Hey this is just what I need. And exactly when I needed it.
I have an old enterprise tower I’ve been trying to set up for my bedroom tv (I believe from 2009 or so) that only has 4gb ram but 12 (!!!) usb ports, and mint with xfce is still much too heavy for it, despite it being able to run win 10 fairly well.
All it needs to be able to do is run my vpn, torrent client, and web browser for media playback (Plex web, hosted elsewhere on my network).
Please report back in a few weeks and a few months, and maybe even a year or two down the road.
Generally “I’m really (happy/upset/confused/sad) with it” after only a day isn’t really good feedback for people thinking of changing, but it does provide a good baseline to measure against once you’re more familiar with it, and getting glimpses into your learning curve might be really helpful for people looking for advice on which OS to go with.
I agree that normally, it isnt. But my post also was about the installation process and the changeover from one distro to the other. They were both very smooth. I was prepared for a lot more issues.
Generally yes, I will report back further down the line.
For me the main config difficulty is from the statusbar. Polybar, Eww, are harder to config comparing to the WM. I solved that with Tint2 bar. It can be configured from an GUI, for the basics. The only code I added to config is simple.
Just today I started experimenting with Hyprland and this repo for installing and configuring all the additional software. The easiest flow seems to be “install EndeavourOS with Gnome, clone illogical-impulse, run install.sh”
Unfortunately, Hyprland runs like trash in a virtual machine so it’s difficult to try out such a setup without going through a full install.
For me this is Gnome with the pop shell extension. It’s so much better than plain i3 in usability and just as good with tiling. Using i3 for years made me appreciate the value of a proper modern desktop environment.
The Steam Deck is what got me to finally try modern KDE and eventually switch to it. I recently moved my gaming PC to Fedora 39, and considered trying Gnome again for variety’s sake until I remembered that it currently does not natively support VRR, so this is good news.
I think I prefer Plasma at this point, and I’m excited with Plasma 6 around the corner, but my desktop PC is basically a gaming appliance, so I think the relative simplicity of Gnome might be nice to run on there eventually as these features catch up. I like to have variety in what I’m running anyways. I appreciate that it gives me a wider perspective on my preferences.
Great. I heard there was a cursor flickering issue under some niche scenarios, due to the cursor and the content’s framerates becoming out of sync with one another after exiting some full screen apps, that was previously preventing the merge of this feature.
I’m assuming it’s been solved?
The “Preserve battery healthy by keeping charge between 20% and 80%” is a nice option too
I find GNOME’s “must be perfect” approach to accepting new code counterintuitive.
One of the largest benefits of having a clean architecture is increased velocity and extensibility. What’s the point in nitpicking over perfection when it takes literally years to merge a feature, arguably one considered basic and essential by today’s standards?
KDE is on the other side of this pendulum, integrating everything and resulting in a disjointed, buggy disaster.
Where’s the middle way? It used to be XFCE. What is it now?
Quality control is important for a project that is going to be supported for long time, and used by many. Slow but steady is a right approach for open source project, IMO.
I definitely get what you mean, and sometimes agree, but tbh I’m glad Gnome is an option for those who want a DE that is uncompromisingly UX-focused and straight up won’t accept changes until they’re damn sure it’ll be production-ready.
And while they’ve been relatively slow in getting adaptive refresh working, they’ve been very quick with some other things. Idk why it took them this long to sort out the cursor occasionally becoming out of sync with displayed content’s refresh rate, but there must be a reason for it.
Gnome was at the forefront with Wayland, PulseAudio, they’ve been the biggest pusher of Portals, pretty much all of their GTK4 apps have been designed to also be compatible with mobile devices. Accessibility features on Gnome are also pretty great for a Linux DE.
As a general rule, I’d say their development process works well, despite there being the occasional holdup.
And while Plasma obviously isn’t nearly as bug-free as Gnome, it’s come a long way since the Plasma 4/early Plasma 5 days. I still don’t feel I can depend on it the same as I could for Gnome or Cinnamon (compositor crashes bringing down all open apps is a big issue in particular - and is finally due to be fixed in Plasma 6), but don’t underestimate their progress — since like 5.15/5.16 they’ve improved leaps and bounds.
And with 6 it looks like they’ve learned from the mistakes of 4 and 5’s launches.
The lack of VRR in GNOME is what had me change to KDE. I prefer GNOME in many ways, but I was tired of having to use the vrr patches to keep the functionality.
I thought its an entire different desktop. Especially itd not possible to run gamescope while a X11 Desktop is running so I guess you are wrong with “bypassing”. Its just switching to gamescope. Its a Wayland compositor. It does even less than a Window Manager (is this right?)
I assume as this is a Gaming mode, its purpose is not to avoid waiting for features. But close the entire desktop which may use up to 1GB RAM and a by of CPU. Which definetly impacts the game by some fraction. Doesnt matter how tiny, its just what gaming modes are having as focus I assume.
The next thing I would never see on a desktop is FSR which gamescope has.
I didn't care for PuppyLinux as it didn't run well with even just Firefox open. I also didn't care for the updating structure that seemed to be the idea that you just don't update packages between releases. I could be wrong on that, but that was what I got from reading on how to keep things up to date. I did like how small it is and how it loads into memory on boot.
AntiX wouldn't let me install any packages or update. It would keep telling me I needed to wait a few hours to access the repos. I did like how you could swap between several desktop environments easily.
The lack of systemd was something I couldn’t get over. I mean the alternative service managers are good but a few apps I really need have a strong dependency on systemd and the adapter packages just weren’t working. Otherwise I highly recommend AntiX. It made my old netbook feel useful again.
AntiX wouldn’t let me install any packages or update. It would keep telling me I needed to wait a few hours to access the repos. I did like how you could swap between several desktop environments easily.
Just manual change the repo and problem solved…
And I need to clarify this because AntiX IMO, under category Permacomputing for low power consumption without too much sacrificing the function than others [in my experiment].
Im using anker soundcore bluetooth speaker on desktop PC. It was acting weird on windows, then I switched to PopOS and it became super smooth for more than a year. Turning on PC then speaker or the other way around it would always pair flawlesly. But since some update around a month ago its not always pairing automatically and sometimes I have to connect manually to get it working. Its not a big deal, but throwing it here in case someone knows a fix and even better if the same fix can help with OPs issue
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