You could try to rebase to the universal blue Aurora version. I believe the ublue images are generally a bit more focused on end user and driver support.

Aurora - kde

Bluefin - gnome

Bazzite - gaming

Absolutely. Look at Aeon. I turn it on and do what I need to do.

Later I might see a quick pop up that says system has been updated. It didn’t require intervention. It didn’t even tell me it was happening, it just informed me after the fact.

If anything broke, I would never know because on the next boot if something failed it just uses the previous snapshot to boot. As far as I am concerned the system is working just like it always has.

But even as recently as this week I see people saying: immutable? No don’t make it a bad experience for them! Just recommend Ubuntu for newcomers! >:/

I use the Steam controller, (obviously not helpful since they don’t make it anymore) most of the time.

I also have the remake of the old Xbox “duke” from a few years back. The largeness of it in my smaller hands always felt surprisingly comfortable. It’s wired and recognised as generic xbox one controller - BUT only when running steam. If steam isn’t open, then the controller continuously turns off and back on every 20 seconds.

I have a few DS4 controllers sitting here that still work. Eh. Not much use but they work fairly well. I don’t really like the PlayStation control design.

I have never tried a Switch / Switch-compatible controller on yet. My partner has a couple for… the Switch! But I’m hoping they do well because I just bought my daughter a Sonic-themed, Gamecube-style wired controller for her upcoming birthday (she obsessed with Sonic and saying she wants to play a game one day instead of just watching). It would be good if she can just take it between playing Switch with her mum or PC with me.

Final comments -it’s wired or replaceable batteries for me. So many dead DS3 and DS4 controllers sitting around from years back that won’t charge, or last about 15 minutes. But wires never get in the way anyway, and I always have eneloop AAs ready to go.

Yes, but he also commented that the rust infrastructure isn’t super stable.

The point is that that Linus responses were not as overtly simplified and predictable as lung suggested.

Dink Smallwood and various dmods.

Sonic 3 AIR, and the Sonic 8bit Remakes because my daughter can’t get enough Sonic.

I just this afternoon rolled up a new character in Stardew Valley.

Your family needs to replace that 2tb with 500gb and then you’ll be all set!

Kalpa needs to attract more developers to keep up with Aeon’s pace. I understand it is usable as a daily driver, but it’s not just a one to one mirror of Aeon with Plasma on top.

https://sfalken.tech/posts/2024-06-08-how-do-aeon-and-kalpa-relate/

Richard Brown is all in on Aeon along with whatever contributors are helping him. Stephen Falken appears to have no one helping him work on Kalpa unfortunately. I disagree with Richard’s stance that Kalpa shouldn’t exist, but I do wish there were some capable people able to help that project.

I don’t mind using Gnome anyway, it actually does solve some networking issues that I’ve always had with Plasma. (Dolphin not handling it well whilst Gnome Files has no issues)

I’ve been using Opensuse Aeon just over a year and it’s done great.

Tumbleweed user for the last 5 years, and dealt with a few issues over that time. The usually infrequent update break that comes with rolling release. And the Opensuse ‘Patterns’ started, which I loathe and it’s a disaster to try to disable them every install.

Aeon hasn’t had any of those issues. It’s been very much a “turn it on and get to work”.

I’ve generally had less issues with Aeon than Tumbleweed - like certain flatpaks not crashing.

But downsides as I see them:

I’m not a gnome guy. It’s fine though, I don’t hate it. But some people can’t stand it.

I had a bit of trouble running wine. Something about the default security policy. There’s a known workaround.

I took it as a question of which distro looks nicest out of the box (like, which distro manager has made real effort to make something particularly nice looking).

North American or Non-American colours?

My partner bought me one last month, so it’s still new but I don’t think I’ve stopped playing it. I can’t make time to sit at my pc unless I’m working, all my time is spent with the kids or in my workshop. So I can finally play games again.

Damn it feels good to be a gangsta

It’s not retroarch. If you have been in emulation for a while that’s enough right there. No one is reusing retroarch cores here.

https://emulation.gametechwiki.com/index.php/Ares

If you don’t want to spend 3 hours setting up an emulator, ares is basically just: open software, click to open what you want to play. The interface isn’t trying to reinvent a weird ps3 or Switch hybrid on your pc. It is similar to regular desktop software ui you might have used during your life.

Ares was developed by Near (rip). If you don’t know who that is, it’s a shame, but I’m not going to go into it here. It’s now maintained by people continuing Near’s work on trying to achieve cycle accurate, preservation quality emulation.

Some of the emulation cores, SNES, 32x, N64, MegaDrive and Sega CD are the best in class, by a wide margin. Turbografx is comparable if not better than mednafen. SNES especially good since that was Near’s main focus for many years - you might know it as bsnes or higan from before they started pushing the ares emulator more before they died.

Some systems are definitely best played elsewhere (mgba is better for gba, Stella is better for 2600, Duckstation for ps1, Sameboy for gameboy colour). But that defeats the purpose of your question. For the sake of having all the emulation in one place, ares usually do fine with these.

It can be taxing. If you are running an older underpowered machine, you might not have a good time.

Depending what systems you want to emulate, just use ares.

https://ares-emu.net

Amazing

Blast Em. https://www.retrodev.com/blastem/

Standalone (not retro arch). Modern emulator (don’t think it’s updated anymore though). Linux support. I think it’s also available on Flathub if you want to get it via there.

Or…

Ares. https://ares-emu.net

Multi system emulator originally developed by Near (rip). Yes, it plays more systems than you are looking for, but it is simple, standalone (no retroarch/libretro), very good, Linux support, and still updated (latest version 23 Jan). Also available on Flathub if you want it there.

I suggest to try these emulators, they’re modern and they aim for cycle accuracy, rather than finding a way to keep a 15 year old emulator running.

Have you also considered though that this is how knowledge spreads. For every 100 people who read this they might say “here we go again with the FOSS…”, but a handful of people might say “GIMP? What?” and go check it out.

Open discussion instead of strictly direct question and answer is important.

Me. A flatpak Firefox means not adding a repo to install non-free codecs. A flatpak steam means not installing a hideous number of 32 bit libs. Can’t remember what software it is because I rarely use it, but another flatpak prevents me needing to build it from source.

when you can install the likes of PopOs within 15 minutes, or Tumbleweed in 30 (just using those examples because I’ve installed them recently), then just install it and see goes it goes.

Or as you said, if a distro has a live usb you may not even need to install to test.

I walk through the woods on one side of my house, there is a shovel behind some trees I’ve marked. Then I go back to my house, down the other side of my property until I get to the river. Then I dig in the river bank until I get to a plastic bag. Double wrapped of course.

Inside the plastic bag?.. a collection of 1gb USB thumb drives and a note pad.

In the note pad?.. an index cataloguing what is backed up on each thumb drive.