The immutable state of distros like fedora silerblue and opensuse microos leads to the use of distrobox.
I defaulted to a fedora image but there must be better images for the job. What do you suggest to use if you just want to install pdflatex, pandoc, R, julia, python, ffmpeg, etc. Just the usual tools you need for the tasks everyday
I’d recommend debian - the universal operating system.
If your software does not exist for debian, your software does not exist. (Ubuntu is just debian with extra corpo flavour)
It’s been a while since I’ve used pure debian, but historically I’ve used Ubuntu because debian made it more difficult to install “non-free” software. Has this changed?
Yes, you just have to change a file,
apt updateand you’re good to go. https://wiki.debian.org/SourcesList#Using__a_text_editor (you probably want to addcontrib,non-freeandnon-free-firmware)What’s nice is that for new fresh installs, non-free-firmware repo is already enabled if the installer detects that it’s needed, way more convenient than before.
Contrib and non-free still need to be enabled manually though, it’d be nice if they added toggles for those in the installer itself one day