Desktop linux - your setup

Saw some discussion of setups in one of the other threads and thought it might be interesting to hear from more people: for those who use desktop linux, what is your typical setup? Suggested template:

 

Distribution: Arch for x86-64 machines, asahi on my m1 macbook, postmarketos on other arm devices
Init system: systemd
Desktop environment/window manager: swaywm
Login manager: none
Terminal emulator: foot

Frequently used packages:

firefox for personal (with adblock), ungoogled-chromium profiles for work stuff (with no adblock)
tmux
git
nvim
libreoffice/pandoc
inkscape+gimp


Comments:

Simple lightweight setup that has low distractions and runs consistently across my different systems. Tiling+workspaces gives me heaps of space to plonk things, and it functions nice and predictably, works even without a mouse.

Stable too, I've been using this since about 2017 and have had daily driven machines with 2+ years of uptime

 

https://bazzite.gg/

is what I moved to off Win10. Steam and GOG just work, obviously some games need Windows anticheat, that's on the vendor. Every I play works fine including AAA things like Space Marine II.

Have Developer tools going easily like Rider. LM Studio for local LLM's. Everything just works...

 

My main PC runs KDE Neon 6.5.0, I've also got a secondary PC that runs CachyOS with Plasma 6.5.0 - I tend to switch between the two. Both PC's run the same software, both run identical desktops, both run dual monitors - They're literally mirrors of one another so I can work from either PC.

Too many software packages installed to mention. Right now my main PC runs an m.2 nvme SSD for the OS and two 6TB HDD's for storage, I plan on replacing one 6TB HDD for a 4TB m.2 nvme SSD and replacing the other 6TB HDD with an 8TB HDD for storage - When I do I'll swap the main PC to CachyOS, as it really is bloody awesome.

KDE Neon desktop:



CachyOS desktop:

 

Fluid notice you have two screens, do you have any hints on getting SDDM to only show one? It's easy in X11 but apparently CachyOS uses Wayland SDDM and I can't get anything to work.

 

Distribution: Fedora 42 Cinnamon spin
Desktop environment/window manager: Cinnamon
Login manager: Default
Terminal emulator: Default
Frequently used packages:
Vivaldi
Onshape (Not actually a 'package' but it's a full CAD application that's delivered via browser)
Orcaslicer
VSCode (mostly with platformio)
git, screen

Comments:
There were a couple of months where I had to pause kernel updates and waited for a kernel bug to be patched before I could resume stable updates. Soured the experience but this is non LTS life.
Package repository is surprisingly sparse for the kinds of applications I use. For the most part direct install and management.
Otherwise, it's covering the hobby productivity tasks very well, on a computer that's about 12 years old. Had to get my head around connecting to serial ports in Linux, that part was a bit less straightforward than expected.

 

Both KDE Neon as well as CachyOS now use Wayland for SDDM, and as far as I'm aware there's no way to restrict the login greeter to one screen only. It's interesting, as the login greeter is visible on both displays when performing a cold boot (although it only works on the display the mouse cursor is on), but when logging in after the computer has gone to sleep the login greeter is visible on one screen only.

Sorry.

 

Distribution: Mint 22.2
Desktop environment/window manager: GNOME with a small tweak as commented below.
Login manager: Default
Terminal emulator: Default
Frequently used packages:
Firefox
My Steam library
OnlyOffice
Spotify
VLC

Comments:
I've just set this up recently as I'm sick of Windows and when I checked ProtonDB, pretty much all of my Steam library seemed to be compatible bar one or two games which I didn't care about. I did a test run via VirtualBox first to get it how I liked it and tested an old game to check that Proton actually worked. Afterwards, I went ahead with an actual install.

I haven't used Linux a heck of a lot, but I know my way around enough to get by. I had run a dual boot with Ubuntu at times. I also did run Mint for a while on a potato laptop back in uni about 9-10 years ago before I upgraded the device a few months later. The CPU fan was busted in it, causing severe thermal throttling to the point where under Windows 7, I couldn't run any YT video at or above 480p without lag. It ran flawlessly under Mint though up to 720p (which was pretty much the screen resolution).

I chose GNOME cause I love the layout/UI of Ubuntu far more than Mint's Cinnamon environment, but I'd prefer Mint overall cause of how Canonical (Ubuntu's developer) goes about things. I just applied a tweak to have the app shortcuts bar show persistently and docked to the left side like Ubuntu's default.

 

Quiet in here....here's mine.

 

Distribution: Fedora
Desktop environment/window manager: KDE/Wayland (formerly GNOME/X11)
Login manager: SDDM
Terminal emulator: kterm (you should ask for terminal configs too....)

Frequently used packages: too many, but open right now, Firefox, FreeCAD, VisualStudioCode, Evolution, Caprine, Chromium, Dolphin

Comments:

terminal configs. bash +powerline, Vi (+powerline), tmux (+powerline), bat (upgrade for cat), eza (upgrade for ls), most (less), btop (top replacement)

several systems. been 100% linux (personally, still have to touch other nasty systems for work) for nearly 20 years now (and longer overall), firmly in the RedHat camp, started back in the days where you had to beg/borrow/steal a CD and compile yourself. don't miss those days.

- Main PC. Fedora 42, initially GNOME/X11 desktop, now KDE/Wayland. Ryzen 5950/7900XTX/64GB, dual 4k 32" HDR screens (Gigabyte M32U).
- Laptop, Fedora 42 KDE/Wayland. Dell Inspiron 15 3525 Ryzen 5700U/integrated/16GB 2k screen.
- Pi, Fedora 43 KDE/Wayland. Pi4 8GB. sits in my rack should I need to do anything while there.

Still running Fedora 42 while waiting on OpenZFS team to provide update to support 6.17 kernels. I don't boot/root ZFS on these systems, but use ZFS extensively for backup drives, and my servers, so keep these working should I need to recover data from servers.

- homelab/docker server, AlmaLinux 9, EPYC 7B13 (64/128 C/T)/Intel A310/256GB, 8x2TB Samsung 990Pro ZFS Z2, 2x1TB 990Pro LVM RAID1 boot/OS.
- NAS server, AlmaLinux 9, Dual Xeon E5-2697 (12c/24t each so 24/48),no GPU,256GB, 2x ADATA 8800 2TB SSDs for cache/ZIL, 8x14TB and 8x4TB Z2 arrays
- a few Pis doing things, usually just Raspian on them.

 

Proxmox 9 with KDE plasma installed so I can run it as a workstation.

 

CPU: Intel Core Ultra 9 285K 3.7 GHz 24-Core
CPU Cooler: Corsair iCUE LINK TITAN 360 RX
Motherboard: MSI MPG Z890 CARBON WIFI ATX LGA1851
Memory: 2 x Corsair Dominator Titanium 96 GB (2 x 48 GB) DDR5-6600 CL32 Memory
Storage: 2 x Samsung 990 Pro 2 TB NVME SSD
Case: Rosewill 4U Rackmount Server Chassis
Power Supply: be quiet! Dark Power 13 850 W 80+ Titanium

Running Proxmox VE with LXC Containers for Plex and Home Assistant, and a Win 11 VM for Blue Iris.

Also, why and when did RAM become fucking expensive?

 

fuck off blueiris and look at Frigate instead. imho much better overall and it's FOSS.

 

Is frigate still heavily "event" focused? I tried it a few years ago and it was much better than the alternatives for object detection and recording when someone was in frame but if you wanted to record 24/7 and be able to just scrub backwards and forwards through the recording it was quite clunky.

 

Cheers. I'll look into that as I will be redoing the setup once the new shed is built.

 

By default it works on events only, but it can be configured to record 24x7. I've got it set up like that, and can easily - and surprisingly quickly (you'll want SSD storage to back it) scrub through days of footage.

 

Fedora workstation. Usually KDE.

Firefox, emacs, default terminal app, 1Password.

I’m forced to use Windows for work (Visio, Check Point Smart Console) and (competitive online) games. So this doesn’t get used as much now.

 

Distro: Bazzite.
Desktop: KDE.
Login manager: Default.
Terminal emulator: Default.

Frequently used:

Discord, Easy Effects, Firefox, fooyin, KDRC, Orca Slicer, Pika Backup, Plex HTPC, Protonmail, Prusa Slicer, QOwnNotes, Steam, Thunderbird, VLC.

Most are native or Flatpaks, Protonmail is running an rpm in Distrobox.

Comments:

Been using this as my daily driver for about 6 months now, so far I haven't had any major issues unlike in the past when I've tried to switch, that was always a nightmare. Still have some annoyances like printers being stupid sometimes (printing wrong size etc.), issues accessing some SMB shares or opening files in VLC over the network. Biggest annoyance is not having GUI access to ZFS snapshots (Windows has Shadow Copy) & not being able to see SMB share file info like codec, bitrate etc.

I do still have a Windows 11 LTSC system for VR, anti-cheat games & photo editing programs (Affinity Photo, DXO Photolab & FilmLab), cant get away from Windows for that stuff yet. Tried all the open source options for photo editing, didn't get along with most of them for one reason or another, paid options are unfortunately still the best option. Use a Level1Techs KVM to switch between them (great KVM btw, expensive though).

 

you probable have to increase the max file size for network file properties in Dolphin, by default (for speed) it won't read network files for that kind of info. it's adjustable. It's labelled for 'previews', now I don't do this, so not sure if it'll do what you want.

zfs snapshots are available in your file manager too, but as hidden dir, so

say your ZFS dataset is mounted to /mnt/data/
the snapshots will be in /mnt/data/.zfs/snapshot/
(note the .zfs the . makes it a hidden dir)

 

That brings up thumbnails, but there's still no tab relating to Details.