<p>Oflate,I've been having some mildly annoying, highly esoteric issues, of the sort any desktop OS tends to develop given enough time, with my daily-driver install of the Arch-based EndeavourOS with XFCE. The most annoying of these annoyances include the XFCE panel daemon having stopped running on login, which I dealt with by binding the command to start it to a keyboard shortcut, and the monitor layout defaulting to mirrored every time I locked the screen, which I dealt with much the same way. I say of late, but I'vebeendealingwiththisshitformonths.TheseseemedlikebugssomewheredeepinXFCEthatIreallydidn'thavetheenergytotrytofix,somysolutionwastojustgoscorched-earthandstartagainwithsomethingnew.</p>
<p>Ishouldsayherethatthisisn't a review of Fedora as much as it is just me venting. It seems like it would be great for the kind of user it'sdesignedfor,butasitturnsoutthatis<em>not</em>me.Honestly,alotofthisstuffmayormaynothavebeenmyfault.Anyway,ontothepain.</p>
<p>Tobeclear,thisprobablywouldhavebeenfineifflatpakswerealreadymygo-to,buttheyweren't, and I wasn'tabouttoreconfigureallmyshitorgowayoutofmywaytobeparticularaboutwhichpackagingmethodIpreferredformysoftwareinordertoavoidreconfiguringallmyshit.</p>
<p>Onarelatednote,alotofthesoftwareintherepositoriesthatwereavailabletomewas<em>severely</em>outdated.PrusaSlicer,forexample,wasonlyavailableinversion2.4.2,whichwasreleasedinAprilof2022.AsofwritinginFebruaryof2024,thelatestversionis2.7.1.ItwasupongoingtoPrusa's website to download the AppImage of the latest version like some kind of fucking caveman and discovering that AppImageLauncher<sup id="n2r"><a href="#n2">2</a></sup> wasn'tin<em>any</em>ofthereposthatIgotfedup,decidedIwasn'tgonnariskdealingwiththistypeofshitforeveryprogramIwantedtoinstallandnopedout.</p>
<p>IhaveacoupleissueswithGNOME,though.Idon't much like the MacOS-style grid of large icons as an app launcher, for one, having gotten used to the density of a barely-configured Rofi menu. I'vealsogottenusedtoseeingataglancewhatprogramsIhaveopen,fromyearsofusingbasicallyeverydesktopenvironmentbutGNOME,fromKDEtoXFCEtofuckingWindows.I'd like if that was available in, say, the positively barren top panel. I found an extension for that, but it doesn'tseemtoworkproperly.</p>
<p>Beyondthat,I've been acclimating to the fresh install pretty much fine. All my programs are set up the way I like them again, which is nice. Turns out GNOME ships with Wayland by default now, and it'sactuallybeengivingmefewerissuesthanIwasexpecting.EvengamingisfinefromwhatI've seen so far (what kind of topsy turvy world are we living in where gaming is one of the EASIEST things to do on Linux?), but I did have to pass the flag <code>-platform xcb</code> to OBS to get it to run. Also, the state of graphical package managers on Arch is utterly abysmal, but that'sneitherherenorthere.</p>
<p>ProtonlistsFedoraasofficiallysupportedbyProtonVPN.Great!Oneissue:ItFuckingIsn't, It Would Seem. The ProtonVPN client is only present in the Software Center as an unofficial GTK app (as opposed to the Electron app I'musedto(Iknow,ugh))thatrefusedtowork.IwenttoProton's website and followed the instructions there, only to end up with a very similar looking GTK app that very similarly didn'twork.Awesome.</p>
<p>Fortunately,ProtonVPNsupportsconnectingusingOpenVPN,andGNOME's network settings panel has an option for that built right in! I download the relevant configuration file from the ProtonVPN website and it also doesn'twork.Evenawesomer!</p>
<p>SoIlookupthis"unknown reason"errorandfindaGithubissuewheresomeonesaystoruna<code>journalctl</code>commandtoseeifthere's any errors, and wouldn'tyouknowit,Ifindone!</p>
"Proton VPN CA#166"]:secrets:failedtorequestVPNsecrets#3: No agents were available for this request.
</code>
<p>Progress!Ithink.Idon't know what this means. I look up this error and find a different Github issue where someone claims to have fixed a similar issue by installing a package called nm-applet, which... doesn'tseemtoexist.Transcendantlyspectacular!!!</p>
<p>(Mindyou,allthisisgoingononarepothatwasarchivedsometimelastyear,whichseemsominous.PleasetellmethatweirdGTKclientfromFedorathat's missing a CLI isn'ttheup-to-dateofficialsolution.)</p>
<p>Ihaveacouplequestions.One,whyisn't this listed as a dependency if not having it breaks everything? I assume it'sthefaultofthepersonmaintainingtheAURpackage,butthatseemslikeaweirdoversightonafamilyofdistroswherethatpackage<em>clearly</em>doesnotcomestandard.</p>
<p>Two,what's going on with ProtonVPN clients on Linux? It looks like the Electron app and accompanying CLI (which I quite liked) are deprecated as of last October? And replaced with that weird GTK thing that'smissingabunchoffeaturesanddoesn't include a CLI anymore? What the fuck? Why did they make it worse? I mean, it'snotlikethisisn't part of a pattern for Proton. I'mprettysuretheProtonDrivedesktopclientstillisn'tonLinuxyet.</p>
<p>Also,three,whywasn't network-manager-applet already installed? This thing seems like a pretty important system package, especially given the rest of network-manager was already present and seems to be the thing allowing me to connect to the internet right now. Well, such is Arch I suppose. The type of Linux user who runs this thing seems to tend towards having a pathological obsession with bloat and the relevant de-'s<supid="n3r"><ahref="#n3">3</a></sup>.<p>
<pid="n2"><ahref="#n2r">2</a>.AppImagesareprogramspackagedasstandaloneexecutables.Theydon't need to be installed - AppImageLauncher isn'tnecessarytorunthem,butit'smypreferredtoolforintegratingthemintothesystemwithmenuentriesandsuch.</p>