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Joined 1 month ago
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Cake day: May 18th, 2024

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  • I don’t know the pros or cons of it vs Nix and others, but one pro is that it also runs on MacOS and other OSs. I’ve never used it, but it’s nice that uBlue offers a simple installation ootb.
    Many devs seem to use it regularly, and it isn’t dead simple to set up from what I’ve heard. When uBlue offers an installation, then there is at least one person using it, otherwise it wouldn’t exist :D




  • GrapheneOS is probably the best option out there.

    As you said, it’s only for Pixels currently, because

    1. They are more secure than most other phones. They have some kind of chip built in that makes them superior. I don’t know the specifics, but other commentators might add some information if needed. Something with encryption if I remember correctly. The GrapheneOS team is a bit …picky… when it comes to security, and most other phones don’t reach their requirements for a secure device.
    2. Google is one major contributor to Android, and their phones are fine tuned to work perfectly with it. Other manufacturers’ phones feel less polished.
    3. It’s easier to maintain one line of devices that are very similar, instead of keeping hundred phones up to date and secure. Pixels are similar to iPhones, they get updated almost simultaneously and are similar. If you now add a phone from a different line, e.g. a Fairphone or Nothing Phone, things get more complicated. If you look at Calyx (more onto that later), the FP4 caused quite some headaches for the dev team.

    Pixels are cheap(ish) for what you get, and I believe Google makes them so cheap because 99% of users don’t care which ROM/OS is installed. Those are the advertisment-cows that will get milked. If you buy a Pixel and install a custom ROM on it, they will loose money.


    My experience with GrapheneOS has been great. My Pixel 5 hit EOL a while ago and still gets maintenance updates almost weekly.
    Many security additions are overkill for me, but quite some make a lot of sense.

    I used CalyxOS for a year too, but now that I don’t get full updates anymore, I don’t feel safe anymore with it.

    I think GrapheneOS is technically superior to Calyx, especially due to the sandboxing they do. MicroG has full root privileges and can do with your phone what it wants, while also breaking some apps due to missing dependencies. If you choose to enable Play Services on GrapheneOS, they are user level and heavily restricted, and only you decide how much access you want to give them.

    Regarding Calyx, since they don’t limit themselves as much in terms of security, they also offer a ROM for the Fairphone. Maybe check that out too.

    DivestOS also seems to be a good option. AFAIK it’s based on LineageOS and supports a lot of devices, while being more secure than LOS.

    Regarding Linux phones, I don’t have any experience with them. I tried Phosh (Mobile Gnome) on an exhibition a while ago, and it felt great and interesting, but from what I’ve heard, they are nowhere as good as Android.


    My personal ranking:

    1. GrapheneOS on a Pixel. Get an used/ refurbished device if you don’t want to support Google. Best price-performance ratio, great OS, and very good hardware (battery life, camera, etc.)
    2. CalyxOS on a Fairphobe. Modular device with good repairability. Nowhere near as good in terms of what you’ll get for your money. Better security than 95% of other phone ROMs, oh, and you can just swap your battery in seconds if you want that :D
    3. DivestOS on a random supported phone, e.g. a China device. Nowhere near as sustainable (short lived update support, no spare parts, etc.)
    4. Linux phone. Only a good option for a tinkering device right now imo.

  • Short answer: use uBlue.


    Longer answer:

    Even though uBlue is technically “downstream”, it also isn’t. uBlue builds its’ packages automatically, and you are never more than a few hours (1 day max for huge updates) away from upstream. It feels more like “sidestream” (if that word exists?).

    One reason it exists is, as you already said, because layering takes quite some time.
    At least I personally don’t wanna use stock Fedora (Atomic) and would install some codecs, tweaks and such anyway, and uBlue does that already for me.
    Update time doesn’t matter anymore for me, because uBlue updates itself automatically in the background. Silverblue doesn’t do that afaik.

    Depending on how “custom” your system should be, you can take a look at the uBlue builder, where you can create your own image based on already existing ones if you like.

    The cool thing about Fedora Atomic is, that you don’t have to stick to anything. If you don’t like something anymore, you can rebase in less than two minutes without any hassle and jump from image to image, no matter if it’s an official one (e.g. Silverblue) or some obscure uBlue image.


  • This may be an unpopular opinion, but you can use pretty much anything you like, as long as it isn’t brand new or extremely old.
    Even stuff with Nvidia GPUs and stuff.
    Even MS Surface devices work decently.

    Thing is, for a really smooth experience, where you don’t feel like a second class citizen, and everything works ootb, proper support is advantageous.

    I have a Dell XPS laptop, and it works fine. Sometimes, the WiFi switches itself off, and I have to restart the connection, but other than that, everything is flawless.
    Thinkpads are great too, since they are also used heavily in offices, where they get thrown out or sold cheaply. Maybe ask there.

    I personally would recommend something that you can repair yourself, or at least change the battery and memory.







  • Same here. Like… forever now.
    When I click “hibernate”/ “standby”, the PC goes off for a second, and then switches on again. Resetting the energy settings to default helped for some time, but that only made it a bit less often IIRC, not fixing it.

    On my laptop, that doesn’t happen. I set it to go to standby if the lid closes, and it works as it should.

    My thesis is, that there are different standby-states. KDE tries to force one explicit kind of it, and if the device doesn’t support it, it won’t go into standby properly.

    On Gnome on the other hand, I never had problems with the standby on my PC. It’s a KDE issue


  • Go with Bazzite instead.

    The Nvidia drivers come pre-bundled with your install and are baked into the image itself.
    The good thing is, they won’t break, and if they should, you can just roll back to yesterday’s image by just rebooting. It’s extremely reliable and lets you just dive into your optimal gaming experience straight away.

    Don’t use Manjaro. The dev team is very sketchy and it’s a very unreliable distro. If you really want Arch, for whatever reason, use EndeavourOS. I personally don’t like the rolling release model and find Fedora (Bazzite) just right. If I need something from the AUR, then I use Distrobox.

    PopOS is too old for me, and isn’t evolving at all right now. I would skip it until Cosmic is ready.




  • There are a few “grandfather”-distros out there, for example Debian and Arch. They’ve been around for a few decades now.

    Then, they got kinds, because some people said “I don’t like xy, I will do it better”, but granddaddy disagreed, so they split apart.
    That’s what Ubuntu is to Debian for example, that’s why Ubuntu is Debian-based. They are related to each other (e.g. the same package manager), but differ in some things (e.g. update cycle).

    This cycle of forking continues, that’s how Mint got there for example. Mint is based on Ubuntu, and Ubuntu is based on Debian.

    But nowadays, the gap between distros gets smaller, with things like Distrobox, Nix, Flatpaks, and more. I wouldn’t mind working with a PC that has Mint on it instead of Fedora. Sure, there are reasons why I prefer one over the other, but in the end, they’re all the same.

    One example I can think of where the base matters, and not the package manager, is when adding an user to the sudo group. RedHat distros need another promt than Debian for example.

    But other than that, the thing that defines a distro are the packages, they make a distro unique.


  • Like I said I’m really new at this, hopefully it’s ok to post this here but if not please let me know where would be more appropriate.

    Perfectly fine, we’re here to help!

    but I’ve read even better things about Bazzite and want to give it a whirl.

    Imo, you’re right. Bazzite > Nobara. Just don’t expect better performance. But yeah, image based distros like Bazzite are way easier to use and maintain themselves.
    Just remember that those kind of distros are a bit different from mutable OSs, like regular Fedora.
    If you need certain CLI or other tools not available in your software center, use Distrobox and try to not install anything on your host if possible.

    My question is, am I able to download it to a usb and just do a clean install without issues or do I have to do anything beforehand. I originally installed Nobara using btrfs if that makes any difference.

    They should have the same installer. Just install Bazzite the same as you did Nobara, and select “Free up disk space” or however it’s called. That will wipe all the Nobara stuff.

    In general, you shouldn’t have any problems. In my opinion, Bazzite is one of the most user friendly distros out there. Just learn how to use containers if you do more advanced stuff, that’s the biggest difference between that and other classic distros :)


  • That sounds so useful if I can stick with it enough.

    That’s my main issue for private use. At my job, I never had problems sticking with the habit of writing everything down. I work in a science job, and documentation is key there. So, I basically get paid for exactly that.

    But in my free time, the whole concept of task management, knowledge offloading, and more, is a bit harder for me, especially when I come home tired.

    Welcome in the life of someone with ADHD. I need my life to be organized, but have a hard time with exactly that. It’s like needing to find your contact lenses because you dropped them…


  • Yeah, the Android app is horrible. I only use it if I don’t have my PC in arm’s reach.

    It feels sluggish, buggy, is overloaded, I always get sync issues (usually the last words I just typed go missing), and some features (especially the graph overview) don’t work at all sometimes. And the whole app sometimes feels like an alpha version, which is just a no-go…

    I really hope the mobile app gets polished more over the next months. Many people nowadays mostly use mobile devices, and having such an unpolished app really hurts the image. And, PLEASE devs, test your software before shipping it out. Especially the mobile app is broken half the time.

    I still gladly pay the 5$/ month for the optional sync and to support the devs.