u/Major303

I want to test Manjaro, but as soon as it boots into desktop environment it becomes completely unresponsive. I can't even install it, since installer is in the desktop environment. GNOME version, I haven't tested if KDE behaves the same.

Any clues what can I do to fix it? I've tried setting up the VM like 3 times now and behavior is always identical.

I did try to look it up on the internet but it leads me to websites that are currently down.

What is the suggested location for them on Linux? There is nothing special for them on Windows, I usually just store them in "Portable Programs" folder on C:, but there is no C: on Linux. I can't find conclusive answer online.

By portable/preinstalled I mean AppImage or x-executable. It doesn't come from package manager, it's not flatpack, there is no deb or rpm, you just download and run it.

I know that there are two ways of ejecting external drives - there is full ejection, so you can safely remove the drive, or it only does it partially, and removal is not safe.

I don't know how to do both. The only place where external drive is visible is file manager. There is nothing under right mouse button menu. There is an icon for ejection there, but there is no information is it full or partial ejection.

I really like the idea of Solus. It's good to stick to upstream distributions, because the lower you go, your distribution of choice relies on more variables, and if any of the upstream distributions starts to do stupid things, it will affect you too. There is no dependency in Solus, since it is the upstream. What I also like is that it's meant to be an OS for normal human being (which already sets it apart from Debian, Fedora, and Arch). It just works. You don't have to fight with the terminal for 3 hours after installation.

But I have a few questions before I commit to it.

1. How small is the software repository in reality? I have made some research and they do have what I need, but I don't want to discover in a few weeks or months that the repository is actually tiny. It doesn't matter if OS is good if you can't get the work done.
2. How many people maintain it? I have heard it had turbulent moments, but now it's in good shape. But I want to know if it's maintained by small team and OS can disappear overnight.
3. Are there plans for support of more desktop environments? It does support the most popular ones, meaning GNOME and KDE. But my older laptop doesn't appreciate KDE as much as I do, and with GNOME you have to fight with extensions. So I would prefer to just use COSMIC, since it blows GNOME out of the water. So I wanted to know if there will be more options in the future, or those 4 (Budgie, GNOME, KDE, Xfce) is all there is going to be.

I would lie if I said that devs don't fix bugs at all. But the frequency at which I'm seeing new bugs is honestly crazy for gacha game, since those games have large budgets, and are usually extremely polished.

Today alone I've experienced 3 bugs in like 20 minutes:

• user interface stopped responding, forcing me to close the game and restart,
• actions that need time to finish (interaction) interrupt before the end, locking progression,
• characters saying lines of other NPC with completely different voice.

Outside of that I've also experienced:

• NPCs not moving their lips while talking (in cutscenes with zoom in on their face),
• parry assist randomly doesn't work (this is an issue that has been ignored for over half a year now, and it's not about the charges, it doesn't work even at full charge)

I was initially interested in using Ultramarine, which is Fedora but ready to use out of the box with zero configuration. While this is not a lie, I have checked list of changes, and quite a lot of it is fluff that I do not really care about. So I've decided to try out Fedora, and just install missing software myself.

There are tutorials online about it, but there is quite a lot of differences between them, so it's hard to say what is really the correct way of doing it. There is of course also official documentation, but it's not as thorough as I would like.

I'm going to describe what I've did (initially on VM), and I wanted to ask is it correct approach, and if not what did I screw up.

Step 1: sudo dnf group install multimedia After using this command I've got feedback that it would change this group from dependency to user, so I've assumed it's already installed, and decided to abort the command.

Step 2: sudo dnf install gstreamer1-plugin-openh264 mozilla-openh264 This straight up told me that everything is already installed, so there is no need to do that.

Step 3: Added RPM Fusion repositories through GUI.

Step 4: sudo dnf group upgrade core

This is where official documentation ends.

Step 5: sudo dnf swap ffmpeg-free ffmpeg --allowerasing

That's all. Is it correct process of installing missing proprietary codecs? There is also matter of NVIDIA drivers, but I have AMD, so I'm not interested in this right now.

I have a question how good is the out of the box experience on some distributions. I'm going to focus mostly on the upstream (more popular) ones.

Ubuntu is exemplary in this aspect, easy installer, includes drivers and codecs out of the box, and has GUI menu where you can install extra drivers. The only issues - it pushes Snaps so hard that if you want to also use Flatpaks you need to install separate store, since Ubuntu App Store doesn't support them. And it uses GNOME.

Kubuntu generally solves these two problems - Discover handles both Snap and Flatpak, and GNOME is replaced with KDE. There is one thing I'm not sure about - Kubuntu installer doesn't ask you about drivers and codecs, so I don't know if those are also included out of the box.

I'm also interested in Zorin, Linux Mint, and Fedora. The question basically is - do they have drivers and codecs included, and is there a dedicated menu for drivers installation? The only thing I know is that Linux Mint does have drivers and codecs preinstalled, and Fedora doesn't. I'm willing to bet Zorin also has everything out of the box.

Edit

I have AMD, mentioning it in case it significantly changes the OOB experience.

This is genuine question. I don't think that the game is horrible or anything (day 1 player, 300 hours), but it starts to feel somewhat boring compared to other live service games of the same genre.

The main issue is that weapon upgrade parts and gear is tied to very specific boss. So every time level cap is increased, you go back to farming the same exact boss. Even if new ones are added it doesn't matter, gear for the set you are using is dropping only from single boss. I'm clearing nothing but Sentinel Howlion since it's release.

Multiplayer raids do spice things up, but doing them with pugs is just a torture. I've stopped doing them since early 2026, and from what I'm hearing it's getting worse, and now it's straight up impossible to clear with pugs.

There are also outposts, but the loot is random, so they are only useful to clear when you already have everything you need and just feel like spending stamina.

I've been tasked with finding a smartphone with budget up to 200 euro, and while from hardware perspective there is plenty of great choice, in this budget all phones are Chinese, meaning bloatware and ads. So I need to find something where OS is somewhat usable.

There are articles about it online, but they aren't always up to date. For example Motorola has always been recommended as smartphone with somewhat clean OS, but apparently now it does contain bloatware and ads, even on lock screen, which sounds awful.

Applications related to the manufacturer ecosystem are fine, since every smartphone that isn't Pixel has it (like Samsung Galaxy with Galaxy Store or Galaxy Browser). Bloatware like TikTok and Facebook is also okay if it can be uninstalled (not only disabled).

Ads are okay if:

• they can be permanently disabled, automatic return every X days is a deal breaker,
• they appear only in manufacturer preinstalled applications, since you can just ignore those applications.

Is there something that meets those criteria, or ads are everywhere these days?