After testing several distros in Virtualbox earlier, finally did a proper install of KDE-Arch on an AMD CPU/ nvidia GPU machine on its own drive. So multiboot, but no interference in either system's bootmanager.
WLAN is a bit funny. Seems to connect via "iwd" during install, but afterwards network manager seems to scan only via "wpa supplicant" as default. So i was online but the info box in the right bottom corner was not able to show that, or connect to any other connection, or disconnect. Saw available sources but could do nothing with them. Had to write some simple config file that forces the network manager to use iwd.
Reminded me a lot of setting up my now ancient laptop for the first time some years ago with Ubuntu where the wlan driver was not correctly chosen by the system and I had to force it into some blacklist which resulted in it switching to another, working driver.
It's insane how much is included in the Linux kernel while some very basics are almost Windows 98 kinda bad, where installing a driver from the original floppys or cd would end up in a refusal loop throwing you into an internet free Internet Explorer for help...
Browsers work with copy pasted Win profiles. Just has a few buttons here and there differently placed. Even imported the bug that I can't see the pic in pic button anymore on some sites.
Mail works fine, even though Thunderbird is a bit dumb with not automatically subscribing to all necessary elements. Which is probably no Linux specific problem/inconvenience.
GIMP, Inkscape work just the same as their Windows versions.
Overall I already used almost only open source software anyway, so why should stuff not work.
My Wacom tablet works out of the box without doing anything. While Windows came with some 500MB install.
Spotfiy works.
Kdenlive seems okay, but I might switch to AVIdemux since I am used to it on Windows and I think Kdenlive might be more powerful and feature reach which I do not need.
Dolphin as the filemanager is a bit weird with its search function, seems to need Kfind to properly find stuff sometimes.
File preview is a bit odd since preview seems to be on, as a general option, while video preview pics (or other options) have to be enabled separately. Before that the folder already shows previews of its content, but the files themselves are blank video icons. Everything is there, somewhere, but some defaults are just odd.
Wallpaper switcher works nice, allows selecting several folders while Win only has one activ directory. HDR seems to work, Multimonitor as well, although lacking the same options Windows provides with monitor specific task bar behavior.
I like that window borders are snapping to each other and the monitor limits.
Not all apps seem to remember their window size and position, even after you manually set it to remember.
Tried a few icon packs. The most downloaded ones seem to love some rather colorful icons, deviating from the original logos' colors completely. I don't like the very top one much, "candy", just too thin contours, "sours" and "beautyline" are based on that but thicker. In the end chose a very tame black and white one. Also for the window colors. Greytones with orange as highlight. Mouse also orange. Neogaf inspired I guess. lol Alternatively I would either choose Papirus or the system default Breeze. Created a new icon for Thunderbird myself since I hated the one the icon pack provides, and modified the Dolphin folder icon dolphin with the dolphin of the dolphin emulator. Why some icon sets use the Firefox brand logo instead of the actual Firefox browser logo is weird to me, but swapped that too.
I am kinda confused about the nonsense about KDE and gnome being two different systems and their title bars looking different. Found Willow for KDE and something called Redstone for gnome/GTK to make both look like regular ass Windows, at least in theory it should be one design now, but since steam, firefox and vivaldi use their own designs, steam comes at least close, but both browsers just have something entirely else on their top. Why they don't just use system standard is beyond me. Same in Windows though. There are some programs that just know better... ugh.
Installing stuff that is outside their pacman and flathub archives is a bit odd. Download from github, trigger some makepkg or whatever and then realise that the programmers forgot to add all required dependencies. So when "scon" cries about being stuck on line 5 of a code, you have to research that scon seems to be some python element and install python manually. It's no dealbreaker since the programm that required this hassle isn't essential at all, offers debian/ubuntu and fedora packages, just not arch stuff which should not be chosen anyway if you are not enjoying solving nonsense. The app would run anyway manually just in its unzipped folder without even installing... installing only adds it properly in the autostart service list, which would not work by just adding it to autostart for some reason... it would run fine locally, starting it manually, but adding the exe to autostart would save several folders directly in my home directory outside of its own folder.
Gaming
Tested not that much. Trackmania runs. A very simple 2D puzzle game worked well too. Another 3D puzzler had a weird bug though. It runs default Linux native, but 15 of the 40 levels could not be solved at all since the command for one of the three verhicles would not register, just makes a sound but does nothing. Switched to some Proton runtime which updates the game files to the Windows version or directory paths or whatever. Took a while to find my savegame and transfer it. No idea why proton has this insanely branching folder paths replicating a ton of folders for every game individually, but I guess every game gets a clean fake Windows in that way?
Boot and shutdown so far seem quicker than Win, but fresh systems are usually snappy. Linux is on an "old" 2,5 SATA SDD while Win is on a more modern nvme drive. I don't know their respective speeds, but I assume nvme should be faster, so Linux might be nice in that area.
I would not expect games to run better, especially since I am on nvidia, but just like normal apps most should run fine enough, and if not, Win is waiting on the other drive. I don't expect Linux to be better, I just try to avoid MS and Google as much as possible. OS, startpage and duckduck as search engines. Did not use an MS Office product since years.
BeardSpike @Soodanim
Durin
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