Linux Thread

[vulonkaaz]

my laptop is on Garuda Linux which is basically Arch for smoothbrains who can't install arch themselves I'm using KDE wayland and I installed the normal linux kernel because Garuda comes with linux-zen which is a meme and is literally less optimized than the normal kernel even tho it claims the opposite (also driver issues on my usb3 card and virtualbox didn't work on -zen)

when I get back home I'll install Artix on my desktop and I will fall for the tiling window manager meme as well plus the GPU passthrough meme my setup will become very weird and full of virtual machines

 

[LostintheCycle]

when I get back home I'll install Artix on my desktop and I will fall for the tiling window manager meme as well plus the GPU passthrough meme my setup will become very weird and full of virtual machines

Lol I've got a friend who spent a shitton of money on an expensive computer and a shitton of time configuring PCIE passthrough to virtual machines, and he's obsessed with it. His computer runs Arch, but automatically starts up his Windows VM which he uses mostly for gaming. With it he runs a Switch emulator, so he's literally running a VM in a VM and hitting 60 FPS in it.
He's also very into VR, he's been experimenting with working in VR, like having multiple simulated monitors. Probably cool but I don't want to have a big thing on my head when I'm doing my work.

 

[kodeb8]

I started with Ubuntu, then switched to Debian, then back to Windows, then Manjaro, then I had my "distro hoppipng phase" where every other day I tried a new distro. I tried a bunch of ones during this time, Void, Opensuse, Artix, Fedora, then I went to Arch and stayed there for a while, and then came my "miniamlism" phase, I installed i3, polybar, etc. but then Gnome 40 came out and I saw a lot of hype for it and got curious, so I tried it out, and that was the end of my "minimalist desktop" phase, I had forgotten how good it felt to use a desktop that felt like a complete package. Then an Arch update fucked me up during a time when I absolutely NEEDED my computer to work, so after that I switched to Fedora, and I quite liked it. I stayed there for a few months, but then an update came and it broke some Gnome extensions I was using, and I came to the conclusion I actually don't like it when my desktop changes too quickly every 6 months, so finally I switched to Pop OS, and that's what I've been using for a good while now.

It's quite funny how the "path" every Linux youtuber talks about, you start at Ubuntu, and then you end in Gentoo with dwm or xmonad, isn't really how it turned out for me. It was fun to mess with that stuff, but nowadays I like things that "just work".

 

[InsufferableCynic]

I've been using Linux on and off for years now, and have just recently switched from Windows to Artix, a fork of Arch that comes without Systemd. I have to say I wish I did this sooner because Windows makes me want to do cruel things to Bill Gates. Gaming is also a lot easier on it these days, which is a plus for me.

Here's my desktop if anyone is interested.

You're free to use what you want, but just keep in mind that systemd hatred is largely a meme and not based on anything. For every person you see making a tangible argument against systemd, you will hear an entire chorus flasely claiming it's "unstable, slow, insecure and impossible to use".

Enjoy Artix, I hope it goes well for you, but I stick with classic Arch for a reason. Managing services on anything else is just a pain, and I find that distros that tend to be "this other distro, but without SystemD!" are usually meme distros that die out quickly and barely get support.

 

[vulonkaaz]

Lol I've got a friend who spent a shitton of money on an expensive computer and a shitton of time configuring PCIE passthrough to virtual machines, and he's obsessed with it. His computer runs Arch, but automatically starts up his Windows VM which he uses mostly for gaming. With it he runs a Switch emulator, so he's literally running a VM in a VM and hitting 60 FPS in it.

based but does he use like only one windows VM ? cause that would be basically dual boot with extra steps the same as just having two computers that's a fun meme but not quite like what I'm trying to accomplish I'm gonna have tons of VMs for different things all of them disconnected from one another and some of them having their network interface that goes straight into a VPN and a ephemeral hard drive loaded entirely into ramdisk for when I'm at peak schizophrenia

 

[InsufferableCynic]

based but does he use like only one windows VM ? cause that would be basically dual boot with extra steps the same as just having two computers that's a fun meme but not quite like what I'm trying to accomplish I'm gonna have tons of VMs for different things all of them disconnected from one another and some of them having their network interface that goes straight into a VPN and a ephemeral hard drive loaded entirely into ramdisk for when I'm at peak schizophrenia

Have you looked at Qubes OS?

 

[I-330]

I have gone down the linux pipeline. Started using linux full time ~7 years ago with Ubuntu. Hated Ubuntu. Quickly switched to Manjaro with KDE. I used Manjaro for a bit less than a month, dual booting with Windows. Eventually, I switched to Kubuntu. To this day, I think that kubuntu is the best ubuntu fork available. It's the stability and feature set of ubuntu without the horrible gnome styling and weird configuration menus. I used kubuntu for about two years before making the leap to Arch. I stuck with arch for quite a long while, re-installing/configuring it every year or so. I got really into bspwm and xfce for quite a while, switching between the two on an almost monthly basis for a good while. Eventually though, I made the ultimate switch. Just over a year ago now, I made the switch to Gentoo with dwm on my laptop. I love hate it. Today I run all of my systems on Gentoo, occasionally dual booting with Debian. I've started learning how to maintain packages, and I've been learning how to make ebuilds and maintain repository entries. Gentoo has honestly lead me to learn so much more about low-level linux then I would have ever imagined, and for what it's worth, it's pretty stable too. (who knows, maybe I'll mess around with LFS soon). I've probably tried out every major linux distribution, and I use distro's like Debian and Ubuntu on my servers and VM's pretty regularly. All this is to say, Linux is great, windows sux, vim is neat, lets all love lain (or something like that).


obligatory screenshots & neofetch attached:

 

[vulonkaaz]

Have you looked at Qubes OS?

yea they basically automate what I wanna do manually, I wanna do it from scratch so I can understand what's going on and end up with a system that is exactly how I want

also I've heard from someone on this forum that it doesn't have 3d acceleration which is something I wanna have

 

[LostintheCycle]

based but does he use like only one windows VM ? cause that would be basically dual boot with extra steps the same as just having two computers that's a fun meme but not quite like what I'm trying to accomplish I'm gonna have tons of VMs for different things all of them disconnected from one another and some of them having their network interface that goes straight into a VPN and a ephemeral hard drive loaded entirely into ramdisk for when I'm at peak schizophrenia

Yeah he uses a bunch of VMs for different stuff, I think segregated by what he does so of course gaming but also different ones for uni work, personal work, etc. He hasn't told me a whole lot about the other ones, mainly he was doing some rubber duck troubleshooting regarding PCIE passthrough.
I wish I could even try this out but I haven't got a computer that's beefy enough. I ran a Windows VM on it once, and it was struggling with a program that was just for stepmania charting.
What I'd really love to do when I have a family with kids old enough to use the computer, is to have a server which runs multiple virtual machines or maybe is just an X server, and have each computer in the house be a thin client which connects to it over wire. The great thing about that is that I get to have a cool ass server, but then anyone else who needs a computer I just buy a cheap little thing and a monitor for them. Would be handy if my wife has quintuplets.

 

[vulonkaaz]

I wish I could even try this out but I haven't got a computer that's beefy enough. I ran a Windows VM on it once, and it was struggling with a program that was just for stepmania charting.

is the software that light does it need some kind of 3d acceleration ? VMs don't really need that much cpu power the CPUs are meant and optimized to be virtualized you're not supposed to loose too much performance unless intel vt-x/amd-v is turned off or unless the software actually need some gpu power (getting some kind of gpu power inside vms can be a pain in the ass)

What I'd really love to do when I have a family with kids old enough to use the computer, is to have a server which runs multiple virtual machines or maybe is just an X server, and have each computer in the house be a thin client which connects to it over wire. The great thing about that is that I get to have a cool ass server, but then anyone else who needs a computer I just buy a cheap little thing and a monitor for them. Would be handy if my wife has quintuplets.

sound like the kind of thing linus tech tips would do for the sole purpose of making views and having fun building it

if you like to build this kind of thing go for it but if you're thinking convenience and cost efficiency i think just giving the kids some $60 used thinkpad is enough (and maybe the central server thing for gaming and file sharing idk)

this kinda reminds me about my middle school who fell for the thin client meme back in the days, I wonder how that went maybe i should ask my sisters about that

 

[manpaint]

From my limited experience with Linux, dealing with drivers is a headache. Is there amy distro that make this easy at all? The lack of NVIDIA and WIFI antenna drivers in particular is awful.

 

[Collision]

From my limited experience with Linux, dealing with drivers is a headache. Is there amy distro that make this easy at all? The lack of NVIDIA and WIFI antenna drivers in particular is awful.

Any mainstream distribution is going to include drivers built into the kernel for the most common hardware. Nvidia's graphics driver is an issue because until recently it was completely proprietary (I believe it's still mostly proprietary). It's easy enough to install Nvidia's proprietary driver on Debian based systems. You just need to enable the non-free package repository and install nvidia-driver. Ubuntu, which I use, enables these proprietary driver and firmware packages by default, and it provides some more granularity for Nvidia's different driver versions too. To know how your preferred distribution handles non-free drivers you will have to check. On the other hand, you should have access to the free software Mesa graphics driver too, so your system should work either way. Mesa's Nvidia driver, which is called Nouveau, is serviceable in my experience, but it doesn't achieve 1:1 performance with the proprietary driver.

I can't really speak to wireless NIC drivers, but it's going to be a similar situation. The most common network drivers are going to be built into the kernel. If you have weird hardware or the hardware vendor does not make a driver available then you will have to find out what their preferred install method is. The drivers you need might be available as a separate system package, a binary provided by the vendor exclusively, or even source code and build scripts. In the worst case the vendor may not provide a Linux compatible driver or any documentation on how to create one.

Personally, I think the best practice is to be aware of what hardware you're buying before you purchase it. Linux desktop systems remain a niche market and there are a lot of hardware vendors who can't be bothered to support it. The trade-off that you're making with free software, in general, is convenience for personal freedom. It's not always the case, but you are usually expected to be a more active user with free software. System packagers and distributors can't plan for every possible hardware configuration you might want to use. As a result, you have to figure out for yourself if your hardware will be compatible. Generally, I find hardware works right out of the box, but it's still important to be aware before you buy. Obviously, that's probably not what you want to hear, and I will admit that it's probably what you're describing as a headache. If you don't want to think about software or hardware issues at all then you'll need to stick with pre-built computers and whatever software the vendor packaged with them.

 

[llillilll]

I've been using Linux on and off for years now, and have just recently switched from Windows to Artix, a fork of Arch that comes without Systemd. I have to say I wish I did this sooner because Windows makes me want to do cruel things to Bill Gates. Gaming is also a lot easier on it these days, which is a plus for me.

Here's my desktop if anyone is interested.

I have been running windows 10 on my desktop that ran linux for years bc reasons and i can't say how less stable windows is compared to linux. in linux the radeon drivers took about 2 minutes to install and they worked for 4+ years without a fps drop, i could change windows instantly without getting a blackscreen and nothing that i didn't want came to the screen. Now that i run the "gaming" OS, changing windows takes about 5 seconds, i sometimes get screen freeses, i get less performance, the program that installed the radeon drivers could run randomly soo i had to disable that and one time i pressed alt-R and the radeon thing opened itself and it took literally 3 seconds to open and more than 3 seconds to close in the middle of a fight soo i had to change that setting too. There is nothing that works instantly in windows and i hate it for it.

 

[CyberPulse]

MX on my main pc, and artix on the secondary one

 

[Another Name]

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpVD24fBI7g

 

[CopiumDen]

Been using Linux as my daily driver for two years, currently stuck with Manjaro as I'm feeling too lazy to switch as it 'just works'... Most of the time. My home server uses Debian.
However, not sure if it's a KDE thing or Manjaro itself, but occasionally multitasking brings performance to a crawl, and shortly after to a total halt from where the OS cannot recover from, needing a hard restart. Any ideas what's going on? My desktop should be beefy enough to handle these workloads. Same issue appears easier with my old test laptop (that also has Manjaro), but it's a piece of crap in comparison.

 

[Mew]

Been using Linux as my daily driver for two years, currently stuck with Manjaro as I'm feeling too lazy to switch as it 'just works'... Most of the time. My home server uses Debian.
However, not sure if it's a KDE thing or Manjaro itself, but occasionally multitasking brings performance to a crawl, and shortly after to a total halt from where the OS cannot recover from, needing a hard restart. Any ideas what's going on? My desktop should be beefy enough to handle these workloads. Same issue appears easier with my old test laptop (that also has Manjaro), but it's a piece of crap in comparison.

most likely you're out of ram and/or don't have enough swap space

 

[LostintheCycle]

Yeah, I had this same exact issue on a laptop and it was because I was hitting 100% usage of RAM. I had to watch the number during regular use if I had VS Code and Firefox open, and close tabs periodically to free up space. I also did not have a swap partition, which I assume would've bandaided the situation, but it never happened again after I stuck 16GB in it.

 

[llillilll]

most likely you're out of ram and/or don't have enough swap space

There is also a memory leak, your computer shouldn't increase its ram usage with uptime.

 

[Yuiui]

Glorious gentoo masterrace.
I just use gentoo for my main pc and then run oasis linux (statically linked distro) on my laptop.
My only fear is going even deeper than I already am and then suddenly waking up in my "debloated" bed on a farm next to luke smith explaining to me why all languages besides latin are bloat.