The OS has no concept of an “fn” key. The keyboard never sends an fn keycode to the host machine. It’s a feature that’s entirely handled by the keyboard firmware itself. Your computer either receives an F2 key or a “brightness down” key, but it has no idea an fn key was involved in that one way or another.
So you could maybe modify your keymap to swap things out yourself. Intercept the “brightness down” keycode and manually map it to F2 or whatever. That’s the only in-software solution I can think of. That’s basically what the BIOS toggles do, as far as I know. Less than ideal to do yourself, though.
You don’t think there are significant maladaptive thought patterns that would lead you to base an entire identity based off some bull shit “suit vs creatives” imagining of the world? They took “dell guy vs apple guy” and made it there identity.
That doesn’t answer my question, it avoids it. Passions come in many flavors, and are not all-consumimg. For some its music, and culminates on an instrument. For some it’s sports, and revolves around one. Do you have anything you are passionate about?
That isn’t the reason most of us use Linux, and even if it were, the “administration vs. creatives” divide probably goes back to Ancient Egypt, if not further. But fight it if you want to. I give it six months before you burn out, and the division in question will still be there, and some people will still be basing their identities around it. (I mean, what do you think is a good thing to base your identity around? Your degree of appreciation for Taylor Swift? 'Cause I think you’d find that one is a lot more common.)
This isn’t about most of you. It’s about those that take a love of foss too far and invent narratives that just aren’t true. If you commit and are active, that is fantastic. This person is imagining an entire reality that just isn’t true.
I’d recommended Arch because with NixOS you end up having to tinker too much. Besides, if you need to use Linux for development purposes, Arch follows the usual Linux/Unix conventions, while with NixOS you would end up tinkering…And you can always use the Nix app from Arch.
Just use Arch with Gnome or KDE, that will save you a ton of time.
Huh, I never expected anyone to recommend Arch to me because you have to tinker too much with an alternative distro. I thought simplicity was the reason why people liked NixOS, no?
I have set up my archlinux os in a weekend with btrfs snapshots and everything I need. About once a quarter I tinker with it for 30 minutes to either fix a broken update or do some custom solutions to minute problems. It has been running like this for 5years. And snapshots allow me to rollback any fuckups in 1 minute.
I tried to setup nixos twice, because I love the concept. Both times I tinkered with it for 1 to 2 weeks, had to take paid leave. At the end, some stuff still didn’t work as I wanted it to. Any customization that is not already natively implemented in nix is a huge pain in the ass to add. Things that would be a 5min config edit on arch took hours on nix to make them rEpRoDuCaBLe. I have experienced no additional benefit over btrfs snapshots.
Tldr: If I could pay somebody 100$ to set up nixos just the way I want it, I’d use it. But since I have to do it in my own free time, I won’t.
Nix is a pain. Not everything works. Example Netword supposed to be able to put options in some confines. Sure most work but I have two in my config that nix well not put in. Why they are valid an I’m running them on my current Os but my nix van refuses to build with them. Another nftsble rules. Again supposed to put them in config file. But I have some nix does not like, completely valid rules but nix won’t build with them. I’ll tinker with it but it still needs work.
Comparatively, NixOS is complex, while Arch is simple. NixOS diverges very much from traditional Linux distributions, beginning with using a diferent filesystem hierarchy, which breaks a ton of apps, requiring workarounds like patches, simulating a standard filesystem… In the long run, you will have to deal with many NixOS-specific issues.
Because you’re going to Uni, it’s better to focus on having a mostly just works distro with updated repository, and that’s Arch. On your free time in the future, maybe try NixOS in a VM just so you have a feel for it. And again, you can use Nix on Arch so you use apps from Nixpkgs.
This all comes from an originally Arch user turned into an experienced NixOS user.
This is my experience as well. I went back to Arch after trying NixOS for a few weeks. I just ended up spending way too much time tinkering with the system instead of using it. Also, I feel like a major advantage to nixos is only viable if you have multiple machines. I only have a main desktop.
I’m not sure I agree with this… I’m using nix on several different generation thinkpads, two older generation MacBooks (one air and one pro), two different older generation imacs, as well as my home built PC, and an OEM built pc… All with little to no tinkering whatsoever.
All my tinkering was first setting nix up and figuring out how to use it… Then I saved and copied my config and use the same one on all the machines (albeit with subtle changes on first install).
I’ve used arch a handful of times over the years, and it is without question, significantly more “needy” over time, imo.
Guess you never had to package general or hard to package software like those that require fixed output derivation or undersupported ecosystems, trying to use common development environment for Python under NixOS, running binaries under NixOS, the list goes on.
I have not… And in fairness to me, OP didn’t mention the need for any of those things. OP mentions having not even installed anything with the AUR in Arch, which to me just means they are looking for something stable out of the box, which nix has been for me across many platforms.
It’s been a while since I’ve used pure debian, but historically I’ve used Ubuntu because debian made it more difficult to install “non-free” software. Has this changed?
Gnome and KDE are both great for different reasons. One of the things that’s great about Linux as a whole is it gives people the ability to choose the stack they like most
Yes likely, at least in the VM the guest addition didnt work, and the mouse cursor was duplicating itself forever. Also it looked quite ugly so yeah, not a great ootb experience for sure.
Looking for similar myself. I love cbpp, based on openbox, it’s just out of my way and lets me do my work. but I want to move to wayland, thinking kde plasma, spend for ever changing it to my liking and some how export all changes. probably a bash script first but thinking long term write it in ansible.
But i’d much perfer to find a stock/sane solution.
Not enough yet, made a list of apps I need, moved the dock/bar to the top of the screen. only have kde installed on my personal laptop, I don’t any where near enough time to spend on it, my desktop isn’t for playing around on.
The Tumbleweed installer is great, the general feel of the distro is polished, modern, up-to-date and efficient.
As other people have said, use the terminal to update both flatpaks and packages.
One main reason I went back to Arch BTW is that there aren’t, contrary to the old self a declaration by Suse, that many software available for my use case, so I ended up with tons of ppa’s, sorry, Suse Vendors who relied on each others for libraries, and it eventually broke down my system when some stuff wasn’t available but was required, while some may be available from 4 different, private, repos.
So I found software management a nightmare: where to find, which one to choose from? Looking for stuff in yast, then in gnome-software, then in software.opensuse.org, then on the Build Service… Clicking bliindly to trust keys from people with personal repos titled “Use At Your Own Risk”. Updating that mess then was complicated, and slow because gnome-software would lock yast while checking stuff in the background. I had to kill it, even just to relaunch it to search for stuff.
But Tumbleweed installs Snapper on Btrfs by default, so rolling back shouldn’t be a problem? True, and I did it and it’s just delicious, fuck up your system, wind back in two clicks… That is, unless btrfs snapshots didn’t got unruly, and in it’s default settings ate up all my disk space, forcing me to destroy that great system.
What annoyed me most here wasn’t the software all-over-the-place mess, but that the default, factory setting of a great system they themselves contributed to the Linux world wouldn’t be working 6 months down the line on a small disk (30Gb). Thanks to the Arch Wiki I know better now, and it is easily manageable, but it was too late for me.
Went back to Arch, with snapper, snap-pac, grub-btrfs, snapper-rollback. Can’t yet wind back like in Suse at all, currently at VM number 9, trying again, wish me luck.
TL;DR: a rolling release from a reputable company with one-click rollback is a perfect solution if you keep your system relatively standard.
That would be my only complaint about OpenSUSE, the default size for partitions is too conservative. it would default to 30gig and even though there is a snapper cleanup, acheduler updates would fill it up. I now add to the recommended x2, and then the partition always hovers around 70%. The scheduled btrfs and snapper cleanup it keep it managed
One main reason I went back to Arch BTW is that there aren’t, contrary to the old self a declaration by Suse, that many software available for my use case, so I ended up with tons of ppa’s, sorry, Suse Vendors who relied on each others for libraries, and it eventually broke down my system when some stuff wasn’t available but was required, while some may be available from 4 different, private, repos.
This is the reason I abandoned both Fedora and openSUSE when I tried them. I like plenty about both of them but things are just simpler on Arch. Despite Arch having less software than most distributions, it tends to be the software I actually want or need to use. The few programs not present can be installed from the AUR. Writing new PKGBUILDs is simple and there is no bureaucracy.
Arch is a pain upfront but I’ve found it tends to save you time later on. It’s not without its downsides, though; the primary one being that I’m the one responsible for managing everything and there are plenty of things I don’t know.
Unlike apt in Debian-based distros, zypper in OpenSUSE does not have an autoremove command that removes the unneeded dependencies of packages that were removed. To keep your system clean, use the –clean-deps option when removing packages.
I personally find it rather infuriating that swapping those is made so difficult, and to this day don’t know who has more usecase for media keys and varied power buttons over function keys.
And the worst thing is, if the upper row defaults as mefia keys, and toggling Fn to be function keys by default, you also toggle numpad to the right side of the keyboard. Don’t get me wrong, I like numpad, but I quite don’t like losing half of my keyboard, because keyboard manufacturers don’t know what keys should be behind the Fn.
I personally find it rather infuriating that swapping those is made so difficult, and to this day don’t know who has more usecase for media keys and varied power buttons over function keys.
Non-IT people, who, believe it or not, are the majority of users out there. I’ve stopped keeping score several years ago on how many people had asked me how to bind F-keys to something else, but at that point things were like 100% of IT people wanted F-keys, while 70-80% of non-IT asked me for help rebinding them to other things.
I’m a programmer and these decisions annoy me as well, I’m just pointing to the answer as for why some computers come with the annoyance enabled (and often make it unnecessarily hard to change it). I’m by no means defending it. If anything, I think it should be up to the OS to have an easy way to change the behavior instead of assuming what the user needs and making it difficult to change.
I believe Inkscape is still working towards GTK4, but yes they are much farther ahead, to be expected when there are more developers active, after all.
GTK has long outgrown GIMP, it’s much more general purpose now, though the acronym remains. Who knows, maybe it’ll be renamed to GTK Toolkit in full MIT hacker style one day
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