alt Hacker News> Ubuntu LTS
This is why I try to encourage new Linux users away from Ubuntu: it's a laggard with, often important, functionality. It is now an enterprise OS (where durability is more important than functionality), it's not really suitable for a power user (like someone who would use Zed).
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" It is now an enterprise OS"
You really want enterprise standards support for your graphics API.
Bleeding edge ...is not nice in graphics. Especially the more complex the systems get, so do the edge cases.
I mean in general. If you are writing a high end game engine don't listen to me, you know better. But if you are a mid-tier graphics wonk like myself 20 year old concepts are usually quite pareto-optimal for _lots_ of stuff and should be robustly covered by most apis.
If I could give one advice for myself 20 years ago.
For anything practical - focus on the platform native graphics API. Windows - DirectX. Mac - OpenGL (20 years ago! Predates metal!. Today ofc would be metal).
I don't think that advice would be much different today (apart from Metal) IF you don't know what to do and just want to start on doing graphics. For senior peeps who know the field do whatever rights for you of course.
Linux - good luck. Find the API that has best support for your card & driver combo - meaning likely the most stabilized with most users.
You don't have to run LTS. There is a new release every 6 months.
Which one would you recommend for regular users and power users?
My understanding with Mesa is that it has very few dependencies and is ABI stable, so freezing Mesa updates is counterproductive. I'm not sure about Snaps, but Flatpak ships as it's own system managing Mesa versions.