SteamOS does not get reported as Arch.

It seems that KDE does not plan on supporting Xlibre, though it may still work.

It makes sense that they would not support it. Their goal is to move to Wayland, not to support yet another thing.

Yes, it’s ok for Arch to break things. As their Wiki describes, it’s for “the proficient GNU/Linux user, or anyone with a do-it-yourself attitude who is willing to read the documentation, and solve their own problems.” You’re expected to follow Arch Linux news to watch out for things that require user intervention to avoid breakages.

It isn’t Ubuntu or Fedora who try to make a system accessible to everyone.

Updated the title

But you don’t need a status icon to run in the background.

If Firefox wanted to, they could make Firefox continue running in the background. They could even app a system tray entry for Firefox to access recently visited sites or favorite sites, like what Steam does.

This paradigm is actually the norm on MacOS. When you X out of an app, it doesn’t actually close. It will just have no open windows but stay open on your dock.

All those same options are available by right clicking on the app. Though thinking some more, the status icon being dynamic does give it some extra flexibility, I think it can show recently launched games. Still, does that mean Firefox should get a status icon so that you can access recently opened sites? Should your file manager?

The complaint against the app indicators is that apps tend to throw their icon in there for no reason. Why does Steam need to show itself there? Why doesn’t Firefox?

There’s also some technical reasons why they’re bad. There’s quite a few different protocols to show the icons up there, all each with their own pros and cons. But none can handle sandboxing properly, so work is being done towards a new protocol.

Setting the environmental variable

GSK_RENDERER=gl

in Flatseal or on your entire system should fix the issue. It tells GTK to use the old OpenGL renderer backend for GTK. Once the issue is fixed upstream, it would be a good idea to remove the change.

You can check if you are using Xorg or Wayland in the Settings -> System -> About -> System Details page. If you’re using Wayland, you’re all good, nothing changes. If you’re using Xorg, you may notice some changes. If you’re using NVIDIA on Ubuntu 24.04, you’ll be on Xorg by default. If you’re using a later version or AMD/Intel, you’ll be on Wayland be default.

To keep it short, X11 was the old protocol for creating and managing windows. Xorg implemented this protocol. But both the protocol and implementation have many shortcomings that are difficult to address for a multitude of reasons (breaking compatibility, poor code base, a ton of work, etc).

Rather than putting lipstick on a pig, a new protocol, called Wayland, was created. It was designed for modern needs and tries to avoid the pitfalls that X11, Windows, and MacOS have. It doesn’t just copy what those three did, it’s more opinionated, so some people love it a lot (like me) or hate it a lot because it changes the way things have to be done and simply does not implement some functionality, either purposefully or because the work hasn’t been done yet.

I don’t use Zoom enough to know, but it probably still works.

My last experience with the Zoom app on Wayland (a few months ago?) required me to do a manual config file change to launch the app properly. And Zoom says they fixed the screen sharing options, not sure how true that is.

Getting ready for Zoom to have instructions to install i3 rather than fixing their Wayland support.

You could install Linux Mint onto a flash drive. Though keep in mind that flash drives aren’t that robust, the flash chips are cheaper and will fail faster than SSDs.

Ubuntu had their own desktop called Unity that had a global menu. Gnome itself never did, though there were projects like Fildem to bring one to Gnome.

Edit: I was wrong, it used to have one

On MacOS and some desktop environments like Unity and optionally in Plasma, there’s a UX design pattern called the “Global Menu”. At the top of the screen, as part of the desktop’s shell, there’s buttons labelled File, Edit, View, etc for you to interact with.

Firefox is seemingly (I haven’t tested it myself, not using Plasma) enabled this functionality under Linux. Previously it required a patch to work. But this functionality has always existed on the MacOS version.

Image from a reddit post here: https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/1l0yec5/global_menu_now_works_with_firefox/

Seems like you first have to go to about:config and toggle the option shown in the screenshot.

This also also affecting me. Though it was just because I was unaware of the USB wake function. Since I have, I made it a habit to suspend, then immediately lift up my mouse to turn it off. Though I guess that’s not an option for wired mice.

Keeping the search terms in the URL bar rather than replacing it with the URL is nice. Should help with searches on web engines that don’t support bangs.

I hope the https hiding doesn’t affect copying the URL.

I run Fedora Silverblue on a N100.

It’s very usable. For most actions, it feels pretty similar to my much more powerful desktop. but has some limitations.

• I am able to run two 1440p monitors at 144hz via HDMI, but the screen occasionally blacks out for a second due to HDMI limitations. Running at a lower refresh rate should avoid the issue.
• Gnome shell animations aren’t running at 144hz, even with triple buffering (never tested if it maintains 144hz with just one monitor at 1440p). Haven’t tested KDE.
• I am able to comfortably run Minecraft with 60+ fps with performance enhancing mods, though at like 5 chunks rendering distance. Honestly it’s fun to play this way, feels nostalgic. Though performance will dramatically drop if you try to play a video at the same time, though dropping it to like 480p or even 720p helps a lot.

The battery life is still better than most laptops, but yeah, not as good as MacOS.

It’s meant to be an upgrade over the old system. If both are accessible, that just means they didn’t remove the old code.