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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: October 10th, 2023

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  • Don’t know about your hardware. I don’t own a notebook anymore. I read good things about the AUR package optimus-manager-qt for hybrid GPUs (iGPU+dedicated GPUs) but also that it can be a bit tricky.

    I exlusively used dedicated Nvidia cards in desktop rigs with Arch & EndeavourOS since 2017 when I switched from Win 10. Additionally exclusively KDE.

    Though I had a bit of experience with other distros and desktop environments before my switch I’d wager to say you should give one last try to EndeavourOS, even if you have barely any Linux experience. I mean you had so many failed attempts. One more won’t hurt.

    Use EndeavourOS not arch. First, it uses the standard initial graphical system-setup (Calamares), then it comes with some good default settings & tools and finally a welcome screen which features links to additional tools like mirror selection (for faster updates), update shortcuts, package search, docs/wikis/forums or logs.

    I’d select KDE in Calamares and I’d install the graphical package manager octopi via “yay octopi” after system installation and activate yay for the AUR in the octopi settings as e.g. optimus-manager-qt (which you should only use with hybrid GPUs) is only available in the AUR. You need to click the alien symbol in octopi to install from the AUR.

    The AUR (Arch User Repository) is the repository for packages not available in the main repositories. AUR packages are user contributed where the maintainers write a so called PKGBUILD file which contains the steps to build and install a package from foreign sources (e.g. from a debian DPKG or from github sources). With octopi you can quickly open the PKGBUILD file and look from where the maintainer pulls the parts of the package.

    The amount of software available in the AUR is gigantic but it can potentially contain malware (which happened a very few times). But you’ll have a hard time finding users who actually had that happen to them. A good indicator that the package is ok are its number of votes. But if you really want to know you have to check the sources in the PKGBUILD. If they come from github, you could check the github-repo and only it’s stars (votes) if you won’t read the sourcecode.


    That all sounds mighty complicated but it isn’t. Just try to install packages from the main repo. Click the alien symbol only when you don’t find something official.

    So with octopi and the welcome screen you don’t need to enter any terminal commands for package installation or the system update. I had only a few updates where problems occurred in like 7 years and they were always fixable. The Arch Wiki and the Endeavour forums could always help.

    I can’t guarantee you’ll have a better experience than with the other distros and you will meet some bumps or roadblocks for sure. I’m not playing the the most current games and a lot of retro games via Lutris and Heroic. For some of them I had to tinker a bit and try different starters than Steam. Arma, Path of Exile, Sekiro (fitgirl repack), Diablo Immortal were tricky but all the steam games or e.g. Witcher 3 via Heroic run very nice.

    On the screen where you login (usually SDDM) you can switch between Wayland and X11. Which are two very different Display managers. Wayland is the replacement for the very old X11. It works way(land) better with AMD GPUs than with Nvidia which are usable though but work much better on X11. Games can be faster on wayland for Nvidia than on X11. But things like missing color management in nvidia-settings make me stay with X11.





  • KDE offers a better user experience than MacOS or Windows (haven’t used 11 though). It really took off in the last years.

    By default it’s similar to Windows but you can completely customize the look and feel without touching a terminal/console. It has inbuilt stores with user contributed themes, icons, backgrounds, widgets and extensions. Some of those can make KDE really shiny.

    Then you can completley change the layout of the Desktop. Add panels (alias taskbars), add different buttons and functions to the panels change their positions. The widgets KDE comes with are very nice too. Especially the hardware monitor ones. I use HW-mon widgets for temperatures, diskspace, ram, network-activity e.g.

    You can add as much virtual desktops as you want. You can activate desktop animations for things like switching between virtual desktops or window overviews. With an extension like Krohnkite you can automatically arrange your windows. You can change most keyboard combos for the various functions of the desktop.

    KDE is based on the superior Qt programming framework and is therefore pretty optimized and most of the apps are pretty consistent in their design language unless they’re written for the concurrent desktop environment Gnome whose apps can also be run under KDE.

    Alt+F2 opens a KRunner overlay which is KDEs universal search for applications documents, web, even open tabs in browsers. You could also open the Kickstarter (Startmenu) via the Windows-key and enter the application name right away.

    Browsernames are the same. Just search them via KRunner. The best way to install software for newbies is a package manager which is included on user-friendly distros like Fedora, Mint, OpenSUSE, Kububtu. You open the package-manager/appstore search for the application you want to install and click install. Huge Advantage: With every OS-Update all the software you installed via a package manager gets automatically updated along with the OS packages.

    Generally if you come from Windows use KDE. There other desktop environments like Cinnamon or Mate similar to Windows but none come close to KDE. If you feel adventureous and want to learn a completely new desktop workflow use Gnome.

    The first and most important choice is to choose a good Distribution. I’m using EndeavourOS and Arch. They are extremely good distros but maybe not the best for beginners (although Endeavour is not too bad with onboarding).

    Fedora or OpenSUSE could ease the learning curve.












  • And it’s more ethical and environmentally friendlier than Lithium-Ion, right?

    Norway has just started a deep sea excavation for cobalt and copper which as I understand (I’m clueless) can be omitted from sodium-ion batteries. The excavation is roughly of the size of equador and will take place in an area that may contain previously unknown lifeforms and critically endangered eco-system.

    A paragraph of an article seems to show their non-chalance regarding the ecosystem impacts and unknown side-effects:

    “The Norwegian government recognizes that it can’t be sure any mining would be sustainable—it’s not been able to determine the likely environmental impact of extracting minerals in its waters, nor exactly what minerals are there to be found. “We do not currently have the knowledge needed to extract minerals from the seabed in the manner required,” says Næss.”

    These are the guys whose grid runs on 99% hydropower but they keep drilling for fossile fuels and now rare earths to export them and in addition are still hunting wales.

    So to summarise: I’m very happy that there seems to be an eco friendly battery where its main component is the overambundantly availabe sodium. And the short wikipedia entry seems to reflect, that it’s a more simple tech.