Alexandriteia
New Member
Preface:
More accurately, I only spent over 30 hours on this, but if you include sleeping, writing up this post, etc., it's been exactly 3 days since I first tried installing Debian and such, and it's been... difficult. Not so much installing Debian itself – it only took me about a half-dozen hours before I got to a login menu, and I'm sure that Debian isn't entirely to blame for my struggles with that – but with all the other things I wanted to do, I've effectively tried Debian, GNOME and Flatpak for the first time on Nuzlocke mode with my self-imposed challenges. I'll divide this post into two sections; if you don't care for the contextual fluff, but are still interested in helping me with my problems, feel free to skip to the second section titled 'Part 2 – My Problems'.
Part 1 – My First Debian, GNOME (+ Truly Customised KDE) & Flatpak Experience:
Debian vs. (K)ubuntu:
For me at least, there's no doubt about it: Debian is unquestionably better than (K)ubuntu as it has recently been. No more graphical issues, no more audio issues, no more being coerced into using Snap for Firefox (even if it works perfectly fine now)... I'm definitely sticking with Debian from now on. I wouldn't recommend it for new users – I wasn't expecting the installation process to be as difficult as it was, it really is much simpler with (K)ubuntu (which also has a much prettier GUI) – but I believe that's the only fair criticism I can make. There might be something else – and I'll discuss this problem in Part 2 – but I'm willing to give Debian the benefit of the doubt. Thankfully, I had alternative means to access the internet and found a workaround to said problem...
GNOME vs. KDE:
At first, I was loving GNOME: I'd paid attention to the videos, so I had fun abusing the super key like never before (in a productive manner), and I appreciated the simplicity of customisation. However, it soon became clear to me that GNOME was also very simple – inconveniently simple – with its default GNOME-specific software, particularly the file manager and image viewer; those made me miss KDE. Moreover, I was unable to figure out how to enable login and logoff sounds; the login and lock screens were... less pretty, to put it nicely; and what made me finally give up on GNOME was the difficulty I had with using the hotspot (also, in hindsight, the GUI elements were too big for my liking). So on Friday, I reinstalled Debian with KDE instead of GNOME.
Truly Customising KDE:
I'd heard that KDE is renowned for its customisability, but I never quite appreciated that until now: I'd never really taken advantage of it, nor could I compare it. Since I hadn't anticipated missing KDE as much as I did, I had to spend some time looking for a new global theme, and considering the wallpaper I use (it has bats and castles), EliverLara's Dracula theme was perfect; RStudio even comes with it by default, which is what helped me discover the Dracula theme. For the icons, I was able to reuse my custom Zafiro Nord Purple icons (modified from zayronXIO's Zafiro Nord Dark icons) and SuperMarioFPS's Miku Cursor; they both work in both GNOME and KDE, but I find that the icon theme shines a lot more in KDE than in GNOME (especially in the system settings).
I have had some problems with these, but I'll discuss them in the next subsection and Part 2. As for sound customisation, I eventually figured out how to do that in the system settings: (1) turn notification sounds up from 0% to 100%, then (2) configure application-specific notification settings. I can even enable and customise login and logout sounds with this, so that solves that problem I had with GNOME. The default sound theme is Oxygen, so I'll make a new sound theme based on that; I don't have to, but I think it'll be worth it to make the sound customisation process easier for me. As for customising my KDE splash screen... The Dracula one is fine, but I want to make and use a custom one, and I've had difficulties with that, which I'll discuss in Part 2.
Flatpak:
My only complaint so far is that GIMP 3.0 keeps crashing. For now, I'll still use Flatpak for a modest proportion of non-system/utility software; just not for some software, including those that are evidently buggy like GIMP 3.0 (unfortunately, I now need to manually delete it from the file associations; that'll take a while, but it's less inconvenient than reinstalling Debian). If it's newer and there are no problems with it, why not use the newer version? Besides, the regular packages can be 6 or so years old (and I'm sure there are some regular packages I don't know about that are even older), such as with MuseScore; for some software, the difference might be negligible, but for others such as MuseScore, they're as different as night and day. Speaking of MuseScore...
Since I never found a 'musescore.svg' file, I never thought a custom MuseScore icon was made, but then I found one on Discover. Turns out it was named 'mscore.svg', and the problem was that there was no file named 'org.musescore.Musescore.svg', so I created a symbolic link named as such. Initially, I had 4 options for installing MuseScore via Discover, but then Flatpak suddenly removed one of them; combined with failing to find 'org.musescore.Musescore.svg', I think you can imagine when I thought happened. Turns out, I just didn't look hard enough. Well, this is why KFind exists: Dolphin isn't perfect, but other software can make up for its shortcomings, such as KFind for finding overlooked stuff and KRename for batch renaming stuff.
Summary:
Trying Debian, GNOME and Flatpak for the first time on Nuzlocke mode with my self-imposed challenges has obviously been a challenging experience, but I'm convinced that it's been worthwhile. I'm definitely sticking with Debian, and although I won't be sticking with GNOME, I can appreciate its strengths (namely the versatility of the super key in combination with multiple workspaces; as for its simplicity, it's both a strength and a drawback, and at least for me, it's generally more of a drawback than a strength), and I've gained a greater appreciation for KDE. For now, I plan on using a roughly 50:50 mix of Flatpaks and regular packages for non-system/utility software; Debian 13 releases later in 2025, so I don't believe it'd hurt to try Flatpaks for at least a little while longer.
Part 2 – My Problems:
Problem No. 1 – GRUB 2 Command Shell (Urgent Priority):
Every time I turn on my laptop, I need to type in the following:
I've had to type this in so many times now, it's only a mildly irritating inconvenience, but I'd still very much like to have this issue fixed as soon as possible. Here's what I get when I run efibootmgr:
I've tried deleting Ubuntu, setting the next boot to Debian, changing GRUB_DEFAULT from 0 to "debian", and most recently, inactivating Ubuntu, then reactivating Ubuntu, which has resulted in the mess you see above without a Boot0000 or Boot0009 (there were two Ubuntus and two Debians a couple of times before). According to efibootmgr, whenever Ubuntu isn't booted, my hard drive is booted. I'm convinced that I've done all I can to the best of my personal ability; even if I could do more, I probably shouldn't try anything else without assistance from an expert.
Problem No. 2 – Plymouth on Debian (Mostly Solved):
I was able to get my custom Plymouth theme running perfectly fine on (K)ubuntu by running the following:
This didn't work for Debian, so I spent a while trying to get it to work. When I changed GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT from "quiet" to "quiet splash", I was able to get Debian's Emerald theme to show up, and that's when I learnt of the 'plymouthd.defaults' file in /usr/share/plymouth/. I changed the Theme to match what I wanted, and changed the DeviceTimeout from 8 to 0... Oh, well that's embarrassing: turns out that setting it to 0 is what broke it, silly me. Now that I've set it to 10 (it's a nicer number than 8, at least in a decimal context), it works, so that's Problem No. 2 solved; perhaps having installed plymouth-themes helped as well, I'm not sure. And is it just me, or do my graphics look a lot crisper? Well, I'm certainly not complaining...
Why am I labelling this as mostly solved, then? My custom watermark gets replaced with an official watermark, and oddly enough, only during the boot process, except when updating (and I was certainly glad to see my custom Plymouth theme working as intended during this rare occasion, it's the first time I'd seen it): during the shutdown process, my custom watermark doesn't get replaced with an official watermark (which incidentally, I couldn't find in /usr/share/plymouth/). I'm very happy that over 95% of my custom Plymouth theme is functioning as intended, but if there's anyone who could help me with getting my custom watermark to appear as intended during the non-updating boot process, I would appreciate that.
Problem No. 3 – Cursory Issues (Pun Intended):
To my knowledge, my custom cursor works perfectly fine with all system/utility software that I use, and among the 17 non-system/utility software that I use, only 6 of them (35%) – one of them installed as a regular package (GIMP), the rest installed as Flatpaks – are problematic for my custom cursor. I checked the Breeze cursor theme; I didn't do a most thorough check, so I can't be absolutely certain, but I believe the custom cursor seems to only be lacking in a few areas, and none of them suggest that these problems have arisen because my custom cursor hasn't covered a specific cursor type (I believe that I could be wrong, but I doubt it). Depending on the software, there are either only image problems, or both image and size problems.
Software with only image problems include GIMP (everywhere except menu borders and editable text), MuseScore (everywhere except editable text and selectable elements) and Audacity (top-most and bottom-most segments only); in the mentioned regions, the cursor still has dimensions of 64 pixels, but evidently uses the Breeze theme cursor. Software with both image and size problems include OBS Studio and Kdenlive: no custom cursor appears anywhere. Regrettably, I can't be certain if I had – or did not have – these problems with GNOME (and I'm not reinstalling it to find out), but I'm thinking that I didn't; in particular, with OBS Studio, because I tested that for a bit back while I was using GNOME. So, I suspect that it's a KDE-specific issue.
I don't use these software as regularly as the likes of web browsers and LibreOffice Calc (although I would say that I regularly use GIMP), so it won't be a major annoyance: more of an annoyance than Problem No. 2 now that that's mostly solved, but still less of an annoyance than Problem No. 1. I don't believe that getting it to work on GIMP, MuseScore and Audacity should be difficult: obviously, my custom cursor works, the default variant just doesn't work for some reason I can't figure out. As for OBS Studio and Kdenlive, I'm less confident about getting it to work on them, and I honestly wouldn't be too bothered if I never did: at least the cursor theme is consistent, the mixed cursor themes is more annoying for me personally (especially as I regularly use GIMP).
Problem No. 4 – KDE Splash Screen (Moderate Priority):
Before I'd installed the Dracula theme, I just wanted something that wasn't the default KDE splash screen. Unlike with the icons and cursors – which could be installed via a tarball – it seems that one must install it from the KDE Store, and I'll have to make an OpenDesktop.org account to use a custom theme: I had installed and tried editing Bounding Zigzagoon, but it seems that doing anything more than replacing the GIF file with another GIF file breaks the theme. Using a GIF made from my custom Plymouth theme images, the result was amusing. I'm confident that I can make and use a custom KDE splash screen without help, but if anyone has useful tips and tricks they can share, I would appreciate it; for now, I'll use the Dracula splash screen (it's decent).
Problem No. 5 – Trivial Icons (Low Priority):
This really is trivial stuff I'm not too bothered by, and I honestly wouldn't mind if these problems are never resolved, but if they can be resolved, I'd like to do that. First, all opened LibreOffice windows display the 'libreoffice-main' icon, and the name of the application is always 'LibreOffice Start Center' in the task manager. I usually only ever use LibreOffice Calc, so this doesn't really inconvenience me, but I would appreciate it if the icons and name reflected the specific software (Calc, Impress, Writer, etc.). Second, when an image has been created or opened, the GIMP icon changes with the image; it's not really a problem, and I can see others liking this feature, but I personally don't like the iconic inconsistency that arises from it, so I'd like to disable it if possible.
Summary:
I believe that covers everything... On my personal to-do list, I still need to fix the file associations (broken from uninstalling Flatpak GIMP 3.0 and reinstalling regular GIMP 2.10) and create a custom sound theme based on Oxygen, which I shouldn't have any troubles with, then create a new KDE splash screen, which I might have trouble with (I doubt it, but I'm not certain that I won't). A problem I definitely can't resolve on my own and desperately need help with is the GRUB stuff. Having help in resolving my problems with my custom Plymouth theme, custom cursor and/or icons (specifically with LibreOffice/GIMP) would be greatly appreciated, but I'm in no rush to resolve them; perhaps these will be resolved in Debian 13 with KDE Plasma 6 (I certainly hope so).
Closing Remarks:
Is it my fault that my first Debian experience has been so challenging? It (mostly) is, I'd otherwise just have a problem with the GRUB stuff; the icons wouldn't be any different – they're not an icon theme-specific problem – but as I said, it's really trivial stuff (and it makes sense that Kubuntu is better at supporting KDE than Debian). Do I regret embracing customisation? I certainly don't: setting things up has never been more challenging and tainted with issues, but using my computer has also never been more satisfying and enjoyable to use. For example, I actually want to watch my laptop boot up; I actually enjoy hearing notification sounds; and seeing my cutely animated cursor turn into a giant leek when hovering over text is amusing.
Edits:
14/04/2025: I just fixed some spelling and grammar mistakes.
More accurately, I only spent over 30 hours on this, but if you include sleeping, writing up this post, etc., it's been exactly 3 days since I first tried installing Debian and such, and it's been... difficult. Not so much installing Debian itself – it only took me about a half-dozen hours before I got to a login menu, and I'm sure that Debian isn't entirely to blame for my struggles with that – but with all the other things I wanted to do, I've effectively tried Debian, GNOME and Flatpak for the first time on Nuzlocke mode with my self-imposed challenges. I'll divide this post into two sections; if you don't care for the contextual fluff, but are still interested in helping me with my problems, feel free to skip to the second section titled 'Part 2 – My Problems'.
Part 1 – My First Debian, GNOME (+ Truly Customised KDE) & Flatpak Experience:
Debian vs. (K)ubuntu:
For me at least, there's no doubt about it: Debian is unquestionably better than (K)ubuntu as it has recently been. No more graphical issues, no more audio issues, no more being coerced into using Snap for Firefox (even if it works perfectly fine now)... I'm definitely sticking with Debian from now on. I wouldn't recommend it for new users – I wasn't expecting the installation process to be as difficult as it was, it really is much simpler with (K)ubuntu (which also has a much prettier GUI) – but I believe that's the only fair criticism I can make. There might be something else – and I'll discuss this problem in Part 2 – but I'm willing to give Debian the benefit of the doubt. Thankfully, I had alternative means to access the internet and found a workaround to said problem...
GNOME vs. KDE:
At first, I was loving GNOME: I'd paid attention to the videos, so I had fun abusing the super key like never before (in a productive manner), and I appreciated the simplicity of customisation. However, it soon became clear to me that GNOME was also very simple – inconveniently simple – with its default GNOME-specific software, particularly the file manager and image viewer; those made me miss KDE. Moreover, I was unable to figure out how to enable login and logoff sounds; the login and lock screens were... less pretty, to put it nicely; and what made me finally give up on GNOME was the difficulty I had with using the hotspot (also, in hindsight, the GUI elements were too big for my liking). So on Friday, I reinstalled Debian with KDE instead of GNOME.
Truly Customising KDE:
I'd heard that KDE is renowned for its customisability, but I never quite appreciated that until now: I'd never really taken advantage of it, nor could I compare it. Since I hadn't anticipated missing KDE as much as I did, I had to spend some time looking for a new global theme, and considering the wallpaper I use (it has bats and castles), EliverLara's Dracula theme was perfect; RStudio even comes with it by default, which is what helped me discover the Dracula theme. For the icons, I was able to reuse my custom Zafiro Nord Purple icons (modified from zayronXIO's Zafiro Nord Dark icons) and SuperMarioFPS's Miku Cursor; they both work in both GNOME and KDE, but I find that the icon theme shines a lot more in KDE than in GNOME (especially in the system settings).
I have had some problems with these, but I'll discuss them in the next subsection and Part 2. As for sound customisation, I eventually figured out how to do that in the system settings: (1) turn notification sounds up from 0% to 100%, then (2) configure application-specific notification settings. I can even enable and customise login and logout sounds with this, so that solves that problem I had with GNOME. The default sound theme is Oxygen, so I'll make a new sound theme based on that; I don't have to, but I think it'll be worth it to make the sound customisation process easier for me. As for customising my KDE splash screen... The Dracula one is fine, but I want to make and use a custom one, and I've had difficulties with that, which I'll discuss in Part 2.
Flatpak:
My only complaint so far is that GIMP 3.0 keeps crashing. For now, I'll still use Flatpak for a modest proportion of non-system/utility software; just not for some software, including those that are evidently buggy like GIMP 3.0 (unfortunately, I now need to manually delete it from the file associations; that'll take a while, but it's less inconvenient than reinstalling Debian). If it's newer and there are no problems with it, why not use the newer version? Besides, the regular packages can be 6 or so years old (and I'm sure there are some regular packages I don't know about that are even older), such as with MuseScore; for some software, the difference might be negligible, but for others such as MuseScore, they're as different as night and day. Speaking of MuseScore...
Since I never found a 'musescore.svg' file, I never thought a custom MuseScore icon was made, but then I found one on Discover. Turns out it was named 'mscore.svg', and the problem was that there was no file named 'org.musescore.Musescore.svg', so I created a symbolic link named as such. Initially, I had 4 options for installing MuseScore via Discover, but then Flatpak suddenly removed one of them; combined with failing to find 'org.musescore.Musescore.svg', I think you can imagine when I thought happened. Turns out, I just didn't look hard enough. Well, this is why KFind exists: Dolphin isn't perfect, but other software can make up for its shortcomings, such as KFind for finding overlooked stuff and KRename for batch renaming stuff.
Summary:
Trying Debian, GNOME and Flatpak for the first time on Nuzlocke mode with my self-imposed challenges has obviously been a challenging experience, but I'm convinced that it's been worthwhile. I'm definitely sticking with Debian, and although I won't be sticking with GNOME, I can appreciate its strengths (namely the versatility of the super key in combination with multiple workspaces; as for its simplicity, it's both a strength and a drawback, and at least for me, it's generally more of a drawback than a strength), and I've gained a greater appreciation for KDE. For now, I plan on using a roughly 50:50 mix of Flatpaks and regular packages for non-system/utility software; Debian 13 releases later in 2025, so I don't believe it'd hurt to try Flatpaks for at least a little while longer.
Part 2 – My Problems:
Problem No. 1 – GRUB 2 Command Shell (Urgent Priority):
Every time I turn on my laptop, I need to type in the following:
Code:
> set root=(hd1,gpt2)
> set prefix=(hd1,gpt2)/boot/grub
> insmod normal
> normalI've had to type this in so many times now, it's only a mildly irritating inconvenience, but I'd still very much like to have this issue fixed as soon as possible. Here's what I get when I run efibootmgr:
Code:
BootCurrent: 0007
Timeout: 0 seconds
BootOrder: 000B,0007,0001,0002,0004,0005,0006,0003,0008,000C
Boot0001* Diskette Drive
Boot0002* M.2 SATA SSD
Boot0003* Linux Firmware Updater
Boot0004* USB Storage Device
Boot0005* CD/DVD/CD-RW Drive
Boot0006* Onboard NIC
Boot0007* Ubuntu
Boot0008* UEFI: WDC WD10JPVX-75JC3T0, Partition 1
Boot000B* debian
Boot000C* Internal HDDI've tried deleting Ubuntu, setting the next boot to Debian, changing GRUB_DEFAULT from 0 to "debian", and most recently, inactivating Ubuntu, then reactivating Ubuntu, which has resulted in the mess you see above without a Boot0000 or Boot0009 (there were two Ubuntus and two Debians a couple of times before). According to efibootmgr, whenever Ubuntu isn't booted, my hard drive is booted. I'm convinced that I've done all I can to the best of my personal ability; even if I could do more, I probably shouldn't try anything else without assistance from an expert.
Problem No. 2 – Plymouth on Debian (Mostly Solved):
I was able to get my custom Plymouth theme running perfectly fine on (K)ubuntu by running the following:
Code:
$ sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/share/plymouth/themes/default.plymouth default.plymouth /usr/share/plymouth/themes/kitty-spinner/kitty-spinner.plymouth 100
$ sudo update-alternatives --config default.plymouth
$ sudo update-initramfs -uThis didn't work for Debian, so I spent a while trying to get it to work. When I changed GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT from "quiet" to "quiet splash", I was able to get Debian's Emerald theme to show up, and that's when I learnt of the 'plymouthd.defaults' file in /usr/share/plymouth/. I changed the Theme to match what I wanted, and changed the DeviceTimeout from 8 to 0... Oh, well that's embarrassing: turns out that setting it to 0 is what broke it, silly me. Now that I've set it to 10 (it's a nicer number than 8, at least in a decimal context), it works, so that's Problem No. 2 solved; perhaps having installed plymouth-themes helped as well, I'm not sure. And is it just me, or do my graphics look a lot crisper? Well, I'm certainly not complaining...
Why am I labelling this as mostly solved, then? My custom watermark gets replaced with an official watermark, and oddly enough, only during the boot process, except when updating (and I was certainly glad to see my custom Plymouth theme working as intended during this rare occasion, it's the first time I'd seen it): during the shutdown process, my custom watermark doesn't get replaced with an official watermark (which incidentally, I couldn't find in /usr/share/plymouth/). I'm very happy that over 95% of my custom Plymouth theme is functioning as intended, but if there's anyone who could help me with getting my custom watermark to appear as intended during the non-updating boot process, I would appreciate that.
Problem No. 3 – Cursory Issues (Pun Intended):
To my knowledge, my custom cursor works perfectly fine with all system/utility software that I use, and among the 17 non-system/utility software that I use, only 6 of them (35%) – one of them installed as a regular package (GIMP), the rest installed as Flatpaks – are problematic for my custom cursor. I checked the Breeze cursor theme; I didn't do a most thorough check, so I can't be absolutely certain, but I believe the custom cursor seems to only be lacking in a few areas, and none of them suggest that these problems have arisen because my custom cursor hasn't covered a specific cursor type (I believe that I could be wrong, but I doubt it). Depending on the software, there are either only image problems, or both image and size problems.
Software with only image problems include GIMP (everywhere except menu borders and editable text), MuseScore (everywhere except editable text and selectable elements) and Audacity (top-most and bottom-most segments only); in the mentioned regions, the cursor still has dimensions of 64 pixels, but evidently uses the Breeze theme cursor. Software with both image and size problems include OBS Studio and Kdenlive: no custom cursor appears anywhere. Regrettably, I can't be certain if I had – or did not have – these problems with GNOME (and I'm not reinstalling it to find out), but I'm thinking that I didn't; in particular, with OBS Studio, because I tested that for a bit back while I was using GNOME. So, I suspect that it's a KDE-specific issue.
I don't use these software as regularly as the likes of web browsers and LibreOffice Calc (although I would say that I regularly use GIMP), so it won't be a major annoyance: more of an annoyance than Problem No. 2 now that that's mostly solved, but still less of an annoyance than Problem No. 1. I don't believe that getting it to work on GIMP, MuseScore and Audacity should be difficult: obviously, my custom cursor works, the default variant just doesn't work for some reason I can't figure out. As for OBS Studio and Kdenlive, I'm less confident about getting it to work on them, and I honestly wouldn't be too bothered if I never did: at least the cursor theme is consistent, the mixed cursor themes is more annoying for me personally (especially as I regularly use GIMP).
Problem No. 4 – KDE Splash Screen (Moderate Priority):
Before I'd installed the Dracula theme, I just wanted something that wasn't the default KDE splash screen. Unlike with the icons and cursors – which could be installed via a tarball – it seems that one must install it from the KDE Store, and I'll have to make an OpenDesktop.org account to use a custom theme: I had installed and tried editing Bounding Zigzagoon, but it seems that doing anything more than replacing the GIF file with another GIF file breaks the theme. Using a GIF made from my custom Plymouth theme images, the result was amusing. I'm confident that I can make and use a custom KDE splash screen without help, but if anyone has useful tips and tricks they can share, I would appreciate it; for now, I'll use the Dracula splash screen (it's decent).
Problem No. 5 – Trivial Icons (Low Priority):
This really is trivial stuff I'm not too bothered by, and I honestly wouldn't mind if these problems are never resolved, but if they can be resolved, I'd like to do that. First, all opened LibreOffice windows display the 'libreoffice-main' icon, and the name of the application is always 'LibreOffice Start Center' in the task manager. I usually only ever use LibreOffice Calc, so this doesn't really inconvenience me, but I would appreciate it if the icons and name reflected the specific software (Calc, Impress, Writer, etc.). Second, when an image has been created or opened, the GIMP icon changes with the image; it's not really a problem, and I can see others liking this feature, but I personally don't like the iconic inconsistency that arises from it, so I'd like to disable it if possible.
Summary:
I believe that covers everything... On my personal to-do list, I still need to fix the file associations (broken from uninstalling Flatpak GIMP 3.0 and reinstalling regular GIMP 2.10) and create a custom sound theme based on Oxygen, which I shouldn't have any troubles with, then create a new KDE splash screen, which I might have trouble with (I doubt it, but I'm not certain that I won't). A problem I definitely can't resolve on my own and desperately need help with is the GRUB stuff. Having help in resolving my problems with my custom Plymouth theme, custom cursor and/or icons (specifically with LibreOffice/GIMP) would be greatly appreciated, but I'm in no rush to resolve them; perhaps these will be resolved in Debian 13 with KDE Plasma 6 (I certainly hope so).
Closing Remarks:
Is it my fault that my first Debian experience has been so challenging? It (mostly) is, I'd otherwise just have a problem with the GRUB stuff; the icons wouldn't be any different – they're not an icon theme-specific problem – but as I said, it's really trivial stuff (and it makes sense that Kubuntu is better at supporting KDE than Debian). Do I regret embracing customisation? I certainly don't: setting things up has never been more challenging and tainted with issues, but using my computer has also never been more satisfying and enjoyable to use. For example, I actually want to watch my laptop boot up; I actually enjoy hearing notification sounds; and seeing my cutely animated cursor turn into a giant leek when hovering over text is amusing.
Edits:
14/04/2025: I just fixed some spelling and grammar mistakes.
Last edited:
