Why would you need any user retraining?

All distros are basically identical. The only real difference is whether you spell "package manager" as apt, yum, or dnf.

For people with a level of technical literacy that has them interested in posting on HN, sure. But for typical government workers? I imagine the differences are going to be pretty significant. They're not programmers or "devops" people.

We're talking about users who are going to do almost everything through the GUI, and who will associate the "distro" with the default choice of DE/WM/etc. stack in whichever flavour of whichever distro it is. Understanding what a "package manager" even is, will be the responsibility of "IT" specialists. Assuming they don't decide that only, say, Flatpak-installable software can be approved.

We're talking about massively bureaucratic institutions that have been steeped in Windows orthodoxy for decades. That's the administration policy they know, so it's what they will forcibly adapt to Linux.

You're going to need user retraining because the GUI has its own file manager program and no matter which one you choose (and they will choose exactly one) it is not Explorer. Because LibreOffice is not the Microsoft Office suite, and neither is any of its FOSS competitors. And so on and so forth. There's no telling what idiosyncrasies people depend on. In organizations like this I really doubt you can count on everyone being generically computer literate. I really doubt that generic computer literacy (as opposed to demonstrated competence with specific applications) was ever part of the hiring requirements.

This comment is completely out of touch with how typical office workers use their computers. "Package manager" is your feldspars. But it's even worse than that, because you don't train for the typical employee, you train for the least-technical employee lest they become completely useless overnight.

Yes. Noting that yum and dnf are basically the same.

>All distros are basically identical.

Have you ever used the Linux OS??