Actually no, I hated the Vista era UI design. Linux themes were positively garish, add MacOS looked like a candy store. CDE greatly impressed me back then. It looked like it was made by adults for adults. Highly legible, and the pastel colors are being emulated by Solarized.

I’m sure that those UIs were a product of the times. The 90’s and noughties were loud and colorful and exciting and everything looked like a comic. Now that we live in more depressing times, we can look to the science of perceptual psychology.

You see, we have an attention budget, we need to process what we see. Visually complex UIs need to be parsed, and that takes mental effort, and that robs us of mental energy to focus on our work. It’s not a crippling effect, but it’s there.

Look at street signs and corporate logos, they easily lodge in our mind. Effective advertising has a clear and simple visual language, and this is what UIs should strive for.

Also not exactly cheap!

If you’re into self-hosting there’s Wallabag, but it’s not half as slick as Omnivore.

You could install ChromeOS, but afaik you can only install Android apps on certified devices.

Both GNOME and KDE are first-class DEs in Fedora - stability is a non issue. You can install both if you want and select your choice at the login screen to just switch back and forth. The only thing you might want to keep in mind is that both have their own prpgrams, like file managers for example, so you’ll have two programs for the same task.

Performance is a wash, really, with a halfway modern setup. Your browser will be consuming way more resources than the desktop by far.

Compatibility is also a non issue nowadays, both implement the Freedesktop standard and are fully compatible with each other.

I’m pretty sure that the installer is the same for all major spins.

Hope you have fun with Fedora!

I installed Bluefin on my mother’s laptop and it’s like a Chromebook for her. She just wants to surf and consume media, and the OS stays solid and out of they way.

Atomic distros are the biggest advance for Linux in recent years.

Congratulations on settling on your endgame keyboard!

Once got my Moonlander and put on Dolch XDAs with O-Ring, I called it a day. Every now and then I’ve been musing about an Ergodash, but I just don’t have a good reason to switch.

All of that and Custom DNS? Sounds like a pet project with scope issues.

Having had both, I can say that with the framework you get a much better display, but you lose the trackpoint. The framework has better repairability, but has less IO. The hardware on the framework is well supported on Linux, but can be hit or miss on thinkpads, especially newer ones.

The only thing I’m really missing on the framework is the black thinkpad chassis - can’t really get used to the aluminum.

Just installed Bluefin and I also like the way that the base OS, GUI apps and CLI programs are partitioned. I enable auto updates - does anyone know how I get informed that an update happened, and that I should reboot?

Reading about Bluefin got me so interested that I just installed it on my laptop. After updating, it’s still at 39. How do I update it to 40?

EDIT: just figured it out:

sudo rpm-ostree rebase ostree-image-signed:docker://ghcr.io/ublue-os/bluefin-dx:latest

I’ve been using Fedora for many years (Nobara is just a fling) and updates were always remarkably stable. That being said, if you’ve played around with the configuration you might have issues, but if you stay with the standard install you shouldn’t expect problems.

Thanks, kind person!

I’ve settled on Fast Draw. You get to use exactly one widget, but it’s lightweight and lets me launch apps.

While I can fully understand his pain, I can’t quite follow how adding a paid subscription model will make his life easier (except financially).

Before, he had to deal with entitled asshats, and now he’ll have to deal with asshats feeling even more entitled, because they paid for it.

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I used to have a TypeMatrix around 15 years ago and really enjoyed it, but the rubber domes wore out on me. Happy to hear that yours survived that long!

There is a commercial product with big keys in the middle - the Truly Ergonomic, which I got afterwards. The new version has optic switches, and you can reprogram the middle keys. I also had the Cleave and have to say, those switches are damn smooth, but I prefer the layout I set up on my Moonlander.

Switching over to a new operating system can be challenging, even frightening for some people. We should acknowledge that, welcome them and offer them help along the way. We all want FOSS to gain more traction, and gatekeeping isn’t the way. How about a new community for Linux news?

Thanks so much for this post! Ventoy is really the tool I never knew I really needed. Up to now, I have been reflashing and juggling sticks with various ISOs.

But even better, now I could finally update the BIOS on my Framework 13!

Which CPU are you using? I’ve got the 11th gen i5 and battery life is just miserable, especially in standby.