What’s the use case? Is there a reason that the disk is not unlocked at boot/login?

I think any distro will do really. I’d go for something that is friendly to new users, if you’re not very familiar with Linux in general. For example: Linux Mint. Here is an example on how you can get your installation setup easily: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyT4wfz5ZMg

Regarding your Valve Index. It will likely work, but don’t expect it to be very easy to get it running well. I’m currently on Arch Linux with red team hardware and a Valve Index. For example, you will need to ensure the udev rules are set properly: https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-devices. New issues occasionally arise, see: https://github.com/ValveSoftware/SteamVR-for-Linux/issues. Currently, it’s not switching audio devices automatically, so I use pavucontrol (with PipeWire) to switch that manually.

Oh I didn’t know that yet! Amazing stuff.

You’re in luck. As far as i recall wincompose is inspired by Xorg’s Compose feature (https://github.com/samhocevar/wincompose?tab=readme-ov-file#features). Depending on your installation you can toggle it via some settings, or by running: setxkbmap -option compose:ralt

I always find the book useful for this stuff: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Xorg/Keyboard_configuration#Configuring_compose_key

I have been in the same spot. Good to read that I’ve been able to help out. Have fun with this in combination with your gaming!

I use a gaming-mode for that. Like this:

# Create a gaming mode
mode "gaming" {
    # switch to workspace
    bindsym $mod+1 workspace number $ws1 ; mode "default"
    bindsym $mod+2 workspace number $ws2 ; mode "default"
    bindsym $mod+3 workspace number $ws3 ; mode "default"
    bindsym $mod+4 workspace number $ws4 ; mode "default"
    bindsym $mod+5 workspace number $ws5 ; mode "default"
    bindsym $mod+6 workspace number $ws6 ; mode "default"
    bindsym $mod+7 workspace number $ws7 ; mode "default"
    bindsym $mod+8 workspace number $ws8 ; mode "default"
    bindsym $mod+9 workspace number $ws9 ; mode "default"

    # move focused container to workspace
    bindsym $mod+Shift+1 move container to workspace number $ws1
    bindsym $mod+Shift+2 move container to workspace number $ws2
    bindsym $mod+Shift+3 move container to workspace number $ws3
    bindsym $mod+Shift+4 move container to workspace number $ws4
    bindsym $mod+Shift+5 move container to workspace number $ws5
    bindsym $mod+Shift+6 move container to workspace number $ws6
    bindsym $mod+Shift+7 move container to workspace number $ws7
    bindsym $mod+Shift+8 move container to workspace number $ws8
    bindsym $mod+Shift+9 move container to workspace number $ws9
    bindsym $mod+Shift+0 move container to workspace number $ws10
}

# Enter the gaming mode when a game is started
for_window [class="^steam_app_"] move to workspace $ws10; workspace $ws10; mode "gaming"
for_window [class="^hl2_linux"] move to workspace $ws10; workspace $ws10; mode "gaming"

This automatically moves (most) games to workspaces 10 and switches to that workspace. This allows me to use key combinations that would otherwise be used by i3.

That should be easily solved with: sudo apt install curl

Well… I guess I have been living under a rock. Today is the first time to have heard of info. I have been using man for well over 2 decades now.

It’s very difficult for me to work through these logs as they are missing new lines.

But there is plenty of stuff giving errors:

Aug 20 14:07:08 blackcloud gnome-session-binary[635]: Unrecoverable failure in required component org.gnome.Shell.desktop

Aug 20 14:07:08 blackcloud org.gnome.Shell.desktop[646]: Failed to setup: No GPUs found

Aug 20 14:07:08 blackcloud gdm[398]: Gdm: GdmDisplay: Session never registered, failing Aug 20 14:07:08 blackcloud gdm[398]: Gdm: Child process -628 was already dead.

Aug 20 14:08:08 blackcloud /usr/lib/gdm-wayland-session[2472]: dbus-daemon[2472]: [session uid=120 pid=2472] Activated service ‘org.freedesktop.systemd1’ failed: Process org.freedesktop.systemd1 exited with status 1

Aug 20 14:08:25 blackcloud gnome-shell[2483]: Connection to xwayland lost Aug 20 14:08:25 blackcloud gnome-shell[2483]: Xwayland terminated, exiting since it was mandatory Aug 20 14:08:25 blackcloud org.gnome.Shell.desktop[2483]: GNOME Shell terminated with an error: Xwayland exited unexpectedly

You might want to try (in no specific order) to check why xwayland is failing, reinstall gnome, clean up old configuration, do a system upgrade, try pacdiff.

I have not experienced this and no direct solution. You should probably check your logs to see what’s wrong. So on boot, try to log in into Wayland, then open up a shell and run these to see which errors pop up.

journalctl -b | grep wayland
journalctl -b | grep gnome
journalctl -b | grep gdm
# and for more general errors
journalctl -b -p 3

You might also want to check the book on Wayland.

I think Wikipedia is a valuable common good and should be maintained. Because I can afford it, I donate monthly, even if I only use it a few times each month.

I case you want to try it out, the setting I’ve used in Steam was:

RADV_PERFTEST=rt VKD3D_CONFIG=dxr11 %command%