I haven’t read the whole article yet, but it bothers me how athe author mistakenly calls the init (with the process id 1) pid 0, which is special and belongs to a part of the kernel.

major upgrade like from kernel 6 to 7

What do you mean? The Linux kernel doesn’t follow SemVer.

The 6.19 -> 7.0 version bump didn’t have any more inherent meaning than 7.0 -> 7.1 or 7.1 -> 7.2.

kAppIcon is a small icon manager for KDE Plasma and other freedesktop desktops.

According to the Readme, yes.

I didn’t look too deeply, but I assume it modifies .desktop files stored in $XDG_DATA_HOME/applications/ and/or copies system.desktop files there to override them with modified versions.

If it works like I assume, it should work with anything that reads .desktop files from the standard locations.

Thanks! I’ll give swaylock another chance. I’m currently moving back to sway from the Hypr* ecosystem.

How much do sway{,lock}-effects add to the experience?

How did you rice swaylock? Would you mind sharing your config?

As others have already noted, the handbook is very good. You should be able to manage with limited Linux & terminal skills. (terminal navigation, can install a package with e.g. apt, etc.)

If you’re unsure about your skills, try using the terminal a bit. You can start with switching to the apt cli (command-line program) if you’re using a gui client. Or, you could try to do some basic, everyday tasks with it, like editing text with nano (or vim, if you’re feeling brave).

Just don’t forget to install important packages when installing Gentoo, like sudo (and add youself to sudoers), a DE/WM (KDE Plasma, GNOME, Sway, etc.) and a terminal. These things can be done later, by rebooting to the install media and chrooting, but it can be a bit annoying.

Don’t worry too much about mistakes, as everything is fixable, except things related to bad UEFI implementations.

Like others, I would recommend going with defaults for now. You can always tinker after the install. While a few things are a real pain to change or shouldn’t be changed, like going from no-multilib to multilib, most things can be played with later. Though I haven’t done it with a Gentoo system specifically, going from an unencypted system to encrypting all disks is very much possible.

1. I’ve heard good things about CUPS for printing, not sure about the wd drive app & msi dragon center.
2. Not really, with exceptions:

• Appimages are a Linux equivalent of Windows’ EXE files. Everything the program requires to run is contained in a single file, which can be run anywhere.
• Statically linked applications, for example, a lot of software written in Rust & Go, also include everything needed to run, but in a different, more compact way.
• Not what you want or mean, but source-based distributions, like Gentoo do not distribute ready-to-run software*, but rather scripts/instructions for building for source in an automatic manner. This decouples the file you get from your distribution from the required library versions somewhat, in a way, increasing backwards compatibility a bit.

3. You can, although you should use the system’s package manager, if possible. You can just download an appimage or a statically linked executable and give it the executable permission (chmod +x <path-to-program>) and run the file.
4. First, beware that Wine is malware compatible! Wine — upon which Valve’s Proton is based — can be used to run Windows programs & games on Linux (and MacOS). Alternatively, you can use umu-launcher to launch non-steam programs with Proton. If you encounter problems with Wine, you could try looking into the Lutris launcher, winetricks & the winedb website.
5. You ask multiple things here: 5.1. Flag emojis: Yes, so long as you have fonts with them installed. (They probably are on Ubuntu) Flag emojis are interesting that they’re just 2 special characters, representing a country code. If you have a font that specifies a flag for a country with the code “FR”, you get support for the French flag emoji. There is also nothing stopping a font from including flag emojis for fictional or historical flags. 5.2 Codecs: Yup, HEVC (H.265) and others are supported at no cost. FFmpeg supports it, so you can transcode video on Linux. Just be aware of the quality loss from lossy->lossy conversion.
6. Yes, Wine works offline.
7. See points 2 & 3. Also, if you have a package file (.deb for Debian-based distributions like Ubuntu), you can use the package manager to install it. Well, so long as you have its dependencies either installed or as package files stored offline. You can also run a repository offline, but that’s probably not really useful to you. Be aware that you should assume package files to be distro-specific, unless otherwise specified. (A .deb file without dependencies could run on both Debian & Ubuntu. If I remember, EndeavourOS uses Arch’s repositories, so it should be compatible with Arch.)
8. Yes, Wine can run .bat files. Wine contains a terminal program (windecmd or winecommand I think), which works like a windows command prompt window.

_{*With exceptions}

If you have other questions or if anything remains unclear, ask away!

I see that you don’t use a shell with completions.

Anna’s archive, known for “open-sourced” books. They scraped spotify recently.

I have no idea why ground goes into the negative node, but it was the only plausible configuration, since the power simply has to come from the positive node, according to conventional current

Electronics are complicated. Ground = negative node in most circuits. Unless you have studied electronics explicitly, most prior explanations you have heard are just good enough approximatons for whatever thing it was about.

my new laptop literally is more than double in each spec

13.6"

Where did you find a laptop with a 27.2" or larger screen?

What about “I’ll accept your pull request if you accept my merge request”?

emerge --ask cake
...
[ebuild  N     ] dev-dotnet/cake-5.0.0  USE="-debug"

Huh. Seems like Gentoo really has a cake recipe.

Unlike Windows, on Linux you need to run ./<command> instead of just <command> for executables in you current directory.

Lemmy is not GPLv2, but AGPLv3.

So, the game would have to be (A)GPLv3. (The licenses are fairly interoperable. IIRC you can use AGPL components in GPL software if you abide by the terms of the AGPL.)

Viral licenses are nice and all, but they’re not without their drawbacks. I caught GPL recently (the slightly rarer Affero v3 strain) and now no DNA testing companies want me as a customer. I can no longer write MIT or BSD licensed code. Whenever I open a project, a LICENSE file appears within ~15 minutes of contact. I hope to recover soon.

How would other types of taxes, like in you example, gift tax, be handled?

If the grahical app store has asked for a password when updating, like on normal Fedora (what Nobara is based on), all programs installed with sudo dnf install <program(s)> are also updated. A update to native packages can also be ran with sudo dnf upgrade. Flatpaks can be updated from the app store or with flatpak update. (no sudo, as that just raises the privileges for the next command, like dnf)

Linux has become more user-friendly, but due to the many, many alternatives for pretty much everything, while some programs integrate well with each other, this is not the case for everything, sadly.

Sorry, I don’t know about the scroll issue. The scroll wheel on a mouse or dragging 2 fingers on a touchpad should still work.

TL;DR:
If you are prompted for a password when updating, everything’s fine. This should be the case for you, as Nobara is based on Fedora, which supports this. Otherwise, you have to run sudo dnf upgrade or the equivalent for your distributions’s package manager.

There are a few common ways to distribute software for Linux, which I’ll try to explain while leaving out the more complicated parts:

• Appimage: The program & all of its dependencies are put into a special filesystem image file. (think special .iso or .zipfile) Works on any distro & does not require administrator privileges, but has a large file size. This is somewhat close to an .exe file.
• Statically compiled binary: The program is compiled in such a way, that the program file contains all dependencies. Unlike an appimage, the program file is not an archive, so it does not contain any files within itself. So, all the libraries (small program parts) are placed in a large program instead of being zipped up. Can usually be run without proper installation, like appimage & .exe files. This is also a bit like an .exe file.
• Package: The program & asset files are archived, usually compressed .tar archives, (linux equivalent of .zip/.7z/.rar) which are extracted (unzipped) during installation. Sometimes a small included script is run during install/update/removal. Usually, architecture (x86, ARM, risc-V, etc.) & dependency information is also included. Common package formats include: .deb (Debian based distributions like Ubuntu, Mint, etc.), .rpm (RHEL, OpenSUSE, Fedora & derivatives). These packages are usually somewhat distribution & version specific. For example, you might be able to install a Debian .deb on Ubuntu, but if you have incorrect versions of dependencies, it either cannot be installed (you get a warning/error) or the program won’t work correctly or at all. Often, package managers like apt, dnf & pacman get these for you, so you don’t need to think of them as files, but you can also install package files like .deb or .rpm.
• Flatpak: This one’s a bit complicated. Something of a mix of all of the above. Works anywhere, but you need to have the application flatpak installed to run programs installed this way. Flatpak programs are installed for each user, meaning that no administrator privileges are required. They also support sandboxing, meaning that a program only gets access to files & functionalities it needs, like on smartphones, but that is optional and not all programs make use of it.
• Snap: Also complicated. For an average user, mostly like flatpak. Only guaranteed to work on Ubuntu, but might work elsewhere.

So, how you installed a program may change how it works a bit. For example, the versions of dependencies you have can change the program’s behaviour. Also, some configuration can often be done when compiling a program, like specifying whether to use Qt or GTK for drawing windows, or disabling bluetooth support. Different packagers (people who make appimages, flatpaks and/or paclage files) may choose different options here.

Sometimes flatpak programs may use old versions of dependencies. Also, I’m not sure if this is the case with Firefox, but Chromium’s (Google chrome & derivatives, like Brave) sandboxing (security things) conflict with flatpak’s own, so some of Chromium’s security features are disabled in favor of using flatpak’s own ones.

If the flatpak version of Firefox caused issues, I’d recommend trying the native version (package manager) instead of one downloaded from the internet. You can either do this from the graphical app store by selecting something like native, dnf or rpm instead of flatpak, or the native package manager with sudo dnf install firefox for Nobara, I think. Unlike flatpaks, native programs are installed for all users & require you to type your password during installation.

If you use an appimage or manually downloaded .rpm file, you need to take care of updates manually, by downloading a newer version like you did during installation. I would strongly advise against this, unless necessary & you know exactly what you’re doing.

I think this answered your question, but feel free to ask if anything was unclear or you have other questions. I’m a programmer & I’ve used Linux for a while, so I should be able to answer most questions.

Edit:
Sorry for the wall of text. I hope it wasn’t too jargony.

TL;DR:
The wall of text has context & things that might br good to keep in mind, but I’d recommend removing the flatpak version & the Linux .exe equivalent you’re using, then trying sudo dnf install firefox.

Edit 2:
Nvidia can sometimes cause problems on Linux, but if a different version of Firefox worked, it is very likely not the case here. Sometimes switching from Wayland to X11 or vice versa might help a bit, at least until the next driver update. Otherwise, I’d recommend Wayland, as it’s more secure, actively developed, has fancy features X11 lacks & can be a bit more efficient.

Glad you found a way around the problem!

Not sure if I’ll be of help, but I can try. It would help to get some more information.

You’re using the Breeze cursor theme, so I’ll assume you’re using KDE Plasma. The cursor looks like it’s from Breeze 5, not 6, are you on the old Plasma 5? If you are on Plasma, you can go to settings and go to “System information” (near the bottom) or something like that. (IIRC, It was a long time ago since I last used it)

Are you using an Intel, AMD or Nvidia GPU?

Are you on X11 or Wayland? (They’re different ways to handle windows, X11 is very old, but may work better in some cases. Wayland is newer, more secure, has some features that X11 lacks, like HDR & is usually better)

You can check the windowing system (X11/Wayland) by opening the terminal (the application Konsole on Plasma) and typing echo $WAYLAND_DISPLAY and pressing enter. If you only get an empty line, you’re on X11, otherwise you’re on Wayland.

If you’re on Wayland, go to the URL about:support in Firefox. Then search (ctrl+f) for Window Protocol. This should be Wayland, otherwise it’s falling back to a X11 compatibility layer called Xwayland.

Neither, bat or neovim.