nix-shell is great too. sort of like a “demo” of something before actually committing to it or if you just want to use something one off without adding it to your config and rebuilding.

As a dev it’s fantastic for testing also. can just try something on a bunch of browsers without actually installing the browser. love it.

the only issues I had with KDE when I was recently using it all revolved around the panel. Random crashes with “too much” interaction. Adding widgets for the panel or desktop is still to this day hit or miss. clicking the “get new widget” option is a roll of the dice if it will actually work or not or even find the thing you want. It’s still horrible at loading stuff in there. and installing whatever, again, is a roll of the dice if it will actually do it or not.

I like KDE, it’s a good and solid DE but man do they really need to focus on fixing the panels and the installation/discovery of widgets. The alternative is using the pling store and that’s just a headache on it’s own.

someone likely borked IAM.

it’s funny because once you start using other distros you quickly realize how easy Arch actually is. I find Arch more straight forward and easier to use that Ubuntu. Ubuntu makes me want to rip what remaining hair I have out.

on my CachyOS/Arch and NixOS machines I just use borg to backup to my dedicated server. Very easy to do. I have a couple alias’ set up so I can view my backups easily through my file manager on whatever local machine. Essentially all you have to do is make a script to tell it what files/folders to backup, what to potentially ignore, how often you want to backup, the time of day you want it to happen, can also tell it to delete old backups. In NixOS it’s painfully easy to set up and can be done within the configuration.nix. On other distros the only difference is you have to set up a service and timer for it.

but I like it, it’s straight forward, never had issues with it.

I mean if you’re going to go the multiple user accounts route for different things wouldn’t it just be easier to just use QubesOS? No account switching and granted it will be a bit slower but saves you the headaches.

yeah some consider it a racist term because it originally applied specifically to Japanese Cars. i.e. Asian cars, Asians like eating Rice, POS modified Car isn’t a “Racer” it’s a “Ricer”.

I have ubuntu on my server and I really need to switch it. It’s such a dick move when you apt install something and it opts for a snap. I just roll my eyes and groan when I think of having to back up EVERYTHING (music, media, dockers configs, compiled projects, random projects, etc) in order to switch the distro. I dont’ have the time to do it. It’s like nearly 2TB worth of stuff.

you know the Fast and the Furious movies? at least the original 2 or 3, those cars were all tricked out with neon lights, decals, nitros, custom exhaust, all that? most of those cars were Japanese cars that were heavily modified. Basically it was a derogetory term for modifying a piece of shit car to look good, Especally if it was a Japanese car. you slap a body kit on it, neon lights, slap in some bucket seats, switch out the exhaust, but you dont’ touch the engine. that’s a “Ricer” it’s not a good thing in that specific car culture.

So for whatever reason someone at some point was modifying their Desktop Environment or Window Manager with neon borders and all that and decided to call it a Rice. You’re essentially modifying your OS without touching the “engine” so to speak. You’re just slapping a body kit, neon lights, some bucket seats etc onto your operating system.

because they’re built by individuals who are those things. that’s the controversy. that’s it.

the whole thing is people are upset that Framework sponsored those things because they don’t like paying Framework for their machines who in turn then give money to people they feel are facists.

right that’s why I said worse comes to worse and to take it with a grain of salt. For very simple issues it’s fine, beyond that it’s a coin toss. It’s a fine rubber duck. Like if I missed something obvious but I’m just not seeing it then it might point that out for me. Like for example I recently reinstalled my OS and I couldn’t get wireguad to work so as a last ditch effort I plugged it into Claude and it told me that I had forgotten to replace a privatekey on one of the peers. I had just completely missed it.

journalctl and log files are very valuable. If it’s specific to an application running said application in a terminal with verbose also gives can potentially provide you with a clear indication of what’s going wrong.

I’m dyslexic so I get syntax errors all the damn time and thankfully using NixOS it likes to remind me on rebuild how much of an idiot I am.

Worse comes to worse you can always plug the error into an LLM like Claude or Chatgpt. But take that with a grain of salt. It’ll give you a good base to start from for debugging but never trust something like Claude that will constantly tell you “it’s a known issue” when it isn’t.

All this being said I’ve had the best experience for help via whatever application/distro/whatever IRC channels on Libera chat.

they sponsored Omarchy and Hyprland. one a glorified dotfiles arch “distro” built by DHH who is pretty much a fascist and Hyprland a buggy neon mess of a WM built by a transphobic fascist.

So yeah, they’re not having a good time right now.

I don’t get it either. I mean the distro at the end of the day really doesn’t matter. like ok, which way do you want to type a line in a terminal to download something. you want Debian, Arch, Fedora, Nix or Gentoo.

People always suggest Mint and I don’t get why. I mean I could have Cagebreak or Herbstluftwm on Mint…is it still new user friendly? no? then it’s not the Distro it’s the DE.

Throw Cinnamon or KDE Plasma on Arch with a Distro Manager GUI, boom now that’s new user friendly.

It’s the DE that’s important, the Distro is whatever.

mobile only.

I mean honeslty why use base firefox when there are much better forks of firefox. Floorp for example which I like.

If I want straight up firefox without the AI stuff then I’ll just go use Librewolf.

I also use Navidrome and I might rip off your setup today. Right now I use supersonic for my client and when I listen to music I like to just play by tracks and randomize it. The issue is supersonic isn’t really great with randomization. I’ve noticed it’s not random at all and will follow a pattern. A lot of players are bad with this.

But for the life of me I just can’t find a good navidrome/subsonic client. NONE of the tui’s allow you to just play all your tracks and randomize them. it’s either by artist, or album, or playlist and I dont’ want to throw 6000+ songs into a playlist. I just want to randomize all my music.

actually been fighting with that all morning and I’m just about to give up. I don’t understand why my tiles will stack one on top of the other on one monitor but on the second monitor they dwindle.

it’s my dumb laptop in all honesty. it’s a hybrid amd/nvidia so on x11 I can’t game at all. which sucks cause I REALLY love Herbstluftwm. And due to my work I need tiling so for now I’ve settled on COSMIC. it’s beta, it’s buggy, the panel crashes randomly, can’t change the font to my liking but it’s pretty much my only working option on my current rig. I’ve tried KDE Plasma 6 with Krohnkite but that’s just a mess and also buggy for simply tiling.

The thing is I could use Hyprland, I know it works, I know it works well but I just don’t agree with the lead dev on anything and I don’t want to use something that goes against what I believe in. Hell I even tried building my own wayland wm.

look like it or not (and trust me, I don’t) unfortunately Hyprland is the best (while buggy best) WM for Wayland. And trust me, I’ve tried them all. The majority of the things just work right out of the box with hyprland. your next best option is Sway but if you’re on Nvidia then you’re essentially on your own as far as official support goes. Everything else? nothing comes close. It’s not like x11 WMs where you have plenty of good and working options, it’s just not there for wayland. sooooo everyone uses Hyprland.

The ease of use, the fact a good majority of things just work, and the vast amount of documentation/support for Hyprland puts it miles ahead of any competition. And considering the douchnozzle of a dev behind it, that sucks.

River is fine, but there’s some things on river that just won’t work. for the life of me I can’t figure out how to get xfreerdp to work on River and their multimonitor implementation is bleh. Sway is fine but like I said if you have Nvidia then they don’t like you. Niri is frustrating. and the rest are just meh. IF Cagebreak decided to get off their high horse and actually implement wlroots/layer than THAT would be the go to WM but that’s not going to happen. So Unfortunately we’re left with hyprland for now until something like COSMIC matures OR implements as much customization as hyprland which I doubt will happen.

The wayland landscape for WMs/Compositors absolutely sucks. Sorry but that’s just my personal honest opinion. And because of how my main laptop is setup I HAVE to use wayland so please if someone has a better tiling option than Hyprland that isn’t Sway then I’m all ears.