Main Page
Pengwings is a wiki which contains random documentation for various Linux things I had to work out.
Documentation is for Fedora Kinoite (KDE Atomic Desktop) and derivatives, some alteration might be needed for other distros depending on what the thing is.
rpm-ostree layering vs flatpaks
Fedora Atomic Desktop has a curated OS deployment package which is applied as an atomic image. Atomic Desktop has quite a few benefits over non-atomic which I quite like, such as being able to easily roll back to previous OS deployments, pin OS images as backup revisions of the OS, etc. It is much harder to brick the Atomic Desktop, as if you break the system you can simply roll back to the previous deployment. Previous deployments also retain previous copies of the /etc folder, so even config changes get rolled back, which is extremely convenient and makes the OS feel much less brickable.
If you want to install rpm packages then these have to be layered over the top of the image. System updates then have to re-layer the packages again as part of the update, which is inefficient, and in some cases can result in the update not being appliable. Users of Atomic Desktop are therefore supposed to avoid layering; it breaks a lot of the premise behind the Atomic Desktop. Instead you are supposed to install user-level packages by using Distrobox/Toolbx/Homebrew/containers.
Unfortunately, never layering anything is quite stifling. Sometimes it seems like the best option is to layer a package (generally if the flatpak has issues or if it makes more sense to me for something to be a system package). I know there are disadvantages to layering, but flatpaks also have some issues of their own, which so far have been more annoying than layering issues. I prefer to have a working stable system where the packages/software behave as expected so I will pick whichever gives the best user experience.
Consequently, I decided I am willing to put up with the layering disadvantages (at least for now) and I use rpm-ostree install to layer packages quite liberally, which is reflected in my documentation. This might annoy or upset some people. In that case this documentation probably isn't for you.
Documentation pages
- Dvorak keyboard bodge: https://github.com/Theleruby/dvorak-lock
- Automatically mount NTFS volumes as read-only
- Using ldmtool to mount NTFS dynamic mirror
- Discord PTB install script (also needs to be run to update if it becomes outdated)
- Scroll by single-clicking middle mouse in Chromium
- Stop pipewire from automatically adding Sonos Beam soundbar to audio outputs
- rpm-ostree stuff
- Unbreak pip so it can install most Python packages in venv correctly without having to use Distrobox or Toolbx
- Make audio sound good
- Running Windows games via Proton without going through Steam or Lutris
- Software not using Dolphin open/save file picker
- Use wayland rather than X11 for some stuff
- FluidSynth as a background service (required if you need MIDI support in any of your Wine/Proton software)
- Convert putty ppk to openssh (using puttygen from bottle)