Linux

Image based distros are only complicated if you come from traditional distros, because they're different.

If you come from Windows or another OS, then having "The whole OS is one thing" instead of "A huge collection of packages and directories" makes everything simpler to understand, because you don't mess with anything except /home/. You don't have to care about anything else.

And if you want to do something more fancy, like using a CLI tool, then having to enter a Distrobox container isn't complicated.

For casual use, like gaming, browsing or image editing, everything is just as usual. Nobody, except us Linux nerds, actually cares about the underlying system. Casual users just want the OS to be a tool for their programs they use, and for that, it's ideal, because it just works and doesn't bork itself.

What does this mean?

To be fair, the best standard would be to send off new users to immutable distros

(In reply to the post) Actually, I’ve found my immutable distro of choice (Silverblue) to be a lot of fun to tinker in (not with), but you just have to accept that tinkering does work a bit different here, with toolbox/containers instead of your actual host system to install most stuff you want to try etc. on

While your blogpost isn't completely right, it's also not completely wrong.

You can absolutely customize image based distros, just as much as package manager based ones. You just need to do it from upstream, to modify the image itself, not from bottom-up like usually.

uBlue is the best example. There are already hundreds of available customized images around, including for Hyprland, Deepin, and much more.
That's why immutable is often considered the wrong term for it. Image based, or atomic, is way better fitting.

One of the biggest pros, apart from the lack of maintenance needed (updating, etc.) is the reproducibility.
It's very similar to Android, where every phone is the same.
Therefore, every bug is the same too, which is why the devs can roll out patches that fix everyone's install at once.
Also, every update is basically a "reinstall lite", so no package drift occours.
This makes them way less buggy in my experience.

I used the normal Fedora KDE spin for example, and after a few months there often came weird bugs that only affected my install.
Since the time I use Atomic, none of those problems came back.

Even if you decide to utilize BTRFS-snapper, which you suggested, the underlying system drifts apart from the original install.

Also, instead of Kubuntu, I would recommend the Fedora KDE spin or just Debian with KDE, if you really want to use something traditional.
I just don't see any reason to not run Kinoite compared to a non-atomic distro, and it will only get better in the future.

Honestly, I use X, Y and Z

It works out of the box (basically everyone here)

If you aren't trying to run anything too crazy (like AMD HIP compute, HDR, really bleeding edge hardware) I would probably recommend giving openSUSE Tumbleweed, Fedora (only the regular GNOME version, for some reason KDE spin was buggy in my experience), and Pop OS a test drive off live USB drives. Each has their own merits, so it's worth trying all of them. In terms of NVIDIA support, I personally do not have much experience with NVIDIA cards, but when I was helping a friend format an iPod Fedora booted off a live USB on an RTX 4050 laptop with little fuss, and if you install it gives options for installing the full proprietary NVIDIA drivers. I know there is also an NVIDIA installer option in YaST's software manager for openSUSE, and Pop even has an ISO with the drivers baked right in for full compatibility. However, your mileage may vary, although I have heard the whole NVIDIA situation is pretty good right now as long as you have the proprietary drivers installed.

This is by far the most confusing part when I consider switching over

It's the same process as when buying a car. Try a few out and see which one you like.