A Windows Gamer tries Manjaro

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Here's something random I noticed. While checking out my secondary drive in Linux, I noticed a hidden Recycle bin folder that has 13gb of stuff in it. I have the recycle bin turned off in Windows so what the hell Microsoft?
 
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I mostly get what you're saying here. So say I have a 500gb drive, How much should be partitioned for /home and how much for root? Does it even matter? I knew that in Linux it all looks the same even though it's separate partitions. My biggest concern was running out of space on one partition and being mad that I didn't give it more. That's what I was trying to avoid when I went with a single partition. From your description I would have assumed /home doesn't keep much in there and doesn't need much space, but it looks like Steam installs games there so that's a little confusing. Sounds like it stores more than the equivalent of a Windows profile but that might just be a Steam thing. You guys aren't telling me that separate partitions can be used as one continuous amount of space are you?

I like the idea of being able to format the root partition and keeping all your config files and stuff but coming from Windows that makes me paranoid even though it shouldn't. I wouldn't trust something like that under Windows because of registry files and such. I know it's not at all the same in Linux but I'm the kind of person who still reboots every time they take a few minutes away from the PC because I still have my Windows 9x habits

I ran a 60GB SSD as my root drive for years and only ever used 75% of the total capacity.
 
I mostly get what you're saying here. So say I have a 500gb drive, How much should be partitioned for /home and how much for root? Does it even matter? I knew that in Linux it all looks the same even though it's separate partitions. My biggest concern was running out of space on one partition and being mad that I didn't give it more. That's what I was trying to avoid when I went with a single partition. From your description I would have assumed /home doesn't keep much in there and doesn't need much space, but it looks like Steam installs games there so that's a little confusing. Sounds like it stores more than the equivalent of a Windows profile but that might just be a Steam thing. You guys aren't telling me that separate partitions can be used as one continuous amount of space are you?

I like the idea of being able to format the root partition and keeping all your config files and stuff but coming from Windows that makes me paranoid even though it shouldn't. I wouldn't trust something like that under Windows because of registry files and such. I know it's not at all the same in Linux but I'm the kind of person who still reboots every time they take a few minutes away from the PC because I still have my Windows 9x habits

In my experience for a desktop install you don't really need much more then 100GB or so for your root. Root will be your Linux OS files and installed applications. (not games... you can install steam games anywhere including its own part... by default steam installs stuff under /home, but you can specify somewhere else if you want) If it was me I would go 100-120gb or so for root that should be plenty. Linux and most distros base installed apps will be 20-30GB so from there you can figure it out, if you know your going to install 1,000s of Linux applications you can go more if you like most people your going to have no more then 100 applications on your system 100 is more then enough.

Also know its just fine if you want to go one part for your root and your home. Not hurting anything and you can always backup your home/user files completely and restore that to a new install as well. Different ways to do the same thing.

And ya /home/YourUser is your install space. Stuff installed just for you will in general be installed under /home stuff for any user on the OS will be installed under your root. Pretty much think about /home as your c:\ ... the difference is Linux hides c:\windows and c:\Program Files and other OS stuff from you. That will be under root and require root level access to move things around or change. This is what say sudo is for... giving you temp admin escalation so you can install something to root or edit a config file under root. If you want to edit a config file in /home/user/.config/mozilla or something you don't need admin escalation as you own it.

Yes the registry is an abomination... all Linux configuration (ok most) is done in plain text configuration files. (I say almost cause systemd stuff is in binary configuration files but that is another bag of worms lol) I probably shouldn't be so hard on the windows registry... my only real gripe with it is its not a standard, some windows software uses it properly others override settings there with config files, others don't use it at all. MS has multiple ways of doing things instead of having everyone agree on the right way. This is another thing when we hear people complain Linux has no standard... the FHS is one of Linux standards that hold things together. We don't have settings files in 5 possible places, the worst windows developers put config files in every possible location it drives me nuts. lol When you get a chance read through the FHS wiki I linked. Gives you a good idea of what is kept where... one distro is basically the same as the next there. All but a few very fringe distros follow the FHS to the letter. To break down the important stuff....
C:\windows = /bin and /sbin (OS)
windows registry = /etc (System settings)
c:\windows\windows32 = /lib (Libraries)
/media (or run/media) - is where things like usb drives will show when they mount... and every major distro these days will automount such things when you plug them in
/opt = software you install by hand, not controlled by the package manager. Good chance you will never need this but if you have a package you want to install outside the package manager this is where you should put it. Many distros don't create this folder by default.
c:\Program Files = /usr
/var = log files
/dev = hardware these are not files... these are entries for actual hardware devices. People see /dev/sda1 first for instance... so installed harddrives ect. (these can be linked to usable files... mounted)
/sys and /proc are virtul file areas where the kernel will output information... mostly you won't need these for much of anything but this is where you find things you can toy with to change kernel schedulers and other kernel related things.
 
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Here's something random I noticed. While checking out my secondary drive in Linux, I noticed a hidden Recycle bin folder that has 13gb of stuff in it. I have the recycle bin turned off in Windows so what the hell Microsoft?

I wouldn't go deleting it or anything in Linux... windows tends to react badly to that. You must have some stuff in there... its also possible perhaps it wasn't empty when you turned it off ?
 
I ran a 60GB SSD as my root drive for years and only ever used 75% of the total capacity.

Ya it really depends how many Linux packages you are going to really install.. and how big they tend to be. If your the type that developes software and is planning to have multiple versions of python and other frameworks installed that you know will take up space then go on the larger side. If you really are just using it as a dekstop and you are going to have a browser a email client and a few tools then as Maz is saying 40-50gbs is lots. I think SUSE one of the few distros that defaults to 2 partitions recomends something like 40 GB which I think is low but for many people is probably lots.
 
Ya it really depends how many Linux packages you are going to really install.. and how big they tend to be. If your the type that developes software and is planning to have multiple versions of python and other frameworks installed that you know will take up space then go on the larger side. If you really are just using it as a dekstop and you are going to have a browser a email client and a few tools then as Maz is saying 40-50gbs is lots. I think SUSE one of the few distros that defaults to 2 partitions recomends something like 40 GB which I think is low but for many people is probably lots.

ChadD, you know me, I've got PPA's added up the clacker as well as plenty of games! This is no lean install.
 
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I wouldn't go deleting it or anything in Linux... windows tends to react badly to that. You must have some stuff in there... its also possible perhaps it wasn't empty when you turned it off ?

I was tempted but I figured I'd better not haha. Recycle bin never had anything in it so I have no idea what's up with that. I always turn it off and set Windows to ask before deleting files
 
I was tempted but I figured I'd better not haha. Recycle bin never had anything in it so I have no idea what's up with that. I always turn it off and set Windows to ask before deleting files

MS does some strange things.... don't look at your drive partitions it will probably annoy you some more. lol
 
MS does some strange things.... don't look at your drive partitions it will probably annoy you some more. lol

I know exactly what you're talking about. First noticed with Windows 8. Definitely some weird stuff going on at Microsoft
 
I got bored and started poking around my drives with gparted. Looks like Manjaro took that F2FS partition I made and converted it to ext4. Kind of lame oh but well. Would be nice if the installer warned you or something.
 
I got bored and started poking around my drives with gparted. Looks like Manjaro took that F2FS partition I made and converted it to ext4. Kind of lame oh but well. Would be nice if the installer warned you or something.

Honestly, if you want to muck with F2FS go right ahead, but the gains are minimal at the expense of risk. Ext4 is a damn fine file system, even on SSD's.

Really interesting thread.
 
I wanna install the new Ghostbusters game off the Epic store, trying to resist, but like I said at times the temptation is great...
 
I wanna install the new Ghostbusters game off the Epic store, trying to resist, but like I said at times the temptation is great...

I played it in Windows and it ran way worse than the original version did back when I played it. Choppy FMVs, ghosts getting stuck under the map, and game breaking crashes
 
I played it in Windows and it ran way worse than the original version did back when I played it. Choppy FMVs, ghosts getting stuck under the map, and game breaking crashes

Really? That sucks.

You just saved me $$.
 
I decided to do some very unscientific benchmarks. This is Tomb Raider 2013. Default ultra settings at 1080p with motion blur and dof turned off.

Manjaro:
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Windows:
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This could be the difference between dx11 and Vulkan on Nvidia but still pretty disappointing. I've seen some other benchmarks where a user tried different DEs on the same distro and cinnamon performed the worst (8% difference from the fastest). I might install Manjaro LXQT and benchmark again.

My system specs can be seen here: https://pcpartpicker.com/user/GhostCow/saved/#view=YCRH99
 
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I decided to do some very unscientific benchmarks. This is Tomb Raider 2013. Deault ultra settings at 1080p with motion blue and dof turned off.

Manjaro: View attachment 214059

Windows: View attachment 214060

This could be the difference between dx11 and Vulkan on Nvidia but still pretty disappointing. I've seen some other benchmarks where a user tried different DEs on the same distro and cinnamon performed the worst (8% difference from the fastest). I might install Manjaro LXQT and benchmark again.

My system specs can be seen here: https://pcpartpicker.com/user/GhostCow/saved/#view=YCRH99

Bear in mind that there is overheads in translating D3D to Vulkan/OGL that vary depending on the title. That's still perfectly playable with none of the daily issues encountered using Windows 10.
 
Bear in mind that there is overheads in translating D3D to Vulkan/OGL that vary depending on the title. That's still perfectly playable with none of the daily issues encountered using Windows 10.

Think he is playing the Linux native version of Tomb Raider. Which uses ferels conversion engine I believe. I remember the performance of that one just being ok. Game runs well enough but yes windows versions is faster. Shadow of the tomb raider uses Steam play.... I haven't played it but from what I understand the DXVK/Proton on that one gives up between 10-15% in performance. (which frankly is pretty standard of DXVK titles)

The only games that will run faster in Linux are ones with NATIVE vulkan support. Ones that use DXVK to convert DX are going to in general drop around 5-15%... with as you have noticed some being a lot worse.

To be 100% honest and fair... Most games run well under Linux. But anyone saying every game is going to run at = or better performance is being a bit overly rosy. There are a few examples of Vulkan Native games running perhaps even a little bit better under Linux... but dropping low double digits is in general what to expect. The biggest difference between today and 2 years ago... is just how many games are playable at a 10% drop, and that in general most games that run run properly. The days of missing textures or glitchy wireframes or some other sillyness are mostly gone. For the most part the stuff that doesn't start and run decently at this point is almost always due to stupid DRM and or badly written anti cheat systems. The DRM stuff especially is really bad.

To sort of see what you in general should expect from DXVK when it works this is about right. This video compares witcher 3 on Linux on a AMD GPU... with closed source and open source AMD drivers... and compares to windows and importantly windows running dxvk. (its just a .dll replacement you can run DXVK on windows translating DX to Vulkan) My point is you will notice Linux with DXVK actually outperforms Windows with DXVK. The drop in performance is from converting one API to another on the fly. Windows games with native Vulkan is where its at... to bad so few developers are really pushing Vulkan all that hard.

 
My point is you will notice Linux with DXVK actually outperforms Windows with DXVK.

This is very interesting. I'll have to find a native Vulkan game that I can run on both and compare. The only game I can think of off the bat is Dota2 but I doubt that has a benchmarking tool and I hate mobas anyway
 
Think he is playing the Linux native version of Tomb Raider. Which uses ferels conversion engine I believe. I remember the performance of that one just being ok. Game runs well enough but yes windows versions is faster. Shadow of the tomb raider uses Steam play.... I haven't played it but from what I understand the DXVK/Proton on that one gives up between 10-15% in performance. (which frankly is pretty standard of DXVK titles)

The only games that will run faster in Linux are ones with NATIVE vulkan support. Ones that use DXVK to convert DX are going to in general drop around 5-15%... with as you have noticed some being a lot worse.

To be 100% honest and fair... Most games run well under Linux. But anyone saying every game is going to run at = or better performance is being a bit overly rosy. There are a few examples of Vulkan Native games running perhaps even a little bit better under Linux... but dropping low double digits is in general what to expect. The biggest difference between today and 2 years ago... is just how many games are playable at a 10% drop, and that in general most games that run run properly. The days of missing textures or glitchy wireframes or some other sillyness are mostly gone. For the most part the stuff that doesn't start and run decently at this point is almost always due to stupid DRM and or badly written anti cheat systems. The DRM stuff especially is really bad.

To sort of see what you in general should expect from DXVK when it works this is about right. This video compares witcher 3 on Linux on a AMD GPU... with closed source and open source AMD drivers... and compares to windows and importantly windows running dxvk. (its just a .dll replacement you can run DXVK on windows translating DX to Vulkan) My point is you will notice Linux with DXVK actually outperforms Windows with DXVK. The drop in performance is from converting one API to another on the fly. Windows games with native Vulkan is where its at... to bad so few developers are really pushing Vulkan all that hard.



I don't disagree, I also don't think anyone's claiming that Linux gaming is going to result in equal to or better performance than the same title under Windows when translating from D3D to Vulkan or OGL. However, some titles show performance within around 10% of Windows, which considering potential overheads actually shows Linux to be the faster of the two operating systems.

Early Linux ports often struggled with performance, newer ports are much better. Shadow of the tomb raider is now Linux native and it's within the ballpark of Windows performance. Detroit: Become Human isn't Linux native but runs Vulkan and using Wine is actually considerably faster than Windows. I find Doom 2016 to be just as fast as Windows under Wine using the Vulkan API. Dota2 under Vulkan shows strange FPS dips under Windows that aren't present under Linux.

It's all a bit of give and take, but considering you don't have to put up with the numerous issues regarding the daily use of Windows 10, to many it's a fair trade and with software such as Wine, DXVK and DX9VK advancing all the time things are only getting better.
 
This is very interesting. I'll have to find a native Vulkan game that I can run on both and compare. The only game I can think of off the bat is Dota2 but I doubt that has a benchmarking tool and I hate mobas anyway

Dota is a native Linux title being from Valve. :)
 
I decided to try to do a little more benchmarking today but it did not go well at all. First I tried to install Solus because I heard that distro is headed by the guy who made the linux-steam-intergration package. It installed but wouldn't show up in my uefi boot menu. Apparently the 200mb efi partition that Windows makes isn't big enough. It needs at least 512mb and I didn't feel like making a new efi partition since I couldn't resize the original one.

After that I decided to give Manjaro with LXQT a try. Everything seemed fine at first. Booted up Tomb Raider and averaged 13fps. Pretty bad. I then realized that I had forgotten to install the proprietary drivers from Nvidia. Did that and decided to see how things would go if I didn't reboot since I saw someone claim Linux is better than Windows because you don't have to reboot after installing video card drivers. That did not turn out to be true at all. Broken graphics everywhere in system apps and Tomb Raider crashed when I tried to run it. I rebooted and tried again but now steam won't even open. I think I'm just going to go back to Manjaro Cinnamon and stay there. Everything else I've tried seems way worse haha.
 
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After that I decided to give Manjaro with LXQT a try. Everything seemed fine at first. Booted up Tomb Raider and averaged 13fps. Pretty bad. I then realized that I had forgotten to install the proprietary drivers from Nvidia. Did that and decided to see how things would go if I didn't reboot since I saw someone claim Linux is better than Windows because you don't have to reboot after installing video card drivers. That did not turn out to be true at all. Broken graphics everywhere in system apps and Tomb Raider crashed when I tried to run it. I rebooted and tried again but now steam won't even open. I think I'm just going to go back to Manjaro Cinnamon and stay there. Everything else I've tried seems way worse haha.

Who stated you don't have to reboot to install binary blobs? What about Ubuntu based distro's?
 
Who stated you don't have to reboot to install binary blobs? What about Ubuntu based distro's?

I thought I'd seen a wild claim like that in the switch to Linux thread in the news forum. Might have dreamed that. Ubuntu based would be best for Steam because that's apparently the only distro that's supported officially. The last time I tried Linux Mint I really didn't like it. Seemed like nearly every app in the repo was out of date and I got tired of adding ppas for nearly every single thing I wanted to install. It's even harder to go back to apt and PPAs after experiencing pacman and the AUR. Are there any better Ubuntu based distros?

Also I'm not married to Cinnamon. I'd happily try another DE if it has a nice dark theme, easy to modify keyboard shortcuts, and gives the option to show full names on the taskbar instead of just icons
 
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Ubuntu based would be best for Steam because that's apparently the only distro that's supported officially. The last time I tried Linux Mint I really didn't like it. Seemed like nearly every app in the repo was out of date and I got tired of adding ppas for nearly every single thing I wanted to install. It's even harder to go back to apt and PPAs after experiencing pacman and the AUR. Are there any better Ubuntu based distros?

There's tonnes of Ubuntu based distro's. I've used Ubuntu Mate, which was fantastic and lean - Able to be customized to look very modern, and I'm currently running KDE Neon which is like the official KDE rolling release DE loosly based on Ubuntu. There's also Kbuntu, there also used to be Ubuntu Gnome (not too sure if that's still around) and plenty more.

I went from the AUR to PPA's, essentially I found them to be the same thing except I install a repository for only the software I need as opposed to one huge repository for everything. KDE Neon is good as you don't need to use 'sudo apt update' after adding a PPA, you just add the PPA and install the software.
 
I'm starting to think I might just give BSD a shot since it seems like the available games on Linux don't really fit my needs anyway. I've always felt like the BSD license gives more needed flexibility than the GPL. Might be worth a shot.
 
I thought I'd seen a wild claim like that in the switch to Linux thread in the news forum. Might have dreamed that. Ubuntu based would be best for Steam because that's apparently the only distro that's supported officially. The last time I tried Linux Mint I really didn't like it. Seemed like nearly every app in the repo was out of date and I got tired of adding ppas for nearly every single thing I wanted to install. It's even harder to go back to apt and PPAs after experiencing pacman and the AUR. Are there any better Ubuntu based distros?

Also I'm not married to Cinnamon. I'd happily try another DE if it has a nice dark theme, easy to modify keyboard shortcuts, and gives the option to show full names on the taskbar instead of just icons

My first suggestion to anyone trying linux for the first time...

Is Manjaro Gnome. Manjaro is going to be just as fast in terms of gaming as Ubuntu or any other distro... accept perhaps clear linux but that is a completely different thing. Forget I mentioned clear linux. lol

Yes gnome is not scary its not bad... its the defacto standard Commercial Linux DE because imo (and apparently also the people at Red Hat, Suse, and Canonical) its simply the best.

People complain about Gnome for 1001 stupid reasons.

Let me tell you why I love gnome.

1) Its one of the best supported fastest DEs around. People that claim otherwise haven't used gnome in years.
2) It has GTK the framework its based on is the best support Linux API and most linux applications are just going to look right on Gnome.
3) Activities... this is hands down the BEST feature of any DE UI on ANY OS. MS tried to copy it in windows 8 and fucked it up bad. When you push the super key (windows key) what will pop up will be like hitting a steroids version of alt tab... you will see everything running on your current desktop. Roll the mouse wheel up and down to switch to what is running on your other desktops... click on any program to swap to it. On the right side of your activities screen you will see your quick launch programs.
https://help.gnome.org/misc/release-notes/3.6/users-activities-overview.html.en
Its worth running gnome for Activities alone... if I'm on a different machine DE or windows machine it drives me crazy not having this.
4) Its simple and stays out of your way
5) it has perfect composition backend (if you run NV especially some DEs will tear or do other odd things cause if issues with their composition engines)

No by default you will not have a start menu (and to be honest I think manjaro actually does have an extension start menu on by default now... I don't know I killed that long ago) Once you install Gnome... you can go to the extensions website and turn on / update / disable extensions with one click.
https://extensions.gnome.org/
and this is completely 100% no required... but I'll point it out if you try gnome.... install this
https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/pop-gtk-theme-bin/
PopOS is a popular Ubuntu based distro... I think it might be one of the best distros for laptops today as its made by System76 and they have a lot of special support for common Laptop Hardware added by S76. Anyway their Gnome theme is imo one of the best out there... easy to install on Manjaro. :)

Anyway if you haven't tried Gnome give it a go. If you hate it so be it... but ime if you give it a couple days you'll be sold. I have talked to a lot of people that have switched... I do Linux consulting work and get asked all the time what distro, what de ect ect. IME people that start with gnome stay with Linux... those that try the imo stupid look alikes like cinnimon end up leaving. But to each their own... DEs are a personal taste thing I guess.

 
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Forget I mentioned clear linux. lol

It was actually on my list but it probably needs more time before I try it. It might not even be worth it when I upgrade to an AMD system later this year. One of the guys working on Clear Linux also works on Solus which is one of the reasons I tried it.

Anyway if you haven't tried Gnome give it a go. If you hate it so be it... but ime if you give it a couple days you'll be sold. I have talked to a lot of people that have switched... I do Linux consulting work and get asked all the time what distro, what de ect ect. IME people that start with gnome stay with Linux... those that try the imo stupid look alikes like cinnimon end up leaving. But to each their own... DEs are a personal taste thing I guess.

Gnome 2 was ok back in the day but back then I preferred KDE. When Gnome 3 came out I didn't dig it at all. I get why some people like it but to me it feels like something designed for a touchscreen. It might be a superior workflow or whatever but it's not worth retraining myself when I'm happy with the classic desktop experience. I hear there is a classic mode now but I haven't tried it. Apparently it was added because Redhat desktop customers kept asking for it. After that short experience with lxqt I will say that gtk seems nicer though.
 
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It was actually on my list but it probably needs more time before I try it. It might not even be worth it when I upgrade to an AMD system later this year. One of the guys working on Clear Linux also works on Solus which is one of the reasons I tried it.

Gnome 2 was ok back in the day but back then I preferred KDE. When Gnome 3 came out I didn't dig it at all. I get why some people like it but to me it feels like something designed for a touchscreen. It might be a superior workflow or whatever but it's not worth retraining myself when I'm happy with the classic desktop experience. I hear there is a classic mode now but I haven't tried it. After that short experience with lxqt I will say that gtk seems nicer though.

Solus had a good start... and then ikey the guy that founded it disappeared and it floundered for awhile while no one was in control. He didn't give any of the other developers access to servers ect before going awol. Its back on track now... but its imo still way to immature to really be a serious daily distro for most people. Its interesting and I keep an eye on what they are doing... but its no Manjaro.

The first version of Gnome 3 rubbed people the wrong way. I would really say you haven't tried it too long though. Its not at all trying to be a touch screen UI. I think if MS hadn't copy catted it so poorly people wouldn't even remotely think that.

For myself where I often have 20 things running and 2 or 3 desktops in use.... activities is hands down the best feature any UI has ever given me. Really I barely even use my mouse when I'm on my machine. I hit the super key... and tab around or... super and use the search. On newer gnome version of activities search is integrated completely. So when I hit super and type say b... my applications starting with b show up, it will intelligently arrange them by what you use the most. So if that is blender... all you have to do to start it is hit super type b and hit enter. Boom blender is up.

Using activities if I am forced to use a machine with a start menu anymore I just want to fucking kick that stupid thing. I don't know how anyone ever thought those where a good idea. Ya you may not feel the same... but if you get a chance try gnome out for a bit. Its really not going for touchscreen... hell gnome has never been used on any commercial touch screen devices I can think of. :)
 
The lack of a menu by default as well as the need to add Extensions as well as Gnome Tweak Tool to get the desktop looking and behaving how I want it to look/behave is a big downer to me regarding Gnome - I by far preferred Gnome 2.

Old Gnome 3 had performance issues, they may have rectified these issues, but there's still plenty of DE's that are just as fast. Having said that, I'd run Gnome over Cinnamon as the WM used in Cinnamon has always given be grief. KDE also has activities, awesome feature, I use it flat out. I think Solus is pretty much dead isn't it? Which is a shame as it was a good distro.

However, the best thing about Linux is the fact that it's all about personal preference - You get the desktop that suits you perfectly and aren't bound by your corporate overlords. Gonna get stuck into a little more Diablo III @ 4k between jobs...
 
The first version of Gnome 3 rubbed people the wrong way. I would really say you haven't tried it too long though. Its not at all trying to be a touch screen UI. I think if MS hadn't copy catted it so poorly people wouldn't even remotely think that.

I used to work with an IT guy who swore by Gnome 3. I used to stand behind him mouth agape in confusion of how he could like it whenever he'd be showing it off. I might give it another try out of boredom anyway but I doubt the way it looks and feels has changed much since then. Even in Windows I'm not really the type to use search unless I don't know where something is. It's faster for me to pin the important things to the first page of the start menu and get to them in two clicks or one press of the super key and a click.

I might give KDE a shot too. The last time I used it I remember not liking it because it had way more options than I needed or wanted and I think I had trouble setting up the keyboard shortcuts that I like from Windows. The default keyboard shortcuts is a big part of what I like about Cinnamon but it seems like these days Cinnamon performance isn't great compared to other DEs
 
I used to work with an IT guy who swore by Gnome 3. I used to stand behind him mouth agape in confusion on how he could like it whenever he'd be showing it off. I might give it another try out of boredom anyway but I doubt the way it looks and feels has changed much since then. Even in Windows I'm not really the type to use search unless I don't know where something is. It's faster for me to pin the important things to the first page of the start menu and get to them in two clicks or one press of the super key and a click.

I might give KDE a shot too. The last time I used it I remember not liking it because it had way more options than I needed or wanted and I think I had trouble setting up the keyboard shortcuts like I like from Windows. The default keyboard shortcuts is a big part of what I like about Cinnamon but it seems like these days Cinnamon performance isn't great compared to other DEs

Activities would still cover you... I love the search it searches my apps and my files. But...

Super key will bring up activities. On the left you will have your pinned application launches... on the right you will have any desktops you have open which you can click on or switch to by rolling your mouse wheel. In the middle will be every running program you have on the current desktop. So if you have Libre office, Blender, Gimp, and a browser open all 4 will tile in the middle of the screen when you hit super. You can then click on them or tab to them if you don't have your mouse in your hand. Its great for swapping back and forth from a email to a web page.... or a document. When I'm typing a email to a client or something I'll often mid thought hit activities swap to a document or PDF I was referencing then activities back to my thunderbird client. My hands never leave the keyboard. More then a few times when I'm out some where someone will see me shuffling around 20 different screens on my laptop all while typing 50+wpm and I get the standard ohhh they brought in the super hacker Linux guy. Or the obligatory stupid have you hacked nasa questions. lol It looks more impressive then it is but its so much better then start menus and alt tabs.

Maz really likes KDE... and to be honest I haven't tried it myself in a couple years again. Its a solid option as well as i understand it if your into the more traditional windows like UI. I believe they have done a lot of working improving display of GTK apps and such which was always my main complaint with it. I like QT but to me nothing looked right in KDE that wasn't using QT. I'm sure it is much better today.
 
Maz really likes KDE... and to be honest I haven't tried it myself in a couple years again. Its a solid option as well as i understand it if your into the more traditional windows like UI. I believe they have done a lot of working improving display of GTK apps and such which was always my main complaint with it. I like QT but to me nothing looked right in KDE that wasn't using QT. I'm sure it is much better today.

As seen by my screenshots, my KDE desktop doesn't look much like Windows, more like MacOS. In relation to GTK apps running under KDE, the devs have made massive strides in making GTK look better while fitting in with the KDE (QT) theme. In fact that's one of the great things regarding KDE Neon, the dev's are constantly making fantastic improvements - There's even talk about independent scaling between monitors under xorg, something Linux has needed for quote some time.

I don't know whether I've mentioned it in this thread (probably in every other), but fractional scaling under KDE using xorg works every bit as good as fractional scaling under Windows considering my single 4k monitor.
 
Gotta say KDE is by FAR my favourite DE. Super customizable and really REALLY good fractional HiDPi support. It's also come a long way in the theming department. It's rare to run an app that doesn't look right these days.

GhostCow, don't bother with BSD unless you have a very specific reason to do so. It's still very much behind Linux IMO as far as using it as a desktop OS. But if you're bored go nuts ;)
 
Gotta say KDE is by FAR my favourite DE. Super customizable and really REALLY good fractional HiDPi support. It's also come a long way in the theming department. It's rare to run an app that doesn't look right these days.

GhostCow, don't bother with BSD unless you have a very specific reason to do so. It's still very much behind Linux IMO as far as using it as a desktop OS. But if you're bored go nuts ;)

Long live KDE! ;)
 
If you have not tried Steams Fsync patch, I highly recommend giving it a try. I have been playing Greedfall and under the stock kernel it runs at about half the frame rate as Windows , with the patch it run just as fast or faster than windows. if you are running Arch, here is a link to the steam repo with the arch kernels and aco driver packages.

http://repo.steampowered.com/arch/valveaur/
 
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