also seen mention of another candidate - Nobara

I have not tried that one.

I have been using Bazzite for about 3 months now, it has worked quite well for me on my two desktop systems.

I can not use the SteamOs mode on my Nvidia system, but it still works decently well as a normal desktop running steam.

my AMD desktop system does use the SteamOs look mode.

I was using Holoiso last year, but had numerous issues, so gave up on it. The other similar distros, I recall testing, and not lasting a day with them for various reasons.

So for now Bazzite is my go to.

Side note: just noticed on reddit the /r/Bazzite sub is now banned for being unmoderated.

Not that there was a lot of traffic there anyway, but that is a major issue with Bazzite, it's a bit fringe, and while a lot of silverblue stuff does apply, it's still a small community it seems.

there's also bazzite. (fedora based on uBlue, uses kde)

But I see no reason for myself to switch away from SteamOS.

I am using bazzite on my gaming desktop PC. It does a good job.

If you switch away from steamOS you may not find as many places with people to chat with for support.

tip: don't install fish or whatever, change your default shell, THEN uninstall fish because you don't like it.

Change your default shell back first.

I have seen way too many support posts where people paint their self I to a corner doing that.

or just don't change the default shell.

run fish as needed, then exit back to bash when done.

I have

I am reminded of the ability MANY years ago to write the kernel file directly to a floppy disk, or start of a hard drive and somehow being able to boot that way.

I just can't recall how I did it, or WHY I did it.

Back when the kernel would fit on a floppy disk. I am truly showing my age.

---

6 yr old grandson found a box of old floppy disks and was asking what they were. He started stacking them up making card houses and roads for his matchbox cars. Glad he got some use out of those recycled AOL floppies.

I have seen this used in school situations with 3+ seats per PC.

that can add up when dealing with a dozen+ PCs.

For home use, not much a benefit, but I did have it setup years ago for the grandkids.

the OLED deck has the feature from what I can tell to wake in Bluetooth.

my older LCD deck, does not seem to have the feature.

two little tips:

you can backup your EFI partitions, in case you mess them up. I find it a good idea to back them up in any case, I have had EFI partitions get Filesystem corruption.

also the tool rEFInd can work as an alternative boot menu it has the ability to scan the entire system and show all found Bootable OS at boot time.

So with rEFInd, you install it, set it as the default, and it should show windows automatically.

it looks nicer than systemd-boot and grub as well. And it can even show bootable USB flash drives, and has a few other features.

I don't recall ever needing the --user option, if the command is ran by the user.

if you were running the command via sudo, then yes, you would want the --user option.

Understand that flatpaks can be installed system wide, or on a per user basis.

if you are not careful you can install the same flatpak system wide when you just wanted it installed by the one user.

I wasted a lot of disk space and time before I learned how flatpak works.

I have my steam library on a second drive but I am not using the flatpak of steam.

I think it's possible to have the steam flatpak use a second partition, if you use flatseal to allow the steam flatpak full access.

https://docs.xfce.org/panel-plugins/xfce4-docklike-plugin/start

shows the preview feature you mention.

rarely see steam crashing.

I have seen it with some Dock/panels, but the specific DE/tools you mention is not something I have used.

check the project page for the panel you are using.

And does uninstalling a flatpak app also uninstall flatpak dependencies that came with it?

from what I have seen, NO it does not do so automatically. there is a flatpak command option to clean out unused runtimes, and another to remove user data.

delete app data after uninstalling?

you either manually delete the data, or there's some flatpak command option, or you can use a tool such as warehouse which is available as a flatpak.

other posts list the specific commands.

old school solution is the devilspie2 utility. but that may not work on Wayland

make proper backups before you try messing with partitions. Have windows reinstall media made ahead of time, just in case things go badly.

what you want to do is possible, but mistakes happen.

check to see howuch space your log files are using.

to prevent it from happening ..

I would consider 20GB for / to be too small for long term desktop use.

and with just 470GB for /home, I would not split the two up.

It's going to depend on what desktop environment you are using, the default Gnome launcher has a huge full screen launcher setup.

there may be gnome extensions for another look.

Gnome is not the same look, but similar in its oversized UI.

I hate it.:)

I tend to use some other quick launchers. or a simple nested applications menu.

you mean like the various CAD software that exists?

what tool to use can depend on what you are drawing.

Been playing with that Bazannite (sp?) Variant, it works fine, but i am still undecided if learning the ins and puts of it are worth the switch from my Pop_os install.

There was a little bit research and learning to do some tasks, but nothing surprising.

it does seem it boots much slower than my pop_os install, but I think I have it installed on an internal Hybrid HDD that i not yet replaced with a SSD, so that may be the cause.

pop_os boots amazingly fast, not sure what they do to it.

and having to reboot to get stuff updated/installed is a bit annoying, the ability to roll back is the trade off I guess.

However I can't really think of a time that I needed to roll back, perhaps I am just lucky. So the entire roll back feature is something that I don't know if I will ever actually use.

good luck.