Apologies for the ‘spam’, but I was afraid editing my previous message would be in vain. If you desire/crave for decent documentation, then Bazzite deserves another endorsement. While its documentation isn’t as expansive as the excellent ArchWiki, it should be more than able to answer your questions.

Secondly, if you happen to come across an issue that has been painstakingly difficult to resolve, then please consider consulting its many community channels for support. There’s a Discourse, a Discord and an AnswerOverflow. So pick your poison 😉. FWIW, I’ve always had great experiences on their Discord.

Excellent choice fam! However, as much as I adore Fedora Kinoite, it might not provide the best onboarding 😅. If you’re fine with that, then please feel free to go ahead and embark on your journey. However, I would suggest you to at least look into uBlue’s offerings:

• All operate within the paradigm of providing a so-called “batteries-included” product. So, going through the whole mumbo jumbo of RPM Fusion’s Howtos to see what’s relevant for you to apply and painstakingly waiting for them to be applied can be skipped.
• Furthermore, based on your precise needs, you can choose to adopt more opinionated variants:
  • Aurora is their general use KDE variant
  • Bazzite, on the other hand, is their game ready variant that defaults to KDE
• Or, if you prefer a minimal installation, you can choose to install their base images instead. These basically offer Fedora’s images (including Kinoite) with the absolute minimal of hardware enablement and other essential uBlue goodies.
• If you are a system crafter at heart, then perhaps you’re more attracted towards creating your own bootc image. This can be achieved by uBlue’s own image-template OR through the community-effort in BlueBuild.

Regardless, fam, enjoy! And please consider to report back on your findings 😉! I would love to read your adventures of venturing the exotic waters of Fedora Atomic 😊!

Sure fam. This is actually a situation that might come up a lot. Basically any instance of dependency hell caused by conflicting dependencies would be resolved if two different versions of the same software could coexist.

• Peeps that are maintaining packages probably have to deal with this every once in a while as well. Especially if the packaged software relies on some very niche (and possibly questionable) dependencies*. To point towards one of the most openly discussed cases of this, consider watching this video by Brodie in which the takedown of the unofficial packages of Bottles is being discussed.
• E.g. whenever one tries to compile software themselves OR install/use them as/from binaries/tarballs.
• E.g. installing packages as PPAs or other third party repositories (like e.g. the AUR) can also come with dependency hell and are often the reason why breakage occurs.

Q: Would a normal system (read: I’m not talking about Guix System or NixOS) allow you to install multiple branches/versions of the same software natively without introducing a lot of headaches?

A: No. This is literally unsupported.

Then, if using containers (or any other similar platform) allows one to breach that limitation, would it be fair to call containers (and their like) to be strictly limited/limiting in customization?

First of all, thank you for that response!

Do you think I am using this thread and this thread alone as my only source of information on these distros?

No, I don’t think that. I’d even challenge that notion as your query didn’t start with a simple “What’s best?” but instead asked for a comparison between three distros that were (somehow) selected by you. Please feel free to enlighten me on what made you even consider the premise of your above question. Though, as this is not that important to begin with, it’s also perfectly fine to ignore that 👍.

I feel as though this thread has delved into the essence of the matter perfectly well. That matter being, of course, people’s opinions on the three distros I laid out.

If you lay it out like that, then; yeah, surely. However, it seems we fundamentally differ on what the essence of the matter is. And, perhaps I’m at fault for thinking this is a beneficial exercise to begin with. Regardless, I feel I at least owe you an explanation that goes over where I’m coming from:

Fundamentally, literally none of your original three distros serve you well for the purposes of “I’m starting to want to delve into my OS more to see what I can customize”. Each one is pretty opinionated (by default^[1]) and -heck- both Bazzite and Nobara come with (highly) specialized tools required for system maintenance. This is because they’ve identified that there’s a very serious disconnect between the freedom they’d like to allow their users and the (otherwise almost insurmountable) complexity this adds to how upgrades are managed. Bazzite trusts Fedora Atomic’s tooling for this, while Nobara has created their own.

Being (highly) opinionated isn’t necessarily bad. But it’s undeniably easier to tweak/tinker/configure a more minimal system. Hence, you’re better served by a lean install (with sane defaults). Thankfully, community members either recognized this and tried to sway you towards other options. With success*. Or, you were able to discern distros that better serve you from the communities’ input. However it may be, both CachyOS and Solus are definitely better in that regard. Though, crucially, if the community strictly kept to discussing the original three distros and didn’t go out of their way to venture into unexplored waters, then you wouldn’t have arrived where you are right now.

Anyhow, all of the above could as well be disregarded the very moment you (hypothetically) state that your idea of customization is limited to the avenues KDE Plasma offers. Because, the original three are perfectly suited for that. So, your ideas on what tweaking/tinkering/customization entails is fundamentally linked to the distro that’s most fit for the job.

And thus, I would distill the essence of the matter to be a clear idea on what kind of balance between “stability” and “customization” is envisioned as desirable by you. And, while at it, proper delineations of what is and isn’t understood as stability and customization. Is the requirement of stability only satisfied if you can easily rollback to a proper working state? Or, is borking on a random update simply unforgivable? On the other hand, do you really want to compile your own kernel and install it? Or were you merely interested in KDE’s knobs? Etc. etc.

and start an in-depth discussion

Not necessarily, answering “Or…, like could you perhaps be more clear on what it is you’d like to tinker/tweak/customize in the first place?” would probably have been sufficient.

something I can crack open and break while tweaking - for the learning experience

There’s so much we could go over in the paragraph the above text is found, but I’ll instead limit myself to just the above text. I find myself in a conundrum when you present that the above was implied and that (somehow) you came to consider Bazzite. While Bazzite is a lot more customizable than people give it credit for, I would not describe any part of the experience as “cracking it open”. So, when met with an oxymoron as such, I literally have to ask for a clarification.

Fedora has lost my favor due to being a fixed release distro.

You’ve stated somewhere that you “Love the idea of rolling releases”. So, if Solus passes as a rolling release distro ^[2], but has less uptodate packages than Fedora’s previous release^[3]. Then, what is it intrinsically that makes it favorable as a rolling release? And I haven’t even delved into why Fedora’s release cadence is referred to as semi-rolling or how the latest updates to packages like GNOME arrive earlier in Fedora compared to even Arch. Btw, this is not meant as one big advertisement for Fedora. Instead, I want to point out the many many nuances that exist within the Linux landscape.

After CachyOS was brought to my attention, and I researched it a little bit, it seemed to fit my desires pretty well. It’s optimized for speed, which is perfect for games, and it’s rolling release so I still get to feel like an uber haxx0r.

But, I think I’ll stick with CachyOS for now, I’m excited to use Arch btw.

I agree that CachyOS is one of the better fits. And if you’re not interested to check out Arch, EndeavourOS or openSUSE Tumbleweed(/Slowroll), then I can’t even think of another rolling release worth considering for you.

I love that it’s a small team.

I don’t know why this would be preferred over a big team 🤔. Mind helping me understand this?

Btw, to be clear, Solus, as a project, is currently not very healthy. While it could compete with Fedora and openSUSE in the past, the last couple of years haven’t been very kind to it. I’d propose the idea that the departure of its founder (i.e. Ikey Doherty) from the project has left it (relatively) visionless. And the turbulent times that followed made nurturing its community a great challenge. One, I’d argue, they weren’t able to handle gracefully. Regardless, it’s undoubtedly a shell of its former glory. This is also reflected by how relatively bare-bones its repository is. Or how absent it is within the discourse. Hopefully it will be able to bounce back after goodies from Doherty’s latest project (i.e. AerynOS) trinkle down to benefit Solus. But, until then, it would be very irresponsible of me if I didn’t discourage you from daily-driving it…

the performance will take a hit

This is not entirely true. Is there overhead? Sure. But, if the distro used for the container provides (somehow) faster or more performative packages to begin with, then running software within a fast container can be faster that running it natively on the slower host. Link to the comment in which the link to the above benchmark can be found as proof. As can be seen, the Clear Linux container performs better in 90% of the benchmarks. And, the Fedora container is only negligibly (so within margin of error) less performative than the Fedora host.

I suppose that’s fine, and please feel free to act however way you wish.

The fact remains, however, that no one actually delved into the essence of the matter.

Furthermore, I find it rather troublesome that you deflected the question rather than answering it head-on. Perhaps you didn’t think it through yet, and are just waiting to be swayed by whoever advertises best.

To illustrate my point, would you (at least) be so kind to explain me where/why Fedora has lost your favor? While, on the other hand, what Solus provides (in contrast) to justify your interest in it?

But, now that I’m familiar with how to set up any game that needs a little help besides Proton, I’m starting to want to delve into my OS more to see what I can customize, and I think picking a new distro with slightly different architechture will be very nice.

Don’t get me wrong, I still want something that works by itself more often than not. But I would love to have something a little more cutting-edge that gives me a little more control.

Fam, did I understand you correctly that you want to tinker/tweak/customize the system to your heart’s content? Yet, you also wish that the system “just works”. At least, mostly. Is that right? Or…, like could you perhaps be more clear on what it is you’d like to tinker/tweak/customize in the first place? Please, if possible, be explicit.

After I got a better idea on what it actually is that you seek, I’ll try to answer your other(/remaining) questions.

Upgrading between major versions is not a trivial task. Did you adhere to the instructions/tutorials found on this page?

Thanks fam for the wonderful conversation! Wish ya the best!

I feel this, but never had any pains related to it, it’s just more comfortable.

FWIW, my biggest pains had been related to that. Though, more recently this has been rivaling it.

Again, I want to establish that I’ve learned a ton and really appreciate your writings. Thank you!

That looks interesting, although I would be weary of learning a layout that only works on specific keyboards, it will make it hard for you to use a laptop on the go, work in an office with a normal keyboard or any other similar situation.

Thanks for the reminder! While I can’t completely ignore the main takeaway, I do find myself only rarely (read: less than 5%) engage with normal keyboards. And, AFAIU, by only adopting the exotic layout for splitting keyboards, I can keep the muscle memory for QWERTY on regular keyboards. Though, please feel free to correct me if I say something that goes against your own experiences.

which btw I strongly recommend you check out wrist and finger stretching exercises as they help a lot

Would you be so kind to share what has worked for your wrist? While there’s no reason to assume that your exercises work out for me, I can at least discuss them with the physiotherapist. BTW, to be clear, I’ve already visited the physiotherapist a number of times and we’ve discussed exercises that I’ve eventually incorporated in my daily routine.

Lots of the changes I made (e.g. split ortholinear keyboard) were probably not needed

Question: If we focus on the split ortholinear keyboard, is only the ortholinear aspect (possibly) redundant? Or…, the split itself?

Bazzite is a lot less user friendly than mint in major ways.

Would you be so kind to substantiate the above claim beyond what’s found below?

KDE is too deep unnecessarily so.

Thank you so much for your elaborate and well-articulated reply! As I don’t want these messages to spiral into an ever-expanding wall of text, I’ve chosen to refrain from reacting to every single valuable thing you’ve written. Nonetheless, everything, including the parts I’m explicitly not reacting to, has been a joy to read and has been very informative. So, again, thank you! Much appreciated!

Which alternate layout are you considering?

Hehe, currently, I’ve landed on Night.

I recommend grabbing something you typed and feeding it here to check heat map of keypresses you would have done to have some visual representation of your usage.

This is pretty cool! Unfortunately, (perhaps unsurprisingly) Night isn’t included within its layout options. I would otherwise have loved to check this out.

switch stuff on the early signals because that first wrist pain was an eye opener on how bad things can get if you ignore them.

Would you like to elaborate on this? As the pains and discomfort have increased over time, I have been more conscious than previously. But, I’m sure there’s still a lot of mileage to be had. Like, what do you perceive as an early signal? Exhaustion and/or fatigue after a day of work? Or perhaps something more specific?

Furthermore, how bad did things become?

Do you feel pain now though?

After a couple of hours, I do experience strange sensations that border on pain. Furthermore, there’s (almost) always some level of unease/discomfort. Thankfully, resting continues to feel good and I get especially revitalized after sleeping well. But I acknowledge that this isn’t sustainable.

If so what?

Wrist pain and fingers that feel wacky. So, this is basically carpal tunnel 101. This has been confirmed/diagnosed by both the general practioner as well as the surgeon. Thankfully, the damage is relatively tame still; the surgeon didn’t see much distortion/damage in the x-rays (yet). There’s also no need (yet) for a surgery and (hopefully) there’ll never be. Which is very much reliant on me putting in the work and effort to make this as comfortable and (by extension) sustainable as possible.

You should address that immediately. At most points I would have answered that I felt no pain with my setup, because those things build up gradually, if you’re at the point of feeling pain the time to take action is now.

I have taken some action; but I’m still very much in the process. I’m aware it’s just not enough (yet). But, the steps I’ve taken so far have thankfully led to significant relieve already. Like, I was a lot worse last year. And, as hinted at previously, I already have plans to address the remaining issues.

my point is that the plugin ecosystem for it might be a bit less extensive, and not sure how to set shortcuts that use vim key bindings for other plugins.

You could be right on the plugin ecosystem; even beyond the integration of evil-mode*. It doesn’t matter which metric I throw at it, the Neovim ecosystem seems to be more vibrant. Though, at least for the time being, org-mode seems to be Emacs’ forte. Which…, just happens to be the very thing I’m using it mostly for. While I’m far from being comfortable with it, it has already provided a much better experience compared to all other text editors I’ve tried.

I would only try out Emacs or Neovim through a opinionated config.

Why?

My apologies, perhaps I should have been clearer. I didn’t stress enough how this was mostly for trying it out and get going initially. I’m still on Doom Emacs, but I do intend to build my own config after I’ve gotten a better grasp IF it’s beneficial.

And that’s another point for Nvim for me, their configs are very easy, I followed this guide and had a working config that I could easily expand in no time.

Hahaha 🤣, I would have loved to have an up-to-date video guide like that for Emacs. Alas… 😅.

I miss org-mode

Hehe 😜, though I wonder: have you tried out Neorg or nvim-orgmode to see how they fare by comparison?

Virtual Machine Manager’s GitHub page for its flatpak includes the following lines:

NOTE: By default, this Flatpak only includes the Virtual Machine Manager client application and does not include the libvirt daemon or QEMU. Depending on your use case, you may have to install other applications or extensions:

• Connecting to a remote libvirt instance: nothing else needed
• Connecting to a libvirt system instance: make sure that libvirtd is installed on the host, either via your package manager or using a system extension on image based systems for example
• Connecting to a libvirt user instance: install the QEMU extension using flatpak install org.virt_manager.virt_manager.Extension.Qemu

So, in this case, have you either installed libvirtd on the host^[1] (i.e. have you installed it with rpm-ostree) OR have you installed the QEMU extension as per its own instruction?

If neither, then you should at least do one of them and report back.

EDIT: While what’s written above remains relevant beyond Bazzite, Bazzite’s ujust scripts do provide handholds for a myriad of situations including this one:

• (Step 0: Uninstall^[2] the flatpak of Virtual Machine Manager)
• Step 1: Install Virtual Machine Manager with ujust, i.e. invoke the ujust setup-virtualization command

I suppose the ujust way handles a bunch of gotchas you’d otherwise have to tackle yourself. And, thus, is most likely preferred over all other methods.

As a side note, please consider consulting Bazzite’s excellent documentation first. We’ll be more than happy to help out regardless, but I’m sure there are a bunch of gems you’ll be missing out on otherwise.

Hey, yeah, I know the feeling, every time I lose an already typed reply I completely lose motivation to rewrite it.

Hehe, as a precaution, I wrote this up in Emacs instead 😜.

Yeah, my pinky strain issue is completely gone

Glad to hear that!

Using i3/sway as my WM for a keyboard centric usage

Curious to see this at the very top of your list. Perhaps I should make my switch to Sway rather sooner than later. Thank you for the endorsement!

learning touch typing properly

I intend to learn this with the alt keyboard layout after the more ergonomic split keyboard has arrived. Wish me good luck 😉!

Trackball instead of mouse

Hmm…, this is lower on your list. So I suppose that by effectively removing most need for a mouse, the switch to a trackball has been less impactful. Btw, perhaps related, would you happen to be aware of hints? If so, could you touch upon its relevance?

a good chair to prevent issues with my back

Curious. Is this a special ergonomic chair (or something)?

It was a slow process of making one change here, few months later another z etc

Did you advance/progress in increments because you were testing out the latest addition to the setup? And thus, only introduced a subsequent change after judging that you were not ‘done’ yet?

all of my pains in wrist, lower back, neck, etc have disappeared.

I am so glad to read this! While the journey until I am able to interact with my systems without any pain seems far away right now, success stories like yours make me so pumped to pull through.

I figured if I’m going to ve sitting in front of a computer typing stuff for 8h a day I need to make that as comfortable as possible to be able to do it for longer.

Couldn’t agree more.

e.g. <space>srq" (Surround Replace Quotes with ") to replace the next quotes for " (e.g. changing var = 'some text' to var = "some text"). That same plugin allows me to also do <space>srb[ to Surround Replace Bracket/Braces with [ (to change the surrounding [, (, or { to [ ).

Interesting. FWIW, I did test this out and I believe that OOTB Doom Emacs does utilize the evil-surround package. However, I don’t think it’s as powerful as what you describe. Though, this could also be on me 😅.

Another plugin allows me to move to any part of the screen in 4 keystrokes, I press s the two characters of where I want to move, and a third disambiguation character and the cursor moves there.

Hmm…, this very closely resembles what evil-snipe does. Though, unless I’m doing something wrong, the functionality is not a single s away, but rather a g s SPC away. At least, OOTB*.

May I ask why emacs in evil-mode instead of Nvim?

Of course you can. Unfortunately, though, I don’t exactly recall my reasonings 😅. Thankfully, I did note some of my thoughts from back when I was actively trying to decide between the two. From there, I was able to gather the following:

• I would only try out Emacs or Neovim through a opinionated config.
• For Emacs, Doom had kinda won over Spacemacs based on the opinions (and experiences) of others . Though, I still wanted to try out Spacemacs to judge for myself.
• While for Neovim, LazyVim and LunarVim were the winning configs.

What follows is not based on my notes, but from what I can remember. Shortly after I came to the above conclusions, I went out and tried to install them. But, I wanted to ‘test’ them without ‘polluting’ my system. As such, I tried to install them within a distrobox. This is where Neovim came short because of this imposed limitation. I don’t 100% remember what it was, but IIRC there might have been more than 1 issue; one of which had to do with fonts. Regardless, my Neovim adventures were prematurely terminated 😅. By contrast, Emacs didn’t budge an inch under these circumstances. So I was able to test out both Doom and Spacemacs without any significant issues. Since then, I have dabbled in Emacs. But the folding mentioned in the original post is what has led me to commit more seriously than ever. So, in short, it was mostly out of practical reasons.

Btw, it’s funny, but most of what you just read about my reasonings were buried memories 😂. Like, if I had to answer it on the spot -so without thinking it over or look through my notes or dig through my memories- , I would probably have stated some arbitrary technical reason (e.g. org-mode FTW) OR its proven longevity OR I don’t know… something. But it couldn’t be further from the truth 😅. Granted, I’m still very much enjoying Emacs. But, I shouldn’t disregard/dismiss Neovim any longer. It’s time to revisit this rabbit hole 😂. I should also thank you for asking the question that brought this to my attention 😊!

I like stability and cleanliness. Security by default. Least mental load possible long-term.

Excellent breakdown of your desires! FWIW, I definitely resonate with these as well.

I’m currently testing out NIXos. Next will be VanillaOS, 3rd will be Fedora Silverblue.

One simply can’t ignore the fact that these are so-called atomic distros. Which makes a ton of sense considering what you set out for. FWIW, my personal takes on the individual projects are as follows:

• NixOS is pretty excellent. If the epitome of cleanliness is reached with becoming stateless, then there’s simply no other viable alternative.
• For VanillaOS, I feel it has yet to fully realize its promise. Or, at least, hasn’t fulfilled whatever’s required to break into the (relative) ‘mainstream’ for one reason or another.
• Fedora Silverblue has been my daily-driver in some shape or form over the last three years 😅. As such, I’m clearly biased. However, I’d reckon secureblue, i.e. a derivative that goes all-in on security, is actually more interesting for you.

Anyone have good recommendations? Easy backups, stability, security first posture, least maintenance and memory load. I hate getting scattered in symlinks, scripts, and filesystem placing.

Honestly, with Fedora Atomic and Nixos, you’re already considering the very best at the job. Though, for completeness’ sake, consider looking into openSUSE Aeon as well. While I’d argue the other two are currently more interesting, I wouldn’t want to dismiss it altogether.

Beyond these, we find some other distros that miss something crucial for them to be considered a legit candidate/alternative:

• Guix System can put up a decent fight against NixOS and may even sway you over if you’re into lisp. Unfortunately, though, it has yet to receive what flakes brought to the table for NixOS. Don’t get me wrong; Guix’ implementation of channels is vastly superior over Nix’ and therefore Guix System doesn’t gain as much from its (to be) flake counterpart. However, with flakes, NixOS becomes pretty smooth sailing. Like, you can just trust it to work reliably. With Guix, however, it can get ugly sometimes. Which can even lead the biggest Guix proponents back to NixOS…
• Kicksecure is another hardened-by-default distro worth mentioning. Sadly, unlike secureblue, it does nothing with atomicity.

What are some pros and cons of different distros?

This is too broad of a question 😅. If possible, narrow it down to some face-offs you’re particularly interested in. After which I will try to help out if I can. Btw, I ‘found’ this comment that attempts to assign tiers to distros in terms of how they fare security-wise.

What do you daily drive as a power user?

Without going over what a power user is and/or if I would even qualify as such, I’ve been daily-driving secureblue for over a year now.

Give me your thoughts and recommendations! Thanks.

At this point, I think both NixOS and secureblue pose as the most interesting candidates for ya. The former peaks in cleanliness, while the latter peaks in security.

Sorry fam for the late response! I was writing up a draft a couple of days ago, but that one somehow disappeared. Which…, is kinda peculiar as I don’t recall the last time a draft spoofed out of existence. Regardless, it really puts me off to start a reply all over. As such, I’ve been mustering motivation since 😅. Anyhow, thank you for your patience!

Thank you (also) for sharing your journey around the many text editors! If anything, it reminds me how life has got many surprises for us. As such, being wed to any software, regardless of how powerful it may be, may still result in a break later down the line.

Thank you (once more) for touching on ergonomics! I haven’t mentioned it, but I do experience some RSI-related pains/aches.

Anyhow, I do have concerns on how Emacs’ default keybindings might be detrimental on someone using a regular keyboard. I believe this article makes an interesting case on this. That’s also one of the reasons why I’ve (almost) exclusively been on evil mode.

I hope you’ve recovered completely from the strain on your pinky! And, hopefully, nothing else has been causing any issues since!

Btw, the trick with ci" and ca" is pretty cool! Thank you for teaching me something new! FWIW, it was reproducible within Emacs’ evil mode*.

Thank you for the raving endorsement and otherwise very informative reply!

Also I have migrated from Emacs to Nvim, the reasons are purely ergonomical (pinky fatigue is a real issue) but after switching I found a jump in the way to think about an editor. Emacs is great, don’t get me wrong, and if you decide to learn Emacs I can assure you it will be the best editor you’ve used, but it still edits things at a character level, while there are concepts for matching brackets or quotes changing the text inside quotes in Emacs is very character oriented, I.e. go to start of quote, start marking, move to matching quote, delete, whereas in vim is sort of a higher level language where you say Change Inside Next Quote using cin", and expanded with some plugins you can even do srnq' to Surround Replace Next Quote with ’ (which will change the quotations on the next text from whatever to '). And that’s a lot closer to the way I think so it skips a mental step (plus it’s a lot less keystrokes and no Ctrl for my pinky).

Hmm…, interesting. I’m still pretty new to evil-mode, but doesn’t that bridge the gap here? Btw, I don’t know why, but I wasn’t able to see for myself how cin" worked within Vim*.

No no, don’t get me wrong. I think both Emacs and Neovim are excellent. And this little endeavor/search/pursuit has (perhaps more than anything) solidified (and gave context as to) why they’re in their own league.

Like, I’ve tried about a dozen of text editors in last couple of days. And with most^[1] of them I’ve failed to reproduce the functionality demonstrated in the gif.

But even the very best of what I’ve tried since making this post pales -or at least seems to be*- in terms of extensibility. And, when we add in Emacs’ proven^[2] longevity, it becomes hard to root for any of the alternatives. At least…, so far*.

Still, I had to answer for myself if committing to Emacs (or Neovim for that matter) was justified given the fact that I had not a lot of experience with text editors 😅. Like, as funny as it sounds, I’ve moved from Word+StickyNotes to (GNOME’s) Text Editor to a bunch^[3] of Markdown text editors to Emacs. And the switch to Emacs was mostly motivated when I saw Obsidian do the very thing you see in the gif 😂. But as cool as learning the ropes of Emacs was, I think I was experiencing some impostor syndrome shenanigans.

Thankfully, it seems that this has mostly served to be a huge motivation boost. Perhaps I was (more than) ready to conquer Emacs all along…