On the whole, nixpkgs is the freshest package archive there is. There are two main branches though, a stable release branch and unstable. Unstable is where the fresh packages are. If you’re running stable, you can tell your system to used the package from unstable. Or, you can keep.darktable as an overylay, which means you can update it yourself.
That makes sense. When I next change distro, which might be in day or two, maybe I’ll just put everything on the SSD.
Right now, I’m trying CachyOS after having tried Fedora KDE Plasma and
OpenSUSE Tumblweed KDE. Both of them were pretty good as daily drivers, but I found them a little boring in that they are quite similar to a Windows experience. And so I’m now playing with CachyOS with the COSMIC desktop environment. So far I really like it. It feels different without being too different.
This is all for fun at this stage as my main PC is still running Windows.
I’d probably say my biggest gripe with my Linux journey so far is the filesystem and directory structure during installation, because it’s not obvious how it all works together and what the best way to set everything up is.
If you just have one drive and are starting from scratch, it’s no problem because the installation will just take care of everything for you. But if you have multiple drives and/or want to dual boot, you need to know where to put everything and partition properly.
Even the guided setups still assume you know what /boot/efi, /(root) and /home are for, let alone the differences between FAT32, BTRFS, EXT4, XFS… And for anyone non-techie, this is not obvious at all.
The other problem I’ve encountered is that the Linux kernel doesn’t seem to support the audio in my old HP laptop properly. It’s a Bang & Olufsen speaker array with Conexant CX8200 chip. Linux seems to be ignoring the bass and so everything sounds really tinny. I think it’s a fundamental hardware issue because there were some proprietary Windows drivers for this setup, and Linux doesn’t support it. I’m still investigating, but so far my messing around in PipeWire, EasyEffects and ALSA has done absolutely nothing.
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I think some laptop speakers require custom EQ to sound optimal, but since you mention “speaker array” it’s probably like you said, it’s ignoring the low end speakers completely.
You can move your home folder quite easily. Log out of your user, log in as root, rsync /home where you want it, add a line in fstab, and you’re done.
My important data lives on a separate disk array at its own mount point, /data, and I currate that data very carefully. My home Dir is for configs and random downloads.
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It’s hard to find info because it’s quite old now, but from what I can tell, it actually has just 2 speakers, and the bass comes from software EQ. So in theory, I should be able to “unlock” a similar sound to how it was tuned in Windows.
So far I’ve just managed to boost the “fart” frequency 
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Silly question but since I don’t know you audio knowledge: did you lower the Input gain on the EQ? You need to lower it or else the signal will clip digitally. It’s usually lowered by the db of the highest boost you apply over all frequencies.
I haven’t used Linux in 20 years, and all I could remember was that /home was where my data went. I still have a lot to learn and relearn before I get comfortable with configuring everything. But it’s all part of the journey.
There’s just SO much to read, and each line of inquiry takes you down another rabbit hole. It’s such a time sink.
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Not silly question and my audio knowledge is fairly basic. No I didn’t lower the input gain. I’m on a new distro now and haven’t tried to troubleshoot the audio yet. Would you recommend doing this in ALSA or EasyEffects or something else?
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EasyEffects definitely, it’s a great piece of software.
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I doubt your laptop speakers would show up in here, but regardless, this is a cool site that has a lot of EasyEffects configs for various headphones and such. https://autoeq.app/
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Wait this sounds familiar, I wonder if he has–
Darn it, there it is. I have bad news… [hand on shoulder meme]
While you say your laptop only has two speakers, this sounds a lot like my issue on my 2018 HP. There was an amp in that computer that has no open source driver, so the low end was missing. There was no solution I ever found.
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I did check the sound through the headphone jack, and it was nice and rich, so my workaround is just to use an external speaker.
Linux has come a long way since I last tried it, but it was a gradual build-up of these niggles that made me just revert to Windows last time.
This time I will persevere, at least with my laptop, mainly because Windows is just really hard to like these days. But Windows 10 on my main PC is stable, quite fast and compatible with almost everything I throw at it. So I’m probably not going to go full Linux just yet…
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Driver related issues are the hardest, and one of the reasons it sounds like people are talking about completely different operating systems. When it’s supported, it can be easier than Windows. When it’s not, it can be a complete brick wall show-stopper. Desktop parts are normally easier, but some laptop brands are easier than others because of thoughtful part selection.
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Hopefully its fun and interesting?
But also it isn’t supported anymore, which is not a nice place to be.
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Win 10 still gets security patches and it was just extended to October 12, 2027.
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It was just extended due to the estimated 600 million + machines that cannot move to Windows 11 due to hardware limitations. I think if we didn’t have the ram pricing crisis that number would be much lower.
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Yes and no. I do enjoy it mostly, which is why I do this in the first place, but sometimes it’s frustrating, and I don’t actually have the time needed to read everything I want to read!
But yes, overall I love messing around like this. It’s mainly frustrating when I can’t solve the problem or there is no solution to the problem.
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Again, you are unlikely to need a reinstall for this. Just edit /etc/fstab.
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Depending on the distribution, directly editing /etc/fstab might not be the easiest way of managing partitions and mount points. Things have got more complicated since I started using Linux 2+ decades ago.
My Fedora installation uses logical volumes and btrfs. Choosing the right mount options can be daunting and I’d recommend using some high level GUI application or administration tool instead (like cockpit).
I can’t remember how many years ago I last edited fstab, although it might be because I haven’t needed it.