If I want to have glassy themed desktop for example on Ubuntu I need to understand kvantum, which folder need which permissions, download themes from a website, kvantum from the terminal and install them, while on arch I type yay glassy-themeXY
But yeah, the large repo + AUR do make some things easier. Although the additional package managers are quite close, while allowing for a more dependable base system.
When installing teamspeak for Ubuntu I need to understand how to make my own desktop entries, mark files as executable, how to install .deb packages etc, while on arch I type yay teamspeak, done.
flatpak search teamspeak -> flatpak install com.teamspeak.TeamSpeak -> done (I'll get to flatpak later)
Sure aur is not the most secure source, but better (and easier) then blindly copy pasting commands from some forum or manually downloading dubious python scripts from github.
Sure, and that's why you can use something like flatpak in any scenario. I prefer nix, but that's still not user friendly.
For the customization at the time Ubuntu only had gnome,
They have flavours for each DE, same as Fedora has spins. It's an easy way to ensure default apps go with the correct DE.
I don’t know what you are talking about with everything in the same place regardless of distro
Most packages follow FHS and XDG, but there are still plenty of them that just drop it in ~ and call it a day.
The FHS ones (/etc, /usr/share, /usr/local/etc) are where you're supposed to find default configs. But, /usr should be read-only and only ever copied from, while /etc is for system wide configs.
The XDG configs are tied to your user, and only located at your ~. Usually in ~/.config but there are some cases where you might want to use ~/.local/
On Linux, the steam installation via snap has another file structure than via apt, and another for flatpack and another for appimage and another for the aur version which is different from the selfcompiled version.
Yes, but that's got nothing to do with the distro.
Apt and pacman follow the FHS, AUR just provides instructions to pacman.
Appimages contain everything they need to run in a single file that you execute.
Flatpak, snap, nix, guix, distrobox, etc. don't save in the exact same directories because it's much safer that way, but they still roughly follow FHS. For example nix symlinks everything into ~/.nix-profile and provides you with the same structure as apt (/etc, etc.)
When you don’t know about this stuff and don’t have the time to watch tutorials or read man pages when wanting to do anything, the difference between this and “yay teamspeak” was like day and night, a matter of usable vs. Unusable.
GUI stores like discovery allow you to install and update packages from different stores at the same time. You can search for teamspeak and chose to install the deb or flatpak. Can't get more user friendly than that.
In win you have all your settings in the settings app (and the values stored in registry) EVERY file of the program you would need to accsess is in the program folder (or roaming).
No, you have the available windows settings in the settings apps. KDE approaches it the same way, and is far superior IMO. The difference is that if you want to change something that's not covered by the settings apps, windows forces you to blindly copy-paste regedit commands, while linux has a text file.
For packages there is no FHS, they might or might not include default configs if they support text configs in the first place (a BIG part of the UNIX philosophy), or they might generate them when needed. It might be in one of the program files, in multiple locations in my documents and app data, or you might need to once again blindly copy-paste regedit commands. Hell, a windows program might use different 5 location for different configs.
The “why would a beginner need those” question always strikes me as odd, because it always sounds love me people wanna deny use cases. I tried changing my local one time, ...
It's more because Linux has come a long way. For example I can just use MX Date & Time and use a gui to adjust my local and hardware time without ever touching the terminal.