That’s why I prefer to avoid Arch based. Mainly because you would have to keep up to date so things don’t break. I want a distro where I can update at my choosing and not have to worry about things breaking because the system is not kept up to date.
Not an issue. My GPU has only Display Ports with one HDMI output that i never use. So, I use Display Port. HDMI is old and should be replaced by Display Port anyways.
Okay. Well, I can’t have this happening on my mom’s TV PC. It needs to just work and that’s it. So, since we stick to Flatpak apps for browsers and video players, decoding off the GPU will work? Without any of that RPMFusion stuff?
In my experience it almost never happens though. Back when I was using openSUSE Tumbleweed with the Pacman repo, I got de-syncs all the time over the four years I was using it. On Fedora KDE with RPMFusion, I haven’t had it happen a single time over almost three years of usage, and I’ve only ever heard it happening to users on a widespread scale once, a year or two ago as a result of people installing other 3rd-party repos as well.
Okay. Well, I don’t install any 3rd-party repos at all. This is why I mainly went with Flatpak as well so that I could further eliminate possible breakage and other issues like that.
Then a fixed point IS what you should use.
I prefer the freedom to install latest software and kernels and never have to reinstall my OS, but that demands I press one button on the computer once a week (and handle configuration updates, aka pacnews).
We are all different and there is something for all of us, isn’t linux great!
What does that even mean? There is no pacman repo, did… did you add Arch repos, because that is on YOU. 
Kinda like adding debian repos on Neon.
And I think users of old hardware should still be included with new kernels and software so I would never even think in those lines. 
OP shows how completely overrated, or in other words “marketing-driven”, immutable distros are. They spread fearmongering* in 2024 (we don’t live in the era of RPM-hell anymore) to justify distros meant for IOT devices for the Desktop (because in capitalism you need to create some artificial needs all the time in order to sell a new product right?). Why lock everything down and add tons of extra, artificial complexity when one can do what OP did. Uninstall the native apps and install them strictly as flatpaks. I have sudo for editing system files. Done.
*(for the record I use Arch for more than 6 years straight without flatpaks or any other containerized “solution”, it never broke)
Yeah. I think I’ll just go with the regular Fedora KDE spin when I find it’s time to ditch anything Ubuntu based. Be easier to make a script of what I want removed and then add Flatpaks of what I want installed.
Besides, I keep my home directories on separate partitions. And the Kinoite version puts a lot of stuff in the “var” folder; including the home directory. So, I prefer to not move a ton of things around.
Sorry, I misspelled it and forgot the K! It’s Additional package repositories - openSUSE Wiki
In any case, I think a Fedora KDE spin might be the next distro to choose.
As for the HDMI stuff. I’m talking about newer stuff dropping HDMI. Because it isn’t an open standard apparently. I think I know why I see more AMD GPUs only coming with one HDMI port these days.
I fkn Adore you man, but the irony my friend, I could not stop myself…
To avoid breakages, it is recommended to use flatpak or distrobox for up to date software to avoid any risks using third-party repos.
The irony is that this is exactly what Neon users do and comes complaining the OS breaks. 
Regarding the MPEG licensing issue on Fedora, here’s how much I know - if I get anything wrong, I’m sure someone will point that out:
RedHat has some sort of deal with Cisco who distribute what they call “Open h264”. This is a software implementation of h264. It does not support HEVC and it does not support hardware decoding.
Hardware accelerated video decoding (and encoding) on Fedora is disabled for both Intel (using the libva-intel-driver package) and AMD (using the mesa-va-drivers package) due to RedHat not willing to foot the bill for the MPEG-LA bulk licensing (which IIRC, and I haven’t looked at that in a while, is free for the first 100K devices and then caps at $8M/y regardless of how many devices you have - I’m pretty sure RedHat can afford a few million dollars per year, with their revenue stream being about 50% of all IBM earnings).
The “official” way to get hardware accelerated video decoding of MPEG-LA licensed codecs (h264 and h265 mostly) using Intel or AMD GPUs on Fedora is to install the unlicensed freely distributed and licensing flouting packages from RPM Fusion - according to RedHat’s bugzilla
If you have Nvidia - you install the driver from Nvidia anyway, and not from RedHat, and they have a properly licensed MPEG-LA approved implementation.
Okay. But will that be necessary for video players installed via Flatpak?
Well, the less breakage, the better. In this case this with Neon so far; at least I could still log into my desktop. Even after all the quirks I’ve had with it. lol
There’s a Flatpak runtime that provides the unlicensed VA-API drivers, but no “serious” official Flatpak application can use it without encountering the wrath of MPEG-LA, which is why - for example - The Firefox Flatpak does not use it.
Here’s the Flathub tutorial on how to enable the unlicensed runtime for your favorite Flatpak app (in the example they show it for Firefox, and I haven’t read it all, but I assume you can apply this to any Flatpak).
Man… I hate greedy rich pigs with their codecs. Such damn gatekeepers ruining our tech lives.
Anyway, I did that with Librewolf and I have hardware decoding. In fact, I have a preconfigured profile that does all the Firefox portion of the configuring.
So, I guess I won’t need any of that RPM Fusion stuff.
Just install this:
sudo dnf install libva-utils
and this:
flatpak install org.freedesktop.Platform.ffmpeg-full
And it should work.
Actually, it seems I don’t have to install org.freedesktop.Platform.ffmpeg-full. Installing LibreWolf does that all on its own.
I just have to install libva-utils and that’s it. That should work for hardware decoding.
Probably the LibreWolf, as a community project that does not give any Fs about MPEG licensing, builds the Mesa VA drivers themselves, or packs someone else that builds the Mesa drivers with all codecs enabled. I didn’t find their Flatpak build instructions, but indeed they do not depend on ffmpeg-full.
Works for me. LibreWolf is better than regular Firefox anyways.
I wish it would cast to my TV; if so I would use it. I’ve tried the various plugins to no avail. From what I’ve seen all mozilla-like browsers can’t do it, largely because Google has locked down the standard so only chrome-based browsers can, hence why I currently use Brave.
To go back to OP’s question I’ve had no issues with openSUSE TW so far, but I am also interested in Fedora (largely because I go back and forth between KDE and gnome, since I want to be familiar with both interfaces) hence why I followed this thread.
What standard has Google locked down?