Distrobox will resolve your issue with VSCode and then some. Run archlinux, debian or whatever you want as a container. Then, install VSCode/VSCodium (and any other apps that Chimera lacks) inside the container OS. This will keep your development environment containerized and safely away from your host OS.

It definitely sounds like a hardware issue since it has survived multiple disk wipes and distro changes.

1. Make and verify your backups now if you don't already have them
2. Are you using the command line package manager or GUI?
3. What is your current distro?
4. Are you near capacity on your storage?
5. Run a S.M.A.R.T. test and review the results

As a fellow Atomic user, my completely biased opinion is that you've made a good choice of distro for switching from Windows.

Don't sweat the need or desire to layer a few packages. I see a lot of folks stress over this as if it's a hard rule they are breaking. It's a general recommendation and little more. I would be surprised if most users don't layer at least one package (or even a few).

On my main workstation, running Kinoite at the moment, some of the layered packages include:

• distrobox
• gdm (sddm refuses to respect autologin)
• kate
• ksystemlog
• syncthing
• vim-enhanced
• virt-manager
• virt-viewer

This is old news and long-since resolved by RPM Fusion and/or flatpaks.

They're probably talking about Fedora dropping the h.264, h.265 and VC1 VA-API support back in 2022 for legal reasons due to patents:

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Fedora-Disable-Bad-VA-API

It's largely a non-issue as you can easily install the patched Mesa from RPM Fusion, and I believe all Flatpaks incorporate the codecs already.

Don't get me wrong, Arch is great and it will always have a place in my heart, but I also think Fedora is a top-tier project and I completely understand why they weren't comfortable risking patent law unnecessarily.

Longtime Debian and Arch veteran here. I moved most of my workstations to Silverblue earlier this year (maybe 8 months ago now), and I've been very happy overall.

There is a bit of a learning curve if you aren't familiar with Flatpak or container-based workflows, assuming you wish to embrace those elements, but the curve is nowhere near as steep or unconventional as NixOS.

I love the automated updates. The flexibility to rebase or rollback the core OS on the fly, without any extra work, is great too. For example, it's very easy to test out beta releases, remixes, and preconfigured software bundles like uBlue.

I still use Arch for 99% of my command line tasks, inside a container managed by distrobox.

I strongly believe that Flatpak is the future of Linux software deployment, and although the format still has its kinks, it is already quite mature and will only get better as more and more upstream developers adopts its use.

I agree with others that the source article is using a click-bait title convention unnecessarily, but I disagree that the tool is bloatware.

I use tmux and vim for the vast majority of my daily tasks, and I still recognize the benefit of having GUI options for others.

I'll never understand why some in our community show so much disdain for software contributions made by voluneers simply because it doesn't directly benefit them.

I suspect that some found alternative platforms, some broke their doomscroll habits and are doing other things now, and the vast majority just slinked back to reddit because adhering to principles is hard for most people.

I have also noticed a drop in engagement these past couple of weeks. I think there are many reasons why this is happening, just a few of which include:

1. Way too many memes and meme-centric communities; I've had to block so many communities the past few weeks just to declutter the All feed and to find posts that warranted actual discussion; it starts to feel like 4chan after a while
2. Too many communities and not enough users; there was an attempt to mirror reddit during the exodus, and there just isn't enough of a userbase to justify so many communities; many of these shell communities are aggregating dozens of off-lemmy links everyday without a user base to engage with, so it just spams the All feed and makes it look like a ghost town
3. Many users have likely gone back to reddit or found alternative platforms

My own engagement has slowed, as I just don't even know if users from other instances are seeing my comments or posts. Lemmy's federation system broke shortly after the explosive growth and as far as I can tell it hasn't been fixed. Subscriber counts vary greatly, depending on which instance you view a community from. Some folks see your post, and some don't. That's a nonstarter for a lot of users who might otherwise engage.

My thoughts exactly whenever their "losses" are mentioned.

As others have said, de-federation should really be the last resort for the most egregious of actions. The bot serves a well-intended purpose, even if it's something I would never use.

What if the bot was hosted at .ml or .world? Would de-federation even be on the table?

My vote would be to leave it up to the users for now, though I don't fully understand what, if any, performance impact the bot account might have on other instances. Is traffic from that instance excessive? If performance was a factor, then at most I would vote to ban the bot account until the platform has more options to manage such things.

I not so quietly axed all of my streaming services last year (Amazon bore the brunt of my dissatisfaction).

IPTV, a self-made Kodi collection, and the local library are all that we use now. Much happier all around, and zero ads.