Looking at command line file managers and ‘ranger’ or ‘lf’ might be good. I don’t like that ‘ranger’ is dependent on python this and that though. ‘lf’ is based on ‘ranger’, looking to be more extensive. For me, extensive usually means digging through the documentation of many features to find the handful of features that I will actually use.
Gnome is pissing me off today on my old thinkpad. I changed the video config from integrated-only to dedicated, and Gnome wouldn’t load. Oh, I may have forgotten a step when installing the nvidia driver. Changed the bios setting back to integrated so that Gnome would load and I can check my steps for the nvidia install (never installed it during last format). Gnome refused to take my correct password. Eventually I switched from Xorg to Wayland, and Gnome took my password that way but still refuses it when switching back to Xorg. What kind of crap bug is this? XFCE’s only major sin is ugliness.
It seems this is not limited to Gnome or GDM.
There and elsewhere, I have seen users of various desktop environments and distros reporting this issue, going back to a couple of years at least.
Sounds like it is an issue with PAM.
I got login for xorg back after reinstalling bumblebee. Figure that one out. 
And my Gnome config got automatically changed back to default after reinstalling bumblebee. Again. Figure that one out.
Those Macbook Air’s on sale are looking tempting. Too bad they are so damn dinky. I might go try one out anyway just to see. An Air + an XR18 could make for a nicely portable practice/live/recording setup for not much more than I just paid for a laptop with a decent gpu just to tinker with graphics stuff (and maybe a little gaming) once in a while.
I think the pumpkin spice latte is still beckoning and at the end of the day you don’t need a beefy GPU to mess around with graphics stuff.
Weird glitches there with X11, I heard there was a compat layer for logging in with Wayland so that X11 apps can run. I bumped into a couple of things that needed X11 so either it isn’t perfect or it isn’t installed by default.
We don’t ‘need’ much of anything when it gets down to it. I am thinking it over. Would I rather spend some precious future free time tinkering with graphics stuff AND dogging through linux issues, or tinkering with music while pinching my nose to down the pumpkin latte - gui aside, Mac OS is pretty ok, after opting not to use the iSpyware / ‘cloud’ stuff of course. It’s relatively pain free (relative to linux) , has good audio performance, has good availability to lots of open source software as well as some nice polished proprietary stuff.
Air pros: Good display, keyboard/touchpad, speakers, cpu power.
Air cons: Tiny display; lack of ports; lack of upgradability/repairability.
The Tuf should be here today, so I’ll give it a good look over before sweating it.
XWayland is probably what you’re thinking of.
It does seem like the easier option if using one OS is a requirement and you don’t want all the latest, greatest games. The lack of ports of a lot of software on Linux is a stumbling block compared to Win/Mac.
I came across this German laptop manufacturer after getting this one:
Nice touch is that you can get your own logo etched onto the metal lid (it’s all metal)! Never seen that option before!
I couldn’t go Mac because of the lack of flexibility, I’m upgrading this to 32GB and putting another SSD in it and at that point I literally couldn’t buy a Macbook Pro with the same capacity (32GB MBP M1 gfx shares the memory, whereas the 3060 has 6GB of its own RAM).
Went to pick up an nvme and had a good look at the Air. Nope. That thing is a rinky dink.
I have looked over Tuxedo’s stuff a few times. It’s good seeing more linux laptop companies. If they had something that matched my ‘needs’ I would have bought from them.
This is good news.
Last I read though, Wayland is very difficult to build display servers on, so update progress might not be so soon.
That is good news with the amount of different resolutions and screen sizes people have.
Btw, here’s DistroTube accepting snap packages into his heart:
The system lib for everything model might work for a server that runs a couple of programs, in 1998 when memory was measured in MB. It’s not ideal for a desktop env where nobody cares if a few extra MB of shared libs are installed per program.
I definitely empathize with him.
Dependencies is a good example of a stupid problem for linux, among a bunch of stupid problems. It should be such a non-issue. Either every application has it’s own libraries, or a table of applications and their specific library requirements is kept and followed by the package manager.
Reading this now:
It seems like all these app package projects are putting multiple eggs in the same basket and largely nulling themselves through undesired traits. The main problem is getting rid of the stupid dependencies issue, which shouldn’t be a big deal. But on and on it goes. That is aside the points of sandboxing and permissions, distribution of packages, and compatibility among multiple distros.
If dependencies were solved (it’s a linking issue, not a packaging issue), compatibility and sandboxing should be much easier. Then package managers could distribute however they like, no need for an edgy named package format.
Yeah, I still blame purist Linux users, the “Linux is the IDE, dumbass” guys. So much so that languages and build systems go out of their way not to make that the case, isolating development or other environment libraries from system libraries!
To avoid having to recompile everything, Linux could have an extra permission to make an executable search it’s own dir first for linking to shared libs. Without that things would have to be compiled with a couple of flags, but that purism speaking because it would be a choice.
From that article:
So what are the problems with this happy-clappy story? Several of them!
First let’s be clear: Snappy is a Canonical project.
The Canonical hate in the community is real. They could release a patch that introduces lightning fast quantum computing with the x86 instruction set and it would be rebelled against!
How’s the Tuf btw?
It’s a bit like the trend of hating Manjaro. Some deserved, some not.
Just pulled The Tuf out of the box and running it now (Windows). Pros so far: The keyboard seems fine, which I prefer over my old thinkpad. Bluetooth connected right away to the living room audio setup. That’s about it on the pros so far. 
Cons: The display looks very washed out, and FHD res @ 17.3" isn’t great to my eyes for text. With the size of text at 100% scaling, there is no real benefit to 1080 @ 17.3" over 15.6". The touchpad click pressure is pretty high to get a click. I’m running tap to click to avoid it, which I don’t like. Speakers lack bass and highs, sounding like the cheapest of cheap (like the display looks). For some reason the thing wouldn’t start up at first shot. It seems to be that the battery was dead and the IEC cable was making poor contact in the socket of the power supply. There is definitely some slop there, and I think I heard some clicking when wiggling the IEC cable. I’m not terribly enthused about it.
Just did a little more very slight wiggling at the psu IEC cable. There is definitely an issue there of poor contact depending on how the IEC plug is positioned.
Oh, that’s a disappointing first whirl. The 15" screen is alright, it’s weird the combos of parts for this range - the laptop I sent back without WQHD res was (allegedly) HDR compatible, this one isn’t.
The keyboard is nice right enough and I prefer it over the Thinkpad P52s I had before. I like the gaps. And the Ctrl+Fn keys being where they should be without having to flip a BIOS switch.
edit: That cable issue is defo a full/part replacement/return problem. Mine is tight as a gnatt’s chuff.
So far the keyboard is the only thing I really like. Without directly comparing I couldn’t say that it is better than the average laptop keyboard these days, but I prefer it over my old thinkpad keyboard that lots of people seem to prefer for some reason.
How is the 15.6" QHD display faring? It seemed to get pretty good marks in reviews.
It’s really nice for me, highest res display I’ve had. I don’t have your depth of knowledge and eye for detail with these things though, screens for me are like film audio is for other people, I only notice when they are crappy.
You would definitely notice the quality of this display. It’s pretty bad. 
I actually don’t care that much about color accuracy, brightness, contrast, and such though. But the display in my old thinkpad (W520) is actually pretty decent, and comparing the two, the display in the Tuf A17 just looks super cheap. The biggest deal for me is always the appearance of text and general ease on the eyes when reading. Anything else that is good is just nice to have. If you ever experienced wicked chronic eye strain from reading on a display you’ll know what I mean. Using gui’s and watching video is no big deal on the poorest of displays in terms of eye fatigue. But displaying text well is ironically kind of demanding for avoiding eye fatigue (if you’re prone to it). And virtually no manufacturers or reviewers are doing anything special in terms of displaying text for avoiding eye fatigue, so it’s a bunch of try and see for end users who are prone to it.
That’s bad they’ve thrown a crappy display in that. I’d like to think it might be a lemon, but probably not.
I do prefer my Kobo e-ink reader for sitting down to read, there is something about reading on a screen or phone that’s less relaxing than having natural light do the work. Aside from that I don’t get eye fatigue itself from screens, which seems like a blessing from the sounds of things.
By the sounds of things you are one step closer to a pumpkin spice latte enabler!