I really want to have better tiling and window management in Gnome. Ubuntu has an add-on released with 23.10 that I haven’t got around to test yet. And I know that Gnome has that feature in the works, but it annoys me that Windows 11 has better management of windows with window-snapping than my DE of choice.
The one the Gnome team is working on right now, as described here.
The basic premise of rearranging windows at an optimal size, without stretching them out to fill fractions of the screen, seems like the perfect medium between floating and tiling.
I find I have that issue in Windows 10. There’s not much consistency between applications in terms of which monitor or even desktop they’ll launch in when I open them.
Which DE? With KDE I don't think I've ever had to edit a config file. I do recall that being an issue with Gnome; it's been years since I've used it though.
XFCE is really bad with this. KDE is much better, but still when setting up something a bit more complicated, you are quickly back to reading man pages. And man pages really aren’t great.
I’ve not used either, just look on as a curious spectator, I’ve yet to leave the more idiot proof distros of mint and fedora. What makes it so hard to deal with vs nix?
If you want, here’s my config. Feel free to fork it.
github.com/harryprayiv/nix-config (you’ll have the most luck with the “plutus_vm” machine config output in my flake at first since the main output in my config is somewhat obscured by encryption).
I also have a Nix-Darwin config that I haven’t consolidated into my main one:
take any distribution that someone at or close to the library is comfortable with, e.g popular Ubuntu or Debian,
setup a user profile that fits the need of the average library user, e.g Firefox with as a start page the library website
make sure the library card system do work
copy /home/thatuser directory somewhere, e.g /root/thatuserunmodified and insure permissions make it unmodifiable
add a cron task so that every evening 1h after the library close any thatuser session is terminated, /home/thatuser gets deleted, copy the /root/thatuserunmodified to /home/thatuser and fixer permission
assuming it’s fast enough (I bet it’s take 1min at most as /home/thatuser would be mostly empty) I’d do the process after each logout so that each new visitor gets a fresh session, no downloads from previous users, history, bookmarks, etc. Only what the library consider useful.
That’s it. This way one can still let the OS do it’s updates but the user experience is consistent.
My network randomly drops. A restart fixes but I can't even download Cyberpunk with my 1GB connection before it crashes. Klogs showed something about the network manager successfully shutting down but I can't find much else.
Share the output of sudo dmesg logs as well as sudo journalctl -u NetworkManager | cat. The first is the kernel logs about what's going on with your connection, and the second one is from the utility that manages networking on most systems (there's alternatives but pretty sure Manjaro uses NM). It should give us more info as to the reason of the disconnections.
No Radeon software. I sometimes need to record clips/ stream so relive is nice but the biggest problem is my second 1080p monitor I Super Resolution to fit more programs on it. I can't find a way to replicate that functionality. I also do not know how to control Radeon anti-lag, chill, Smart Memory Access, etc.
Most of these things are more deeply integrated on Linux, so you don't need to worry about them for the most part. Some of them are also buzzwords for marketing purposes for features that really should be default on, which on Linux, when it's reasonable, do default to on. For example, you don't turn Smart Memory Access on: if it can use it, it will use it. Same with VRR, at least on Wayland: just on by default on KDE.
ReLive: you can use any screen recorder that will work on any GPU. Right now with the Wayland transition it's a bit weird and OBS is the better choice there, but on an Xorg session you can just use something like Simple Screen Recorder. On KDE, Spectacle, the default screenshot utility also has the ability to record short video clips but it can be a little buggy.
Super Resolution: just set the monitor's scaling to less than 100% in the display settings. It's technically probably better than Super Resolution for apps that supports <100% scaling, because instead of making a fake 4K display for example, it'll render everything at 1080p still but instead cause apps to render smaller, achieving the same result but with the potential of remaining pixel perfect. It won't be doing any AI scaling though, so YMMB.
Anti-lag: it's kind of a hack, and on Linux we're trying to get things right for the graphics stack with Wayland. But if you're running Wayland, KWin is already doing what it can to reduce lag on the desktop, and individual applications have to implement similar methods if they want to. Have you run into specific things where it's noticeable? Linux is generally pretty good when it comes to input lag already.
Chill: you can run games in Valve's gamescope wrapper to limit framerate. That's exactly how they do it on the Steam Deck. You can also use CoreCtrl to underclock the GPU.
Smart Memory Access: it's just marketing for Resizable BAR, and it's on by default. You can check with sudo dmesg | grep BAR=, if it's greater than 256M and equal to your GPU's memory size, it's working.
HDR controls. Nothing in the display settings so I'm lost
Yeah that one's still WIP unfortunately. It's technically possible on Xorg but you have to run everything HDR all the time and things break. It's coming along fairly well!
Alternative Software I haven't spent a lot of time looking but things like wallpaper engine, rainmeter, powertoys.
Wallpaper Engine -> KDE's desktop backgrounds have a lot of options to do similar stuff including animated wallpapers. Go to change your wallpaper, there's a button to download new modules and new backgrounds. For example: store.kde.org/p/1413010
rainmeter -> Conky, or KDE's desktop widgets. Right click on your desktop, add graphical component.
powertoys -> A lot of those have built-in and better equivalents. Fancy zones: we've had that as standard for a good decade here. You can also fairly easily make your own or use other people's KWin scripts, which lets you manipulate the desktop however you want. Here's some examples: store.kde.org/browse?cat=210&ord=latest
As someone who uses nnn (occasionally lf) all the time, terminal file managers make navigation (especially bookmarking) easier.
Think Nemo’s my default file manager but with GUI file managers I find it hard to switch contexts. I always used to have two splits open with Nemo but if I need to open a new context I’d have to open another instance of Nemo and then I gotta switch between the instances now.
Now, nnn gives me 4 contexts, which can be easily switched between using 1-4. I’ve added zoxide within nnn to pretty much jump to any directory within my system. This isn’t really possible with a GUI file manager. Guess you can add integration to other tools as well to the list of pros of a terminal file manager.
File preview needs a mention as well. It’s easier when you can quickly glance a file and move on instead of opening it.
The penguin’s name is “Tux” and he’s the official Linux mascot.
I think Linus Torvalds picked it a long time ago, he said he wanted something that was non-threatening, so hence the penguin lol.
The debate about Linux vs GNU/Linux imo, is one of the stupidest and pedantic debates I’ve ever heard. Maybe it mattered 30+ years ago when things were much less developed and only hardcore nerds and programmers used it, but now days it’s only important to grognards and neckbeards.
Hot take, but it’s like those pretentious music enthusiasts that will argue about what precise genre an artist fits into. “I would say they are post-progressive indie skitzo-pop. No way! They are clearly more neo-grunge sca-punk with post-rock elements” who cares?? Have your ultra-precise categories in your personal music collection all you want, but acting like it’s based on some hardcore objective truths of the universe is stupid.
Nobody is confused when I say I run Linux as my OS. Actually, people do get confused but it’s not because of GNU/Linux, it’s because they haven’t ever heard of Linux and thought that Windows and MacOS were the only 2 OSes for computers.
If somebody genuinely pulled an “um, actually” on me for saying Linux vs GNU/Linux, I would scream laugh loudly and then change the subject.
And it needs even less memory than Electron, even if it runs as an own instance with a different profile! I replaced Discord with it a year ago and it’s much better in literally every way. I just wish there would be a FF alternative for Electron.
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