Yeah, only thing I can think of is the few banking apps that don’t have web versions.

I was lucky enough to have all my banking and 2FA apps work perfectly on GrapheneOS. The only app that gave me a significant amount of trouble was iClicker, which my school uses for attendance. That was fixed by enabling Google Play location services, and there was a (fairly expensive) alternative anyway.

I did have to buy a new phone to use Graphene, because I got my previous one as part of a carrier’s cell plan, and it had a locked BIOS. Though I think the purchase was worth it, and just moving my SIM card from one device to another was enough to get it working.

of course not!

Yeah, it’s fake, and as other commenters have pointed out, it’s also inaccurate to how the GPLv2 works. It was not meant to convince anyone.

I came across a bunch of those recently, which is how I came up with the idea for this, as a parody :)

Internet horror is disappointingly un-creative. I have no idea why the weakest works (sonic.exe, anti-piracy, kill screens) always end up becoming huge trends, or why so few people try to put a significant twist on said trends.

Tons of companies are shipping Linux without giving users access to the source code, it’s just that only one has the term “Tivoization” named after it.

Where’d you get the OneShot Firefox icon?

I’ll probably use Codeberg or another Forgejo server for my next programming project, if/when I have one that is far enough along to publish (motivating myself to get that far is a tall task). Until then, everything I’d consider contributing to is either on GitHub, or is self-hosting some other software, so I don’t have a reason to create an account yet.

https://github.com/TeamNewPipe/NewPipe/issues/11139

I’ve switched to FreeTube for now, it still works using the Invidious API. This is happening because YouTube is testing forced login to watch videos or use the API. There is a workaround it seems, but we’ll have to wait for all the major clients to roll it out.

Yeah, 50% (ram / 2) seems about right.

The major tradeoff with zRAM is that programs are much more likely to crash due to running out of memory, but will run faster when memory is running low and freezes are less likely. You can think of it as offloading the pressure that traditional swap puts onto your disk, onto the (much faster) CPU. There will be an impact on CPU usage, but not enough to cause noticeable slowdown; in my experience running Linux, the CPU is almost never the reason something is slow, and is only going to be under significant pressure if you’re running a 3D game in software rendering, compiling a large program, or another complex CPU-bound task.

I wouldn’t recommend making the switch unless you often encounter system freezes or slowness while running tasks that use a lot of RAM (like web browsing on certain sites, or gaming), but it will improve things in that case.

You can install an antivirus, but you really don’t need to. Malware for Linux is rare, and malware that targets desktop Linux users is extremely rare (to the point that it’s a newsworthy story every time it does appear). Most distros have ClamAV and the frontend ClamTk in their repos, but it’s primarily used to scan servers for Windows malware before it reaches its intended target. Some Windows malware can still be harmful if run with Wine/Proton, but unless you’re downloading and running a lot of Windows software from unofficial sources (which you shouldn’t have any reason to) that won’t be a risk.

I’m using an AMD Ryzen iGPU on Wayland. I switched to Testing because the support already existed, but the kernel and mesa versions in stable were buggy for my particular GPU and I didn’t want to make a FrankenDebian.

It’s not systemd’s fault, though systemd most often implements offline updates. The arguments for and against offline updates have nothing to do with systemd.

A lot of Linux distros, and graphical package managers like Discover and GNOME Software, are moving in that direction, under the argument that updating while online can cause disruptions to running software, in the worst case including the package manager itself (which can brick the system if it occurs in the middle of a critical update), and updates can’t be applied until the affected program (or the system, in case of critical components like the kernel) restarts anyway. Fedora Magazine explains the reasoning here: https://fedoramagazine.org/offline-updates-and-fedora-35/

In my personal experience though, I have never had an issue enabling automatic online updates on Debian Stable, and have had computers stay online for several months without any noticeable issues beyond Firefox restarting, so the risk is there but it’s pretty minor.

I personally don’t use Arch, but I think the reason so many people find it stable in practice is because they know their system well. When something breaks or needs to be changed, they know which configuration file to edit, which package to {un,re,}install, what to look for in the AUR, etc., and they can usually avoid those things in the first place, because they went through a fairly hands-on install process, not to mention having the best Linux wiki in existence at their disposal.

On top of that, I think a lot of derivatives of Debian, including Ubuntu and all its derivatives, severely undermine their stability by providing custom configurations for or changes to software that are rarely documented and completely transparent to the user… until they break and leave no indication of how to fix them. Which is one reason why I ended up using base Debian.

For me, the outdated packages in stable have actually gotten better over time, as DEs get closer to a place where I don’t need any major updates to enjoy using them, Flatpaks become more readily available, and on a subjective level, I get less and less invested in current Linux news. Before Debian became my “forever distro”, I’d hopped to it a few times, and often found myself wishing for a newer piece of software that wasn’t in backports or flathub, or simply being bored with how stable it is, but that’s been happening less and less. And I feel like Debian 12 in particular left me with software that I wouldn’t mind being stuck with for two years.

I’ve gotten warnings to upgrade my browser with Debian’s Firefox ESR, but they never affected a website’s usability in a way that a newer version would fix, and they do provide security updates and new ESR series when they come out; even if you must have the newest Firefox, you can use the Flatpak.

Additionally, I’m currently on testing in order to get better support for my GPU, and each time I’ve tried to use it, it’s worked for me for a longer time than the last as I get better at resolving or avoiding broken packages. If you do experience issues like the one you described, and can replicate them, and no one else has already reported them, you should report them to Debian’s bug tracker. The whole point of Testing is to find and squash all the critical bugs before the next stable releases.

how do I install programs from outside the “discover store”? I can get the Plex app through the built in app store, but the Plex media server app isn’t on there so I have to download it from the website, which gives me a .rpm file.

Installing from Discover (or to be more precise, your distribution’s software repositories, for which Discover is a frontend) is usually best practice. Programs you find online are less likely to work on your distro (especially something as technologically unusual as Bazzite). That said, from what I could find online the command to install an RPM file on that distro is sudo rpm-ostree install <path/to/package.rpm>. I have never used boxbuddy or any kind of distro container, but I imagine it would as simple as opening the terminal for one of your distros and entering the appropriate command for that distro to install your package.

Also, outside of the built in discover store, what’s the best way to install programs?

Generally, Flatpak packages are safe to install, and any Flatpak repos you enable will show up in Discover. Flathub contains the majority of Flatpak packages in existence, though it might be enabled by default on Bazzite.

What are some cool programs in general to check out? My main use case is gaming, I don’t program or do any work on my PC but I’d like to explore just for the sake of exploring!

Just look around in Discover and you’ll find lots of gems. As a retro gamer, I’ve found RetroArch indispensable, as a frontend for all my emulators and then some. Lutris is nice if you want all of your games to be centralized under one launcher. There are lots of fun time-wasting open-source games too.

Also, what’s a good way to familiarize myself with using the terminal? I’ve used the terminal on Windows quite a bit in the past, but only for basic things like unlocking a bootloader on Android and sending a ROM to it, back when I cared enough to root my phones. How would I, for example, pull a program off of github and compile it myself if needed? There’s a program on github called gHub GUI by ysph that I’d like to check out, would be nice to be able to configure my mouse since piper doesn’t seem to recognize my mouse.

You can just ease into it, or read any number of Linux courses online. Following tutorials on Linux will be as easy as following tutorials on Windows. You can learn about programs with either man <command>, info <command>, or <command> --help.

Most projects include README files instructing you on how to compile and/or install them; the exact process depends on the program. But generally, if you see files named “configure” and “Makefile”, the process is to install dependencies, then cd into the source code folder and run ./configure; make; sudo make install.

What are some general best practices that differ from Windows? I don’t really know how to narrow this question down, apologies for it being so vague.

Discover should be the first place you go to install programs. Don’t install programs from random websites unless you absolutely have to. They probably won’t work.

A lot of the programs you are used to from Windows will not be available for Linux. They might be compatible with Wine or Proton, but try to find alternatives to them before you try that. There is a KDE app and a GNOME app for most of the basic uses, and https://alternativeto.net/ is a decent resource for finding Linux-friendly alternatives to just about anything.

You probably don’t need an antivirus - there are viruses for Linux, but they are extremely rare, and the anti-malware programs that are available for Linux will only detect and remove Windows viruses.

Don’t have any comments on your other issues, because I don’t have experience with the software you’re using (I rarely if ever buy “gaming” hardware).

Debian can still work, but you’d have better chances with legacy LXDE, or starting with no DE and installing IceWM.

Q4OS Trinity, antiX, and Damn Small Linux are all Debian derivatives known for being able to run on very old systems, and they’re among the most lightweight distros I know that are still functional for most purposes.

I’ve had great experience with QKSMS on GrapheneOS. Thanks for directing me to the fork, I’m switching to it right away.

1. Create a source control repository containing all your code, and publish it to an online code forge. GitHub’s docs might help with this: https://docs.github.com/en/get-started/start-your-journey
2. Choose an open-source license and add it to the repository as a LICENSE file. If you want to require any projects that build upon yours to be open-source too, the GNU GPL is a good choice. If you want to allow proprietary programs to include your library without releasing any source code other than that which is directly based on yours, the GNU LGPL is good for that. If you want to allow people to do whatever they want, even use all your code as the basis of a proprietary program without credit, the Unlicense is a good choice. There are a lot of licenses with different degrees of “copyleft” and attribution requirements in between. Technically publishing with a license file is all you need to do, but there are more things you should do.
3. Create a README text file describing what your program does, and instructing users on how to compile and run it. Consider including more detailed documentation on how to use it, as well.
4. Clean up your code and file layout so that it’s as easy as is feasible for other programmers to understand.
5. Promote your project to whoever you think might find it useful!