It’s not a flaw. Ostree is a last resort, you should be using containerized software. Layering a package should only be done when strictly necessary and not as the regular way to manage packages. If you need an overtly customized system, you use Nix or universal blue to design your new system declaratively and create your custom image.
Then just install KDE in your Arch install. Or use endeavorOS with KDE, or any other Arch based OS with KDE. Don’t be dismissive of other people’s interests.
Settings live in user space. Software exist in containers like AppImage, Flatpak or Distrobox. If something need deep system integration, they can be layered on top of the system in the user layer. Immutable does NOT mean less control. Just exerting control over the system in a different, usually more systematic, automatic and deterministic way.
your base distro is immutable, then any extra changes go on an additional mutable layer
That is exactly how OsTree and other layering solutions work. Only Nix requires a whole distro rebuild.
There’s KDE Neon already. The whole point of this distribution is the atomic immutable part.
Maybe they’ll fix the sddm custom theming? It’s currently broken on all immutables and doesn’t allow custom themes.
Well, there’s much more to it than just installing steam. That’s highly dismissive of the effort it takes, including kernel level optimizations and driver space configurations required to guarantee top performance. To suggest it is pointless is insulting to a lot of people and not constructive criticism, at all.
Bazzite is just Kinoite with gaming things out of the box. Which in turn is just Fedora with KDE Plasma but atomic and immutable. It doesn’t get any more general purpose than that. Bazzite even preinstalls a lot of stuff that Fedora users have to add manually, like proprietary drivers. If you don’t want a gaming centric OS, then there’s also Aurora which is the workstation version. I guess my point is that, there’s not an objectively best choice in Linux. Something we often tend to forget is that personal taste also plays a role. I personally used Mint for 5 years and supported the project monetarily. But my tastes changed and I think atomic and immutable is a good path for adoption, since it all works more or less the way people have come to expect smartphones to work. But, with the power and flexibility of x86-64 computing. It perfectly fits the management model of set it up once and forget about it. Specially since OP is specifically mentioning his interest on having a system focused on security. A system that is working just works, no doubts, buts or ifs, it always works and if anything happens that make it not work anymore, you just rollback to a working state immediately without fuzz, it is a pretty neat feature.
On Mint, you troubleshoot the wifi antenna following a guide once and then you’re done. On Bazzite you probably just needed to click to change to X11 instead of plain Plasma, on the login screen. I would bet money that you have an Nvidia GPU. Sometimes Nvidia breaks the drivers support on Wayland. They intentionally neglect it in order to keep your kind of mentality around.
On Windows, MS is going to eventually fix the workarounds so you can’t update your computer anymore.
How is having to apply workarounds to keep windows working on old machines any different from troubleshooting the occasional linux issue? It’s a rethorical question, the difference is that the workaround on Windows is mandatory while the Linux troubleshoot is nowadays rare and usually related to edge cases.
Some of the workarounds in this article are far more involved and convoluted than what I’ve ever had to do in 15 years of linux. Some are even dangerous for system stability and security. My very recent install of bazzite in a new laptop has been a perfectly out of the box it just works experience. Not even having to open the terminal. 100% friendly GUI without compromising flexibility, power and customizability. Today, suggesting linux with a solid desktop environment like KDE plasma is just foolproof. The end user will be using exactly the same knowledge and habits of Windows, without the harassment machine that is MS now. The change is not learning a new OS, is just switching a few assumptions on how some advanced things work.
Depends on your risk model. Almost all VPNs have a linux client available, most installers can setup whole disk encryption, and they even support secureboot. There’s also antivirus that detect malicious software that target all OSs.
Linux is also far more private and secure than Windows. If you felt safe torrenting on Windows you were misled.
Since you mention gaming and learning how to troubleshoot games on Linux. This conditions your questions to whether that laptop has an Nvidia graphics card or not. Nvidia has an awful support in linux which creates all sorts of problems and limitations.
Regardless, I would suggest to use bazzite, but be warned, this is an immutable distro. They’re entirely different from traditional distros and relatively newer. So there’s a bit less support history on the web. Nevertheless, they provide a strong secure and stable system that should make having rescue tools less critical and keep your system alive and healthy indefinitely. Bazzite also sets up everything for gaming automatically from install.
If this were done by MS or Apple, who lack any shred of respect left, sure. If it were a material change on how the code works, certainly it would be most concerning. But what happened was blown entirely out of proportion for who Bitwarden has been and how they’ve acted in the past. They are still ethically very solid. And it was an immaterial change in the build tools, that could very well have been neglectful or accidental.
That’s a poor understanding of the situation. Nothing in the licensing changed. The SDK has always been the proprietary business to business secrets management product. The client integrates with and can use that SDK to provide the paid service to businesses. The client and the server side management of password has always been and still is FOSS.
This was apparently an accidental change in the build code (not the client code, just the building scripts) that required the inclusion of the SDK to build the client when actually it has never and doesn’t really need any of that code. It prevented building the client without accepting the SDK license. Which it shouldn’t.
This was fixed and some things will be put in place so it doesn’t happen again. Nothing in the licensing scheme changed, at all. This is not a catastrophic enshittification event. A Dev was just being lazy and forgot to check the dependencies on the build chain before their commit.
Firefox has all those things already (albeit vertical tabs are experimental still). Just without the AI marketing and the built-in identity theft.
Surely the former because at least clowns try to be funny and entertaining.
It’s not connected to the internet and doesn’t send or receive any telemetry at all. It’s API is very minimal as well. I fear Gboard to compromise me far more than this app. Keyboards don’t need internet connection.
Openboard with swipe.
The SDK was never FOSS, and was never under the GPL. Hence why they can add the text mentioned in the article. You don’t get to change the text of a FOSS license to begin with. It isn’t unheard of for text like this to be part of proprietary software that integrates with and uses FOSS that are under different licenses.
That said, this is concerning, but whether it changes BW’s FOSS state is a matter of legal bickering that has been going on for decades.
Please remember that no one is taking anything away from you. If you don’t like it, you don’t have to use it. Traditional package managing isn’t going away any time soon. You are safe. Others can have their preferred tech, and you don’t have to like it. It’s ok to have different tastes.