For the video problem, it might be codecs; try using Proton-GE if it’s in Steam or use Wine-GE if not. (IIRC, Steam will often convert the videos and give you the converted ones in the shader caching if necessary. But those outside of Steam, and sometimes a few still in Steam don’t have that workaround.)

For the main issue you’re having, try running those games in gamescope, which itself is a compositor with a bunch of neat tricks. In this case it’d make sure to not lose the focus of the game even if the gamescope window loses focus. It can also optionally force windowed or fullscreen modes, upscale (even with FSR1), and lock the framerate.

Changing settings in the game itself between fullscreen or borderless (borderless should usually help with the focus issues) may help too, if the game has that setting, but then you’ll probably hit the borders issue due to FVWM. (I don’t know if you’d get the fullscreen unredirection optimization in fvwm. That could be a reason to pick one or the other for you too.)

You’re probably hitting a few edge cases by using FVWM versus a more modern environment like GNOME or KDE, but to be fair I’ve seen the focus issue happen before on a game on running through Heroic on GNOME with more than one monitor before. FWIW: I don’t remember seeing the issue in games from Steam. (It probably depends on the game itself, however.)

It certainly is a differentiator: uBlock Origin already works best on Firefox. https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-Origin-works-best-on-Firefox

And when Manifest v3 is fully enforced in Chromium (current date is slated to be July 2024), then the more restricted uBlock Origin Lite would need to be used instead.

(I’m not sure if Arc will fully adopt v3, but they might not have a choice at some point in time.)

The Lite version still works well considering all the restrictions, but has a lot of limitations: https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues/issues/338#issuecomment-1507539114

• Filter lists update only when the extension updates (no fetching up to date lists from servers)

• Many filters are dropped at conversion time due to MV3’s limited filter syntax
• No crafting your own filters (thus no element picker)
• No strict-blocked pages
• No per-site switches
• No dynamic filtering
• No importing external lists

TL;DR: The way uBlock Origin works on Firefox right now is already better, but if Arc has to go along with Manifest v3 in Chromium in a few months, then it’ll be even more of a differentiator.

It also looks like they’re even thinking about rolling out their own tracker blocker (instead of using uBlock Origin) as a result of the Manifest v3 changes:

https://www.reddit.com/r/ArcBrowser/wiki/index/#wiki_how_will_arc_handle_the_transition_from_manifest_v2_to_manifest_v3.3F

https://twitter.com/joshm/status/1728926780600508716

We’re rolling our own native @arcinternet Ad & Tracker Blocker in 2024 (since Chrome is restricting them)…

Any creative ideas for how we can go above and beyond, and reimagine the category?

Remove GDPR/Cookie Consents? What else?

I basically gave up on podcasts on the desktop and only use AntennaPod on my phone. When I’m at my desktop, I have my phone paired with my computer via Bluetooth and play that way. I can pause it on my computer via KDE Connect (GSConnect on GNOME).

Bluetooth audio from phone to desktop works on Fedora Linux quite well. It probably works on other Linux distros too. I’m guessing it might also work on other OSes like Windows and macOS.

KDE Connect is available on Android, iOS, KDE (and can run on other desktops too), GNOME (via the GSConnect extension), Windows, and macOS.

This solves the syncing problem by sidestepping the need for it. My podcast state is always correct and I always have my podcasts with me, even when out and about.

Docker on Windows and Mac also runs containers through a VM though. (It’s more obvious on Windows, where you need WSL (powered by a VM) and Hyper-V (a way to run VMs on Windows). But on a Mac, VMs to run Linux are also used to run Docker containers inside the VM.)

Podman Desktop helps to abstract VMs away on Windows and macOS: https://podman-desktop.io/

For the command line, there’s “podman machine” to abstract away the VM. https://podman.io/docs/installation (installing on macOS is mentioned on that page and Windows has a link to more docs which also uses the podman machine command.)

As for Docker compose, you can use it directly with Podman too: https://www.redhat.com/sysadmin/podman-docker-compose (there’s also podman-compose as well). The only thing Docker compose doesn’t support with Podman is swarm functionality.

Docker compose can even work with rootless Podman containers on a user account. It requires an environment variable. https://major.io/p/rootless-container-management-with-docker-compose-and-podman/ (it’s basically enabling the socket for podman and using the environment variable to point at the user podman socket)

Some would probably consider it sacrilegious, but you can actually embed Neovim inside VS Code (or Codium, the FOSS soft fork, similar to what Chromium is for Chrome).

https://github.com/vscode-neovim/vscode-neovim

I’ve been using this for a couple years (after using vim for a few decades). You get the best of both worlds. You can use both VS Code plugins as well as Neovim/Vim extensions too — whatever you prefer.

I still use Neovim on the command line for quick edits, but I’m happy with VS Codium + Neovim for long IDE coding sessions.