It's actually fascinating to me, the number and maturity of immutable distros being released recently, that is ones that have most of the root system read-only with minimal changes allowed to the system. I also don't know if I'd call it ironic that Arch, the most DIY of all the "core" distros, is the foundation of many such locked-down distributions. In addition to KDE Linux, Arch also powers the base SteamOS, while Bazzite is Fedora-based. I find it notable that all have chosen KDE over other graphic environments; even the current distro-du-jour, Catchy, is reported to have dropped GNOME support. The sea change in the Linux desktop is the now-muscular support for games thanks to the enormous support given by Valve to the Steamdeck and all things Linux. A new KDE reference system (still in alpha) is not that sea change, power users are already well cared for in this world. What's genuinely new is that Linux now has a legitimate shot at attracting newcomers thanks to un-borkable OSs and game support that sometimes surpassed performance under Windows. Further, in a world where Nvidia seems to be running away with the GPU market, the Linux approach seems to heavily favour AMD. An interesting video on the reason KDE devs found Neon to be less of a platform than they needed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dk1_nOPMuX0 and recently updated: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6wyZkZ2IME And ... a popular tech channel tries Linux for the first time in 14 years and likes the result: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sa8nMiEoti0 - Evan On Sat, Aug 9, 2025 at 12:11 AM Ron via Talk <talk@lists.gtalug.org> wrote:

Evan Leibovitch via Talk wrote on 2025-08-08 18:59:

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Fedora and KDE based. Immutable. Most installable apps are Flatpaks. Best tuned for AMD graphics. Apparently the best and easiest way to turn any PC into a SteamDeck, ie, gaming system.

Has anyone here tried it?

Haven't tried it.

However, KDE fans might be interested in KDE Linux (klinux shirley?), a new KDE-as-intended-by-the-devs project:

https://kde.org/linux/

It's has some of the features you're looking for:

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Arch and KDE based.

Immutable.

Most installable apps are Flatpaks.

Best tuned for AMD graphics but nVidea 16xx+ via nouveau

It seems they're somewhat constrained by the Ubuntu LTS that KDEneon is based upon as it doesn't update frequently enough.

I find the LTS rather important, so not sure if I'll be giving KDE Linux a try, but wish them luck with it. ------------------------------------ Description: GTALUG Talk Unsubscribe via Talk-unsubscribe@lists.gtalug.org Start a new thread: talk@lists.gtalug.org This message archived at https://lists.gtalug.org/archives/list/talk@lists.gtalug.org/message/E24NPOR...

CAREY SCHUG via Talk said on Sat, 9 Aug 2025 11:24:58 -0500 (CDT)

I am getting concerned about the disk space consumed by snap.

flatpacks purportedly "deduplicate" and save disk space.

what is the down side to flatpacks so they have not completely replaced snap?

Snaps require a specific init system: systemd. Therefore, snaps are dead to me. Modern flatpacks have no such limitation. Therefore, if I had to use one of these two package types, it would absolutely be flatpack, whether or not I would be using systemd at that particular time. How small is your disk? SteveT Steve Litt http://444domains.com

On Sat, Aug 9, 2025 at 6:18 PM CAREY SCHUG via Talk <talk@lists.gtalug.org> wrote:

Ubuntu I guess one alternative is to find non-snap installs. I don't have a lot of obscure software installed, so concerns for conflicts of packae levels are probably minimal.

Because the browser is so much a part of my use of the system -- not just to websites but also cloud apps and even localhost stuff -- that I think it's important to have a default browser that's a system package (.deb), closer to the iron and quicker to start. There are a number of places with instructions on how to: 1) add the firefox ubuntu PPA repository. 2) ensure that the .deb Firefox has priority over the snap one 3) (optional) delete the snap Firefox and instruct snapd to not try to reinstall Other apps I have less of a problem with, though I do prefer flatpaks over snaps partially beyond the size issue that you raise and the systemd dependency that is important to Steve. Primary to me is the massive single-point-of-failure in play given Canonical having tight control over the repository.

I know ubuntu is evil,

Not evil, just misguided. 🙂 but i fear trying to learn something new.

Been there. Tried Mint KDE and then Neon and Tuxedo and even Bazzite, now back to Kubuntu. It's not just fear of the unknown, it's also that the based-on-Ubuntu distros will by definition always be slower to deploy. Even if they fix things Ubuntu breaks they are always in reactive mode. Plus developers that have limited resources and can only officially support a few distros will always have Ubuntu in their lists.

Is there any possibility snaps will de-duplicate in the future, or does the basis for how they work make that impossible?

IMO the obstacle to Ubuntu just using flatpak like everyone else is business and politics rather than technical. Canonical has its reasons for reinventing this wheel -- somewhere -- and nothing will change until those reasons go away. - Evan

On 08/10/2025 3:57 AM CDT Ron via Talk <talk@lists.gtalug.org> wrote:

CAREY SCHUG via Talk wrote on 2025-08-09 15:09:

...

I know ubuntu is evil

It is not evil, actually. Neither is Canonical.

apologies, must have been tired. Should have said --> ubuntu is "evil" <-- i.e. not liked, has problems/detractors/haters

I realize Carey might not be expressing his own opinion, but that of a small niche group of zealots, but I'll address this to those folks.

True of course, though I do agree to some extent with the zealots, especially that they to some extent "bully" others. ...

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I guess one alternative is to find non-snap installs.

I've done that with Thunderbird & Firefox. The snaps were pretty nice, but I think clicking a mailto: link in Firefox didn't open an email in Thunderbird due to the confinement (sandboxing) level that Mozilla chose.

I'm guessing that is why when I right click a page in a chromium derived browser, select print, it hightlights the default name, but I can't just type a new name, i have to manually re-select the default name? Except that every now and then it WILL work for a while, then stop again. I thought at one point it worked for a while after a reboot, but then it didn't. I use the print-to-pdf to save some things, like whenever i buy something online, i prepend the date purchased, when it arrives in add in the date arrived. If I want more later I can search files to find the it again.

But, for node.js, having snaps has been great. They're not confined and it's nice to be able to run multiple versions concurrently.

Is there a "for REAL dummies" on that? several MAJOR releases ago I had a hyper multi timer that I really loved (it was developed for one game, but I used it for other things too). Developer was gone and old code would not run, maybe because new js was different? are the old versions available? It was mostly for a game, so I haven't worked on it that hard.

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Is there any possibility snaps will de-duplicate in the future, or does the basis for how they work make that impossible?

Who knows? That would be a *lot* of work, so I doubt it.

AFAICS snaps are single files in /var/lib/snapd/snaps so this novice doesn't see how any "deduplication" could be done. most recently, when the root partition was almost full, there were the lastest two levels of something over a gb each. I kinda-remembered that was installed for something else that I didn't like and removed, but of course the removal of the end-user part did not remove the support layer it made me put in. at least I hoped i rememberes, so I went through the removal command and was not warned it would force something else to be removed, crossed my fingers and confirmed. seems to be ok. Over a year ago I had a problem where the old snaps were not automaically removed, and with my browsers revising every week or two, that kept filling my snaps directory and I had to manually remove the old ones. Eventually I did find a fix on the internet, don't recall what it was.

File systems like ZFS have built-in de-duplication, so that's an option.

IIRC, you can's Reiser root, so that would mean repartitioning everything, not possible for me without a fresh install on new hardware (and converting filesystems probably needs a clean fresh install anyway).

It'll use more in memory & CPU usage, so expanding disk space is probably cheaper.

My current system was purchased with excess memory and cpu for my normal usage, because the last install suffered memory leaks and (not sure of the term) things like zombies but still consuming CPU. Both of those required a reboot every 5-10 days.

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it seems to me that this way I could have several versions of some basic tool installed, and different applications would just automatically use the correct one.

That's something snaps can help with - multiple versions.

But probably not do-able via $path because applications are installed using system-wide libraries normally.

I meant to suggest an ENHANCEMENT/UPGRADE to $PATH processing where programs and directories would have flags so the actual usage of $PATH would know to redirect to the correct actual directory FOR THAT REFERENCE ONLY. meaning a table so that if I am using the fortranv1 directory vs the fortranv2 directory some entries in the $PATH are internally & dynamically switched per the table of what version demands and one uses mathpackv4 while the other uses mathpackv7 although the $PATH actually contains "mathpack" only. In practice, I thought it would be that path includes a character not allowed in a filename, but i was disabused of that by asking for characters not allowed, and maybe it would be something like "mathpack?" would send the internal processing to see if that should be "mathpackv4" vs "mathpackv7". If someone really had a ? in a directory name, it would have to be escaped in $PATH. Maybe there are complactions that make this not possible? Or in my ignorance I am completely confused and off base?

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help us ubuntu-morons transition to flatpacks

apt install flatpak

Step one of 5? 50? Do I have to create my own flatpacks from the normal install? And the fear it would break something else to have both. Found this, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24383561 though will not consider switching to RPMs (first suggestion). Maybe think about straight Debian or Mint (which I think some friends were pushing a while ago, though not any more). Probably should just search for apt install package for my browser for now,

Evan Leibovitch via Talk said on Sat, 9 Aug 2025 21:58:15 -0400

It does not like Nvidia GPUs.

So who does? Remember the words of Linus. SteveT Steve Litt http://444domains.com

put your vm definitions on a usb with a write protect switch, use writeable disks for data only, swap & work space, and complete immunity from permanant maleware, a reboot gives a fresh start. put your most critical data on a reiser disk with a checkpoint at each hypervisor boot for one more level. question: to ransomware programs detect reiser and subvert them? I would think the encrypting would set off alarms with space usage./ Carey