BananaTrifleViolin

Yes, Krohnkite on KDE auto-resizes window tiles and keeps the screen full. It’s a default setting (monocular view) but can also be turned off.

To use krohnkite you can add it from within KDE - go to Settings > Window Management > KWin Scripts. Then top right select “Get New…” and type K in the search box and it’ll be one of the top options.

It works well but you may need to log out and and back in after enabling it to see some of the changes. Also you will probably want to change other KDE panels and layouts to fit how you want to use the desktop in a tiling set up (and there are plenty of widgets available and window animations to add - like Geometry - if you want to a specific tiling set up and look).

KDE is incredibly customisable, but for tiling it may take a little work to get it exactly where you want it. Also worth backing up your settings folders once you’ve got it how you want it (Konsave for example, or manually)

The DE is very important to me, and for me that is KDE. Tbh I find Gnome horrendous to use - too locked down, too uncompromising in it’s design. If you like the paradigm then I imagine it’s decent - certainly looks very slick. KDE on the other hand is very flexible and has been easy to tune it to exactly what I want.

But i’d say switching DE shouldn’t be a “barrier”. Almost all distros support multiple DEs, and Gnome or KDE is a common choice.

When is comes to VR, you can set up an alternate X11 session which only runs Steam in gamescope mode, with minimal or no desktop environment. /usr/share/xsessions/ contains defined X11 sessions; you can manually add one that literally only launches one program via a .desktop file pointing to a script (e.g. launches steam in gamescope mode with a specified resolution). Or you can install a very minimal DE such as OpenBox or i3 and set that up to autolaunch Steam in a window or big picture/gamescope mode. This way whenever you want to VR, you log out of your Gnome desktop session and then login to your “Steam” session, and almost all resources are available for Steam and games with minimal overhead. The minimal DE route is probably the better route just because of options to get out of crashes and problem solve. Either way, this route bypasses the Gnome / and general Wayland issues with VR.

You don’t need to do anything, it’ll work without Windows, and grub should auto update with your distro when you do a major update (such as Kernel update)

You might want to manually update grub to remove the Windows entry just to keep it tidy. On mint it’s as simple as:

sudo update-grub

It’ll scan your installed kernels and other OS. If windows is gone, it will no longer be detected and disappear from the boot list after running this.

If you’ve set up a default OS at boot (like Windows) you might want to update the grub config files. Thats as simple as editing /etc/default/grub and setting:

GRUB_DEFAULT=0

Where 0 is the first boot entry.

You can also use:

GRUB_DEFAULT=“saved”

which will remember the last selected item and boot that. Bit redundant if you’re going down to 1 OS.

During the OpenSuSE install you can choose custom package collections (or packages). So you can install any of the DEs available and multiple DEs if you want. You can deselect the default DE and chose something else entirely.

It’s not put front and centre as an option like CachyOS seems to be doing but is easily accessed in a submenu.

Only the healthiest of relationships use whatsapp to accuse their partner of theft

Apparently cost - made from recycled paper which looked grey as poor quality, so they added a little red dye to make it look better. Then it became a standard, partially as it easily stood out from white and yellow paper in offices. TMYK

So on my linux PC, I have made a KVM (Kernal Virtual Machine) using QEMU and made a Windows 11 machine inside it (and I bought a digital license for it), which I have work office and email set up. I personally only need to use it occasionally. If you give it enough resources it works decently & runs all windows software; although as it doesn’t have a dedicated graphics card it won’t look as slick as native windows 11 machine and run GPU intense software well (you can get it it’s own dedicated video card and pass it through but really isn’t worth it for just using Excel). It means I can main linux but use Windows occasionally if I really have to. It means you can have a full Windows machine with work Microsoft account set up for Office, One Drive etc - depending on your employers policies of course. You can cut down the resources you allocate it if you want to be switching between the Windows machine and other software in Linux, but Windows can be laggy without enough resources as it’s so poorly optimised.

There are sites that guide on setting up a windows 11 machine in linux, but essentially you need to install KVM modules and Virtual Machine manager in linux (available on all distros). You do need to access your PCs bios to ensure the settings that allow virtual machines to access the CPU are on (slightly different name between AMD and Intel CPUs).

Then you create a machine in Virtual machine manager, give it plenty of resources (especially if the idea being when you use it if it’s the only think you’ll be doing, give it access to most of your CPU cores and the majority of your RAM), and create a decent size virtual hard drive file (I’d say minimum 128gb or more as Windows is bloaty - you can set the virtual drive file size to be flexible so it has a max size but the actual file size is only what is used by the guest system but some file systems still use the whole space unfortunately; not sure how Windows behaves). Download the Windows 11 installer ISO, and then add that file as a virtual CD drive for your guest machine, boot the guest machine, and you should get the Win 11 installer. The VM can only see the virtual hard drive file, so you can install Win 11 safely onto the drives it sees with no risk to your PC. Then reboot and you should have a new Windows install; test it - if it works, buy a digital license (if you want…) and install Office using your 365 account OR if you have old CDs then pass those through to the virtual machine and install as on any Windows PC.

Yeah it can be confusing; Flatseal makes it easier as it’s a GUI way of doing what is otherwise command line with flatpak itself but it still assumes some knowledge about what you’re doing and can be a bit of trial and error. The more you expose to the sandbox, the more “native” performance you can achieve but it’s at the expense of security.

In Flatseal you can set global options for all apps, or individual apps. For graphics, in the Device section, toggling the option to make the GPU available to the sandboxes may be needed - “GPU Acceleration” in the Device section. That one option can be pretty effective as GPU hardware acceleration is often important, if not essential, for programs like Handbrake (which are video transcoding).

This is equivalent to “device=dri” when launching the flatpak via the commandline.

Yes but I wouldn’t recommend a Deck for streaming. The interface is geared for “on the go”. It’s great for gaming on the TV but it is a little clunky for streaming. You can open a browser and use that for streaming but it’s best done in Desktop mode. You can actually add Chrome as a custom “game” in Gamescope mode and set it up to launch a website like Netflix but I find it a little unreliable on filling the screen in that mode.

I do have a mini PC that I use for both gaming and streaming, and it works well. You can get something more powerful than the SteamDeck (as it doesn’t need a screen nor to be mobile), and put pretty much any desktop on there. I personally use KDE with a remote keyboard and mouse, but if you want prefer a full screen interface, then probably Kodi is your best bet. For streaming you can add a Browser Launcher plugin to launch Firefox or Chrome, so you can run Netflix etc. But a mouse & keyboard is still probably needed as an interface.

HDR viewing is an issue on Linux devices currently though. It’s improving but can be hit and miss depending on hardware and software.

There are also other TV interfaces coming - like KDE Plasma’s Bigscreen; but it’s got a way to go as it’s only recently been resurrected.

I’m not aware of general Linux specific tools for this (game specific ones do exist). However:

• Vortex does work on Linux: https://linuxvox.com/blog/vortex-mod-manager-linux/
• So does Curseforge: https://linuxvox.com/blog/how-to-install-curseforge-on-linux/

They both work by you running them in wine and pointing them to the game files created by Steam (or Gog or any windows game installed via Wine or Proton) in the Linux filesystem (e.g. /home/yourname/.steam/steamapps/common/game) instead of windows filesystem (e.g. C:\program files\game)

Modloaders with “bootstrap” fixes will also work; they just have to be installed and run in the same proton/wine prefix as the game. I.e. if you install Cyberpunk 2077 via steam, the bootstrap type mods need to be installed into the game folder or fake-windows file system that Proton makes for the game. It even has it’s own “drive C” folder for the rare times you need 3rd party tools. You also put tools into the game folder as you would on windows. If it has it’s own custom exe you can tell wine/proton to run that instead of the game or even before the game in the same prefix.

I mod games extensively on Linux; they work just as they do in Windows. I’ve played heavily modded Cyperpunk 2077 to completion (all the mod tools work via proton - that takes a little tweaking to get working but is doable - and many mods you just drop into specific sub folders; I played with about 50 mods and I didn’t find a single one that didn’t work on Linux specifically), Stardew Valley, Rimworld and Minecraft for example of bredth. Stardew, Rimworld and Minecraft even have linux specific tools to help.

This is less a case of games run via Linux not being moddable, and more that it has it’s own learning curve (in the same way modding on Windows has a learning curve). Once you understand how the linux filesystem and how proton/wine work, the world is your oyster. Protontricks and Winetricks are not just useful for getting games running or tweaking them, they’re a modders best friend.

Yes; it makes no sense to have multiple communities when the Steam Machine and Steam Frame are so similar to the Steam Deck. It may be that in the future it makes sense to split out topics if their isn’t overlap, but I’d say the community isn’t flooded with content and there is a lot of overlap between these topics that will benefit everyone.

Did you set your Mint to autologin to desktop? If so then your Keyring is then locked and you get prompts to unlock it when you want to use anything that needs it - websites, software like email etc. The keyring holds your passwords and credentials to pass to on as needed and keeps your system secure. If you set your desktop to not autologin - i.e. have a login screen - your keyring is unlocked automatically as you log on to the PC and you don’t keep getting prompts to unlock the keyring. You can disable the keyring entirely or give it a blank password, but it’s better to use the login screen to keep your device secure, and let the keyring do it’s thing in the background even though “login automatically” is so easy to tick and use. The wallet is the same concept on KDE desktops.

Otherwise the only password prompts you should get are similar to windows - when you want to make system level changes.

I’d recommend OpenSuSE Leap with KDE. User friendly, stable, with a good GUI for making all system changes. Fedora KDE is also a good popular distro; I’m not sure how good it’s GUI is but I’d be surprised if you need to use the terminal. People often recommend the terminal (because it IS quicker - often one step instead of “go here, click here, click here”) but there is usually a GUI way of doing everything.

The text here on the fediverse is the prologue; bit confusing but click through the link and it makes sense.

Interesting read, thank you. Also I recognise this type of procrastination: sit down to do one thing, end up installing a whole different OS :D

KDE is genuinely incredibly flexible - you can make it into pretty much any GUI that exists. The default windows like set up is fine, but there are so many easy tweaks and changes you can make to get it however you want. I have a floating dock-like set up instead of a window-like taskbar, with application launcher, icon-only view, system tray, clock and power button.

For simple tweaks yoy can right click on most component of your KDE panels and select “Show alternatives…” to see different official versions of the same component. For example, the Application Launcher offers an alternative Application Menu with cascading menus like an old-school windows start menu, or a full screen gnome-like Application Dashboard. And there are also loads more user made tools if you right click and select “Add or Manage widgets”. Every component of the desktop is a widget and can be moved, swapped out, duplicated or replaced.

It’s really not that difficult with a Global Theme; anyone can do it. There are step by step tutorials on line (such as this one from howtogeek) for people who want to do it manually. The benefit of manual is if there is a major KDE update it is more likely to be completely unaffected; very rarely Global Themes can break and need their own updates.

The Mac ones are the 2nd most popular in the Global Theme store and well maintained though.

Yeah KDE is incredibly flexible. You can get most of the way there downloading a Global Theme from KDE’s settings menu (such as MacOS Big Sur) - that lays out all the panels, including the top bar context menu, power menu, dock, left sided window buttons. There are then some extra visual themes such as cursors, icons that people can get separately if they really want to completely mimic a Mac.

No one is born knowing this stuff; everyone learns it somewhere. But omg it’s still frustrating after you spend days taking the difficult route and someone says “oh you could have just done this in 2 mins”. My sympathy to you! :D But GG on getting your parents onto Linux and saving them from wasting money on a new laptop!

So interesting rabbit hole: Aldi was originally 1 company but split between two brothers into Aldi Nord and Aldi Sud (Aldi North and Aldi South) in the 1960s in Germany. The two companies share the same Aldi name, and work somewhat together but are separate and have their own territories. They are owned by the families of the original owners, and they do not compete directly against each other.

Aldi Sud covers southern Germany, eastern and southern Europe, the UK, Ireland, Australia and the USA. In the UK Aldi has got a reputation as a good employer, a discount supermarket that offers quality, and is the fastest growing supermarket. All the competitors now do “price matches” to Aldi to try and keep up. Aldi in the USA, Ireland and Australia are seemingly run very similar to the Aldi in the UK and of course in it’s base in Germany.

Meanwhile, Aldi Nord covers northern Germany, the Benelux countries, France, Spain and Portugal amongst others. It seems Aldi does not have as good a reputation in some of these countries? I can see stuff about aldi being dirty, with poor products and poor customer service. Not sure how true that is, but that is definitely not Aldi’s reputation in the UK where I live. Clean, good quality and happy staff is my experience.

So when you see Aldi in the anglosphere part of the internet, it’s all about Aldi Sud. Also total random aside but the 2 companies do compete in the US: Aldi Sud runs Aldi, while Aldi Nord sort-of-owns Trader Joe’s (it’s a “sister company” owned by the owners of Aldi Nord).

EDIT: Also in the UK, Aldi and Lidl are very similar in quality and style. Although Lidl does more fresh baked goods, and I personally prefer it but Aldi is nearer for me so I shop there.