I've noticed that if I pass the --config=yes option for mpv in SMPlayer's advanced preferences, it will use some of my mpv config, since it'll load the autoload script I use, but it'll ignore all the settings needed to load YouTube subtitles. Setting disable_player_config=false doesn't change this.
Celluloid, meanwhile, will load subtitles, but using it feels kind of jank compared to mpv by itself. On my setup, you have to pause while it's "loading", then play to actually get a YouTube video to start, and you also have to press J to bring up the subtitles.
I'm using FreeTube Nightly, and I'm actually using a newer build than the one that's on the AUR, since you can pull the latest Nightly build from their Github, yay -G the PKGBUILD for freetube-nightly, then modify the PKGBUILD to point at the newer .pacman file. FWIW, this has never really fixed any problems I've had with using whatever the latest version on the AUR is.
But in any case, different people have different results with FreeTube, and it sounds like you've been having better luck than I have. It's not consistent.
The last answer works for MPV. I'll have to figure out if it's possible to get it working with SMPlayer as well, but for now telling FreeTube to use MPV directly works.
If anyone doesn't feel like opening the link, the fix involves adding this to your ~/.config/mpv/mpv.conf file:
I wasn't sure how powerful of a machine you had. The Ryzen you have likely slaughters the CPUs in both of the laptops I mentioned; an i5 4300U in the HP, and an i5 3320m in the Thinkpad. I should've been more specific about that.
I have Debian 13 running on a desktop i5 4570 box, and it seems to run well, though I have it set up differently than the laptops since it's a headless machine I mainly access over RDP and SSH. It also has twice the RAM (16GB vs the 8GB in both laptops), an NVME SSD for a boot drive, and XFCE instead of KDE Plasma.
Whatever the case, I feel like if your machine is powerful enough, the performance difference between Debian and more aggressively optimized distros shouldn't matter too much, BUT, I can see not wanting to use it if you're adamant about squeezing every last drop of performance from your machine.
EDIT: Hopefully this isn't too TL;DR. I got a bit carried away writing this response.
Debian Stable uses an LTS kernel, so while it's based on an older codebase, it still gets regular security updates. You won't get the most bleeding-edge performance features, but since you're using an older Nvidia GPU, not being on the bleeding edge might actually be helpful.
I honestly wouldn't be too concerned about the space used by Flatpak dependencies, unless you have a really small SSD that you're trying not to use too much space on. If you use a separate home partition, it's helpful to set up Flathub as a user repo (add --user to the usual install command) so that the space that gets used is on your home partition and not on root.
As far as sandboxing issues go with your development workflow, I'm not super well-informed on that subject, but I know that Flatseal gives you a fair amount of control over what Flatpak applications can access.
I think if Debian Stable has one big caveat, it's that it's not the lightest distro, particularly when you're running it with a full DE and Flatpak applications.
On machines like my Thinkpad X230t or my HP Elitebook 840 G1, EndeavourOS has been noticeably snappier. However, EOS is basically Arch, and I don't like running Arch on machines I don't intend to use regularly, since it tends to break when it hasn't been updated in a long time.
It's not a rolling release, and you'll need to use Flatpak if you want newer versions of certain apps; unless you're willing to deal with the Backports repos and their limited level of support, but I think it might be a good fit for your use case.
I'm running Android 17 on my Pixel 8, and Termux runs just fine; apt packages included.
Aside from having to go through the Advanced Flow to run unverified APKs, I'll honestly be surprised if this changes when the app verification restrictions roll out, since going through the Advanced Flow gives you the option of installing unverified APKs indefinitely.
Now, if Google raises the minimum SDK version apps can use so that Termux can't run, that will be an issue...
Once you go through all the steps, including a 24 hour wait, it says you'll have the option to install unverified APKs indefinitely. It's a bit of a process, but it honestly doesn't sound too bad.
To this day, I still grumble about the lack of universal middle-click autoscroll support in applications that aren't browsers or Electron/Chromium-based.
"But middle-click pasting is better!"
Well I'm not a fan of it, and I'd like to be able to use my middle mouse button to autoscroll everywhere instead. After all, isn't customization one of the main reasons to use Linux in the first place?
That number seems rather low. I can see that number for overall OS share, including mobile devices, but for desktop I'd expect Windows to be a lot higher.
EDIT: Thinking about it further, if you included mobile devices, then Android would have to be even higher than Windows is here. Either way, these numbers look off.
You jest, but Fedora's probably one of the worst distros you could use an old version of. They're practically a rolling release with how short the support window for each version is. Plus, they have a very "march of progress" mentality compared to something like Debian.
The biggest problem with Haiku is that it has practically no security. It runs everything as root, it doesn't have user accounts, and the only password it supports is for a screensaver screen locker. I think it has potential, but its security model is completely unacceptable for an online OS in 2026.
I thought it had something to do with BTRFS subvolumes, but I wasn't sure. I'm guessing the TUI doesn't cover them since Void's developers didn't think TUI users would be interested in creating them, but I can't imagine it'd be hard for them to add support for.
I've noticed that if I pass the
--config=yesoption for mpv in SMPlayer's advanced preferences, it will use some of my mpv config, since it'll load the autoload script I use, but it'll ignore all the settings needed to load YouTube subtitles. Settingdisable_player_config=falsedoesn't change this.Celluloid, meanwhile, will load subtitles, but using it feels kind of jank compared to mpv by itself. On my setup, you have to pause while it's "loading", then play to actually get a YouTube video to start, and you also have to press J to bring up the subtitles.