That scenario would definitely be the time to use SBC-XQ.

http://soundexpert.org/articles/-/blogs/audio-quality-of-sbc-xq-bluetooth-audio-codec

(I have the over the ear XM3 that don’t support multiple devices, but also have a Bose 700 that does. The Bose 700 does AAC, but I find SBC-XQ better. On the Sony it’s a toss-up, so I stick to LDAC. I’m using Fedora Silverblue 39 with PipeWire for reference.)

I’ve been on Fedora 39 since it was branched (in September), using Silverblue and GNOME. No issues; everything’s great here.

There are a few ways…

The easiest is using Steam, which handles everything for you (once you flip a switch in settings). The second easiest is using Bottles or Heroic, both of which lets you run Windows games and apps on Linux via Wine. The third is VMs, but that’s just Windows itself running virtualized (in its own virtual machine) in Linux. The fourth way to use the same computer for Linux and games is to dual boot (reboot from one OS into the other) and stick with Linux except for particular games that might not work with other methods — which is thankfully very rare these days (as most games work in Linux via Proton or in Wine via Bottles or Heroic).

1. Steam on Linux has a switch in the settings to enable Proton for all games. Flip that on, and it’s basically transparent. For setting up Steam, the easiest way is to install it from Flathub.org. Depending on your distribution, it’s most likely set up for you. If not, then follow the setup guide @ https://flathub.org/setup. Once Flathub is set up on your system, you can install the flatpak of Steam from your app store (GNOME Software, KDE Discover, etc.)

2. An alternate method is to set up Wine outside of Steam. There are a few ways to do that; Bottles is the most straightforward and super easy way, letting you have different Wine environments for different apps or games (or just one for everything, if you’d rather)… Bottles is easy to use and has installers for a lot of common apps and launcher. Additionally, Heroic is also a good way to run GOG, Epic, and Amazon games on Linux. Both are on Flathub too.

3. There’s a third major way, and that’s installing Windows as a virtual machine on Linux. You’d probably want to use GNOME Boxes or virt-manager for that. Boxes is easier (and on Flathub) and will give you adequate GPU performance for a lot of things (however, isn’t ideal for high performance gaming), but if you have two GPUs (often one integrated and one discrete), then you can use GPU passthrough with virt-manager, but that’s way outside the scope of this comment. 😉 Perhaps having a Windows install in a VM just for some games that don’t work on Linux is what that person meant? But that would still get you tracked by Microsoft whenever you’re using Windows in that VM. (So I’m guessing they’re talking about Wine instead, which is option 1 and 2.)

4. Dual boot is basically reusing the same hardware for two different operating systems, but only one at a time. When you’re in Linux, Microsoft doesn’t track you (unless you’re using Edge on Linux or specifically using a Microsoft service). You’d want to minimize your time in Windows.

You could use any of the above or a combination (perhaps even all of the above), depending on what you want. I only use 1 and 2 myself. While I do play a lot of games, all on Linux, I don’t play any that require Windows.

(There are only a few these days that don’t work on Linux. The notable ones I’m aware of are Fortnite, Destiny 2, Genshin Impact, and a few others that rely on lootboxes where the maker didn’t flip the switch to enable “anti-cheat” on Linux. Most everything else works these days, even a lot of other lootbox/pay-to-win games.)

Two ways to liven up your Mastodon feed:

1. You can follow hashtags (search for a hashtag and follow it) and it’ll show up in your main feed.
2. You can find people to follow based on the people who you’re following are following using https://followgraph.vercel.app/

There are a ton of interesting apps to use on Linux.

The Steam Deck uses Flatpaks from Flathub by default in KDE’s Discover app “store”.

Browse and search https://flathub.org/ to find all sorts of apps.

Are there any types of apps you’re interested in or anything in particular that you’re used to and want to find something similar?

You’ll probably want Flatseal to adjust Flatpak app permissions (like giving apps access to more directories and such). You usually don’t need this, but some apps might not support portals and may need more “holes” poked in the sandbox to access additional directories.

If you want to run VMs, then I’d suggest GNOME Boxes (just searching for “boxes” in Discover should find it. You could install a standard Linux distro inside — or even Windows if you really wanted. It’s simple and straightforward, and even has Linux distro downloads from the UI (so you don’t even have to hunt for an ISO to download).

If you’re looking for command line stuff, then I’d suggest setting up podman and distrobox; this is more advanced, but would let you run almost everything from any distro on your Deck via containers that persist (even across Steam Deck updates): https://github.com/89luca89/distrobox/blob/main/docs/compatibility.md#install-podman-in-a-static-manner & https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2022/09/distrobox-can-open-up-the-steam-deck-to-a-whole-new-world/

If you’re doing a lot of stuff on your Steam Deck in desktop mode, please remember that it’s not encrypted (so anyone can copy anything you do out of it) and doesn’t even have a password by default. You’d want to set up KDE Plasma’s Vault and use that for sensitive documents and/or use a VM with disk encryption. Sadly, EncFS isn’t included on the Deck, so you cannot use KDE Plasma Vault (without jumping through hoops), so you’d have to set up something similar in Distrobox (although probably a different program), use something similar from Flathub (again, which requires a command line program behind the scenes currently) or use a VM with encryption (which is the easiest thing to do).

If you aren’t doing anything sensitive (including browsing) on desktop mode and don’t want to do anything too advanced (like command line stuff), then all the many thousands of apps available from Flathub are still really astoundingly great and super easy to use. They’re basically just a click away in Discover.

I know you’re making a joke, but you can install the extension today to get the proposed feature. (How to install it is even mentioned when you follow the link.) There’s no need for waiting.

👍

…Is Xits pronounced “exits” or “zits”? 🤔

Yep, Safari is still WebKit.

Safari thankfully hasn’t switched to Blink (the engine powering Chrome and all Chromium-based browsers), which forked from WebKit over a decade ago (April 2013).

Safari is only available on iOS, iPadOS, and macOS. In fact, every browser on iOS/iPadOS is WebKit-based, as it’s the only browser engine Apple permits on their phones and tablets. (Yes, this includes the so-called “Firefox”, “Chrome”, and all the other browser apps on iOS/iPadOS.)

GNOME Web (aka: Epiphany) is also WebKit-based and is available on Linux.

There’s no current Windows WebKit browser that I’m aware of. (Apple shipped Safari for Windows a long, long time ago, but also discontinued it shortly after.)

There are embedded ports of WebKit for various devices in the form of WPE Webkit. (WPE stands for Web Platform for Embedded.)

You can install and use a standard distribution through Distrobox, which has a few initial steps to install, but once it’s there, you can dnf/apt/zypper/apk/pacman/etc. install any packages completely in user space. (And distrobox-export from within any Distrobox containers lets you access a command or graphical application from that Distrobox transparently without having to manually run a distrobox command.)

https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2022/09/distrobox-can-open-up-the-steam-deck-to-a-whole-new-world/

And distrobox-export from within any Distrobox container sets it up so can you access a command or graphical application from that Distrobox transparently without having to manually run a distrobox command.

https://github.com/89luca89/distrobox/blob/main/docs/usage/distrobox-export.md

But, you probably want to not have anything private on your Steam Deck, as there’s no encryption, so anyone can take your Deck and copy files off of it. To solve this, you’d want to either have an encrypted loopback file that you use like a pluggable disk (there are some tools for this; “Plasma Vault” is even built into the KDE desktop that powers the Steam Deck’s desktop mode, but requires a little setup) or you could run a Linux distro (or other OS) within a VM in GNOME Boxes (available as a Flatpak without having to do anything special). The Plasma Vault solution is more lightweight and integrated, once you install the encryption support it needs.

https://github.com/popsUlfr/steam-deck-tricks#encrypted-vaults-with-plasma-vault-and-gocryptfs

https://flathub.org/apps/org.gnome.Boxes

FWIW: I used my Steam Deck as a desktop when traveling a few months ago and have been using Linux (with GNOME, not KDE — but both are great) for decades.

Welcome to Linux! I’ve been using it since 1996 and doing design using FOSS tools for years. (At first, I needed to a separate computer for Adobe products for years, but switched full time to Linux a long time ago.)

A couple of quick suggestions of other apps to try:

• Krita, for image editing & painting https://krita.org/

• Penpot, for UI layouts (including website design), prototyping, and flow; a great replacement for Figma and Miro. https://penpot.app/

There’s a big list of FOSS design & photography software @ https://pixls.us/software/

And a huge list of alternatives @ https://codeberg.org/RayJW/awesome-foss#user-content-creativity (linked to creativity, but there’s tons more on that page)

Note: You can actually play Halo on a Steam Deck. I’ve played it with friends over the internet and two of us were on a Steak Deck and Linux desktop. The other two were on Windows. It worked well.

(But, yeah, there still are a few other games that don’t have anti-cheat enabled, such as Fortnite and Destiny 2.)