Oh interesting. I may look into that. Thank you for the suggestion!

Wouldn’t exactly fit my use case because this pc also doubles as my game in bed pc and is what I’m currently using for ai image generation. If i could get big picture mode but still run applications that arent games or for streaming, that’d be ideal. From the recommendations, seems like kodi is a fan favorite but not exactly a DE either. Might work but I’d rather it be a DE than an app i have to run but beggers cant be choosers.

That said, I have 2 chunky servers that my buddy gave me recently and I’m planning on self hosting a lot of things with them which likely include jellyfin.

I will say that im slowly getting the internet to a decent spot at least for streaming, generally as long as my connection is fast enough between starlink and my lte connection (using failover with pfsense) i can usually stream ok. Though with one tower in my area and trees surrounding my place, its never gonna be great.

My desktop pc runs Fedora with Wayland currently and it works really well. I like wayland a lot and was trying to use it on my media pc as well but it wasnt playing well with Firefox for video playback. Not sure if this was fixed yet or if it was even a bug but it was not good when i tried it on kubuntu. Haven’t tried it om popos yet but it might just be an issue with gnome. Ive never been a fan of gnome ever since i started messing around with linux.

Love kde plasma though, its def the best DE ive found so far. Coming from Windows and all the customization it has, its so nice.

I mostly use this pc as a streaming box for online content like youtube or crunchyroll so not really sure kodi would fit that anyways. Will probably have jellyfin up again at some point so might use kodi for that? Idk, mot something im doing anytime soon.

Rn im using the default for PopOS and like you, scaled the ui. Its fine, but not quite right yknow? Ui scaling in Linux hasnt ever felt quite right to me especially when I’m using a tv.

I also use this pc to do other things so its not just a media PC all the time which is another reason why i was looking for a desktop environment rather than a whole new os.

Is mate pretty good for scaling well? I havent used it before but a small gripe is that the default for pop doesnt scale well when the taskbar always shows. Applications get cut off at the bottom. Pretty annoying.

Ah good to know. I thought they looked interesting and very customizable which is why i though it was a legit recommendation lol.

For this pc, wayland support isn’t much of a concern atm but also good to know. Appreciate the info :)

Both of those look interesting. Thank you!

I have looked at kodi briefly, not sure if its exactly what I’m looking for but could be a viable option. Have heard a lot of good things about it of course. Appreciate the suggestion!

I was recently looking for something like this and couldn’t find what i was looking for, so thanks!

Ah ok so from what im hearing, because the kernal on the deck hasn’t been updated with a codec that you prefer for these headphones, they sound worse. That sucks man. I would hope it wouldn’t be the same case for other distros but if your headphones are newer that can make it more difficult to have compatibility. Takes a while for Linux to catch up on most stable distributions is my understanding.

And I use Reaper! Love Reaper a ton, clean and easy to use daw for $60 bucks (small business/personal use) I’m currently on Fedora 40.

I’m a musician who is just getting started producing on Linux. I haven’t had issues with audio aside from my audio interface not being compatible due to have software control for hardware which i hated anyways. Using a focuarite interface now and its been good. Pulseaudio has been pretty solid for a while now which is what the steamdeck uses from what i can see online.

Both my mic and headphones have worked great with all distros I’ve tried. That said, sometimes stuff just doesn’t wanna play well with Linux, even if it seems like it should and im typically not using bluetooth devices on Linux for audio so im not as familiar with issues they may have.

You might try another set of headphones to see if its an issue with the headohones themselves. And or, try them with a different distro/pc because it may be a issue with the deck itself.

Older thinkpads would come to mind, usually a good option. Generally affordable, repairable, and can be good for Linux.

I tried umbrel and wasnt super impressed. It seemed like it would function alright for the small amount of things i was trying to do but broke shortly after installing. I set up pihole and i think jellyfin since i was just testing it out on an older laptop.

I’ve heard decent things about CasaOS but have not used it myself.

What are you doing step-LAN?

I’m def a windows hater but i dont fault people for using it. Most folks arent gonna know how to install a diffrent os or even want to if what they have already works.

Use what you like and what works.

Jellyfin was my go to as well. It was really nice to play with and finamp was as well. Once setup it was just as easy and nice to use as Spotify without all the ads and Spotify randomly playing songs after i finish a podcast episode.

If you dont need the drive to be fast and want best bang for your buck storage capacity, HDD is the way to go.

If you want speed and are ok with a higher price, SSD is best. Used enterprise HDD are usually a good value. Im in the US so not sure about where to purchase exactly.

Something to consider is if the drive you are storing the os and files on are the same, using am HDD will make it slower on start up.

Ah ok, thats pretty cool. I dont do much torrenting anymore cause my internet is not only limited but is kinda slow and unsteady.

Might check that out once im back in civilization with a decent connection. I miss gigabit speeds man.

Yea the real fun is always the set up when selfhosting. Then you look for the next project lol.

Im not familiar with gluetun, is that what you’re using to download tracks or something?

I personally really liked using jellyfin and finamp. Both were pretty great once i figured out how to set it up lol.

The issues i had were due to my lack of knowledge and trying to set things up to use it outside of my home network. Jellyfin itself was great as was finamp when i used them.

Now thats something I’d slap on my resume. Hope you get a bonus or something for saving your company money cause it’d be well deserved.