Sorry, I think I might have confused OmniOS with QubesOS.

😅, but QubesOS isn't a derivative of OpenBSD either. It might have inspired some of its parts, but fundamentally it's a completely different beast.

ZFS is itself a security feature because of how well it guarantees the fidelity of your data.

Do you happen to know if this goes beyond what Btrfs(/Bcachefs) provides on the Linux side of things?

My two cents; install uBlue's Microsoft Surface Images. Here you can find the (WIP) documentation on how it differs from other uBlue images. I'm sure the following lines should pique your interest:

• "Replaces the stock Fedora kernel with the Surface kernel
• Adds the correct kernel modules"

For installation, either refer to the dedicated page on installation (from ISO) or follow instructions on how to rebase (from an existing Fedora Atomic installation).

My personal take on what uBlue is, would be that it's how Fedora would love to ship their Atomic variants if they could ship everything without worrying about those things they can't (like hardware acceleration, codecs etc). Furthermore, uBlue even has device-specific images; which is just fantastic if you happen to own such a device.

Last, but definitely not least; it's the best platform in which the transition to Ostree Native Container has been realized. As such, this allows some very unique ways to maintain a distro. For example; if something broke (for whatever reason) on vanilla Fedora Atomic, then... well, you (the uBlue-user) wouldn't even have noticed it. Because that breakage simply never hit your device. Instead, uBlue's maintainers noticed the issue -> somehow applied changes to the image so that the image doesn't ship the issue (by either not shipping the breakage inducing update of the specific package or by shipping the workaround/fix with the image) -> the very next time you update your system (which happens automatically in the background by default) you just go on with your life as if nothing had happened in the first place 😅. So, in a sense, your system is managed such that breaking changes/updates don't hit you; while they do hit non-uBlue users.

And I haven't even touched upon how uBlue enhances tinkering or how it allows one to manage (a fleet of) self-customized images etc.

In case you're still not sure if you'd like to use a derivative rather than the original, then it's at least worth noting that uBlue is mentioned in Fedora's documentation.

Honestly, that's very encouraging! Thank you so much for providing me with very valuable insights and information! Have a good one! Cheers!

Thank you so much for your insights! Much appreciated!

Some packages haven’t been changed in 10 years, some are changed daily. It’s bleeding edge everything, and things don’t actually break that much. Lisp makes for (obviously IMO) beautiful, simple code, so most packages are a pleasure to fix, extend, or automate.

I want to have a better idea for much time is spend on 'management'; fix, extend and/or automate etc.

I was shocked when I went from “I’ve never used spacemacs before” to “I’m comfortably writing LaTeX here” in about half an hour.

This line really piqued my interest, especially considering that I've had another conversation with someone else in which the general sentiment seemed to be that "Spacemacs expects you to know Emacs, while being a completely different beast of itself.". May I ask how your Spacemacs is configured? Would you say it's close to the default config? Or rather a significant departure? Furthermore, I believe I've read the existence of some kind of version control. Which, at least by the name of it, should somehow contribute to a more stable experience. Or am I perhaps confusing things?

My setup still breaks occasionally and sometimes it’s a bit difficult to figure out why and how to fix it

Does this happen randomly? Or rather as a 'response'?

I like being able to change how the editor works on the fly just by writing some elisp anywhere

This sounds very interesting and promising. Would you mind providing an example of sorts such that I can perhaps better grasp both the sheer amount of new possibilities it provides as well as its (possible) limitations (if at all)?

I like that emacs has been around for decades and will be around for decades more.

I wholeheartedly agree! But, I am at least somewhat concerned when it comes to its 'gravitational pull from afar'. To me at least, it seems as if, currently, Neovim does a better job at attracting new people. Perhaps these are just mostly refugees from Vim. Nonetheless, it can't be ignored (I think). Would you mind sharing your thoughts on this?

I tend to use both, depending on the situation, with a lighter nvim config. Sometimes the 3 second emacs startup time is annoying so I use vim then. I think its fine to try both.

Could you elaborate more upon your workflow? Like, in which situation do you prefer Emacs and when do you prefer Neovim? I get that the lighter option is preferred when you want to perform a quick edit or can't be bothered with startup time. But I want to know it beyond that and -if possible- what led you to favor one over the other in each situation.

Regarding emacs declining popularity, I think that in the long term it could be a problem, since most people don’t want to learn elisp just to configure their editor. Elisp is very powerful in emacs, but its design is very different to other languages, so as emacs contributors get older, it could possibly lead to less and less new contributors.

How do you envision Emacs' future? Would, at some moment in the future, some kind of compatibility layer of sorts be developed that lower the entrance barrier? To my knowledge, Emacs has -contrary to Vim- been more open to community development. So I don't expect something like NeoVim to be developed for Emacs as there's less need for it. But I don't know how much they'd be willing to change Emacs for the sake of making it more attractive for new users.

Idk about the vim distros, but I think Doom Emacs is easier for beginners to get into.

Compared to Spacemacs I assume*. If so, would you mind elaborating?

Thanks OP for being relatively descriptive!

Your issues with xfce-notifyd don't make a lot of sense. Therefore, I wouldn't dismiss the thought that you might have tarnished your GNOME Wayland session. If possible, consider reinstalling a distro with GNOME pre-installed. Perhaps consider Fedora this time as it's less opinionated compared to Ubuntu and thus offers GNOME (almost exactly) like how its developers intended.

Don't be afraid to engage with GNOME's plethora of extensions. Sure, it's stupid that some basic functionality is only unofficially supported through extensions. But one simply can't deny how much they add to GNOME.

Currently, if Wayland is a requirement, then we're bound to GNOME, KDE Plasma (and COSMIC in the near future). Furthermore, there are a couple of window managers (of which Sway and Hyprland are the big ones) that are properly supported in Wayland. If, for whatever reason, GNOME is not it, then move on to explore the next. Rinse and repeat.

Regarding Arch; Arch is mostly an exercise in how good your system administration skills are. Btw, don't feel intimidated by this as the skills required are linearly correlated with the complexity of the system. E.g. a clean install with EndeavourOS that relies mostly on container-solutions for its packages and is set with (GRUB-)Btrfs+Timeshift/Snapper -comes pre-configured on Garuda Linux- should be a rock solid and easy to maintain system compared to one that relies on repos with 'frozen' packages but still chooses to install plenty through the AUR natively. (Btw, the second system I just described is bound to break and is not only very 'complex', but the combination of 'frozen' packages + over reliance on installing AUR packages natively is just a very bad practice. Note that on their own either 'frozen' packages or over reliance on installing AUR natively ain't that bad or complex, the combination -however- is astronomically bad and 'complex'.)

Question: Is there any reason why you seem to gravitate towards rolling release distros? 'Skill-ceiling' is (surprisingly enough) grossly the same on Linux Mint and Arch, it's the 'skill-floor' in which there's a (significant) discrepancy between the two. Distros with actually high skill ceilings would be the likes of Gentoo and NixOS.

Gaming and programming should be fine regardless of which distro you decide to stick to.

Thank you for being quite elaborate!

dell xps 13 9310 laptop with Intel i5 evo processor and I think 8 GB of ram

That should be fine.

I am currently using linux mint 21.2 with cinnamon desktop.

That should be fine as well.

I believe I have installed apps outside of official repos, sometimes successfully other times not. I try not to do that though.

Have you considered installing those apps inside of a container? Distrobox is worth mentioning as it streamlines a lot of this process and even allows one to set a 'distrobox' with its own custom HOME directory. It should make experimentation a whole lot less painful, so you should definitely think about it if you haven't yet.

I'd argue that if you reinstall Linux Mint with TLP -for what it offers in terms of battery life- and install the exotic packages within a distrobox, then most of your concerns would be resolved. Maintaining a healthier system like that should also decrease the rare bugs that you might be facing right now and thus enable you to run a system over a longer time period.

If this course of action makes running your distro too boring, then it's probably worth exploring either Arch or Gentoo as a dualboot alongside Linux Mint. Linux Mint would be used for school/work or whatsoever, while Arch/Gentoo is where all the 'fun' happens. Both distros also play a lot nicer with packages not found in the official repos, so they should necessarily offer a better experience.

Yeah lol 🤣 . Consider reporting back after testing your findings. Thanks in advance!

I'm a simple man; I like to use GNOME so any terminal that feels at home on GNOME suits me. Currently, I've been in a phase in which I primarily use GNOME Console because of how GNOME Terminal doesn't play nice with tiling managers. Though Black Box is definitely tempting me.

The official manual page for xorriso is probably the best place to start. Unfortunately it mostly glosses over how it's compatible with mkisofs and doesn't further delve too much into what mkisofs does and thus how to engage with the -b flag. Fortunately, that information can be found on the related manual page for xorrisofs.

Please feel free to notify me if I can be of further help :blush: !

Is the guy who called everyone thieves if they didn’t donate enough before downloading still part of Elementary?

Assuming you're referring to this article; I don't know. Was it even ever revealed who the author was? Honestly I don't even think that it matters, as publicating the blogpost means that the team -at least to some degree- endorsed the idea.