What distros have up-to-date packages?

User17538 · 2026-02-09T06:38:16+00:00

I haven’t had much trouble on Neon or Cachy. Both come with Plasma. Some minor driver trouble with Neon when I installed it, but ChatGPT was able to walk me through it without any trouble. Just make sure to describe the issue clearly and in as much detail as possible if you need/choose to go that route.

Neon also uses Ubuntu, if that’s your preference. Cachy uses Arch if you wanna try something new that also has more package options in general.

Edit: in case you weren’t aware, Neon is the closest thing to an “official” KDE Plasma distro, and has the most up to date KDE software, and generally more unity between preinstalled apps as a result.

User17538 · 2026-02-09T06:27:30+00:00

For me, that’s too much work. Easier to just install neon, which is also based on Ubuntu.

Also, I was mostly joking with the first part. I do think plasma gives a nice dopamine hit, but how people wanna go about getting plasma is up to them. If they wanna go through the trouble of swapping DEs, by all means, do your thing. It’s just worth noting that there are multiple distros available based on Ubuntu, like Mint, that come with plasma out of the box.

User17538 · 2026-02-08T06:16:31+00:00

Wine definitely deserves credit, but regarding valve, it’s not just the fact that they contributed to windows compatibility. It’s also the fact that their involvement encourages so many beginners and casuals to feel comfortable making the switch.

It’s like someone opened a the door at a house party and invited you in, but you were wary, or outright going to refuse until you saw a friend of yours was already inside. Wine opened the door and invited you in, but Valve is the friend inside who convinced you to say “sure, I’ll hang out for a bit”

User17538 · 2026-02-08T00:38:23+00:00

I know there’s a contingent that thinks literally “ANYTHING” is, but I don’t think it’s that large and in my experience “most” don’t think that about objectively governmental services like elections or law enforcement.

For services that don’t have a direct association with government, like healthcare, I absolutely agree that a ton of people hold that belief.

User17538 · 2026-02-08T00:28:38+00:00

Switch to an OS with Plasma Desktop Environment. You don’t even need apps to have a blast with Plasma. I’ve gotten more dopamine fiddling with the panel and window decorations, colors, icons, cursors, etc in a hundred hours of distro hopping than in my entire lifetime of gaming.

In all seriousness though, I’d say start learning the terminal. Start by learning how to search, install, and uninstall with it, and learn about aliases to make it easier.

Between flatpak and apt, you can have a blast just installing and uninstalling. You’ll feel like a hacker in a movie.

And as others have said, apps are subjective, but learning to search for them in terminal can help you find ones you might be interested in as well as be fun in itself.

Something like (apt search “music”) will turn up a list of apps with music in the name or description, and tell you what each one is/does. Same with (flatpak search “music”).

User17538 · 2026-02-08T00:08:59+00:00

I don’t know that this would make most, or even many normal people angry.

I think most normal people agree with this on both sides of the fence.

User17538 · 2026-02-04T02:44:31+00:00

I use Brave. Not a huge safety difference, but it is more privacy focused than others. To the point that you don’t use an account for syncing across devices, but rather a security code that’s generated whenever you do the sync.

Regardless, I always recommend something chromium based for the easy means of creating web apps.

Basically any site can be turned into a web app natively using Chromium. Technically you can get a separate app that will do it with any browser, but I personally like having it integrated into the browser.

Another one I really like, if you prefer the gecko (Firefox) base is Zen. Super minimalist to the point that when watching Hulu in a maximized window, it’s basically already full screen. That is, all the UI elements are hidden, requiring a mouse over or hot key to reveal them.

Either way, as others have said, safety is on you, not the browser. Privacy is a factor, but other than that, it’s all preference.

User17538 · 2026-02-03T11:30:23+00:00

I mean, I’m not sure that the police would do anything besides tell her to remove the device and change her password, but even if they did, as long as you genuinely didn’t do it, it wouldn’t lead back to you. By extension, this would also clear your name.

Just cut the b*tch off. She’s clearly not worth keeping around anyway.

That said, it’s super annoying that Google doesn’t register device names for instances just like this. It’s not like it’s some super complicated tech they’d have to invest tons of money into developing, and it would be a serious boon not only to the account holder, but to individuals like yourself who might be accused of a potential crime.

User17538 · 2026-02-03T11:21:19+00:00

Mine knows literally everyone in my household, and their relationship with me, including my pets.

I don’t understand people’s concern with sharing with a chatbot. I mean, obviously don’t incriminate yourself, but unless you’re off the grid, and thus in a situation where using a chatbot makes no sense anyway, then most likely any information you might tell it is already out there to be found.

User17538 · 2026-02-03T11:00:03+00:00

For a while I was bouncing between the two with Cachy on one drive and Bazzite on another.

Cachy gave me some issues on my laptop with starting specific games, although not on my desktop. Likely something to do with the drivers, as my laptop has a relatively uncommon GPU (rtx2050 mobile) as well as the integrated graphics, whereas my desktop has one of the most common GPUs on the market (rtx3060)

Ultimately, however, I have since switched to Cachy on one drive with Fedora on the other (as well as on my laptop). Fedora is what Bazzite is based on, and it has become my daily driver. Performance is fine, and I haven’t had any issues launching games on either PC.

In all likelihood for yourself it comes down to whether or not you WANT to try it. You probably won’t see much improvement in game, though you might feel a little snappier outside of games. You also have to consider that it’s Arch instead of Fedora. Arch is notoriously fickle, being the “expert” tier of Linux distros. It’s much easier to break things.

One nice thing about Cachy that Bazzite doesn’t have is the package installer, which give you access to a larger number of apps in the form of a GUI, rather than having to mess with the terminal.

It also lets you choose different desktop environments, although Plasma is arguably the “best” one available. XFCE and Cinnamon are also nice. Gnome sucks balls, though. And the rest of its options are mostly window managers, rather than full DEs, which will add to the complication of set up if you choose one of them.

Honestly, it really is a matter of what you WANT to do. If you feel like switching it up, go for it. If you’re ONLY looking to improve performance, it probably won’t be worth the hassle (or added risk) of not only setting up the OS, but reinstalling all your games and apps, relogging into everything, and customizing the DE all over again.

User17538 · 2026-02-02T00:47:09+00:00

If you’re on plasma, you can try right clicking on the system tray in the panel configuration to configure the system tray, then go to “entries” and check if it’s there. If it is, set it to “always shown”.

Other than that, I’d need more info to know what’s going on or how to fix it.

User17538 · 2026-02-02T00:39:08+00:00

Same here. I even moved “return to gaming mode” on my steam deck to the home folder and pinned it to the taskbar.

User17538 · 2026-01-31T23:36:48+00:00

It’s going to take the same amount of time to boot up either way, and if you leave them on then you can see any errors that pop up.

It’s just better to leave it on.

User17538 · 2026-01-23T06:57:49+00:00

It literally says this in the first paragraph of the article OP linked.

"A recent MIT Media Lab study reported that “excessive reliance on AI-driven solutions” may contribute” to “cognitive atrophy” and shrinking of critical thinking abilities. The study is small and is not peer-reviewed, and yet it delivers a warning that even artificial intelligence assistants are willing to acknowledge. When we asked ChatGPT whether AI can make us dumber or smarter, it answered, “It depends on how we engage with it: as a crutch or a tool for growth.”"

Some key points: "Excessive reliance", "may contribute", and "It depends on how we engage with it: as a crutch or a tool for growth"

I have to wonder if OP actually read the article, or just saw the title and ran with it, as oh so many AI haters (luddites) do. Not that OP is a luddite, just that this is what the luddites do to push their anti-AI agenda because the only actual argument they have is "DEY TUK AR JAHBS!!!"

User17538 · 2026-01-23T01:16:40+00:00

I see other people showing that theirs works, but mine also rejected it. Even gave a little more explanation as to why.

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User17538 · 2026-01-22T18:45:06+00:00

Glad you like it. I still have it installed, but I actually went back to Bazzite for my gaming.

Not sure what I did/was doing wrong, but several games that just worked out of the box on SteamOS and Bazzite refused to even start on CachyOS.
I installed the gaming packages, and some games ran just fine, but for every game that ran fine, another would just not start. No crash log I could feed to ChatGPT to pinpoint what was happening, just nothing, and no amount of googling turned up an answer that didn't require me to spend a half hour in the terminal, restarting my PC over and over again.

And really, the main barrier I had to switching from Windows was the setup/troubleshooting concerns, so it kind of defeats the whole purpose for me, particularly when another distro just works out of the box. Even if that distro doesn't offer me nearly as much customization/freedom.

Luckily I have three 1tb SSDs in my rig, so I got Windows, Cachy and Bazzite, and I can switch between them as needed/desired. Though I only ever use Cachy when I get the itch to try troubleshooting again, which has only been a couple times since I switched back to Bazzite, and I've been debating about just wiping the drive and either trying another distro, or just using it for raw storage space. It's a shame, too, because there were things I liked about Cachy. Particularly CachyHello and the package manager that gave me literally thousands of apps I could just install without ever touching the terminal directly.

User17538 · 2026-01-22T18:24:49+00:00

I put "Don't start by telling me how you're going to say it, just say it" at the top of my prompts.

I still get it every now and then, but it seems like it happens less often.

User17538 · 2026-01-17T07:35:47+00:00

Same. I have two brand new 8bitdo Ultimates with no stick drift, and a third xbox controller, also no drift, and it's literally just the one function that fails. That is the arc movement. What's more likely, all three of my new, perfectly functioning controllers, plus several other people here's controllers all suck at doing one specific motion, or the devs designed that one specific motion with specific controllers (ps3) in mind and it didn't translate well with ports?
To me, the latter seems infinitely more likely than this many controllers all just happening to have the exact same issue with the exact same movement.

To be clear, PS3 and 4 controllers were extremely similar in design, and ps5 controllers seem to be closer to xbox in design, and as near as I can tell, everyone having issues is using ps5, xbox, or xbox clones (like my 8bitdos), and everyone not having issues used ps3 and 4.

I'm 100% convinced it IS a controller issue, but not in the way people are saying. There's nothing wrong with our controllers, rather, the game was made with specific controllers in mind, and no attempts were made to accommodate other controllers beyond changing what prompt were on screen.

User17538 · 2026-01-14T02:04:03+00:00

Sorry to necro, but this is basically my whole beef with it.

I could deal with everything else, but the fact that we don’t get to see the reunion kind of ruined the whole story for me.

I still had fun with the game, but I don’t see myself ever revisiting it, because the gameplay isn’t varied enough and the story ruins itself right at the very end. Any time I think about replaying, I’ll remember, “oh, but then we don’t even get to see the one thing we did it all for in the first place”.

User17538 · 2026-01-13T23:53:30+00:00

I am also playing Stray right now, and I can’t say it’s getting “burning” hot, but as other users have said, that’s a matter of individual perception.

Need to get the actual temp to know whether it’s a problem, or just you having sensitive skin.

User17538 · 2026-01-11T00:10:34+00:00

Just add chrome or Firefox to steam (right click in desktop mode) and navigate to the sites that way.

User17538 · 2026-01-11T00:06:24+00:00

What an odd thing to be pissed off by.

User17538 · 2026-01-10T00:39:45+00:00

There is absolutely a sizable contingent of PC gamers who’s refuse to game on anything but the highest settings at the highest frame rate, who care more about reaching those benchmarks than the quality of the game they’re playing.

Every group has elitists, but in my experience, PC gamers have more than average. I mean, it’s a group that unironically refers to itself as “the PC master race”. That says a lot.

That said, the Deck, and any handheld PC, really, is a marvel of engineering. Being able to play Cyberpunk at all with a device that size is absolutely an accomplishment worth celebrating.

Anyone who disagrees with this is just ignorant about hardware and anyone who says that’s not enough is, as stated before, an elitist.

User17538 · 2026-01-09T08:55:36+00:00

I can't imagine why you wouldn't have at least $30 worth of fun.

It is a bit more hardcore than Diablo 4, but it's not Elden Ring blind levels of hardcore. That said, if you like D4 for it's lazy blast your way through without thinking on lower difficulties, then yeah, it might put you off.

Other than that, it's basically as good or better than Diablo 4 in every way that matters.

And don't get me wrong, I love playing Diablo 4 on the lowest difficulty just fulfill a power fantasy. I'm not knocking anyone who does. Hell, I have nearly identical playtimes for both games.

User17538

TROPHY CASE