Jaypg
You asked for an example. I’m not going to spend a lot of time thinking of the best example when any example will do. For some, sure it’s more difficult. Like that fake triangle tablet. Is that something you could get used to or learn to live with? Yeah, but why should you spend time learning how to “fix” it when everybody else does it a different and standard way? For a desktop it’s also one of the most important UI elements on screen FYI. The first introduction to a new user shouldn’t be to confuse them for no reason.
But I’ll circle back to it’s just being different for the sake of being different, not because it’s better or easier. Unless you have some point on how it’s somehow better and more intuitive, again, it’s just hipster app development.
Re: KDE, I do use it on the Linux desktop I rarely touch. It’s also used on my Bazzite box for if I ever need desktop mode. The KDE defaults aren’t perfect but they’re the most sane of all the environments I’ve tried, and believe me over the last 22 years I think I’ve probably tried them all at some point. Calling any example I bring up trivial would be fine, but aren’t your gripes with Windows also trivial and something you couldn’t just work around?
Spitting facts. I generally use Linux for any server need, but I’m convinced that people using Linux as a desktop have absolutely nothing to do all day and can spend all their time researching, tweaking, and installing a mishmash of software to make it usable for them.
The best desktop experience I’ve had with Linux is Fedora Kinoite and ironically it cuts against the grain by locking down the base system and making it immutable. Same thing with Bazzite on my TV PC. I can just sit down and achieve my task I needed a computer for without having to waste time screwing around with anything extra.
The BTRFS thing is cutting the power or losing the disks in the middle of a write which corrupts your data. If you don’t think that will be a problem then BTRFS is fine. I recommend ZFS personally, but it sounds like you want to use mdadm instead so basically anything will work.
If you might need to shrink your filesystem later then avoid XFS. EXT4 is relatively featureless but ol’ reliable. ZFS is good for long term data integrity and protection. BTRFS is similar to ZFS. BcacheFS is new but like a swirl of EXT4 and BTRFS. Just pick the one with the features you want.
I’m not the only one seeing a little Weiner dog with a cape jumping into a hand in the Nokia thumbnail, right?
Give webtop a try? Granted I haven’t tried anything heavy on it, but it’s been performant enough for me. Here’s a compose file if it stays formatted correctly:
services:
webtop:
image: lscr.io/linuxserver/webtop:latest # alpine - xfce
# other tags with different bases and desktops: https://github.com/linuxserver/docker-webtop
container_name: webtop
#security_opt:
# - seccomp:unconfined #optional
environment:
- PUID=1000
- PGID=1000
- TZ=America/Los_Angeles
- TITLE=my_desktop #optional
volumes:
- config:/config
#- /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock #optional
ports:
- 3000:3000
- 3001:3001
restart: unless-stopped
volumes:
config: {}
networks: {}
For every year Capcom doesn’t make MegaMan Legends 3, an executive needs to be launched out of a trebuchet right into a wall.
First and foremost, backups. Back up everything and back up often. Immutability can’t do anything for critical hardware failure.
Issues happening on something only running container workloads isn’t common but I think it’s worth the extra little effort to reduce the risk even further. Fedora CoreOS or Flatcar is ideal since its declarative nature makes it easily reproducible. Fedora IOT can get you there too, but it doesn’t use ignition so you’ll be setting the server up manually.
Immutability is good. Declarative configuration is good. Manage cattle, not a pet.
Proxmox is sort of the gold standard for homelab server operating systems. Runs containers and VMs.
If you’re not into Proxmox, look into Fedora Server with Cockpit. Web UI for server management. Fedora CoreOS is an immutable variant of Server that would make more sense for a hypervisor, IMO.