT 2.1 but it wont default to wayland so you might have to do some manual config. Its also not an lts release.
storage requirements
shouldn't be a big problem. lxqt is super lightweight. If you go with lubuntu, I recommend turning off snap to save some space.
Linux Mint MATE or XFCE are really good if you dont necessarily want wayland support.
Another option is the Raspberry Pi OS. Debian based, should be very lightweight and runs wayland. I haven't personally tried it though.
I mean Fedora is open source but if they really wanted a european base, they could have gone with opensuse. AFAIK opensuse is the only fully european linux distro plus they use many of the same tech that redhat/fedora does.
Ultimately I think it doesn't matter too much since even the linux foundation is based in the US and large parts of what makes the linux desktop are maintained by non-EU companies (on top of all the major projects hosted by Github, Gitlab including most of Flathub). If its all open source, I think the risks are pretty low e.g. huawei was able to use Android despite all the restrictions.
I might be in minority here but I kinda see the point the Readium guy is making, specifically this one:
We managed to convince publishers (even big US publishers) to adopt a solution that is flexible for readers and appreciated by public libraries and booksellers
Publishers and companies will always want DRM so at the very least we (as a community) could offer a DRM that is less flawed, more respecting of privacy and FOSS, etc. If we dont, someone else will offer a DRM solution thats far worse (and publishers will implement it because they dont care and there are no consequences).
Updates taking that much space is a bit surprising. I used to run linux mint on a 20 gb partition and usually had 3-4 gb space free. Does Linux mint comes pre-installed with flatpaks (you check with
flatpak list)?But 20 gb is on the very low side, you will run into issues on updates. You probably need to extend the linux partition by at least 10 gb.
For the printer issue, check the status of the cups service (
sudo systemctl status cups).