I think I’m getting a better handle on my distro considerations. My previous question dealt with how to make a distro choice and I was having trouble understanding the differences between them all aside from the eye candy level. Distro choice seemed to come down to how the interface looks, to my observation. Since my daily usage (email, browsing, reading, writing) was the same as 90 percent of the people out there, it really seemed to me that “pick what looks good” was all that differentiated the distro choice.
But just now I realized that how you do what you do is a major component of the interface, and I think this is whats going to steer me towards the right choice. I use my keyboard and trackpad every day and I don’t even think about it. My trackpad works so well (current gen Apple Magic) and has so many different gestures that it really is like semantic magic; wave my hand over this thing using 1 to 4 fingers, or pinch/expand/tap/whatevs, and there are a lot of things I can accomplish. Some, like Mission Control, probably don’t translate to Linux. But things like pinch zoom, desktop selection, turn backwards and forwards in a document - those are useful gestures that I’d be lost without, or severely hindered.
So now I have a concrete question that can give me a concrete path to walk on: which distro has the best (most Mac-like) trackpad gesture support?
(Yes, I’m still going to try other distros, just for funsies, but the keeper is going to be the one that nails gesture control.)