I don’t think you really do anymore. I’d consider myself an experienced Linux user. I’ve been using it as a my desktop OS for over 20 years. I’ve also used Linux heavily through my career and am completely comfortable with the command line.

With recent installs of Fedora the only thing I use the command line for is the initial setup of the multimedia codecs. After that I haven’t been required to touch it.

I used to consider a terminal required to keep your desktop Linux system running. Now I look at is as an optional install for programmers.

Hi,

I’m going to say that at a high level it doesn’t make much of a difference. Some distros will make claims they have tweaks for gaming but for most players I doubt you’ll notice the difference. Almost all distributions make it easy to get Nvidia drivers working these days so I wouldn’t worry about that.

I’d say to pick the distribution based on other factors, such as update policy (rolling vs stable) or desktop environment you prefer.

I wanted to wait to the end to mention Manjaro has some controversial aspects to it. In terms of how the project handles money and leadership. I’d personally not recommend it but that has nothing to do with gaming.

That was a good read. I’d not really been sure of the differences between libadawaita and GTK were. It sounds like this frees up GTK to focus on being a cross platform GUI library, perhaps competing more directly with Qt. Meanwhile, libadawaita allows GNOME developers to keep leveraging GTK and tune it to their design guidelines.

I’ve only seen positive things come out of recent GNOME apps, but I wonder if the downside of GTK no longer embedding GNOME’s design language would be apps choosing to use GTK directly instead of libadawaita for better cross platform support. Will we end up with a less cohesive GNOME environment in the future?

When you’re in school you’re often stuck with the software they require. No harm in that. Once you’re finished with school you can reevaluate. If you want to be more privacy focused you could make sure you’re only using Gmail for in a Firefox container tab for instance or look into sandboxing it other ways.

For the same reasons don’t worry about keeping Windows on your computer for classes. It’ll get easier when you’re out of college, any job will give you work equipment with the software and tools they make you use and you can keep all personal information out of those. You’ll be able to use what you want on your personal items.

Privacy is important, but not important as passing your classes.

You’re doing great!

Would be baller to be able to use a switch for running emulators for nes/snes/gb/gba.

I’m curious where you’re having issues. I’ve been able to use the little GNOME widget for setting up wireless connections for years.

Do you have an edge usecase that makes you drop back to using nmcli or is there a missing feature forcing you back to the ip/ifconfig commands?

No sarcasm, I’d just be interested in understanding your frustration a little better.

I recently purchased a laptop from System76. I’ve been very happy with it. You can get many of their models with coreboot used as the system firmware which is unique. I have been disappointed that they usually recommend installing open source, but not in-tree modules for getting things like keyboard backlight working. It feels a bit like they’re not a Linux laptop company but instead that they’re a Pop!_ OS laptop company.

Linux distributions have definitely standardized over the years. You get a kernel, systemd, network manager, Firefox, etc from basically every distro targeting desktops. Most will have different spins for the popular desktop environments as well.

From a purely technical perspective the main difference of distributions today is the package manager. Are you using pacman, apt, dnf, or something else? We know as users that while some of these different package managers have advantages and disadvantages they are all doing the same thing. You can get basically all the equivalent packages on each major distribution. I sometimes feel sad thinking about all the volunteer effort working in parallel, but not together to package the same software using different package managers. In many ways it’s duplicate effort that I wish could be spent in better ways.

Even package managers are beginning to converge. Flatpack is becoming extremely popular and is my current preferred way to add software to my system.

Leaving technicals behind the only major difference I see between distro today is their philosophy on how frequently to update and what to exclude. Does every package get a new update immediately when it’s rolled out upstream like Arch? Are we going to stick to older packages and only apply security/bug fix updates like Debian, or do something in between? Do we want to bend over backwards to make it easy to install Nvidia drivers or tell users we don’t support closed source software? Do we want to make it as easy as possible to install codecs or leave it to the wider community to figure that out on their own?

I don’t think there’s any right or wrong answer. Use what you enjoy!

I’m glad to see open source video editors are still evolving. I know Davinci Resolve has become popular with Linux YouTubers for serious work.

I’d be curious to know a video editors opinion of what’s missing. Is it stability, GPU acceleration, UI or a combination of all of the above? What would be needed for you to switch to Kdenlive for example?

I stopped watching Linux YouTubers after the Red Hat/CentOS Stream/Rocky controversy that happened recently. There were so many clickbait videos with a poor understanding of the problem just trying to make a buck off the communities anger and spreading disinformation .

The Linux Experiment handled it the best and had the most nuanced thought out view on the issue. This is despite us ultimately having different conclusions. My only complaint about his coverage is that if you visit his personal website he has some extreme views on ethics, including believing that investing in the stock market is unethical. I felt he should have been more upfront of that in his videos before sharing his views on the ethics of a company like Red Hat.

I’ll still watch some of his videos on occasion if they get picked up here and I believe him to be the most honest of the many Linux YouTubers. That being said I wouldn’t hold any of them in high regard. Many of their videos are sloppy, have clickbait titles, contribute very little, are are just trying to get ad revenue from you as much as Linus Tech Tips is.

I watched this video earlier today. I’m not sure how I feel about it. Some of the results sound like legitimate issues and some are kind of vague. Are the people having multi-monitor support issues using Gnome/KDE or are they setting up a niche tiling WM with a highly custom config?

It’s good that he has an audience where he can gather this kind of information but much of it isn’t very actionable. I don’t know how I as a developer or Linux user can help improve anything from this data.

I’d wager that good old fashioned bug reports to the specific software having the problem is a more useful tool.

I use Hexchat. It’s a fine GUI a client, simple and reliable. I use a ZNC bouncer so no need to keep a CLI client running 24/7.

Anything is possible, but I’d be surprised if it’s a driver issue. Many server vendors use tg3 based NICs as the onboard NIC integrated into the motherboard. The install base for that driver is huge.

I’ve used both. I switched from Fastmail to Proton then back to Fastmail. If you’re just starting on your privacy journey I’d still recommend Proton.

When I switched to Proton they only did email and that’s what I wanted. Instead of focusing on email Proton expanded into other areas like VPNs, Proton Drive, and password managers. I already had good privacy focused solutions for all of those problems, so for me personally I didn’t like where they were spending their development time.

As a Linux desktop user and an iOS mobile user I was often one of the last to have new features available for Protons applications which got to be really annoying.

To use desktop email I had to install Proton bridge which required a GUI to run. It was always having issues. Super frustrating.

I really disliked that Proton didn’t give me a way to use SMTP without going through their bridge. I have three home servers configured with Fastmail app passwords limited to only SMTP to send me notifications for updates and other alerts. This would have been really flaky to make work with Proton.

With Fastmail everything uses open standards, IMAP, SMTP, CalDav, CardDav, and WebDav. It all integrates really well with my laptop and phone without any special tools. I end up using those services much more now. The downside to these open standards is you don’t get end to end encryption that Proton offers.

I also feel as if Fastmail is giving me more for my money. I remember having pain points with Proton and wildcard emails with custom domains and trying to use their hidden email service. All of that is much easier with Fastmail. I also had a few sites not allow Protons masked emails but Fastmail worked fine.

I’d say, if privacy is your main thing and you don’t already have some of the services offered by Proton go with them. If what you’re looking for is as much privacy as email will let you have without using non standard software, and you just really want reliable solid email, Fastmail is the right choice.