I wouldn’t worry too much about not knowing this. The steam deck is still relatively new and proton/dxvk is improving at such a blinding pace compared to the rest of Linux that my head is still spinning.

From my limited understanding, because of Arch’s rolling releases and Valve basing the steam deck on Arch. DXVK the compatibility layer for DX games to vulkan is managed by the distro. How this works is magic is still magic to me. I also think graphic drivers gets pushed on arch early too, since it’s a rolling release.

However I am in complete agreement, Arch isn’t beginner friendly, I personally like Manjaro and find it friendlier, but that’s like having a pet cat, and it’s a Bob cat. Sure it’s not a Lion, but it’s not a Kitty.

Have you not heard of the Steam Deck and Proton? Running MS APIs through a compatibility layer is the main goal for Linux gaming for the past few years, as it allows legacy games that had no hope in getting a Linux native port (or a terrible Linux port) to run in Linux, through the Proton Compatibility layer.

The apps I was using were running with DXVK, but due to a bug with intel iGPU driver which affects both Windows and Linux users, it didn’t work. A Intel Mesa update patched the bug, and my game worked better. When I moved back I was on an older driver and had to wait for it to be added in.

This comes from personal testing of games. There was a DX11 bug intel igpus where UE4 games crash instantly on boot. I was able to work around this by forcing dx12 in arch, but when I moved to fedora it wasn’t working, that was until about 2 months later after an update. Since I don’t know exactly how far behind fedora is in terms of graphics drivers I said it in ambiguous terms.

From my personal experience Arch is several months ahead of other distros and depending on the package and sometimes has everything you need already included for gaming.

I believe this is due to the Steam Deck.

However for ease of use, I agree there are other better distros. Fedora is only 2ish months behind arch in terms of graphics drivers and Ubuntu… has the latest proton from steam and lutris since proton isn’t installed from the local app stores.

I was more going for ease of use. If you are playing the latest and greatest then I agree you’d probably want Arch based or at the minimum Fedora based distributions. However if you are playing some more stable games, or I do titles and Ubuntu is fine. The updates will come.

My SO enjoys Zorin. Based on Ubuntu (like pop os) but had built in themes that makes the desktop environment easily customizable.

They found it easy to use and set up.

Many reasons. Many of which is down to how Google as a company is reaching between the proverbial couch cushions to get at the loose change to make a profit. Default opt-in tracking, breaking ad-blockers, and probably more which I forgot about since I abandoned Chrome years ago.

I’ve tried Linux on my Surface Go. It was awful but not in the way you’d think it would be.

Pros: Honestly Linux made the anemic processor on it feel snappy again. I couldn’t play the newest games, linux is not a miracle worker. But compared to the bloated experience its better than Windows 10.

Cons: The smallest features didn’t work. SD reader never worked. Needed the Surface firmware to get the webcam to work and even then it was worse than it was on Windows. No good on screen keyboard software, and from my testing no DE had a good tablet mode.

Plus the giant red “unsecured” bar on boot was an eye sore.

I know Linux is has more compatibility on different Surface models so maybe it was just my Go. Or perhaps it was Manjaro. Either way if you don’t have a machine yet maybe look at other laptop/tablets

From my quick search you aren’t getting everything from under $150.

I got a USB C dock from Amazon under the name LASUNEY, but it’s not for sale any more. I’ve seen equivalent under a 15 in 1 naming that seems to exactly the same, just under a different name LIONWEI that’s around the $100 mark, 2 DP 1Gbps and many usb ports.

I believe resolution is determined by your machine’s chipset not the dock, but I could be mistaken.

Now I also found one that has 2.5Gbps networking but that’s $270 under the Plugable brand. Not a fan of the specs of that one since the power comes from a barrel Jack instead of usb c.

I wouldn’t consider Fedora or Opensuse TW better than Manjaro. Just trading one issue for another. Honestly I replaced my 1 year old Manjaro install (when I borked my DE) with Fedora.

Fedora lasted 1 month before the btfs filesystem broke and I lost all of my files with no way to recover. Ontop of the difficulty of adding community copr repos for features like XPadNeo, DNF being so slow that Discover would barley function, and being about 2 months behind software fixes for a specific graphic driver bug that prevented me from playing some UE4 game.

Yes the AUR is the best feature of Arch, which is why I am still using an Arch distro and not Fedora or Debain.

However one of Manjaro’s features which other Linux distros don’t have, is how much of the OS’s troubleshooting and repair is in GUIs. For the most part I can setup a fresh Manjaro install without touching the command line once. And that’s how I want to use my machines, I want to just browse the web, play games, or do office tasks (the reason I use a computer), not trying to figure out how to install a GUI package manager from the AUR in EndeavourOS since it doesn’t come with one.

Manjaro is fine. Ran it for a year straight before I broked it.

My 2 cents is this. Don’t install from AUR unless you have to. Thats how i broked my manjaro install when i was uninstalling packages to fix a bad install. So my install order to protect myself is:

Main Repo

Flatpak (if its not a system tool like an IDE)

AUR

I can give you my opinion on a Gigabyte Clevo Laptop.

My laptop both ran to fast and hot which drained the battery. This was an issue in both Fedora and Manjaro.

I need to use different utilities to reign in the battery depending on the OS. Fedora it came out of the box but Manjaro I needed to install Slimbook Battery.

The other issue is the networking kills my sleep. Fedora was better with this than Manjaro, but newer versions of Manjaro kill WiFi when you put it to sleep. So it been better.

In comparison with windows while id like it to just work. Being able to tweak it is much preferable.

Might be a phone thing. Usually crashes any background apps while in use. Maybe its fine on a dedicated device?

I have a Nova 3 Color and 2 like books.

The likebooks never got OS updates, but the Nova got updates, but they were updating the default apps.

I don’t like moonreader, as I found it to be a battery hog. KOReader is my favourite and its the default reader (or a skin of it is)

By bloat I am referring to the Onyx store which is on my home screen and is not removable.

With that said my Nova is my preferred eReader, especially when I kill the WiFi. 2+ week battery life FTW

I think it depends on how invested you are in ebooks, and how much time you wanna spend on it. I would advise a Kobo if you aren’t up for Tinkering or an iPad if you are flexible with the screen.

But if you are up for a challenge a Chinese ePaper Android Tablet like Onyx Boox or Bouyee, so long as you can get Google Play to work. Or a Pocket Book if you can sort out DRM removal for ebooks.

Here are the pros and cons bellow

Kobo is the easy option.

• Adobe Digital Editions for non-kobo DRM, and library access. Its able to read DRM free books like you find on Project Gutenberg or Humble Bundle.

• Major downside is that you can’t read Amazon without effort (or a kindle serial number), book sorting kind of sucks without Calibre, and the storage size is small if you are into Comics.

iPad is the safe option

• Apple Books app is convenient and can read anything. It can sync with your iCloud if you wanna so you can continue on your iPhone. And DRM isn’t an issue since you can just download the apps.

• but its a LCD Tablet, and no ePaper display. iTunes isn’t the easiest to figure out to move books and iCloud can get verrry expensive if you are syncing comics.

Android Tablets are kind of in the same boat but…

• with KOReader even an old (but not too old) tablet is viable. Side loading official apps.

• OS updates are kind of hit or miss, support for older android is worse than iPad, and the devs don’t put as much effort in their Android ports.

Android ePaper tablet (Onyx Boox)

• Usually steals KOReader as its base, if its new probably has pen support so you can use it as a writing tablet, if it has Google Play you can get official apps

• But its expensive, there is often no updates to the OS, usually no MicroSD card, and has a lot of preinstalled bloat which is hard to trust.

Kindle Tablet/fire tablet

• Cons, its made by Amazon and will track your every movement.

• Pros keep it offline and it can read converted DRM free ebooks converted to AZW3 via Calibre. Fire Tablets can be made into cheap eReaders with side loading. But more importantly if you do give your kindle an Amazon account you can decrypt ebooks with its serial number. So you can get cheap books on a better eReaders.

I mean its unconventional, but moonlight + sunshine

It was the reason I moved to Linux. Though with another arch based distro and not the deck

Yup my install order is

Repo

FlatPak (if it doesn’t need is level stuff)

AUR

TBH I want “user friendly” with up to date drivers. Most Ubuntu bases distros dont offer that and fedora doesn’t have the same support with copr that AUR has.

While I don’t agree with Manjaro’s parent company, as someone who doesn’t want to tinker with their os, I prefer it.