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In "Other search engines" you will find Google icon. Click on it. Right-click on address-bar, Select "Add Google".
After that, go to Firefox settings, Search section. Select Google as default search engine (in Private windows too if you prefer).
While I would like this operation to be supported, currently it's not.
It requires the user to be aware of the change he made on top of the Gidro-OS, which is something I want to avoid.
It is more annoying that you have to constantly open those affected apps for notification/updating functionality, than to quit them whenever you don't need them.
This would get solved if upstream offered universal notification service which all apps would use & which Android devices have implemented. That way, apps are only running minimally enough to ping the notification service when needed & do not run fully, wasting resources, like now.
You should use Deluge. Enter Deluge, go to Edit in status bar, Preferences. In Interfaces, Tick "Enable system tray icon", "Minimize to tray on close" & "Start in tray" checkmark. This will grant Deluge's Background Apps support.
Other apps like Fragments, qBittorrent & Transmission don't support that. They either believe that Gnome does not support that functionality (in their sense, system tray, which is true) & Fragments developer ideologically believes that Background apps should not be endorsed by Fragments because of potential unnoticed constant network usage for countries where VPN is needed for illegal stuff. Background app support was a problem before, but now it's not since Gnome implemented it. Ideally, apps would use that native protocol, but anything that has system tray support will work well with it (minus the context menu options & app indicator).
My opinion is that lack of that functionality is harming the torrent community & torrents itself, because of much higher chance of quitting the app after downloading torrent, where seeding did not perform fully or at all. Seeding is the operation which should be persistent, not interrupted. While you can leave the app in the workspace all the time, it is very impractical & it gets in your way, as opposed to Gnome's philosophy of getting out of your way. Why should you have a non-interacting working app in a workspace when you can access it in the Background Apps panel?
This is a bug of Steam app, which must be solved directly upstream by Valve.
As an alternative solution, use Cartridges app, which sorts all your games from various sources in a nice launcher. It has an available search function built into Gnome, so you can search for your game & launch it quickly, without entering the launcher & without having game shortcuts. This makes separation between normal/work apps & gaming apps better for less cluttering experience.
Steam has shader cache precompiling built-in, which can help with some games stuttering (needed rarely these days, thanks to Mesa GPL support).
Steam automatically updates Proton when using Proton Experimental.
Steam automatically manages separate wine prefixes when installing games (which is more reliable).
Steam automatically installs Windows dependencies needed for games (thanks to Steamworks Common Redistributables).
Steam is generally more reliable overall.
Go to Steam settings, Compatibility, tick "Enable Steam Play for all other titles" & select Proton Experimental.
Yes. Use Proton-GE, which is included in Gidro-OS.
Go to Steam settings, Compatibility, tick "Enable Steam Play for all other titles" & select Proton-GE.
Downside is that you always have to redo this setup if you want to use newer Proton-GE version. To update to latest version, apply this command:
ujust proton-ge update
ujust proton-ge remove-old (Don't use this command if you want to keep some specific Proton-GE version. In this case, delete Proton-GE's you don't need manually)
Go to Steam settings, Compatibility, tick "Enable Steam Play for all other titles" & select updated Proton-GE.
To uninstall Proton-GE, apply this command:
ujust proton-ge uninstall
You can also use Proton-GE combined with Proton Experimental when something is not working for the specific game, by going to that game properties in Library, Compatibility, ticking "Force the use of a specific Steam Play compatibility tool" & selecting Proton-GE.
If you use GOG, Epic Games or Amazon Prime Gaming, use Heroic Games Launcher. While not better than Steam's implementation, it is much better compared to other solutions.
For apps/games which do not use launcher, check out below.
Take in mind that this solution is not the best & I'm looking to improve this in the future.
Install Bottles app from Gnome Software, which is responsible for that.
- Open Bottles. Create new Bottle in Application environment & name it "Apps".
- Create new Bottle in Gaming environment & name it "Games".
In following text, "Apps" & "Games" are environments.
Not all Windows apps & games will work. Notably, Windows applications which are dependent & very deeply tied to Windows-only components (VPNs, kernel anti-cheats, anti-viruses etc.) will not work.
Use Windows installers as much as possible, avoid archives/folders as much as you can for the ease of setup.
When you download the Windows app/game installer, copy those files to Bottles environment location by going to Bottles Apps/Games environment, pressing 3 dots in header bar, Browse files.... I usually put it in C:/Users/Gidro-OS-User/Downloads folder. When you open the app/installer, it will ask you in which environment you want to install app/game in (Apps or Games). After you select that, app/game installer will launch. Follow the usual steps & those apps will now appear in Bottles. To create desktop shortcut, go to Apps/Games, in Program list you will find the app you installed, press 3 dots on it & select "Add Desktop Entry".
For apps/games which are in archived format, copy the downloaded folder/extracted archive, go to Bottles Apps/Games environment, press 3 dots in header bar, Browse files... Copy folder to the file location it needs. To create app shortcut, click "Add Shortcuts", navigate to the executable you want, you will see the listed app, press 3 dots on it & select "Add Desktop Entry".
If you use Cartridges app, it is recommended for Windows games to add them to Library by going to 3 dots on the Program & then select "Add to Library", instead of making an app shortcut. This will add those Windows games to Cartridges, while Windows apps won't get cached by it.
If you use:
- Origin
- EA Launcher
- Blizzard Battle.net
- Ubisoft Connect
- Star Citizen
go to Bottles "Gaming" environment, Install Programs & than select the mentioned app.
If you wish, you can also try Lutris as a popular & more capable alternative (with more complicated UI)
This setup is not ideal, as it does not involve creating separate prefixes per app, which is more reliable, but in this manual work, much more time-consuming. It does not automatically download & install dependencies for most affected apps (Bottles has only 21 Installer apps supported, while Lutris is much better there). If app/game installer doesn't automatically install dependencies, than you will have to install them manually.
For more details, please refer to official documentation of mentioned apps.
This is because Gnome does not ship system tray functionality by default & uses Background Apps functionality instead. Linux apps with system tray functionality are recognized as background apps, while Windows apps are not. Known affected apps are Battle.net launcher & Steam for Windows, among dozen others which implement system tray functionality.
To mitigate that issue, you can install Gnome extension Tray Icons Reloaded in included Extension Manager app, which has support for Windows apps. However, this will show all apps in system tray which support it, including Linux apps like Steam or Discord. This makes top bar a bit more cluttered, so it's not an ideal solution. You can blacklist Linux apps from system tray, but you have to do it manually. There is not an automatic option to use system tray for Windows apps only.
Take in mind that tray icon functionality in 1 form or another is not supported by Gidro-OS, so Github issues will not get support.
GPU Screen Recorder offers the best recording performance compared to other software on Linux. As it name says, it uses GPU more efficiently than others, even better than OBS. Developer says that performance is similar to Nvidia's Shadowplay without overlay on Windows. It's out-of-the-box experience is set without need for preference changes, unlike OBS. UI is simple, even if it does not use Adwaita design.
If GPU Screen Recorder does not work for your hardware or you want more functionality, than you have to rely on other software like OBS, Kooha or built-in Gnome screencast (sorted by performance).
My recommendation is to always delete the data when uninstalling, because this will assure that all app content is properly deleted.
Only in some rare cases, when you want to backup some important data, you can keep the data on uninstall & backup it wherever you want.
If you kept the data that you want to delete now, open Warehouse, hamburger menu, Manage Leftover Data than select which data you want to remove.
You can use those if flatpak support for the app is missing.
However, due to nature of AppImages, not all of them are guaranteed to work & auto-updates are not supported.
Gear Lever is included in Gidro-OS for cleaner installation & organization of AppImages.
Location of installed AppImages & it's icons for desktop integration is in $HOME/.AppImages folder.
AppImages are generally portable, with only remaining "app-name" folders being located in $HOME/.config/app-name or in $HOME/.app-name
Support for detection of fully portable AppImages is tracked here
AppImage support is not officially endorsed by Gidro-OS & it's only provided partially as is, for reasons mentioned above.
You should not use that, as the primary & only supported installation method for applications is using Gnome Software for installing flatpaks.
It directly collides with the philosophy, usage & reliability of Fedora Silverblue system, which Gidro-OS is based on.
This process is also called "layering".
I will not support Github issues which indicate the usage of layering.
That is a better solution compared to layering, but it's still not reliable for daily usage & it's the reason it's not integrated into Gidro-OS.
You can use it, but I cannot help around distrobox issues.
However, users with distroboxes can make issues regarding anything else not related to distrobox.
You should not modify anything inside /etc folder & it's subfolders, as those modifications will override Gidro-OS changes & behavior. This operation is not supported & should be done only by advanced users, who can remember to revert the modifications they did manually to Gidro-OS defaults.
This includes installing anything from copr or other 3rd party repos.
Take a note that you won't get support if you modified some stuff in /etc folder.
Ideally, this would be solved by requiring users to automatically reset /etc modifications done by them. But that is not currently supported & upstream needs to jump in with the fix.
Go to Terminal & apply this command:
ujust configure-grub hide
To revert to defaults, apply this command:
ujust configure-grub unhide
Go to Terminal & apply this command:
ujust configure-close-button hide
To revert to defaults, apply this command:
ujust configure-close-button unhide
Go to Terminal & apply this command:
ujust factory-reset apps-gidro-os
This will reset settings to factory defaults for Text Editor, Calculator, Clapper, LibreWolf, G4Music & Gear Lever.
Deleting app data only for those apps are reverting Gidro-OS modifications, so this additional command is needed.
This will not delete app data for those apps, so it is safe to use in all conditions.
Go to Terminal & apply this command:
ujust factory-reset all
Restart your system.
Take in mind that "factory-reset all" of Gidro-OS is not actually reseting everything. It resets everything as much as possible in current state.
Currently, it won't restore /etc folder to default state if modified & it won't restore "Home" directory to defaults, including its config & dotfiles (your personal data in "Home" remains).