𝘋𝘪𝘳𝘬

You could use dd to create full disk images. This maintains everything.

There’s ydotool.

Absolutely none. On my setup everything runs fine either natively or with Xwayland.

I feel like nowadays it’s more specific web servers instead of a general purpose one. Also containerization often is a thing.

You summarize it quite well. But I would still recommend Arch (but as an Arch user since 2008 I am biased on this). Why?

• Lightweight, ideal for gaming. My full-featured Wayland-setup with labwc runs with ca. 2 gigabytes of RAM, including Firefox, which on it’s own currently takes up 800 megabytes. Not that RAM would be an actual issue on modern gaming setups, but still, this shows how little resources the system needs for itself.
• Gaming on Linux is pretty much solved nowadays thanks to Valve (Steam, Proton, etc.) and Flatpaks. Games that do not work are intentionally made to not work on other platforms than Windows due the games using ring0 spyware as DRM and for anti-cheat.
• Privacy by concept – while there are no specific measures taken regarding privacy, the default installation just does nothing except initializing the hardware and allowing the user to sign in. Everything else is up to you.
• Software development is – like gaming – a no-brainer. All common tools work on Linux. Even more: Dependency handling, setting up the environment, using different compilers – all this feels much smoother than on Windows.
• Maintainability is great. Since there are no package changes from upstream, you can be sure that bugs are typically bugs in the software and not coming from Arch packaging.Thanks to rolling release you get much less updates at the same time compared to fixed release distribution – ganted you update regularly. I check the news and update every 1-2 weeks at the weekend.

And since you’re coming from Windows, you have to learn new stuff anyways. So why not dive head first into Arch?

Why do you consider AppImages as last resort?

Mainly because you cannot manage them properly.

Installing from the repos I have pacman, from the AUR I can use one of the various AUR helpers (most of them can forward repo package updates to pacman, so I really have just one command to update the system and all AUR packages).

When making my own packages I usually also put them in the AUR (plus, it is super easy to do make an own package and put in in the AUR) – and from there an aUR helper takes care about updates. Flatpaks can also be updated very easy by just running one command.

So: All of those have a specific location where they install and allow me to start them easily because they put a script/link somewhere in $PATH. All of those can be easily maintained and updated.

Last time I checked, AppImages had none of those. Neither could I easily update all of them on my system, nor is there a dedicated location to place them, nor is there an “unified” (i.e. something in $PATH) way of starting them. I have to manually check for updates, re-download the whole thing, replace the current AppImage file in an arbitrary location.

This is just how I do not want to maintain my programs.

tldr: max 9 days if it’s really stinky.

How planes generate lift.

My personal order:

Repositories > AUR > Making an own AUR package > Making an own package not in AUR > Flatpak > Using an alternative to that application > consider if I really need it > AppImage

Of archeologists don’t know it: “for religious reasons”.

No, sorry, I’m dumb.

On my company mail account I have collected circa 10000 mails during the past 10 years, which is circa 80 mails a month - and that is a lot.

If you’re not following multiple high-volume mailing lists since a decade and archive every single e-mail I don’t think its normal to have 50000 mails in a mailbox.

Edge cases are not the norm, though.

This is why no-one in the right mind uses Sylpheed, but the actively maintained fork Claws Mail (which just recently had a new version released).

Navigating a combination of the distro’s native package manager (apt, pacman, rpm, whatever), snap, flatpack and still having to set up the maintainers’ custom repositories to get stuff that’s even remotely up-to-date somehow

This sounds like a you problem, to be honest. If you want the most up-to-date software, just use a distribution that updates very often or uses a rolling-release concept.

The different UI toolkits, desktop environment, window manager and compositor seem to be fighting each other.

If you use one of them, not that much. If you start mixing them it becomes a huge mess. At one point in time I had Ubuntu installed, running Gnome, but having Openbox as window manager set. It was an absolute mess. Nowadays I think it’s even more of a mess, especially with gnome and this stupid Adwaita library with the stupid CSM.

But I happily ran pure Openbox on X11 for a decade and run labwc on Wayland since ca. 2 years now.

I do a lot of .NET programming and photo editing. I could probably replace VS with VScode or Ryder but it’s an additional hurdle. For photo editing, I haven’t found a single thing that fits my workflow the way Bridge, Camera Raw and Photoshop do.

Then stick with Windows. Or run this software in VM with GPU pass-through and KVM. I really don’t see an issue here. Use the tool that best fits your needs.

After seven years of active development

I wonder where they got this from. The 2.x branch was first released 21 years ago.

Seems like not entirely. But oh well. It looked so good on YouTube. Especially the customizations and alternate UIs.

Currently I’m angrily sticking with Firefox. But once Floorp switches to the current version of Firefox as base I’ll totally try this one. According to what I found, they will switch with the next major release.

This is the way to go!

Yeah, but it is just “fine”.