It's definitely possible. But since OP said "There has to be a simple OS that just works", there are few things i'd like to point.
1. Conflict possibility between DE or default app comes with DE. You might mention you could just remove GNOME, but there's risk you accidentally remove important application or library.
2. I have doubt there won't be any problem when you perform major update (e.g. 20.04 LTS to 22.04 LTS).
Linux Mint fits the bill nicely, for this reason.
Does it do any telemetry? Found these comments on this YT video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKggSOKHFZg5 days ago
Even if that wasn't something you could configure, with the open source nature of Linux someone knowledgeable enough could write a script or app and change it anyhow or at least get the effect they want. Also if we are afraid of them collecting data we can use Wireshark or a similar program and see for ourselves. It may be encrypted but we will still see where it is going. You could set up a spare computer just to monitor the network or at least keep a log of network traffic that way and not have it placing any new load on your main computer. That would be helpful for those who like to buy low power computers that are often single board or use a mobile Intel or AMD CPU that while usable for its purpose is not great for gaming or other demanding tasks.
1 month ago
Yes they are you can check that data in Kernel logs, I posted on the mint forums, the mods felt it necessary to delete the part that shows Data being sent. I traced that logs origin
This sucks. Has anyone tried building Bitcoin Core from source with Whonix? I was looking at the documents and they have a section for Bitcoin which is nice:
https://www.whonix.org/wiki/Bitcoin_CoreAlso I found this article (in German) that says it found unnecessary pings during installation in Arch, EndeavourOS, Manjaro, Garuda, openSUSE, Linux Mint, Ubuntu, and ElementaryOS distros:
https://www.michlfranken.de/linux-distros-dns-tracing/Not sure why they would try to ping some server during installation, probably no big deal but still. And I still have to figure out how to avoid any software leaking data from temporary files. I found the software that was doing it on ElementaryOS, it's called "Code", it is basically the Scratch text editor. I wish there was a way to disable all of these things by default because I just find it unnecessary.