Is Wayland worth using?

For a first dive into the Linux ecosystem, I recommend Xorg. I use Wayland myself (Hyprland), and that’s why I know that it’s simply not ready for general adoption. There are many features that are missing, won’t be implemented, or are done much differently compared to X. Some say Xorg is old and bloated - I say it’s a mature technology.

There are also some applications that need root privileges to work (Veyon Configurator is one that I struggled a lot with) and you have to do some weird pkexec hackery to launch them.

Wayland’s development has more drama and bickering than an average sitcom - I recommend Brodie Robertson’s channel if you’re interested.

advantages/improvements to using Wayland

Wayland is better for gaming. It has a noticeably lower latency because the entire Wayland stack is implemented in a single program (what they call the compositor) as opposed to several in the X11 stack (X server, compositor, window manager) that need to communicate with each other. Unfortunately Steam and some other applications often produce graphical artifacts on Wayland+Nvidia.

Does bloat actually matter

Compared to Windows, it is insignificant. My work laptop is a Macbook Air from 2015 running Linux Mint on just 4G RAM without issues.

Any other resources besides the Arch Wiki that I should be aware of?

Install the tldr program. It’s a bit like man but lists practical examples of a command instead of a full documentation.

What are some habits I should practice

Make use of your home directory. Most user applications will have a config file in several places - usually in ~/.config (user config) and /etc (systemwide config). You should only edit the systemwide config when it makes sense, and always prioritize the user config.

A common practice is to have your /home directory on a different partition, or a different physical device. If the system breaks or you decide to distrohop, you can unmount/disconnect /home and only wipe the root partition while retaining your user files.

I also recommend using Timeshift to back up your system. It’s even better if your root partition uses btrfs since it natively supports snapshots.

What do you wish you knew when you first started using Linux

I needed to leave the Windows ways behind me. On Windows, I had a hard drive mounted as F: and an external HDD mounted as H:. Moving to Linux (Manjaro at the time) was basically a snap decision since Windows had obliterated the boot partition during an update and then broke itself, and I had no idea how to properly set up the filesystem didn’t consider how I wanted to set up the filesystem, so I mounted them to /mnt/f and /mnt/h on a whim. It caused me many hours of headache later.

Using NVIDIA please use the image from ublue.it, the official Fedora one can work but noveau is not ready. You can install Kinoite from Fedora though and give it a try, report your experience with noveau (should work and proprietary drivers are pretty scary) and then rebase to ublue (unsigned, reboot, signed, reboot)

Wayland is worth it, Plasma 6 will come out soon and primarily target it. It just works for me, always, I have like no problem with it. Flathub flatpaks always worked because they have loose permissions.

Xorg is an insecure mess and it is not maintained.

Also, give the Plasma 6 preview a try! and report bugs. Its like 99% ready.

Bloat: yes of course. Fedora Kinoite has none. If you install a few flatpaks, dont be scared by duplicate Libraries, they use deduplication to actually need less space.

Bloat matters as a huge LUKS drive is notably slower, but only a matter of seconds on an NVME/ any SSD. And yeah, please use LUKS, encrypting afterwards is not easy. Also use a Password that can be written in US QWERTY too, a bug in current Fedora Atomic, it doesnt use your native keyboard layout. Seems to be fixed on 40 (rawhide, Plasma 6 prerelease Version of Kinoite)

Habits:

• install huge apps like RStudio, an IDE, a programming environment etc. in a Distrobox. If you program hardware it needs to be a root distrobox, otherwise no USB access.
• if you git clone stuff, create a “Git” folder in your home, put that there. Guides never mention that.
• if you use Appimages, compiled apps, binaries; create a “Programs” folder in your home
• use Czkawka to find duplicate files

Resources:

• alternativeto.net
• itsfoss.com
• discussion.fedoraproject.org
• discuss.kde.org

What do you wish you knew when you first started using Linux that would have saved you a headache in the future?

• Fedora Kinoite (Ubuntu broke, stable Distros suck, …)
• use Flathub Flatpaks, they are often better

the gentoo wiki is also a great resource !!

wayland seems to be the way desktop linux is going, personally i like it and am migrating over w plasma 6, but ymmv mrowz