Curiosity. It began while trying to play around with programming, and finding a lot of talk and resources about Linux, and then trying it. 3 broken Debian installations just for messing around, then Ubuntu as a more permanent install, all of this alongside Windows.
Then I began using less and less Windows until I just deleted the Windows partition because I needed more space.
Dark mode back in the day (XP/Vista era). I wanted to theme everything and have cool UI/visual features in a non-shady download-this-third-party-totally-safe-theme-engine-wink-wink way.
Manjaro kde on 3 computers in the ham shack, manjaro KDE on the media center, and guess what’s on the two lap tops…you got it…manjaro KDE. Most have windows 10 dual boot on a separate drive. I haven’t spent the time to figure out radio control and antenna switching on Linux so windows is still needed for radio contesting.
I have tried many and keep going back to manjaro, everything just works. The Arch wiki is awesome, and the aur has multiviewer to F1, ready to go.
Wanted to try Ubuntu after using mainly Manjaro but I have only 4gb flash drive and the iso is like 5-6gb so I can’t install it. But so far I’m satisfied with Manjaro Xfce and prefer it to gnu
is it that big because of the snaps? It used to be (well after it breached to 700M CD limit) ~1.5G and AFAIK doesn’t include a lot more default software?
I have 2 PCs running Arch currently. My SBC is running Ubuntu but that is just a print service for my 3d printer. I have a few Ubuntu & Fedora vns for testing and self study
I’ve been running Fedora Silverblue on nearly all of my PCs for about a year now and overall it’s been great.
Automatic and unobtrusive updates for the core OS and user apps (everything happens in the background without interaction; flatpak updates are applied immediately, and OS updates are applied at next boot)
I can choose to apply many core updates immediately, but rarely do
Atomic OS updates means that everything must be installed successfully or none of the OS updates are applied, which prevents a partially updated system
Being an image-based distro, I can and do easily rebase to Fedora’s test/beta/remix releases, and just as easily rollback, or run both stable and beta releases side by side for testing purposes
Being image-based means there’s no chance of orphaned packages or library files being left behind after an update, resulting in a cleaner system over time
In the event that anything does go sideways after a system update (hasn’t happened yet), I can easily rollback to the previous version at boot
Some elements not unique to Silverblue but part of its common workflow:
Distrobox/toolbox allow you to run any other distro as a container, and then use that distro’s apps as if they were native to your host system; this includes systemd services, locally installed RPMs, debs, etc.; I use distrobox to keep most of my dev workflow within my preferred Archlinux environment
Flatpaks are the FOSS community’s answer to Ubuntu’s Snaps, providing universal 1-click installation of sandboxed user apps (mostly GUI based); Firefox, Steam, VLC, and thousands of other apps are available to users, all without the need for root access
My only complaints about Silverblue are more to do with how Flatpaks work right now, such as:
Drag & drop doesn’t work between apps, at least not for the apps I’ve attempted to use; for example, dragging a pic into a chat window for sharing; instead, I have to browse to and select the image from within the chat app
Firefox won’t open a link clicked within Thunderbird unless the browser is already open, otherwise it just opens a blank tab
Many flatpak apps are maintained by unofficial volunteers, and this isn’t always clear on Flathub; I view this as a security risk and would prefer to see a flag or warning of some kind when a flatpak is not maintained by the official upstream developer
That said, I’m confident that these issues will be addressed over time. The platform has already come a long way these past couple of years and now that the KDE and GNOME teams are collaborating for it, things will only get better.
Like I said though, overall Silverblue has been a really great user experience, and as a nearly 20-year Linux veteran it has really changed the way I view computing.
Do you have to watch a loading screen while system updates are applied like on regular Fedora or is it in the background?
Many flatpak apps are maintained by unofficial volunteers, and this isn’t always clear on Flathub; I view this as a security risk and would prefer to see a flag or warning of some kind when a flatpak is not maintained by the official upstream developer
On flathub.org there’s a blue checkmark for apps maintained by the devs
Do you have to watch a loading screen while system updates are applied like on regular Fedora or is it in the background?
The image is downloaded and staged in the background of the active session. Upon reboot, the session seamlessly defaults to the staged image. For flatpaks, the updates happen immediately and without the need for a reboot.
On flathub.org there’s a blue checkmark for apps maintained by the devs
Aha, that must be one of the newer features implemented from the beta portal they’d been working on. I’m glad to hear it, and overall I hope to see more official upstream devs come on board with the platform (Signal, I’m looking at you).
The image is downloaded and staged in the background of the active session. Upon reboot, the session seamlessly defaults to the staged image. For flatpaks, the updates happen immediately and without the need for a reboot.
That’s great to hear. Maybe I’ll give Silverblue a try
The flatpaks will continue to be updated by the backend system, but you’ll no longer have to deal with the sluggish frontend UI to keep things up to date.
I've been using EndeavourOS with KDE for a bit under 2 years now (I think) on both my desktop and laptop. It is Arch based and easy to install. And for my home servers I run Proxmox
Turning AA off for fonts solved the missing characters, downside it doesn’t look very good. I still have glitchy artefacts in some menus and the package manager doesn’t display any text for buttons which is a bit problematic. Guessing disabling some more AA settings would remove more of the problems. But it doesn’t solve my main problem - why did AA break in the first place
Systemd has gone way and beyond what was supposed to be a replacement for init.rc.
Most important thing… not ALL Linux distros include systemd as the default init system. That’s the beauty of Linux (and POSIX in general), you can choose.
If you have an android phone, you can plug it in via USB and enable USB Internet tethering, which will give you working internet access on your machine to do the Wi-Fi debugging with.
A discarded Windows laptop is ideal for use with Linux. That’s what this Managing Director of an IT company has been doing for over a decade. My desktop PC is a customer cast off from a good five years ago. I slapped in an ageing Nvidia el cheapo card to get two monitors running. My laptop is a cast off from one of my employees - I simply opened it up and moved my M.2 card into it.
I do run ESET on my Linux gear to show solidarity and to show that Linux really is rather more resource friendly than Windows. I login to AD and I use Evolution with Kerb to access Exchange for email. I have the same “drive mappings” to the same file servers too and so on and so forth.
I used to teach word processing, spreadsheeting and databases n that for UK govt funded courses, I’ve written a Finite Capacity planner for a factory in Excel (note the lack of In-). I still find people who have no idea how decimal tab stops work or how to efficiently use styles. I can confidently inform you that Libre Office is just as good as MSO. They both have their … issues but both work pretty well.
Kids are easy. Adults are a pain! KDE has a lot of educational games ready to go out of the box.
I really like compositor/wm/DE which allow for keyboard driven movement of windows between workspaces and workspaces between monitors. Especially the latter requirement is only met by a few wms, e.g. sway/i3, hyprland.
I can’t stand it if switching to the next workspace all workspaces on all monitors change. This makes it annoying to use with a second monitor that mostly display the same windows (e.g. messaging, video, docs).
That’s true, most WMs have a simplistic workspace geometry, where they spread a workspace across all monitors (regardless of their placement). I suspect that, since the workspace abstraction comes above monitors it may not even be possible for them to have a workspace split between monitors.
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