Yeah, 50% (ram / 2) seems about right.

The major tradeoff with zRAM is that programs are much more likely to crash due to running out of memory, but will run faster when memory is running low and freezes are less likely. You can think of it as offloading the pressure that traditional swap puts onto your disk, onto the (much faster) CPU. There will be an impact on CPU usage, but not enough to cause noticeable slowdown; in my experience running Linux, the CPU is almost never the reason something is slow, and is only going to be under significant pressure if you’re running a 3D game in software rendering, compiling a large program, or another complex CPU-bound task.

I wouldn’t recommend making the switch unless you often encounter system freezes or slowness while running tasks that use a lot of RAM (like web browsing on certain sites, or gaming), but it will improve things in that case.

You can install an antivirus, but you really don’t need to. Malware for Linux is rare, and malware that targets desktop Linux users is extremely rare (to the point that it’s a newsworthy story every time it does appear). Most distros have ClamAV and the frontend ClamTk in their repos, but it’s primarily used to scan servers for Windows malware before it reaches its intended target. Some Windows malware can still be harmful if run with Wine/Proton, but unless you’re downloading and running a lot of Windows software from unofficial sources (which you shouldn’t have any reason to) that won’t be a risk.

It’s not systemd’s fault, though systemd most often implements offline updates. The arguments for and against offline updates have nothing to do with systemd.

A lot of Linux distros, and graphical package managers like Discover and GNOME Software, are moving in that direction, under the argument that updating while online can cause disruptions to running software, in the worst case including the package manager itself (which can brick the system if it occurs in the middle of a critical update), and updates can’t be applied until the affected program (or the system, in case of critical components like the kernel) restarts anyway. Fedora Magazine explains the reasoning here: https://fedoramagazine.org/offline-updates-and-fedora-35/

In my personal experience though, I have never had an issue enabling automatic online updates on Debian Stable, and have had computers stay online for several months without any noticeable issues beyond Firefox restarting, so the risk is there but it’s pretty minor.

I personally don’t use Arch, but I think the reason so many people find it stable in practice is because they know their system well. When something breaks or needs to be changed, they know which configuration file to edit, which package to {un,re,}install, what to look for in the AUR, etc., and they can usually avoid those things in the first place, because they went through a fairly hands-on install process, not to mention having the best Linux wiki in existence at their disposal.

On top of that, I think a lot of derivatives of Debian, including Ubuntu and all its derivatives, severely undermine their stability by providing custom configurations for or changes to software that are rarely documented and completely transparent to the user… until they break and leave no indication of how to fix them. Which is one reason why I ended up using base Debian.

how do I install programs from outside the “discover store”? I can get the Plex app through the built in app store, but the Plex media server app isn’t on there so I have to download it from the website, which gives me a .rpm file.

Installing from Discover (or to be more precise, your distribution’s software repositories, for which Discover is a frontend) is usually best practice. Programs you find online are less likely to work on your distro (especially something as technologically unusual as Bazzite). That said, from what I could find online the command to install an RPM file on that distro is sudo rpm-ostree install <path/to/package.rpm>. I have never used boxbuddy or any kind of distro container, but I imagine it would as simple as opening the terminal for one of your distros and entering the appropriate command for that distro to install your package.

Also, outside of the built in discover store, what’s the best way to install programs?

Generally, Flatpak packages are safe to install, and any Flatpak repos you enable will show up in Discover. Flathub contains the majority of Flatpak packages in existence, though it might be enabled by default on Bazzite.

What are some cool programs in general to check out? My main use case is gaming, I don’t program or do any work on my PC but I’d like to explore just for the sake of exploring!

Just look around in Discover and you’ll find lots of gems. As a retro gamer, I’ve found RetroArch indispensable, as a frontend for all my emulators and then some. Lutris is nice if you want all of your games to be centralized under one launcher. There are lots of fun time-wasting open-source games too.

Also, what’s a good way to familiarize myself with using the terminal? I’ve used the terminal on Windows quite a bit in the past, but only for basic things like unlocking a bootloader on Android and sending a ROM to it, back when I cared enough to root my phones. How would I, for example, pull a program off of github and compile it myself if needed? There’s a program on github called gHub GUI by ysph that I’d like to check out, would be nice to be able to configure my mouse since piper doesn’t seem to recognize my mouse.

You can just ease into it, or read any number of Linux courses online. Following tutorials on Linux will be as easy as following tutorials on Windows. You can learn about programs with either man <command>, info <command>, or <command> --help.

Most projects include README files instructing you on how to compile and/or install them; the exact process depends on the program. But generally, if you see files named “configure” and “Makefile”, the process is to install dependencies, then cd into the source code folder and run ./configure; make; sudo make install.

What are some general best practices that differ from Windows? I don’t really know how to narrow this question down, apologies for it being so vague.

Discover should be the first place you go to install programs. Don’t install programs from random websites unless you absolutely have to. They probably won’t work.

A lot of the programs you are used to from Windows will not be available for Linux. They might be compatible with Wine or Proton, but try to find alternatives to them before you try that. There is a KDE app and a GNOME app for most of the basic uses, and https://alternativeto.net/ is a decent resource for finding Linux-friendly alternatives to just about anything.

You probably don’t need an antivirus - there are viruses for Linux, but they are extremely rare, and the anti-malware programs that are available for Linux will only detect and remove Windows viruses.

Don’t have any comments on your other issues, because I don’t have experience with the software you’re using (I rarely if ever buy “gaming” hardware).

Debian! It’s stable, elegant, and doesn’t impede customization. I distro-hopped a lot over the years - some that I ended up disliking included KaOS (severely limited software repository), Clear Linux (only way to get ffmpeg was to compile it from source) and Fedora (very slow); most I liked, and just decided to move on at some point. But I kept coming back to Debian, and eventually got to a point where instead of trying a different distro when Debian broke, I would just reinstall Debian.

I’d be interested to try VanillaOS or another “immutable” distro at some point in the future. See if they’ve matured enough for my day-to-day use.

I have to borrow a school laptop just to do proctored exams, because their “lockdown browser” doesn’t support Linux, and even if it did, it seems to do some things in kernel mode, so I don’t want it on my system.

Surprisingly, most classes at my university are entirely FOSS based, aside from that one piece of software, an obscure scientific program that only one assignment used, and MATLAB (which is easily replaced by GNU Octave.)

https://framatube.org/w/9dRFC6Ya11NCVeYKn8ZhiD

I really liked the simplicity of GNOME To Do when it was around. The successor seems to be GNOME Endeavor, which I haven’t tried extensively.

I suspect Plasma 6 will remove it. Though I’m liking this desktop setup so much I might just keep it for the rest of Debian Bookworm’s lifespan.

oregano

this is my “gaming” Plasma activity, so in theory everything I play regularly is there :)

i’m personally fine with the windows being slightly brighter, but i think an almost-black theme would look good too… might experiment with that, thanks for the suggestion!

Me too, but I also think it just looks cool. Sci-fi vibes.

oh it is still being updated! great.

I’m aware of FreeTube and PlasmaTube, which IIRC both require an Invidious instance. There was something called SMTube in the past, not sure if it still exists.

Nothing I’m aware of has both desktop and mobile version, but if anything there are more options for mobile YouTube clients; try NewPipe or Clipious.

Edit: SMTube does still exist. It does not require Invidious, but it does use tonvid.com.

deleted by creator

Details:

• OS is Debian bookworm, DE is Plasma 5.27.
• Plasma theme is Oxygen.
• Icon theme is a slightly modified version of Oxylite, only changes are that it follows my system color scheme, the “inherits” list is different, and the start-here and preferences-system icons have been changed.
• Wallpaper is Haenau.
• I’m using Oxygen for Qt widgets and decorations, with the Obsidian Coast color scheme, and standard Breeze Dark for GTK2.
• Layout is entirely my own. I’m showing my Games activity because the main one contains a folder view that might expose info I don’t want to expose here.

Hopefully this is original enough? I’m not sure. I’ve gotten away with posting desktops with mostly existing themes before, but on other occasions I’ve had posts removed for it. At least I mixed and matched some icons this time.

bonus screenshot with apps:

Revolt is the most Discord-like FOSS chat app; it’s very easy to use and customizable. Rocket.chat and Mattermost do similar things and are more oriented toward organizations (the Slack/Teams Classic use case).

Debian Stable. It doesn’t break with updates, it doesn’t break when I try to customize it, it has all the software you could ever want, and it just works. It’s robust, elegant, and free forever.

For most people I’d recommend a derivative like Mint, Q4OS, or SpiralLinux, since those smooth out a sometimes annoying setup process, but for me vanilla Debian is perfect.