sorry I was really busy this week, didnt have time to look into this.

The issue seems to happen in qt6 xcb so you could try switching sddm to run on wayland, which might bypass the issue (from Arch wiki):

Create the file /etc/sddm.conf.d/10-wayland.conf with the following content:

[General]
DisplayServer=wayland
GreeterEnvironment=QT_WAYLAND_SHELL_INTEGRATION=layer-shell

[Wayland]
CompositorCommand=kwin_wayland --drm --no-lockscreen --no-global-shortcuts --locale1

This requires layer-shell-qt to be installed, preferably versions 6.x which kde neon probably has in their repos (its on 5.x on base ubuntu).

Other than that, on sddm’s issue repo I found two similar issues: #1761 and #1468, though both have no resolutions yet.

Effects’ settings are being completely reworked: https://invent.kde.org/plasma/kwin/-/merge_requests/7473

Updates taking that much space is a bit surprising. I used to run linux mint on a 20 gb partition and usually had 3-4 gb space free. Does Linux mint comes pre-installed with flatpaks (you check with flatpak list)?

But 20 gb is on the very low side, you will run into issues on updates. You probably need to extend the linux partition by at least 10 gb.

For the printer issue, check the status of the cups service (sudo systemctl status cups).

I think you can disable the new header bar in VSCode (iirc from View).

The old one was too confusing for new users. It wasn’t clearly step by step like all the other installers on linux.

Not sure tbh but probably anything around the time you experience the issue. Check the time when the issue occurs, then look at the logs from around that time for any errors warnings. That should at least give you a clue.

Currently most cooperate linux companies are not in the business of selling linux desktop itself. Rather its linux for servers, administration, embedded things (like cars), and other enterprisey stuff. So at least at the moment they are not looking to profit of linux desktop users directly which has saved us from enshittiffication attempts.

But even if they in the future attempt to do something fishy, that most users dont agree with, I think by the virtue of how stuff works on linux it will be very easy for people to move to something else or a fork, and still get 95-99% of the same experience. This in turn will force companies to think twice before doing something like this.

A good example here is canonical/Ubuntu who has made questionable decisions in the past and each time they had to take it back. Even now, Snap due to its use of a centralized store is almost universally shunned by the linux community and is only supported maintained by canonical. While Flatpak is supported by the wider linux community with people from different projects contributing to it (though I sometimes worry about everyone centralizing on Flathub to the point where they are actively discourage other projects from launching/maintaining their own stores/repos).

This is why we need to build and champion tech that is resistant to control and enshittiffication. Then we dont have to worry too much about who is developing it.

are you using any sddm themes? splash screens?

Also check/share the logs (you can use ksystemlogs or gnome logs if you prefer guis).

KWin has gained support for the initial version of the Wayland session restore protocol

I found it interesting that they were merging support for a not-yet-merged protocol so I looked it up.

It seems the plan is to use the new experimental protocol thing that was introduced a while back:

https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/wayland/wayland-protocols/-/merge_requests/392

check out this app, its still under dev tho: https://codeberg.org/lucaweiss/lpa-gtk

Thanks must have been part of the progressive rollout thing, I dont remember seeing it before.

Vertical tabs, tab groups, pwa apps, easier profiles switching (some of these are coming soon). Firefox is finally covering its weak points versus chrome.

I thought vertical tabs also landed this release. I can find them in the settings but I dont see it in these release notes. Did they land in an earlier release or smth?

Also, related note, how easy is it to migrate from one distro to another? I am thinking about trying something else - maybe base Fedora or Arch - to hopefully have better performance.

You can backup your data and restore but will have to reinstall all your apps.

Also have you tried asking in the nobara discord? GE and other devs are in there so you likely to get help there.

They should at least make a docs tag or similar and tag all these documentation like posts with it.

Another thing is that my laptop might be using Legacy BIOS, so systemd isn’t compatible with it.

Oh sorry, then Fedora isnt a good idea. They have deprecated support for Legacy BIOS.

Anything with LXQT 2.1 available should give the same experience however right now it seems only rolling distros ship with 2.1. Lubuntu 25.04 will ship (in ~April) with LXQT 2.1 but it wont default to wayland so you might have to do some manual config. Its also not an lts release.

storage requirements

shouldn’t be a big problem. lxqt is super lightweight. If you go with lubuntu, I recommend turning off snap to save some space.

Linux Mint MATE or XFCE are really good if you dont necessarily want wayland support.

Another option is the Raspberry Pi OS. Debian based, should be very lightweight and runs wayland. I haven’t personally tried it though.

try Fedora LXQT too, it ll default to wayland in the next fedora release (~4th april i think), and its very lightweight

This. I personally avoid random firefox forks because there is such a large surface to make mistakes or hide backdoors. If people want a private, hardened firefox, Mullvad’s fork (or Tor) is the best option. If you only want to disable telemetry, you can use betterfox user.js with Firefox.

This is apparently an old issue that somehow got resurfaced again (pull).

tl;dr dev had enabled remote debugging back when the project was new to make debugging easier, apparently forgot about it, someone noticed and reported it, dev apologized and said he was learning and won’t do it again:

Maybe I underestimated the actual risk of this? Yes, but again, it was probably on the first month of development, we learn from our mistakes so we can now provide the most private and secure experience we can. Thanks

Its on the roadmap. AFAIK it requires vector layers before it can be worked on.

I mean Fedora is open source but if they really wanted a european base, they could have gone with opensuse. AFAIK opensuse is the only fully european linux distro plus they use many of the same tech that redhat/fedora does.

Ultimately I think it doesn’t matter too much since even the linux foundation is based in the US and large parts of what makes the linux desktop are maintained by non-EU companies (on top of all the major projects hosted by Github, Gitlab including most of Flathub). If its all open source, I think the risks are pretty low e.g. huawei was able to use Android despite all the restrictions.