Jana

https://social.jsteuernagel.de/@jana

Networking Witch :neocat_flag_trans:

Loves tech.
The concept, not the current implementation.

I host a lot of stuff, nowadays mostly focused on trying to create simple setups that avoid following current trends "just because".
I use FreeBSD as my primary server OS of choice, falling back to Alpine Linux, if I need to.

IPv4 is legacy tech and we need to stop pretending otherwise.
"You aren’t actually running IPv6, until you disable IPv4."

I value human creation very highly.

Follow requests are subject to a vibe check, thus I can't accept requests from (mostly) empty profiles.

#nobot

Pronouns: she/her
Website: https://jsteuernagel.de
Forgejo: https://git.jsteuernagel.de/jana
Codeberg (mostly ForgeJo mirrors): https://codeberg.org/itz_jana

Public Key

npub1jegqal0zzez0587fal72ayeqpvcas54hmwpdnc7rmsl83tctpatqj5c5w7

NIP-05 Address

[email protected]

Profile Code

nprofile1qqsfv5qwlh3pv386rly7ll9wjvsqkvwc22mahqkeu0pac0nc4u9s74sprpmhxue69uhhyetvv9ujumt0d4hhxarj9ecxjmntqy28wumn8ghj7un9d3shjtnyv9kh2uewd9hsu0gu3g

Publishing to

relay.momostr.pink

relay.damus.io

relay.primal.net

Author Public Key

npub1jegqal0zzez0587fal72ayeqpvcas54hmwpdnc7rmsl83tctpatqj5c5w7

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Published at

2026-07-14T08:19:59+02:00

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Event JSON

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Last Notes

2026-07-10 17:01:02 CEST

Some friends and I started a little thing: https://infr.ax :neobot_happy:
We wanted to have a domain to use for behind-the-scenes, infrastructure purposes, but couldn't decide on one.
So we agreed to share one, if manage to think of a name together.
We came up with infr.ax and are very happy with it :3
We hope to use this as an opportunity to work on more things together and test out some more crazy ideas around distributed systems.
For now it's mostly just a landing page (hosted with round robin DNS, on multiple systems), an IP lookup service and the fact that we share a Netbox now.
Oh and we have created the #infraX IRC channel on hackint, to have a place to chat about the things we want to do ^^

2026-06-06 17:43:27 CEST

Holding today’s talk was quite a lot of fun.
I was surprised that we managed to fill the room, I definitely wasn’t expecting this much interest :neobot_happy:
Fitting all of this into 20 minutes wasn’t easy and many of the topics deserve more attention on their own. I‘ll keep that in mind and see if I can expand upon them at future events.
If you missed it, the recording is now available here:
https://media.ccc.de/v/gpn24-611-it-doesn-t-always-have-to-be-linux-an-intro-to-freebsd

2026-05-31 14:24:19 CEST

I was listening to a podcast and suddenly they switched topics to talking about how they use "AI".
One explained how he uses Claude Code to implement features in his app, sometimes by copy-pasting feature requests from people into Claude Code on his phone. He then later goes to his PC, checks if it works and merges it.
A few minutes later they talk about how they don't like Perplexity because they are trying to replace humans with AI and that's obviously bad.
And neither of them managed to see the contradicting irony between those 2 statements :neobot_flop_tired:

2026-05-29 08:05:08 CEST

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Woah :neobot_aww:
Thanks for explaining!

2026-05-29 07:03:58 CEST

Screen interactions with polarized glasses are so interesting.
Why does the screen of my Pixel go completely black at a certain angle, when I have my sunglasses on?
And why does my iPhone have a funny color shift, but only gets slightly darker? And at different angles?

2026-03-24 18:47:53 CET

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Uuuh, cool. I just installed pmOS on a phone a few days ago. Currently WiFi is the bane of my existence with it, I hope I can get that working somewhat stable, otherwise it‘s pretty neat.
It looks like you have some Android apps on there, what did you use to install those and how well do they work?

2026-03-03 19:04:35 CET

And with that the last remaining service from my old Proxmox server is migrated.
It was a good run.
It was my first foray into running more complex infrastructure and dealing with actual hardware somewhere, yet that I couldn't touch.
It was my first experience running services that were also shared with others and I thus tried to make as reliable as possible.
It was the testing ground for many different experiments and the setup grew with me.
I learned a lot and I now know a lot better what I value in a setup and will prioritize going forward.
All that in simultaneously short and also long 4-ish years :3

2026-03-01 18:17:24 CET

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Jitsi :neobot_sad:

2026-03-01 17:44:41 CET

Another day
Another CLAUDE.md in a project I thought was cool
Ugh

2025-12-31 14:30:02 CET

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Warum die UKW Abschaltung?

2025-12-30 20:47:42 CET

I‘m annoyed by FluffyChat not showing notification content on iOS.
Is Element X usable? Or should I use Element? Or is there anything else that‘s good for iOS?
#matrix

2025-11-21 20:03:22 CET

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Wow, what a serverless variety :o

2025-11-19 14:33:19 CET

Doing the important work (Telling some of my work colleagues about BSD operating systems) :neobot_giggle:

2025-11-08 16:12:02 CET

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Wir kommen sicher alle irgendwann an.
Irgendwann :D

2025-07-27 20:21:55 CEST

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Just learned about Bastille templates with the Bastillefile.
Feels kinda like a Dockerfile and it can be applied to any running jail.
I feel like this could be a nice little balance between my desire to make things declarative but also wanting to keep it simple.
I‘ll play around with it a bit.

2025-07-25 11:37:18 CEST

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Realized that Mastodon is one of the workloads I can pretty easily migrate to a FreeBSD jail.
So first gonna spin up a test instance with that, which shouldn’t be too hard with the help of this guide by @npub1ef5…gcpc
https://it-notes.dragas.net/2022/11/23/installing-mastodon-on-a-freebsd-jail/

2025-07-24 19:44:16 CEST

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Thought about yolo migrating my Mastodon instance over to the new server right now.
But I went the reasonable route and first reduced the DNS TTL, so that switching IPs will hopefully be reasonably quick.
How responsible of me :neobot_giggle:

2025-07-24 15:45:27 CEST

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And done a successful Debian install.
That one was a little trickier than Alpine, as the Debian installer didn't listen on Serial by default, when doing an UEFI install.
I now just used the Grub loader method in bhyve and copied the parameters from the debian template, which worked.
I'm getting real close to being able to migrate workloads.

2025-07-24 15:05:49 CEST

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I have achieved IPv6 connectivity in bhyve VMs.
I just discarded the interface that vm-bhyve created by itself, created my own bridge1 (mirroring the config from the interface I have for jails) and imported it into vm-bhyve as a manual interface.
I think the part that actually did it was supplying the interface with a v6 interface in rc.conf, but I prefer doing it myself anyways, so I'm happy with this.
I would likely also just use one bridge for Jails and VMs, but I prefer to keep things nicely separated :3

2025-07-22 09:03:42 CEST

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Hmm. The Windows VM now had it's second complete freeze up while doing updates.
I am willing to blame this on Windows (It's Windows, after all), still need to figure out what's going on there.

2025-07-22 08:56:08 CEST

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Looking up how I could migrate some VMs from Proxmox to bhyve.
Seems as simple as creating a cloned disk image from Proxmox and using that in bhyve. And if I want to also use zvol there, `dd` the .img to the VMs zvol.
Could it really be that easy?

2025-07-22 08:11:53 CEST

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Before that: Let's switch to using ZVOL instead of a disk image.
I just learned that vm-bhyve can also create those automatically with the right template.
And yup. With a simple disk0_dev="sparse_zvol", it was automatically created and WS2025 is now installing to it.
This means I can super easily snapshot and backup individual VM datasets.
I'll have to play around with zfs send/receive for that. Never done it, but it's about time.

2025-07-22 07:55:46 CEST

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Oh, right, there is WS2025 by now. Forgot about that.
Well, this was so quick, let's give that a try also.
Doing an upgrade in the process would be nice.

2025-07-22 07:50:56 CEST

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Doing my first test install of Windows Server in a bhyve VM. (Yes, I need Windows Server. Regretably)
Absolutely eventless. Done in 5 minutes. Wow.
Also love that bhyve is using VNC for graphics **and** halts installs until VNC is actually connected.

2025-07-20 19:45:01 CEST

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Also, question to the #bhyve people around.
Should I be using disk image files or zvols?
I understand so far the zvols can give me better performance, but I don't yet understand the downsides.

2025-07-20 19:42:00 CEST

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And IPv6 isn't working yet.
Yet unsure whether the fault is on the Alpine or FreeBSD side, but I'll ignore it for now and first try some other OS installs.

2025-07-20 19:40:14 CEST

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This Alpine VM in bhyve is so freaking fast.
alpine-virt
bhyve-nvme
uefi
This thing rips.

2025-07-20 19:33:03 CEST

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I have started my vm-bhyve adventures.
After first misunderstanding the `switch` functionality a bit, I wondered why my networking wasn't working.
Now I found a working solution, though I might tweak it again and go full custom bridge that I just import. Mainly for full flexibility and also my own naming.
Also had a quick issue with only pings working, but no TCP/UDP. Turned out I forgot to allow the traffic in `pf.conf`.
Other guides and resources often wanted me to do some other `sysctl` parameters to skip bridge traffic from filtering, but I'd rather go full `pf`.
I managed a FreeBSD install, no problem.
Alpine was a little harder. I got it installed via grub, but then couldn't get it to boot, no matter what.
I saw suggestions to just use UEFI instead, so I did that and it worked beautifully.
I'd rather unify on UEFI anyways, so I take it.
I feel like I already have an okay grasp on how vm-bhyve works, though I'll try some more test installs, also with different OSes, to really get a grip on it, before I setup my final productive VMs (Alpine + Docker, Windows Server 2022 and some Debian VMs I need to figure out how to migrate from Proxmox).
So far, so good :3

2025-07-13 13:11:20 CEST

Mobile PC gaming handhelds are my favorite recent tech innovation.
They are so convenient.
As a kid I would have probably loved them even more.

2025-07-13 12:55:45 CEST

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Next step: Try vm-bhyve to setup a VM and figure out how I want to do that networking.
Still undecided whether I want to try putting jails and vms on the same bridge, or whether I want to create a separate one. I'm leaning towards the second option right now.
And when that works, then my POC is operational and I can start putting some real workloads on there :3

2025-07-13 12:46:09 CEST

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And it even does QUIC now (forgot UDP 443 in the firewall)
Thanks Caddy :3

2025-07-13 12:42:51 CEST

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(Using Fedi as a distributed load test, nice)

2025-07-13 12:41:58 CEST

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It works!
And it does so on both IP stacks!
https://athenacaddy.jsteuernagel.de

2025-07-13 12:07:27 CEST

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Progress! I managed to set the defaultrouter via the bastille_network_gateway parameter in the bastille.conf.
The generated inet parameters for dual stack are still wrong. According to a GitHub issue that's already fixed, but because I'm installing via pkg, my version is too old.
I have decided to just manually fix it for now. I don't wanna mess with ports on the host.
Then I had to slightly change my portacl config, because in a VNET jail I also need to set net.inet.ip.portrange.reservedhigh=0, but for that to work securelevel needs to be 0.
So now I set that in the jail.conf and raise it to 2 via rc.conf.
I re-added the rdr rules to the host pf.conf and that's working. Now I just need to configure the jails pf.conf. :3

2025-07-11 12:32:25 CEST

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But enough of that for today.

2025-07-11 12:31:35 CEST

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After a lot of trial and error I managed to setup a jail with working v4 and v6 connectivity.
Right now I still have to manually set defaultrouter= in order to make v4 connectivity work, but v6 is already handled automatically by SLAAC.
FreeBSD acts as the router, taking packets between bridge0 to em0.
I'd say this is looking promising so far and I think I managed to get a better understanding of the FreeBSD network stack, rc.conf, etc.

2025-07-10 17:07:01 CEST

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/56 assigned.
Jailing shenanigans can commence.

2025-07-08 16:39:12 CEST

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Well, now we get into subnetting and I don't want to cutting up a /64, so now gotta wait for Hetzner to give me my additional /56 on this machine.
Could I try to get this into my space right from the start? Sure.
But is that in the spirit of keeping it simple? No.
And as the /56 is free, except for a setup fee, why not take it anyways.

2025-07-08 16:21:38 CEST

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I'll redo the networking again to use VNET.
This shared interface thing works, but it's getting a little messy now with my firewalling.

2025-07-08 15:55:36 CEST

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Now installing Caddy (unprivileged with macport) into a jail.
This will hopefully end up becoming the central TLS termination point for the whole server and in the process allow me to play around with QUIC :3

2025-07-08 14:46:05 CEST

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Jail Networking turned out way easier than expected.
I just used the default `bastille0` interface that `bastille setup` created and assigned my container a private IPv4 & a public IPv6. And both just worked immediately.
That was so stupidly simple.
Now I just need to do a similar thing for bhyve VMs, which I will setup next.

2025-07-07 17:22:13 CEST

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Now trying to figure out how to create a working networking stack for jails and VMs.
IPv6 is pretty simple, just move the prefix to a bridge and connect stuff to it.
But v4 is being the problem child again, because I'll need to do NAT shenanigans and I don't yet know how to make both work at the same time.
I'd now how to on Linux, but I'm still figuring out the FreeBSD ways. It's fun though :3

2025-07-07 12:04:28 CEST

Besides the other adventures I also just installed FreeBSD on a new dedicated server which will likely become my new internet focal point.
I realized that there is too much complexity in the current setup to save it in of itself.
So I‘ll go with rebuilding it on a different machine, so I can set the speed.
FreeBSD because I finally want to use it in production and want native ZFS.
I’ll hopefully be able to run Jails for stuff that’s easy to run directly and create an Alpine Bhyve VM with Docker and a crapton of docker-compose files for the rest.
Simple, easy, effective (hopefully)

2025-06-17 09:24:12 CEST

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What are these words :neobot_confused:

2025-06-17 09:10:40 CEST

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I first wanted to use the normal logo from your brand assets, but that looked boring, needed to make it queer.
Entities (bot) can hug entities (corporate)

2025-06-17 09:09:47 CEST

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Your Pride logo :neobot_hug_upcloud:

2025-06-17 08:39:25 CEST

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:neobot_hug_upcloud:

2025-06-17 07:09:51 CEST

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Block Storage, Tutorials, AWS?

2025-06-13 08:21:18 CEST

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:neobot_sad_reach:
(Have a good summer vacation :3!)
https://mastodon-media.jsteuernagel.de/mastodon-media/media_attachments/files/114/674/602/961/448/821/original/6daaf0b3120c7149.png

2025-04-14 14:36:28 CEST

I love discovering personal blogs and websites.
No algorithm.
No competing anything.
Just a person, putting out what they want.
It's beautiful.

2025-03-03 16:31:43 CET

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I have never pressed the "Search for Update" button so quickly.
Excited to see how well it works!

2025-02-27 20:37:06 CET

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All of that is amazing! Great work, I'm exited to see it in action!
I assume for it to work either WiFi of WiFi scanning needs to be enabled though, right?

2025-02-24 12:34:57 CET

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How dare you just propose such a simple and logical solution to a problem I've been debating on and off for a while now?
(I'll totally copy that)

2025-02-08 21:55:31 CET

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I mean, I've done it.
The availability was nice.
But I couldn't really justify running 3 machines from a power standpoint, so I went back to one powerful one.
So now I use less power and have more performance (And, well, less resiliency...)

2025-02-08 21:39:33 CET

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This experience makes me wish back my home kubernetes cluster.
When I broke a machine in that one I could just ignore it for 2 weeks and not notice a difference.
Now this server doesn't work and I have to immediately fix it, because not even my damn lights are working, not to mention my heating. :blobcat_facepalm:

2025-02-08 21:38:24 CET

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Okay, re-install successful. I am so glad I wrote myself a instructions and an install script.
Had I followed the instructions properly, it would have just worked, but oh well, I'm tired, I make mistakes.
Now copying back the tar, unpack it, check permissions, reboot and hopefully have it just work.
Interestingly enough, now the password prompt for the drive just works.
Why was it broken? What did I do to it?

2025-02-08 20:03:53 CET

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First copy attempt failed, because permissions and somehow the resulting files were 25G bigger???
I mean, ZFS compression exists, but shouldn't du not be aware of that?
I expect fuckery because of WSL.
Now creating a .tar file from my persist/ folder to save instead.

2025-02-08 19:51:47 CET

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I wish I would also have 10G on the PC, that would accelerate this even more.
But 2.5G is already pretty neat right now :3

2025-02-08 19:49:10 CET

This is beyond saving.
I'm backing up the persistent data from the drive and I'm just gonna re-install it. :blobcat_verysad:

2025-02-07 10:27:28 CET

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Yeah, I'm aware that the desktop landscape is far behind the mobile space.
But I'm not getting around using some desktop system or Linux as a server OS, so I'm currently trying to figure out how to make Linux as secure as possible with the tools available to me, while separating things that need the most protection onto my GrapheneOS phone.
It's interesting to know though, that the ARM Macs are a good option though, at least in stock configuration.

2025-02-07 07:56:18 CET

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Could those improvements you are making to the kernel be reasonably be taken over to a desktop OS? And would you say that makes sense?

2025-01-22 21:45:59 CET

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I used to be very into custom roms some years ago and I found it fascinating how many cool things people were doing with their devices.
But nowadays I know more about tech and I‘m starting to take security into consideration. And most custom roms don’t. They happily break the entire Android security model and litter tons of debug info around and somehow I haven’t found a single custom rom, besides GrapheneOS, that actually has people behind it who care.

2025-01-22 14:01:29 CET

It's always fun to observe how at some point I will make a decision based on the information I have at the time and later see how my interests and other circumstances change, and I lean back towards what I rejected.
I posted this 4 months ago:
https://social.jsteuernagel.de/@jana/113157869479711451
But recently I've been re-evaluating security topics and have fallen out of favor with my iPhone to a large extent.
So now I'm re-thinking GrapheneOS again.
By now there is also a smaller Pro pixel, which would be nice...
Hmmm...

2024-11-20 13:16:57 CET

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Yup. A lot of people complained about keyboard flex on the Framework 16 and thus Framework team decided to improve it. The solution they ended up with are these 5 pads.
They are pre-applied on the newer produced Framework 16's and they sent out an e-mail to all owners of earlier models with a form to request this free upgrade kit.

2024-11-20 12:49:00 CET

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And time! That was quick and painless.
Does it feel better? Don’t know, I never had any particular issue with the keyboard before. I think it’s firmer now, but I‘m definitely the wrong person to judge this.
#Framework
https://d3j19mp0t3i6de.cloudfront.net/media_attachments/files/113/515/124/279/789/632/original/f0b15c38760e0100.jpeg

2024-11-20 12:31:05 CET

Now to finally install this little upgrade on my #Framework 16.
https://d3j19mp0t3i6de.cloudfront.net/media_attachments/files/113/515/053/808/582/914/original/503142edec1e8bc4.jpeg

2024-11-05 15:54:16 CET

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Not only are they Chromium based and thus IMO shouldn't be included if vanilla Chromium is in the list, but they also have their weird crypto stuff and the CEO has A LOT of problematic views.
So that's a solid NO.

2024-09-13 13:14:29 CEST

Anyone know of a good email app for #iOS that isn't just looks, has been doused in AI crap or wants to upload all of my mail to one of there servers?
The Apple Mail app is usable, but maybe there's something with some more customization out there.
For reference: I'm a huge fan of FairMail on Android.
#apple #askfedi

2024-09-03 23:02:56 CEST

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How about using Bazzite instead (a gaming focused spin of the Atomic Desktops) and thus avoiding the issue? :)
https://bazzite.gg/