I’ve been bouncing between live versions of ubuntu and mint
Ah okay, is this problem on Ubuntu or on Mint (or are you going to tackle it on both 😜)?
I’m still learning, so thank you for educating a linux ignoramus like myself.
It has been my pleasure fam!
I’ve had Manjaro, and OpenSUSE recommended to me by a friend who likes both of them but he doesn’t game much and doesn’t need various software development tools.
If your friend is familiar around Linux, then I'd advice you to just stick to the distro they're using themselves. That's probably the best course of action.
I advice against using https://distrochooser.de as it's horrendously outdated and doesn't offer accurate information. The results will also bombard you with a bunch of distros that have lost all of their relevance.
I always upgrade as I can't deal with a clean install every so often. This warrants using a distro that does handle this well, though*. Which, thankfully, isn't a big deal as most distros support this anyways.
Based on your history, I'll assume you're on Linux Mint; note that this is crucial information that influences the required instructions. Therefore, consider mentioning the distro you're using next time 😉.
From Linux Mint's release notes, we find the following:
apt install wine-installer
In case this doesn't do it, add sudo and it should work. So, instead we get:
sudo apt install wine-installer.
Tip: consider sticking to documentation and resources provided by the maintainers of your distro.
On a final note, I don't know exactly what your intentions are, but software like Bottles, Conty and/or Lutris are worth mentioning here as they're 'wrappers etc' for Wine.
Excellent contribution. Even if I'm not OP, I really appreciate this. Thank you!
Consider making another post after everything has been done in which you note down your expectations, experiences etc.
But still, this is not GUI friendly if you need random peoples unmonitored code.
Say whatever you will, extensions are a feature and/or design choice of GNOME. One that definitely comes with its own set of implications. But, like always, the user should interact responsibly with it.
I was not referring to a single KDE Extension here. Extensions are a big security issue. Literally nobody is monitoring them. You can be happy if there are people doing badness-enumeration and flagging bad ones.
I'm not a fan of how extensions are handled in general. But some of the the more popular ones are handled by GNOME developers and/or friends. So there's at least some chain of trust.
I agree that GNOME is not perfect. Never implied as such anyway. You've excellently noted some things that are easier to achieve on KDE than on GNOME. However, likewise, GNOME's extensions allow for customization beyond what KDE allows (see e.g. https://material-shell.com/).
Out of the ones provided by UTM, it's Fedora by virtue of SELinux.
Tweakable
Linux Mint scores less favorably on this due the absence of GNOME, KDE or a Window Manager within their offering (though you should be able to install them). Therefore, consider a distro that comes with (in alphabetical order):
GUI-friendly
GNOME and KDE score excellent in this regard. Special mention goes out to openSUSE Tumbleweed and Garuda Linux for scoring better on this than most other distros.
Well-documented
The gold standard has been set by Arch and Gentoo. Gentoo is probably too hard for you currently. Arch could work out, but that requires you to do an excellent job at reading through its documentation and acting upon it.
Reasonable gaming compatibility
There shouldn't be a lot of difference between different distros in this regard. However, distros optimized for gaming (like Bazzite, Garuda and Nobara) do tend to score better as they've received patches and whatnot to solve edge cases.
Thoughts?
To conclude, I think you should play around with both GNOME and KDE. After that, consider one of the following distros:
(FWIW, you could also try some spin of Fedora)
My 2 cents.
Fam, with al due respect, make up your mind; because, unfortunately, it's not possible to keep up great security practices in conjunction with access to the AUR on a low powered system.
I'd argue that your best bet is probs Kicksecure. Though, I reckon you'll have a hard time on a VM regardless.