Basically the title. I’ve only ever seen huge 20 page guides on how to make it work. Is there an easy way?

Specifically on Debian or Arch with a laptop with two gpus (zephyrus g14)

I love the idea of trying Debian but every time I try to ditch Arch for it I end up just giving up after not being able to find all the packages I need in the repos.

How do you guys deal with that? I’m not even talking about them being out of date. I’m talking about them missing altogether.

As simple as the title sounds I'm having huge trouble getting that working.

Thunderbird only fetches new mail while it's open.

Who the heck knows how to get evolution/geary to play nice with business gmail/protonmail.

Does anyone have a simple way of solving this problem?

edit. Also, somewhat related, is there a good looking, simple e-mail client? Thunderbird looks busy. Geary kinda looks okay but I cant get it to work at all.

I end up manually clicking to turn it on anyway every time. Would love to automate it.

I have a few questions on how to best behave to be as welcoming and inclusive as possible without sounding bad. I hope you guys don't hate me.

I'm just a straight male. Are my pronouns he/him? Is that how I should tell people? Do you actually tell them as you meet them ? Do I have to wait for a certain social cue ?

How about online. Should I tell people or have it on my personal profile somewhere?

And about respecting other people's pronouns. How do i figure them out ? Is it a big faux pas if I don't before I know them ? Is it a faux pas if I refer to someone I just met and I assumed to be male as he/him?

I've never seen anyone referring to anyone irl by non conventional pronouns. Is it an actual thing or is it currently being pushed to make the world a more inclusive place?

I'd love some help with all of this.

I usually trust my distro repos without checking. Can the same be applied to flathub without much worry?

I gave it a fair shot for about a year, using vanilla GNOME with no extensions. While I eventually became somewhat proficient, it's just not good.

Switching between a few workspaces looks cool, but once you have 10+ programs open, it becomes an unmanageable hell that requires memorizing which workspace each application is in and which hotkey you have each application set to.

How is this better than simply having icons on the taskbar? By the way, the taskbar still exists in GNOME! It's just empty and seems to take up space at the top for no apparent reason other than displaying the time.

Did I do something wrong? Is it meant for you to only ever have a couple applications open?

I'd love to hear from people that use it and thrive in it.

So. I tried bitwarden for a while with 2fa. I absolutely did not realize that if you lose your 2fa you are done in that service. So yeah. Time to rebuild.

I'm attempting to go all in on proton stuff ATM. Drive, email, vpn and password manager.

What's the easiest way to set everything up in a way that the whole system is safe and that minimizes the chance of me locking myself out ?

Stuff like. Do I bother with 2fa? What are yubikeys. Are these the answer? Do I 2fa all.accounts other than the protonmail one ?

Long single use case passwords or memorizable ones ?

Do I do throwaway emails or everything signs up to my main one ?

Sorry if I overloaded questions. But id love go get insight from people with more experience.

Edit. And oh. Threat model.

Id love yo not lose accounts if someone physically steals one of my devices.

I'd love to not get hsckdd online by someone random that is not targeting me specifically

And in broad strokes. I'd like to keep all my accounts as private as possible from private companies and governments. But im flexible on this one if its too much hassle.