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  • I also made a very similar comment, but with uBlue (Bazzite, Aurora, Bluefin) instead.

    They are still pretty vanilla, but include a big list of QoL stuff added in, like staged updates, Distrobox, a huge list gaming tweaks in Bazzite, and much more.

    It’s basically stock Atomic made right!

    I’ve used them for a year now, and they’re fantastic!

    Just a small heads up for OP: You have to do quite a lot of (advanced) things differently from now on if you choose Atomic. Use containers (Distrobox, etc.) for everything you can, avoid installing stuff on the host if possible, etc.


  • Guenther_Amanita@slrpnk.nettoLinux@lemmy.mlWhich distro?
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    15 days ago

    Because others already suggested Arch/ EndeavourOS, I’ll be suggesting something else: Bazzite.

    It’s part of the image based (“immutable”) Fedora series and is basically Fedora Kinoite, with all drivers and codecs already set up for you, self managing, with many gaming tweaks included.

    It’s rock solid and basically unbreakable, while also being extremely modern and updated. On Arch, even if it doesn’t break, you always get the newest stuff, which might not be as polished. On Fedora, it matures a few months, while still being very modern.

    The main target group is “For Linux users who don’t want to use Linux”, meaning, it runs all your favourite stuff (KDE, etc.) without having to care for anything. It even updates itself automatically in the background without any interference.

    If you prefer something with less “bloat” (a lot of optional tools and software to choose from, but nothing mandatory), then check out Aurora, which is basically the same, but without gaming stuff.

    For more information, check out universal-blue.org

    Just a small heads up for OP: You have to do quite a lot of (advanced) things differently from now on if you choose Atomic.

    Use containers (Distrobox, etc.) for everything you can, avoid installing stuff on the host if possible, etc.

    Just use Flatpaks for 95% you do graphically, and for CLI stuff or software that isn’t available as Flatpak, I would recommend you to create an Arch Distrobox container (already set up IIRC) and use that. You can even install stuff from the AUR and export it, so it works just like it is supposed to.


  • Maybe, another consideration might be to not run Linux on Windows in some way, but the other way around.

    Linux offers great virtualization, maybe you can use QEMU with KVM and GPU passthrough, and then run Windows inside this box.

    I find Linux more powerful and less annoying to use day to day, and having those annoyances inside a small virtualized container I can just shut down is more peaceful.


    WSL can be restricting, since Linux can’t access anything, and I think getting “the real and proper thing” might be better.

    And dual booting, by having both Windows and Linux on the same drive, is something I would advise against. Windows doesn’t play nice with others and often “accidentally” breaks the bootloader and hard drive permissions, leading only to trouble. If you dual boot, install them on a separate drive and select the booting drive manually in the BIOS.


    Also, why do you want to run Ubuntu specifically? Did you also look up for alternatives, like Fedora or Debian?





  • The only issues I had were due to fractional scaling (blurry apps, especially Electron based ones; and windows opening or moving to weird edges, where I can’t move them anymore).

    But those were already a few months or a year ago, and since I switched from Gnome to KDE 6, I have zero issues, neither on my laptop (integrated on CPU), nor on my desktop with an AMD GPU.

    And even over a year, almost two, ago, Wayland has been very smooth for me. I used Gnome for most of the time, which has always been very solid with Wayland. KDE has been a bit more janky in the past, but nowadays, Wayland feels way smoother and polished than X11 for me.


  • Guenther_Amanita@slrpnk.nettoLinux@lemmy.mlWhat happened to elementary OS?
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    20 days ago

    Then how do you explain the continued success of Mint?

    Because Mint’s philosophy is to make a friendly, simple and usable system for everyone.

    That may be for people who came from Windows before, or those who like their OS to be a bit more conservative, meaning no flashy stuff, boring, and just working. Just like Windows was “in the good ol’ days”.

    This makes it accessible and usable by everyone, including Linux sysadmins who come home after work and don’t want to deal with annoying computers and fixing things.

    Everything on Mint feels high quality, functional and cohesive.

    ElementaryOS on the other hand feels like a cheap MacOS clone, but nothing works. Those who want Mac, buy a Mac.

    Mint/ Cinnamon on the other hand is similar to Windows (XP, 7, etc.), but not a copycat. It’s familiar enough to be intuitive for Windows users, but much enough it’s own thing.

    Mint’s main focus is to get a uncomplicated, and usable system, while Elementary’s focus is to just do what Apple does. … Well, did. 15 years ago. They totally forgot how much work maintaining a distro and a desktop with a whole app suite is, and just stopped working on it.

    While Gnome and KDE (and other WMs/ DEs) got magnitudes better in just one year (e.g. Plasma 6), Pantheon (and Elementary) just stagnated the last 5 years or so.

    They don’t even offer/ work on Wayland yet, or other new things.

    Either they’ll stop working on Elementary, and focus only on Pantheon, so it can live on on other distros, or it will just continue dying like it does currently.



  • If the software you have to run is specifically designed for one distro (e.g. something that’s only in the AUR, or written for Debian) you can use Distrobox.

    This creates a small, lightweight container that allows you to run any software from all distros on your host.

    I, for example, use Fedora Atomic, and I mostly use an Arch container that’s fully customized for me, including having the AUR enabled.

    If you liked Kinoite, then you can still consider it and run your stuff via Distrobox



  • Guenther_Amanita@slrpnk.nettoKDE@lemmy.kde.socialKubuntu vs Neon?
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    1 month ago

    It’s mainly the release model.

    Kubuntu is Ubuntu. So, two major updates a year, where the state is basically “frozen” in between. This gives everyone time to fix bugs, giving you a more stable experience.

    Neon is rolling release on everything regarding KDE, but has a very stable base OS. Advantage: newest and hottest KDE stuff, but it maybe has some rough edges and doesn’t provide you with the newest kernel, which usually isn’t a big deal, but you might miss out on something.

    Is there a reason why you want something Ubuntu based?

    You also have a few other options:

    • Debian: older (still has KDE 5.27), but very stable and tested
    • Fedora KDE: similar to Kubuntu, but more vanilla and less shitty in my personal opinion (Snaps, etc.)
    • EndeavourOS: Arch based, beautiful customisations applied OOTB, sane defaults if you like Arch
    • Fedora Atomic KDE (Kinoite) or Aurora: the newest image based (immutable) variant. It’s what I use and would recommend. Very reliable!


  • Guenther_Amanita@slrpnk.nettoLinux@lemmy.mlBeginners Guides
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    1 month ago

    I never had an IT background and also “just tried” Linux a few years ago.
    Now, I’m still not an Linux expert, but relatively proficient with it.

    I tried reading “How Linux works” (free e-book), but didn’t have a great time with it.

    It’s just too detailed for someone who just wants to use Linux. It might be an absolutely great resource if you plan to work in IT, but other than that, just it’s too much wasted time.


    What helped me a lot was to use Linux as an OS for my homeserver.

    You don’t need anything fancy for it. Just use an old spare laptop or something similar you have laying around, or buy an used small form factor PC, like those Mini-PCs many businesses use. Those often cost less than 50 bucks and would otherwise land on the trash.

    Then, install your server OS of choice. The most popular one is just plain ol’ Debian, and it’s what I used. It’s a great choice!

    Servers run without a display or GUI (DE/ WM). You set it up once, and then connect to it remotely via SSH.
    With that, you can either install a web interface like CasaOS or Cockpit, or just use the CLI for everything.

    For the start, you can choose just Nextcloud AIO and call it a day. It comes with all things needed for a functioning webserver. But, things said, the learning experience ends here pretty quickly. It’s made to be easy and painless.

    If you want to learn more, then consider setting up the stuff for yourself. It’s also really not hard (coming from someone who doesn’t IT stuff professionally!), but takes a bit more time, because you have a lot of choices.

    For that, you might consider checking out c/Selfhosted and awesome-selfhosted on GitHub.
    Theres a lot of really cool things you can discover!

    The main reason I recommend that, and not just “Try LFS, Arch, Void, Gentoo, or whatever” is because I find it pretty much useless. Sure, you learn how it works, but for what price?
    When you set up your own homelab, then you have actual useful things running, you also learn a lot, and maybe you can add it to your CV when applying for jobs. I for example work in the chemistry sector, where IT stuff like this is pretty useless on the first glance, but I often got invited for a job interview exactly because of that. It’s just a nice skill to have!


    For checking out great CLI tools, check out the according video from TheLinuxExperiment or other YouTube/ PeerTube videos.

    Try to learn the basic commands, like cd, ls or cat, then look up for more advanced/ alternative tools, like tree (instead of ls), bat (instead of cat), and so on, and then try to learn shell scripting.

    I really like using fish instead of bash, because it’s a very friendly and interactive shell ;)


    I hope that my comment was helpful! :)



  • Yeah, I agree. That’s why I switched from Gnome to KDE a while ago.

    I really like Gnome, but then just came the time I had enough. The whole “Then don’t buy xy monitor” just drove me mad. Before Plasma 6, Gnome just felt more premium. But even then, fractional scaling just worked on KDE, while on Gnome, I had to apply bandaid solutions all the time and still couldn’t read anything because it was either too small, too big or completely blurry.

    Now, I prefer KDE, and would recommend it over Gnome if someone asked me.
    Gnome just feels backwards in so many aspects, e.g. VRR, HDR, etc.
    Sure, some things on KDE get half-assed from time to time, but at least the devs show some interest in at least trying to takle some issues.


  • Then you can always rollback in case you don’t have a working image.

    I had to do that once. On a non-atomic install, this would have meant a completely broken system. In my case, this was one reboot away and it worked again.

    And in case you don’t like the direction of your image project going, you can also always rebase to another one in less than 5 minutes, download time and reboot included.

    uBlue for example starts with a very basic Fedora Silverblue image, which you can fork easily yourself. I have zero experience in coding or other stuff, and even I managed to get my own custom image working.

    There are already a couple of people around who started with Aurora, Secureblue or Bazzite, but then found them too opinionated, and went back to Vanilla Kinoite for example.
    It’s extremely simple to switch out the base OS to something almost completely different.

    And, you don’t loose any customisability. You can still do everything you want, take a look at Bazzite or Secureblue. Completely different kernel, additional modifications and packages, and much much more. Feels completely different than Vanilla Kinoite for example.


  • Image based distros are only complicated if you come from traditional distros, because they’re different.

    If you come from Windows or another OS, then having “The whole OS is one thing” instead of “A huge collection of packages and directories” makes everything simpler to understand, because you don’t mess with anything except /home/. You don’t have to care about anything else.

    And if you want to do something more fancy, like using a CLI tool, then having to enter a Distrobox container isn’t complicated.

    For casual use, like gaming, browsing or image editing, everything is just as usual. Nobody, except us Linux nerds, actually cares about the underlying system. Casual users just want the OS to be a tool for their programs they use, and for that, it’s ideal, because it just works and doesn’t bork itself.