With low specs like that, the experience will never be great, but with a very light desktop you can make it work. Debian is fine, but with some set up, Alpine could be one option. It’s a really light distro.

Turns out this is also available in Alpine repositories, so I went ahead and installed it on my phone. Could come in handy when browsing from public Wi-Fi or such. Thanks for the tip.

Yup, Konsole is good enough.

Now does flatpak get it’s programs from the same place that terminal would?

I usually install Flatpaks from the terminal, but as to your question: no, the distro’s package manager and Flatpak have different repositories (servers with software packages) and formats. While distros like Fedora have their own Flatpak repositories, most people use Flathub. You can install apps as Flatpak on any distro that supports them, but native package managers generally don’t support other distros’ repositories.

for some reason everybody hates snaps because canonical owns it.

As I understand it, Snap server software is proprietary and doesn’t support independent repositories, so you have to install Snaps from Canonical. This is not exactly in line with Free (as in Freedom) Software principles. Canonical has done many questionable decisions in the past.

Edit: Never mind, I misunderstood something. From what I remember, this post is more or less an accurate description of what to expect.

It’s a really good game. Check it out!

KDE Plasma. It makes sense to me and everything functions more or less how I prefer it to. If I need something, it’s usually easy enough to find. Plasma being flexible is a plus, but I rarely need to do any modifications.

I loathe GNOME. Any time I use it it’s like pulling teeth. On a touch surface I can maybe get it, but on desktop I honestly think it has some serious usability problems cooked in. And since GNOME extensions can break at any time, trying to “fix” GNOME is a losing battle. If I had to use GNOME, I’d install GNOME Classic which is ok. Or better yet, use XFCE or MATE. GNOME is highly opinionated and that’s fair enough, they can do their thing and people seem to like what they offer, but boy is it not for me.

From quick reading, SteamOS 3.0 is only really available for the Steam Deck. As such, I would not recommend it for a desktop user. Earlier versions of SteamOS are no longer supported. Don’t take this as gospel, as I may be mistaken.

Still, I would personally suggest looking in to a more desktop oriented OS for now.

I think he already sent a letter.

After quite a bit of agonizing, I eventually landed on openSUSE Tumbleweed. I chose a rolling release distro because on my desktop I want to be up-to-date. Having used Gentoo a long time ago, I didn’t want a distro that takes effort to install and set up. openSUSE is somewhat popular with an active community and decent documentation in case I run in to issues. I also considered the fact it’s based in Germany, because EU has at least some decent privacy laws. I was put off by the fact its backed by SUSE, but that’s a two-edged sword.

Right now I’m content with Tumbleweed, but I’m keeping an eye on OpenMandriva Lx if I feel like switching.

openSUSE Tumbleweed has served me well for some time now. Maybe give it a look-see?

Years ago I tried running Debian on my desktop computer and it became very quickly apparent it was not suited to my needs because of the out-of-date software. These days I only really consider rolling release distros for my desktop, or at least something with a fairly snappy release schedule. If I went for Debian, I’d probably run sid or testing.

Now, in situations where the bleeding edge is not necessary, Debian is fantastic. I’ve run it on my laptop, Raspberry Pi server and PinePhone. On the laptop, having a solid base that doesn’t break if I don’t use it for a while was great, since I didn’t use that laptop often. I did use flatpaks for some applications that I really wanted to be more recent and it worked nicely. So yes, you can use Debian as a solid base and use Flatpaks/Appimages/other to run apps you really need the newest version of, where available of course.

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The interface is a bit bare bones and 90’s but I like it that way. It’s a good and reliable client.

Can’t help you there, I buy CDs and lossless copies from Bandcamp and Qobuz. Those work for me.

I really should read that one. I’ve been a fan of Poe’s Haunted for a long time.

I’m reading Universal Harvester by John Darnielle. I think I like it, but how much probably depends on how the writer is able to bring it all together in the end. I do like the somewhat unconventional structure though, and the book is very atmospheric. It feels like it’s more focused on painting pictures of a time and place than strictly telling a story, or something, I’m not good at describing it.

I’m sorry, but that’s private.

“Install Gentoo” is a meme, not life advice. With Gentoo, the installation process gives you good insight in to the internals of Linux systems and compiling (almost) everything from source is interesting, but won’t produce noticeable benefits for average users. Especially since updates take some time, what with compiling the programs again. Gentoo is a great distro with a fantastic package manager, but unless you’re an enthusiast or a serious hobbyist, Don’t Install Gentoo.

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