Yeah, I’m sorry. I’m biased against it, thanks to my experience with it.

Well, I can take solace in the fact that 99.9% of the packages you are using are in EndeavourOS too. So, I was mostly right. :)

Yeah, also I think EndeavourOS and Arch moved to Plasma 6 at around the same time too? I tried holding off the update to Plasma 6 for a few days but finally took the update on March 12.

I also wish we could replace Manjaro with a green themed EndeavourOS. Manjaro is the next biggest Linux honeypot after OpenOffice.

I think with enough faffing around customizing things in KDE Plasma, I think a green-themed EndeavourOS is doable. Would I recommend it? Not really, lol! From what I’ve seen, I‌ like EndeavourOS’ default theming.

It’s just a shame EndeavourOS isn’t as known as Manjaro (at least during the time I first jumped into running Linux as a daily driver). But then again, with Manjaro shitting the bed becoming more known, I‌ hope EndeavorOS can take the place of Manjaro as the Arch-based distro for newbies.

Converting Manjaro to Arch in place is a labour of love. I have done it myself and it is was more steps than I expected it to be. Worth it though. Good friend.

Oh yeah, I was there with him when he was doing it. I can’t do any help other than cheering him on, and to have another eye on the screen making sure he doesn’t make any stupid mistakes in the process. At few points, I reminded him of the fact that I’ve backed up my files, and if things really get FUBAR, we can just do a clean install and restore the files from backup.

… I actually use Arch. Sorry.

But really, I would have gone with EndeavourOS (instead of Arch) if it were not for my friend who really strongly advocated for Arch (even installing it for me—or rather, converting my Manjaro install into an Arch one).

If I’ve had any regrets in my Linux journey, it’s choosing Manjaro instead of EndeavourOS as my introduction to Arch-based distros.

I’m with you on liking multi-monitor set-ups. I also have several workspaces and activities (a KDE thing—you can think of it as another set of workspaces accessible via a shortcut key), which means I’ve got tons of “space” to play around with.

I‌ could have my e-mail program run on one workspace, then switch to my main workspace with one screen for VSCode (or whatever) and another for the browser window with lots of tabs that I can just refer to while doing work. And then in a different activity, a multi-media program might be playing a podcast or just some music to help me focus.

My discord is usually on the same activity as my multi-media program though, as I don’t really need to refer to it as often. If there’s a new message for me, my system gives me a notification and an icon in my system tray lights up or something, indicating a new message.

But yeah! You do you with your preferred workflow!

Yeah, using Arch is a commitment. On top of having to keep your system relatively up-to-date (this is probably the easiest part though), you also have to be ready to do some work in resolving problems when they do crop up (usually after an update, lol).

However, I think most of the work in using Arch is the installation process, making sure things run smoothly after installation, and hammering out the kinks that may arise. After that, so long as you keep your system relatively up-to-date (and having resolved any issues resulting from updates), it’s mostly hassle-free.

The only other distro (or rather, OS) that I think has as wide a source for installable software is NixOS, but not only I haven’t any experience with it, it’s still relatively new and wouldn’t recommend it for daily-driving, much less gaming.

But yeah, Arch is definitely not for the faint nor half-hearted, but it might just work out for you. Good luck and may you be able to find a Linux distro that works with your hardware.

I can’t really give you advice but maybe my current set-up can give you some ideas.

My desktop has an AMD Ryzen 5 3500 for my CPU and an AMD‌ Radeon RX 7600 for the GPU and some 16GB of RAM. I have two cheap monitors both connected via HDMI and are 1080p 75Hz. My desktop runs Arch Linux with KDE Plasma 6 Wayland, and aside from some minor keyboard-related issues, it’s running fine. My desktop set-up could be just bog-standard that things just work, but there ya go.

I am not telling you to install Arch Linux, not unless you’re willing to dive into the Arch Wiki, lots of forum posts and the occasional Stack Overflow thread whenever you’ve got a problem—not to mention dive into the command line and read lots of arcane logs to even start to know what to search for online. However, if your problems are due to lack of software support or something similar, then with Arch (or really, Arch-based distros, just stay away from Manjaro) and its wide array of packages, you might just be able to make things work for your hardware.

I switched to Wayland the moment my distro went moved to KDE Plasma 6 because according to my logic: if things are going to be broken and I’m going to adjust to them anyways, I might as well do it all at once: shock therapy style.

Plasma 6 broke a lot of my desktop customization, but that is to be expected. And Wayland? It has been surprisingly okay. I am experiencing some keyboard-related problems that I can’t even begin to track down (sometimes the keyboard flat out refuses to work for certain programs, sometimes it’s the numpad). However, I am not sure if it’s really related to Wayland, so I’m withholding judgement.

Indeed, the phenomena of people being assholes to newbs isn’t limited to Linux. Heck, I even witnessed this in a lot more places other than you’ve mentioned (like language learning). There is just this fact that people don’t start out with enough knowledge to get the help they need. We need to be aware of this fact.

What makes this really problematic in Linux circles is how Linux is “a minority of a minority.” Being a computer nerd is relatively rare enough, and being a computer nerd who is into Linux is even more rare. This makes the knowledge of the mores and culture of Linux circles even more scarce.

If you ask me, one good way to alleviate this is to “adopt a noob”. That is, someone helps a new Linux user along, not only helping them in the installation, configuration, and maintenance of their system, but also how to interact online with other Linux users, and more importantly, how to get and use the debug data one would need to resolve their problems on their own, or ask for more expert help if necessary—or even to make a bug report or feature request if all else fails. All of this in the hopes that this new Linux user grow into someone who can pay things forward. That way, not only can users get the help they need, but also give the contributors the information they need to improve things (assuming more people make good bug reports and feature requests).

But if we’re going by Linux user stereotypes…

Seriously though, I’ve seen this happen in real life, having been a member of a Linux users group in university. That group didn’t go as far as teach members how to retrieve and use system debug data though, let alone how to ask for help online, but simply being part of a group of people who help each other with the inevitable challenges of using a Linux computer system is oftentimes enough to encourage someone to keep at it.

TBH, if it weren’t for that group, I might have stayed a Windows user, with my Linux experience being negatively colored by schoolwork and struggling with vi 😅

I’ve switched to Linux as my daily driver sometime late 2019, and initially went with Manjaro (with XFCE, because I was using an ancient laptop back then) after it was recommended to me. The installation and set-up process was pretty quick and painless.

When I got my current desktop, I stayed with Manjaro. However, I got some problems with my NVIDIA video card’s drivers. Proprietary support for it was dropped shortly after I got my system. Nouveau was decent. I can use my system at the very least, but gaming was a lot iffy. I didn’t mind since I don’t really do gaming, however. Since then, I’ve moved on to Arch, btw. Also since then, I’ve got an AMD‌ card. Neither of them gave me much problems. A lot of my problems with Arch deal with the changes I’ve made to my configuration.

This is basically my Linux experience: when it works, which is 90% of the time, it’s excellent. When I do have some problems, 90% of the time (9% overall), I can get by with a few internet searches. That remaining 10% of the time (so, 1% overall), I feel that I’m just too smooth-brained to resolve it, and even attempting to resolve it seems to be a foolish errand.

While lot of help is out there online, I don’t appreciate the elitist tone of some of the more Arch-specific fora—they’re helpful, but I’ll never want to put myself to the position of asking those people for help, not with how newbs are treated. That is basically why I said earlier that I have no confidence that Linux will soon be able to shed its “for advanced users” image. Newbs to Linux don’t have the knowledge to “properly ask questions” required by a lot of those online fora. IMO, they only resort to asking questions online when they’re knee-deep in shit and are desperate for an answer. Being faced with an “elitist RTFM attitude” when one’s already desperate for help doesn’t alleviate that “Linux is too hard for me” image.

So, yeah, there’s that.

90% of the time, Linux works swimmingly fine. 9% of the time, some problems might arise, but an online search (Arch Wiki is very helpful in this regard) and digging around some fora would resolve it. 1% of the time is where you’d find yourself wondering if you’re smart enough for Linux. Unfortunately, it only takes a handful of (second-hand) bad interactions (thread closed with no answers, being told to RTFM, being told that the query is too vague without any helpful nudge towards a refinement of the query, etc.) to sour a user’s impression of Linux as a whole.

I must admit that newbs not knowing how to ask questions isn’t a problem exclusive to Linux alone. However, Windows and even Mac have the luxury of larger user numbers, and more importantly, paid staff to address user queries. With Linux, as a rule, the ones answering user questions are but other users volunteering their time and effort to answer questions. It’s understandable that facing the same malformed question again and again is infuriating. However, I think it takes time and effort to be rude. IMO, it’s just better to walk away from a possible unpleasant interaction. Of course, this wouldn’t help the user at all, but I’d rather see a thread with no replies than someone telling me to shut up and read the fucking manual. Perhaps there’d be someone more helpful who’d step in before the thread inevitably gets locked due to inactivity.

I don’t want to be negative about Linux, but if the “year of the Linux desktop” is to happen, this is one crucial thing that we (and I count myself in being a Linux user myself) must address. Every Linux user is, whether we like it or not, an ambassador, and how we deal with newbs/noobs asking questions will shape their impression of not just us, but Linux as a whole. I think there are a lot of people who are still on the fence, not because of Linux’s capabilities, but because of a pre-concieved notion of what a Linux user must be: tech-savvy and above all, willing to devote the time to learning about their machine and OS. A‌ lot of people aren’t like that. Moreover, I think there are some people using Linux (even Arch, btw) who aren’t like that, but … yeah.

At any rate, I agree with you that a lot more people will be able to get by with a pre-installed Linux system. I think Linux is ready for being a mainstream daily driver.

Oh, yeah, I don’t think not having native MS Office apps isn’t that much of a deal-breaker. I personally use Libre Office, and despite some hiccups (their documentation do have a lot of problems IMO), it’s got a decent amount of feature-parity with MS Office. For almost all of what I want to use an office suite, Libre Office would suffice. For the exceptions, I can usually find a workaround.

Overall, I’m happy with my Linux system—to the point I barely even touch Windows anymore (my SO installed Win10 on a separate SSD for me so that I can dual-boot), but I’ve got no reason to log on Windows. I might have had some problems (mostly of my own making), but with that small exception of times that made me wonder if I’m smart enough for Linux (or yeah, basically Arch), I’m more than content a huge majority of the time.

I’m sorry for the rambling wall of text, and I hope I’ve put my message across clearly.

This is just based on my personal experience, so please take it with a grain of salt.

Rather than gaining ground from the wider population, I see the recent rise in Linux usage as coming from a pool of “interested users” who have in one way or the other, had some prior exposure and thus interest in Linux. These people have already been interested in making the jump, but have been held back in one way or the other.

This shouldn’t be taken as discounting the recent advances amongst Linux distributions, however. Personally, the reason why I’ve made the jump is two-fold: dissatisfaction with Windows, and the advances in Linux itself that have made the jump far less intimidating than ever before. Not being a gamer, however, advances in Proton was only seen as a bonus, though a very welcome one.

Only one other person in my current friend group daily-drive Linux, and like me, they already have had experience with it beforehand. There are some other people I know of who have used Linux, but still, they all have had prior experience from school or work. For everyone else I‌ know of, if they’ve even heard of Linux, they think of it as “for advanced users” and as one contact put it “way above my pay grade”. Unfortunately, in so far as personal experience goes, I don’t have confidence Linux will be shedding that image anytime soon.

As for the Steam Deck, I am guessing it’d be similar (with a lot of caveats) to how people see Android. It’d be seen as a separate thing, and not occupy the same mental space as “desktop Linux”. For one, it being a hand-held system will reinforce that difference, and people aren’t as willing to tinker about with their handhelds as people are with their desktop systems. Steam Deck’s OS might as well be BSD or even Temple OS as far as the ordinary user is concerned. I am hoping I am wrong here, however, as interoperability might make a difference here: if people can install and use their desktop programs to their Steam Decks in as much the same ease as installing an Android app in their phones, then perhaps the choice of OS here will make an impression on the users and not just the tinkerers.

Despite saying all that, however, I still think Linux is undergoing a renaissance. There’s quite a lot of improvements going on even as we speak. Usability, in a very general sense, like being able to daily-drive Linux without being hampered by a lot of issues, is way better than it was when I first used a Linux machine in a school computer laboratory close to twenty years ago. Advances like this is starting to pull people who are curious, interested, and already leaning towards making the jump—and if this trend continues, will lead more people into using Linux, leading to more people contributing towards advances, and so on.

I can only speak from experience but from my understanding most people’s knowledge of Linux is derived solely from wanting to do something and then figuring out how to do it, instead of studying a list of “things you must know to use Linux”.

I second this. While I’ve been exposed to Linux quite a while back (Linux Mint, circa mid-2000’s if memory serves me right) and was given a “Linux basics” rundown, I only started daily-driving Linux around late 2019, and by then, my knowledge of Linux pretty much have faded. It still hasn’t prevented me from getting re-familiarized with Linux (Manjaro, then Arch). Of course, some bit of knowledge would help, but a lot of the Linux basics you’d need are already out there if you need it. Just look things up if the need arises.

Also, I find having to learn something I don’t immediately would need to use not very productive, even counterproductive at times since it leads me to having a mindset of “I should already know this, why am I‌ being so stupid?”

So yeah!‌ I second this sentiment of “just use your computer, look things up if you have to, it’s not going to hurt.”

And oh, don’t be afraid to mess with your computer from time to time. If you’re concerned about breaking things, you can install the distro of your choice into an old laptop or something, and use that as a place to “mess things up.”

Edit: I forgot that OP already is using Linux in a virtual box. OP can use that as a laboratory to “mess things up.”

Thanks! I’m glad to have inspired you.

While KDE Plasma offers a whole lot of options for customization, it’s really daunting especially if you’re just new to it. What really helped me is to just go with a little bit of customization and tweaking at a time. As I got more experience, I started to want more and more which lead to a lot more customization and tweaking.

I’m weaning myself away from it. However, it’s still unavoidable in my case because my work uses it. Thus, my work-related appointments and such are on there, which is one of the reasons why I had that widget in the first place (to monitor work-related appointments, deadlines, etc).

I’ve been working on it on and off since I’ve started using this system. It started with just the basics, tweaking the defaults, wanting more, and so on and so forth.

I usually can spend an entire (weekend’s) afternoon just tweaking things, making a change here and then, and observing if I like the changes I’ve made. Rinse and repeat that over a period of several months.

I actually am trying to get it hooked to my google calendar. That widget used to support that feature and have it work. However, recent changes have borked that functionality, and I can’t seem to find another widget that does the same.

Or I can just move away from google calendar.

Details:

The right screen has the following (KDE Plasma) widgets:

• Alpaca Clock and Weather (top-left)
• Event Calendar (bottom-left)
• System monitor sensor widget of various settings (the five widgets on the right side)

Both screens have side panels containing only a icon-only task manager. These side panels are installed on the outer edges of the screens instead of on the bottom as might be customary.

The top panels of both screens act as one whole top panel. However, both of them also have a collection of widgets (Window Buttons, Window Title, and Window AppMenu) that (should) only come into play if a window is maximized on a screen. That’s what is demonstrated in the first screenshot of the OP.

As for the theming, I used WhiteSur-dark as the global theme, with particulars overriden as follows:

• Plasma Style: Monterey-dark
• Colors: MontereyDark
• Colors, accent color: custom (#636363)
• Window Decorations: Prof Dark
• Window Decorations, Window border size: No Side Borders
• Icons: Ultimate-Plata-Suru-Plus…
• Cursors: macOS-Monterey
• Splash Screen: 1604-Arch-Splash

As for the mouse gestures. I’ve got a mouse with additional buttons, so I used one of those extra buttons to indicate that I’m going to do a mouse gesture. Those mouse gestures are taken by KDE Plasma and act like a custom shortcut, which executes an action, which I defined via KDE‌ Plasma.

The gestures are as follows:

Go to the previous Virtual Desktop:                     move right, move up
Go to the next Virtual Desktop:                         move left, move down
Move the active window to the previous screen:          move right (a bit), move left
Move the active window to the next screen:              move left (a bit), move right
Move the active window to the previous Virtual Desktop: move down (a bit), move up
Move the active window to the next Virtual Desktop:     move up (a bit), move down

EDIT: Added theming details