I see a couple of other comments reccomending exfat; I’ve had problems with exfat with both the Steam flatpak and the Steam system package. Exfat does not support linux symlinks which are needed for some if not most Steam games to work properly. You will have to re-install your games onto an ext4 or linux-friendly filesystem, for Steam at least.

Emulation and GOG is a different story though. I have both on an exfat drive and I can access and play them with both windows and linux.

In terms of security, you will be at a slight risk using an unsupported os in the future. But hey, some people I know are still on Windows 7, so it isn’t a huge risk. As long as you practice basic computer hygene and have an antivirus running (windows defender (easy), malwarebytes (secure), or clamAV (open source) are decent picks) you’ll be fine.

Yes, you can find it in the themes directory. It also has really good documentation on github in case you want to make custom collections or swap out game system cover art. I went down the qml rabbit hole because of pegasus, it was super fun

The problem lies more with the phone itself no longer being supported, as both Calyx and Graphene only do harm-reduction updates after end of life, not full security updates. You will be taking a risk using either, but both are better than stock android.

For some reason you’ll find a lot of Calyx/non-graphene os hate on lemmy (just look at the dowvotes on anything calyx related, even on this post). But if your threat model is just combatting coprorate data harvesting, de-googling, or further securing your phone, it works well and does as promised.

You should also look into Fairphones with Calyx. They’re a bit pricey, but they get hardware support for 10 years instead of 5 (most android phones) and they are built with replacable parts in mind to prevent e-waste and unnecessary cost.

So in other words, yes you will have to buy a phone every 5 years (or 10 with fairphone) in order to have comprehensive security, even with graphene or calyx.

No problem! I think it depends on the theme. I use the Retro Mega Next theme which is optimized for handhelds, but it works great with mouse and keyboard.

Very nice! I will look into using it

Yeah, but I see it as a pro and a con. With previous browsers I used like Mull, Fennec and Bromite, the store versions usually lagged behind, usually due to FDroid shenanigans, and downloading it from the source eliminates the middleman. While it is more work, I do use my browser for many important things, so I feel like it’s worth it for my use case.

I use Pegasus at the moment as it’s extremely customizable, although it does have a bit of a learning curve since you do most things through media.txt files. You can configure launch commands, box art/media/videos through an external scraper (I use Skyscraper), and you can point to bash files which opens up use of the terminal for basically anything you want to do OS side. It also has many different themes, basic metadata, and sorts games by system.

Emulation station is also another popular choice and is more out-of the-box minded bit still requires a bit of know how.

I also really like Playnite because it’s video game sorting heaven, but sadly it’s windows only and is really janky in wine/lutris. I eagerly await the day a working linux port arrives.

Iceraven is my go to, been using it for about a year now. It works great

I second this, I greatly prefer news from real people with their own style, especially when there’s so much ai stuff and corporate boringness elsewhere. I’d love to see a part 5, good job!

Edit: Part 5!

I also enjoy dualsense and there is definitely quality there, but I could not get it to work with a handfull of emulators on linux for some reason. I’m sure there could be some tinkering to do to get it working but I’ve just been using xbox series for plug n play

Not generic, but I’ve been using Xbox Series controllers with LMDE. They were plug n play and work flawlessly out of the box. I’ve used them with both bluetooth and wired and have had no problems with emulation and steam. You’d probably save more buying a used xbox controller for about $30-$50 than trial and error with cheaper off-brand gamepads

Can second this strategy. I still dual boot W10 and LMDE, but every day I find myself booting Windows less and less. All I really use it for is Roblox and Playnite, and Playnite isn’t even necessary because I’ve been getting more and more used to Pegasus on Linux.

You just gotta get comfy with a bit of program migration, for example I used to use programs like Word, Brave browser, and Playnite, and learned LibreOffice, Librewolf, and Pegasus one at a time until I didn’t need the often worse Windows version.