I don’t know tons of the detail but I understand the principle. The immutable part of the system is really just an applied oci container image for any ublue based distro.

Certain mount points are writable and persisted (e.g. /home), but otherwise you can just reimage the entire system with any compatible (ublue based) image. Then each image is built by layering changes using ostree. So that’s how you get the different distros.

Silverblue is ublue with gnome, kinoite is ublue with KDE, Bazzite layers steam, proprietary Nvidia drivers and other stuff mainly gaming related, etc.

System updates (which tend to be regular) are just applying an updated image, so actually updating is effectively the same as rebasing.

You can also yourself add ostree layers on top of the base image, and if you rebase to a different one your layers get reapplied on top.

There is definitely this for activities, so I’d be surprised if there isn’t for virtual desktops given how much more popular/supported they are

See also: GNU’s Not Unix, WINE Is Not an Emulator…

And in a slightly different way: I’m So Meta Even This Acronym (ISMETA)

Since they already mentioned WSL, you can also describe distrobox like WSL for Linux.

but yeah, agree this would be the simplest.

This is kind of only a problem if you let it be. It’s more likely to affect more tech savvy people, but lacking in Linux experience, as they will be aware enough of their specific technical desires/needs, but not have the knowledge to know what meets them.

For regular people who just use windows or Mac os that came with the computer, then they will be happy with whatever Linux flavour they get, because it just is their computer’s OS.

I agree the spectrum of distros can be hard to navigate, but ultimately it makes not much difference. Just pick one.

As for the rest:

• if you don’t want to experiment, pick the DE you like the look of most, possibly basing it on an OS you’re more familiar with.
  • If you want a vaguely older windows (7ish) look/feel use KDE.
  • If you like the macos workflow either use Gnome or pick a distro that more closely mimics it (Garuda, Mint with Cinnamon)
  • if you do want to experiment, install a handful of distros in VMs. This is what I did before picking what I’m running now
• For X/Wayland unless you really have some reason to care, just use the DE default. Most that support Wayland allow switching at the login screen anyway
• init/systemd, I wouldn’t pick with those in mind, just use what the distro comes with. For the average user, who cares?! For a non average user, pick one, if you change your mind then change it
• package manager, again who cares?! Use what the distro uses, or increasingly use nix, or flatpak, or distrobox, or all of them

For most regular people, the choice isn’t a hurdle - pick one with a default DE that looks nice, and for everything else use what it came with.

For anyone else, instead of being paralysed by choice, just try something and change later if you’re dissatisfied.

It seems very anecdotal at the moment (both for success and problems), but I think it depends a lot on what card and drivers, and the situation is improving.

Personally (though as I say, anecdotal) I got a new card (16GB 4060Ti) and switched from Win10 to Linux as a daily driver in October, and have had no issues.

Some info:

• I’ve installed Bazzite, based on Fedora universal blue and comes with proprietary Nvidia drivers and configured to support a bunch of gaming stuff
  • lots of distros optionally come with the proprietary Nvidia drivers, like Garuda, Pop!OS…
  • I picked Bazzite since I have a steam deck (which convinced me desktop gaming Linux was viable) and it aims to be steam os like, and as a dev the universal blue approach appealed to me
• I’m using X11 for now. While there are anecdotal successes with Wayland, they seem to be fewer than with X
• I have multiple monitors with different aspect and resolution (but same scaling) and haven’t experienced any issues

Ha! Good to know

I 100% agree with the sentiment here, almost exactly what I said to my wife about the perfect blend; it’s uniquely Doctor Who.

However, the gravity bit is almost certainly not unnecessary, because they kept saying “mavity” for the rest of the episode. It’s a clue. This is no longer our universe, shenanigans are already afoot. There’s definitely a reset coming at some point, because it’s not going to be “mavity” for the rest of the show’s life.

And the Doctor is aware (his facial expressions whenever “mavity” was said, and he said “gravity” near the end), but Donna isn’t (she didn’t know what he meant when he said “gravity” near the end)

While I too like the analogy, and agree that Windows is becoming increasingly money grabby, I feel the need to be fair: as an OS it has supported native ISO mounting since Win7, just right click an ISO file and choose “Mount”…

Speak for yourself

Does anyone know if Susan is maybe a classically trained actor or something?

Lots of laugh out loud in this one for me.

Julian’s deadpan sass “good luck with your career”

Sam’s insane (but quite noisy) prize

I’m disappointed Alex only kept up with “(knees and toes)” for Sam’s.

No secret task mention this time I think?

My guess is a typo, possibly supposed to be 11 or 12? Is 1998 too early for TF2 design to be occurring?

Team Fortress 2 was announced in 1998

According to Wikipedia. So that looks plausible.

The post however talks about gathering feedback from players of TFC, which didn’t come out until 99. Maybe Robin meant the original mod, which he also worked on, or maybe he just misremembered at what point TFC came out or when they actually explored the death stuff that resulted in the freezecam.

Baguette is pain

This reminds me of my practice French oral exam at school, so not a typo but still:

As part of the conversation my teacher asked what sort of things I liked to read, and I decided to talk about a then popular technology magazine called T3.

“T trois” sounds rather like “Tais toi” (shut up), and she was a bit taken aback!

Thankfully though we learned not to use that in the real exam.

Haven’t seen this everywhere, but RPS say:

The original Tomb Raider was a relatively early 3D game, created in an era before analogue sticks, and it’s a little awkward to control in modern hands. The remasters include the ability to switch back and forth between “classic and modern joystick control schemes”, as well as camera lock-on

Just to be clear, Visual Studio does not officially run on anything other than Windows.

However, as the linked blog post indicates, since this is .NET based you can use any IDE or code editor you like that has support, such as Visual Studio Code, or JetBrains Rider, which are available for Linux and macOS.

The game engine’s own editor is also Windows only and presumably if that is .NET based then one day it might be cross platform if the community makes it happen. That doesn’t really relate to Visual Studio though.

I have a separate 4 joycon charging dock.

lazy today

I can sympathise.

Thanks, and thanks for posting all these! Definitely a highlight of my feed.

Any chance of reverting the date format?

• I find it hard to read generally in my feed since it’s shorter and just numbers
• but also, the old format is unambiguous; the new format is literally only used in the USA.

Ooh! Are you one of today’s lucky 10,000?!

The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins