daredevil

if you keep your setup simple

I would prefer this. 😊

I had much worse time trying to debug Debian-based distros, as they’re much more complex and hard to understand

That's interesting. This thread has piqued my interest wrt Debian, so this will be a useful bit of information to consider moving forward.

If you need additional security for your install if it’s critical, consider setting up snapshots.

I am a bit familiar with snapshots--I have them set up on my current setup and have used them to recover from mistakes in the past. I'll be looking into them more as there's probably some good stuff out there that I don't know about yet. Thanks.

Installing different DEs as the same user is pretty much guaranteed to create conflicts and generally should be avoided. It’s always best to create a new user account for each different DE you want to try out so that it doesn’t screw anything up.

This has been a good first-hand experience. I'll keep this in mind moving forward.

Which you’re free to benefit from regardless of which distro you end up installing as long as an Arch container offered[...]

Other distros like Debian, Fedora and openSUSE (to name a few) do offer similar functionality on specific ISOs (or just as an option in the YaST installer for openSUSE).

This information is definitely useful for me to keep in mind, thank you.

That’s perhaps a bit too harsh on KDE Plasma without giving it an honest shot first. Don’t let others’ opinion on the matter deter your willingness to genuinely explore, experience and judge for yourself 😉. Furthermore, it’s important to note that the development of Wayland has accelerated (relatively) recently. Therefore, the issues of others might have already been resolved since.

Valid reminder. I'll keep an open mind, and try things out for myself. Cheers.

Your issues with xfce-notifyd don’t make a lot of sense. Therefore, I wouldn’t dismiss the thought that you might have tarnished your GNOME Wayland session.

Yeah, based on another reply in this thread, I seem to have botched things. I've already started ensuring I have the proper backups in place for reformatting my boot drive.

Perhaps consider Fedora this time

I certainly will. Thanks for the recommendation. This distro seemed to be the one most often recommended while I was looking around just now. I will also be looking into extensions as well.

Sway and Hyprland

Window managers have piqued my interest in the past. Currently, I think I'll focus on GNOME, but I agree with looking into these one at a time if GNOME ends up not suiting my needs.

the skills required are linearly correlated with the complexity of the system

That's good to know, I really agree with Arch's philosophy of focusing on simplicity. I don't have much experience with containers, tbh. However, I'm not opposed to learning about them. That said, I have done a little bit of reading regarding them in the past, and why they might be useful.

Question: Is there any reason why you seem to gravitate towards rolling release distros?

WRT Arch: it grabbed my interest because having the option for the most current updates sounded appealing. It may not be necessary, but if the situation arises and it would help, I'd like to have it. The Arch wiki has also been a big incentive, as well as the AUR. If I'm not mistaken, Arch is also a distro that allows me to pick and choose aspects of my operating system with intention as opposed to having a system that comes with stuff that I don't use or need.

WRT TW: As Arch grabbed my interest initially, I was worried about whether it may cause too many issues down the line. So, I read that BTRFS was useful for snapshotting and preventing accidents, while still enjoying the benefits of a rolling release distro. I suppose it comes down to having the option to choose from more current software updates, while having the security of native BTRFS support and snapshots. I was also looking at TW because it was a distro that supported KDE, but I'm learning from this thread that KDE is not ideal if I'm looking for a Wayland session.

‘Skill-ceiling’ is (surprisingly enough) grossly the same on Linux Mint and Arch, it’s the ‘skill-floor’ in which there’s a (significant) discrepancy between the two.

Whoops, lol. I'll chalk this up to being tired.

But if you intend to use KDE with wayland, good luck. It’s quite stable but still not there. It might have made me lose some hair over things that weren’t working as expected - whereas on GNOME it was all smooth.

This is very useful information, thank you. I'll keep looking into GNOME.

Yeah, that's understandable, which is why I'm not currently opposed to staying with Gnome for the time being. However, Cinnamon also had the option to tile windows horizontally, as well as sectioning the screen into 1/4ths. It's not the most necessary feature, but I do miss it when I'm not on the Cinnamon session. The Extension Manager app sounds useful, though I've been steering clear of them due to the complaints I've read regarding their tendency to break. I'll look into it, thanks.

I had a feeling that xfce-notifyd was something not native to Gnome. To be honest, I don't remember installing the Gnome Wayland session, but noticed it at the login screen awhile back. I logged into it using the same login that I use for my LM Cinnamon session; I've heard this is not ideal, and this issue is probably one of the reasons why. For the record, I've also previously tried installing a LM xfce session, so that is perhaps the cause for its appearance. This conversation has me wondering if there's a proper way to reduce any goofy stuff I may have done because of experimenting with DEs. I don't mind looking into it myself, but would also appreciate any insight as you seem familiar with Gnome.

Actually, the UI is alright in it's default state. Those extensions do look interesting though. I generally like using the super key to search for some programs, while opening others with the CLI. I also liked switching between active applications through this interface + arrow keys as well. Though I did have an issue with trying to navigate between programs if the program I wanted was on the other monitor. I also struggled with alt+tabbing between multiple windows of Firefox, for example. Though now that I think about it, that could potentially be resolved with utilizing workspaces better. I had issues with notifications, particularly Thunderbird and Rhythmbox. The notifications would take priority as the active window, and temporarily disable the input for whatever I was working on prior to its appearance. I tried enabling Do Not Disturb mode, disabling notifications for specific programs, and killing xfce4-notifyd through the CLI. Killing xfce-notifyd sort of helped, but would cause a weird notification that still messed with my active window. Currently, If I want to continue working or playing whatever I was using before, I have to alt+f4 the notification, which is rather cumbersome when I get an email or the song changes. Perhaps the solution is to set another shortcut to close the active window. That said, it's rather unfortunate, because LM Cinnamon seemed to handle these notifications in the same way, while being less obtrusive.

Wayland is indeed a priority, I appreciate the insight. Your reply has given me some useful food for thought. I was also interested in Endeavour as well, but I may try toughing it out with Gnome a bit longer and keep looking into this.

If hiccups are a once in awhile thing, that doesn't sound too bad, I suppose. I've been enjoying learning about Linux, and I could see troubleshooting Arch being fun. Though that's probably because I haven't experienced what a bad break could be like. However, I'll look into Debian+KDE, thanks for the recommendation.

No worries, I understand these things take time and that the code takes priority. Thanks for taking care of the login bug btw and keep up the good work. Cheers.

I'm aware. I don't think that reply is really necessary of a tag as I'm sure you and I both know he's busy. This problem is fairly common among kbin native magazines as well and not limited to the federated ones where Ernest is assigned as the owner and moderator. And yes, I'm also aware that it's something Ernest has talked about and plans to address. I'm not hating, but that doesn't change the fact that it's still an unfortunate situation.

I recall the second game getting a lot of negativity for…some reason I don’t fully remember.

Some of the popular complaints went into spoiler territory. Since I can't seem to spoiler tag on kbin, I'll only briefly mention that they generally centered around one of the main character's choices early on, while also targeting their appearance for being "unrealistic".

Outside of the story the gameplay is better, the tech is better, the environments are better. Even today it holds up as a powerhouse in these areas.

I agree overall. I also applaud Naughty Dog for the considerable number of gameplay options and accessibility features. If I remember correctly, someone has even beaten TLOU1/2 who was born blind.

I’m just trying to remember why a certain subset of people online were going all apey over it.

Not gonna get into it here, but the lesson learned by the protagonist felt like it missed the mark a bit when looking at the events of the game after things were said and done. Ultimately, I think it's fairly minor considering that's maybe my main gripe. I suppose I had some issues with pacing too, and thought some aspects of the plot should have been fleshed out differently. I was hoping to revisit TLOU1/2 eventually to see how my thoughts have changed.