I’m between distros and looking for a new daily driver for my laptop. What are people daily driving these days? Are there any new cool things to try?

I have been using linux mint recently. I have used nixos and arch in the past. Personally, linux mint uses flatpacks too much for my liking. Although, I might have a warped perspective after using arch. (the aur is crazy big)

  • jack@monero.town
    2·
    7 months ago

    Do you have to watch a loading screen while system updates are applied like on regular Fedora or is it in the background?

    Many flatpak apps are maintained by unofficial volunteers, and this isn’t always clear on Flathub; I view this as a security risk and would prefer to see a flag or warning of some kind when a flatpak is not maintained by the official upstream developer

    On flathub.org there’s a blue checkmark for apps maintained by the devs

    • thayerEnglish
      2·
      7 months ago

      Do you have to watch a loading screen while system updates are applied like on regular Fedora or is it in the background?

      The image is downloaded and staged in the background of the active session. Upon reboot, the session seamlessly defaults to the staged image. For flatpaks, the updates happen immediately and without the need for a reboot.

      On flathub.org there’s a blue checkmark for apps maintained by the devs

      Aha, that must be one of the newer features implemented from the beta portal they’d been working on. I’m glad to hear it, and overall I hope to see more official upstream devs come on board with the platform (Signal, I’m looking at you).

      • jack@monero.town
        2·
        7 months ago

        The image is downloaded and staged in the background of the active session. Upon reboot, the session seamlessly defaults to the staged image. For flatpaks, the updates happen immediately and without the need for a reboot.

        That’s great to hear. Maybe I’ll give Silverblue a try

        • thayerEnglish
          2·
          7 months ago

          Sounds good. I don’t think the automatic background updates are enabled by default, at least they weren’t when I last installed it. To enable:

          1. Edit /etc/rpm-ostreed.conf and set AutomaticUpdatePolicy=stage
          2. Reload system service: rpm-ostree reload
          3. Enable the timer daemon: systemctl enable rpm-ostreed-automatic.timer --now

          Also, consider disabling GNOME Software’s management of flatpaks with the following:

          rpm-ostree override remove gnome-software-rpm-ostree

          The flatpaks will continue to be updated by the backend system, but you’ll no longer have to deal with the sluggish frontend UI to keep things up to date.