I am reminded of the ability MANY years ago to write the kernel file directly to a floppy disk, or start of a hard drive and somehow being able to boot that way.

I just can’t recall how I did it, or WHY I did it.

Back when the kernel would fit on a floppy disk. I am truly showing my age.

6 yr old grandson found a box of old floppy disks and was asking what they were. He started stacking them up making card houses and roads for his matchbox cars. Glad he got some use out of those recycled AOL floppies.

two little tips:

you can backup your EFI partitions, in case you mess them up. I find it a good idea to back them up in any case, I have had EFI partitions get Filesystem corruption.

also the tool rEFInd can work as an alternative boot menu it has the ability to scan the entire system and show all found Bootable OS at boot time.

So with rEFInd, you install it, set it as the default, and it should show windows automatically.

it looks nicer than systemd-boot and grub as well. And it can even show bootable USB flash drives, and has a few other features.

I have my steam library on a second drive but I am not using the flatpak of steam.

I think it’s possible to have the steam flatpak use a second partition, if you use flatseal to allow the steam flatpak full access.

https://docs.xfce.org/panel-plugins/xfce4-docklike-plugin/start

shows the preview feature you mention.

I have seen it with some Dock/panels, but the specific DE/tools you mention is not something I have used.

check the project page for the panel you are using.

It’s going to depend on what desktop environment you are using, the default Gnome launcher has a huge full screen launcher setup.

there may be gnome extensions for another look.

Gnome is not the same look, but similar in its oversized UI.

I hate it.:)

I tend to use some other quick launchers. or a simple nested applications menu.

Been playing with that Bazannite (sp?) Variant, it works fine, but i am still undecided if learning the ins and puts of it are worth the switch from my Pop_os install.

There was a little bit research and learning to do some tasks, but nothing surprising.

it does seem it boots much slower than my pop_os install, but I think I have it installed on an internal Hybrid HDD that i not yet replaced with a SSD, so that may be the cause.

pop_os boots amazingly fast, not sure what they do to it.

and having to reboot to get stuff updated/installed is a bit annoying, the ability to roll back is the trade off I guess.

However I can’t really think of a time that I needed to roll back, perhaps I am just lucky. So the entire roll back feature is something that I don’t know if I will ever actually use.

good luck.

but they have an APK for the file manager ‘index’. so that’s what’s confused me.

I thought KDE was working on some cross platform programs, but I can’t recall the name of the project or the tools, they had a file manager, and a few other things. I thought it included a basic terminal emulator.

I may be thinking of the following project.

https://mauikit.org/apps/

it shows screen shots for ‘station’ on mobile, but I can’t find a .APK for it.

determine is the XFCE system is using sddm, lightdm, gdm3, there are other login managers as well, but those 3 are the most common.

you can then setup the same login manager kn the other system.

unless they are the same and it’s just a scaling issue due to the monitor resolution.

then I guess you could try the alternative login managers, and see if any look better.

ages ago I used various Hp (and other) calculator emulators for some tasks I needed to do.

they had more features than any of the calculator programs I had checked out.

But that was many many years ago.

also saw some options mentioned here.

https://www.reddit.com/r/linuxquestions/comments/nxnycv/calculator_with_mathematical_notation/

you could use MXlinux and it’s remaster tools/feature to build your own custom USB/iso.

MXlinux makes such a task rather easy.

remove stuff you don’t need to get it as small as you desire.

for testing, and no, no issues at all with the various dot files.

Cluttered app menus, and an occasional “default open with app” setting changed is about the only issues.

I have 5+ DEs on my pop_os install, you don’t lose files in your users home.

I just use in my Exec=

Exec=GDK_SCALE=2 steam

but that may differ in looks from the options you are using

I have a steam-big-ui.desktop that gives me the option to run in big mode, or I run normal steam for small mode.

Notes I made for people trying to use steam under Linux and keeping game files on a NTFS partition. Notes on ext4 filesystem at the end.

Also I Found this Guide - which may be better or have some details I overlook.

https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/wiki/Using-a-NTFS-disk-with-Linux-and-Windows

Flatpak Warning

If your steam install is done using Flatpak that can result in the steam program being sandboxed and limited in what it can access. I have no experience with how this limits things, the flatseal tool may be needed to manage the flatpak steam program. You can setup the specific flatpak to have access to other filesystems and mountpoints outside of your home. the command flatpak list

should show if you have steam installed via flatpak or not.

Flatpak notes at the end…

I have NO idea how the steam SNAP version differs in how it can access other locations either.

Continueing with the normal guide now…

Steam Game Directory on NTFS (fat32/exfat/vfat)

don’t use the file manager to mount the filesystem setup a /etc/fstab line to mount it at boot time you do NOT (typically) use chown or chmod on a mounted NTFS. (you do use those commands with ext4) example fstab entry.

    UUID=1234-your-uuid-56789 /media/gamedisk ntfs-3g uid=1000,gid=1000,rw,user,exec,nofail,umask=000 0 0 

You Do NOT use all of those options for ext4

On Ubuntu you can use ‘ntfs’ instead of ntfs-3g for the filesystem in the fstab options if you have ntfs-3g installed , it auto changes NTFS to be ntfs-3g. Other distribution may differ. When ntfs3 gets more commonplace, and stable likely people will switch to using ntfs3, and drop ntfs-3g

Newer Distribution and kernels may use the ntfs3 driver, I have not tested that driver. Try it out and see if it works.

The various issues and problems with ntfs getting mounted Read Only still apply. (hit up the numerous NTFS under Linux guides for more information) These issues also apply to exfat,vfat, fat32, and I imagine using ntfs3. Disable windows hibernate/suspend and fast boot if sharing a filesystem between linux and windows.

And …

it’s best to not use ntfs for your game storage drive , it can be slower and more of a CPU load. It does Work for me, but it is slower in my experience.

also… there are a lot of bad/wrong/old posts/blogs/guides on this topic. so watch out for those. (some of the info here may be wrong, so dont trust this guide 100%)

This guide may be outdated or wrong when we start using ntfs3.

Also be sure to check out this guide, and the part about the compatdata directory

https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/wiki/Using-a-NTFS-disk-with-Linux-and-Windows#preventing-ntfs-read-errors

bonus tip. Steam scale ui Tweak.:

set a system variable to have steam scale up it’s UI.

     $    GDK_SCALE=2  steam

edit your steam .desktop file to make it the default option, or make a second .desktop file for a steam 2x Launcher.

STEAM on an ext4 or other Linux filesystem.

basic outline…

format the Filesystem, get the UUID make directory for the mount

   mkdir /home/bob/games 

make fstab entry.

UUID=123-YOUR-UUID /home/bob/games ext4 defaults,nofail 0 0 mount the filesystem

  sudo mount /home/bob/games 

make the Filesystem owned by your user.

 sudo chown bob.bob /home/bob/games 

reboot to make sure it mounts.

use steam and tell it to put a steam library on /home/bob/games install games as normal.

ntfs3 notes

from user mandiblesarecute who gives an example with ntfs3

PARTLABEL=Win10 /media/win10 ntfs3 noacsrules,noatime,nofail,prealloc,sparse 0 0 noacsrules makes everything effectively 777 for when you don’t need or care about fine grained access control.

This 777 mode can be annoying and a security issue in some use cases which is why it’s not the default.

I had issues using Ntfs3, so for now I still use Ntfs-3g , i will test out ntfs3 again in the future as it matures.

Steam flatpak notes from another user. TimRambo1

For flatpaks you want to use the flatseal tool to allow access to the filesystem mountpoint of your steam games filesystem.

example: add mount point /home/(username)/games/

under filesystem under the steam settings in flatseal.

The filesystem still has to be properly mounted (as shown above)

Guide Used

https://deckcentral.net/posts/allow_flatpaks_to_access_your_sd_card_with_flatseal/

STEAMDECK NOTES:

Not tried running steam games from a NTFS on my steamdeck. So I can’t say how it differs from a normal Linux install.

end of my rambly guide.