It’s a bit of an unpopular opinion, but if you pick a mainstream distro there isn’t a lot of difference between them. Especially to somebody who is new to linux.
With most any distro you can use KDE, gnome and other desktop environments. You can pick which one you want to use when you login. So don’t think you’re tying yourself to KDE if you install kubuntu or something.
If you want an easy way to switch to a new distro make sure you create a separate partition for /home. Then if/when you want to install something new you can have it overwrite everything except your home directory. So all your steam configs and games will be left untouched (for example). Alternatively just backup /home somewhere and restore as you need.
Is a home directory similar to the users folder in windows, or like the program files folder? Is it ‘everything but the OS’? I’m still trying to get a grasp on how the OS operates conceptually.
Yeah - the home directory in Linux pre-dates the windows Users directory by a long time. You’ll see the multi-user nature of your OS exposed much more in Linux than you will in Windows.
Every user will have a /home/username directory on Linux (often referenced by “~” or by the environment variable “$HOME”). By default this is the only directory that user will have any permissions to create things (with some exceptions like /tmp which is used for temporary file creation - but nothing long-term). So all of your configuration, user-created files, etc. will be created there.
Configurations are often stored in ‘dot-files’ or in directories that begin with a period. These are “hidden” by default with most file-browsing tools (it’s just a tradition - there’s nothing otherwise special about files or directories that begin with a period). So you’ll have a .bashrc which is the script that runs when you start a bash shell for example. Or .local which is where you will find a lot of application configurations these days.
So if you copy /home/username somewhere you will copy all of your configurations.
Some applications will install there as well. Steam, for example, will install your programs under $HOME/.steam.
Things you install “system-wide” will be installed to /usr/bin or /bin. This will typically be things that you use a package manager to install. So the steam application may be /usr/bin/steam but then all of its configurations, installed apps, etc. go in your home dir.
If you’re curious where a command lives you can use which cmd or type cmd from the command-line and it will show you (something I often wish Windows had).
NOTE: There are exceptions to everything I’ve said above. But those are the “general” guidelines. In short - if you installed it without needing root permissions it’s likely somewhere in $HOME.
If you’re curious where a command lives you can use which cmd or type cmd from the command-line and it will show you (something I often wish Windows had).
A command can ‘live’ in different places? And this might be a dumb question…but what is a command in this context?
This is the actually the thing same as Windows - in Linux you’ve got the which command, and it’s equivalent is where in Windows. Both do the same thing - find out where a program lives.
OP meant a “program” in this context. Both Linux and Windows have specific paths where programs typically lives. For example, in Windows, if you type “notepad” in a command prompt or the ‘Run’ dialog, it’ll search for it in known system paths such as C:Windows, C:Windowssystem32 etc. These paths are declared in the PATH environment variable - which you may have encountered when certain applications try to (or ask you to) add their program folder to the PATH, such as say Java or Python. If a program is added to the PATH, typing ‘java’ or ‘python’ from anywhere will automatically launch it, so you don’t need to specify the full path or the program.
Now whilst this is convenient, sometimes it can cause unwanted issues. For example, say you installed some other program that uses a specific version of Java or Python, and it installed that version in your system, and added that folder to the PATH - now when you type java or python in a command prompt, you wouldn’t know which version you’re executing. This is what OP meant by a program living in multiple places. As you can imagine, this can now cause issues, and can even break some scripts expecting a particular version of Java/Python etc and some other version is being picked up. This is where the where command in Windows comes in handy, as it tells you where exactly that program is located. And it’s Linux equivalent is which.
So at least in this department, the behavior of Windows and Linux is virtually identical. :)
The home directory is like the Windows users directory, yes.
In the shell/terminal it’s represented by ~ or $HOME, it’s path is likely /home/$USER/
First / = Root $USER = current user account you’re using.
You should check out this Arch Wiki page & this Arch man page.
Don’t worry it’s pretty distro agnostic.
Essentially, yeah. Most programs will install to your root directory, but all your personal configs and personal files will be in your home directory.
What I’d personally recommend is using Timeshift to automatically keep backups if your home directory on a separate partition, then if you want to switch distros or if you need to reinstall for whatever reason you can use Timeshift to restore your home directory pretty easily, as long as your new install uses the same file system.
Timeshift was designed for system snapshots not home files. You can force it to cover home but it’s better to use BackInTime which was designed specifically for home snapshots.
Didn’t mean no offence. If it works for you, great! But personally I got too into customisations and missed a lot of work which was the whole actual point, " productivity" lol. But damn did my setup look slick that week.
If you use KDE, look for the “TV Glitch [burn-my-windows]” opening and closing animation. It’s a default setting in the KDE Settings > Workspace behavior > Desktop effects > Window open/close animation section. It’s really good in my opinion, especially if you tinker with the open/close timing to make it a little more crisp.
KDE has your back. You .mostly use regular windows but with meta+T you can configure tiles that can be used to snap windows to them using shift when dragging a window
Unfortunately for my free time I really enjoy the endless customisation loop
Also tiling WM with virtual desktops makes one monitor feel like many, I often actively choose to use my hyprland laptop and trackpad instead of a triple monitor setup without tiling
Partially true… I’ve been using i3 for roughly 8 years so setup and usage is pretty dang quick these days. I’d say it’s worth it if tiling piques your interest.
Took me a few goes here and there but now I love my minimal tiling setup. Never really got it but just played with them here and there out of curiosity. Last time I tried it something clicked for me and now I’ve no desire to go back.
Ain’t that the truth. But I love the workflow they offer. You don’t have to go looking for new windows. You can easily pin applications to virtual desktops and I prefer the multihead model they use over the one used by gnome or KDE.
"Cloud native" technology is double speak for your shit is running on other people's computers who will be tracking your use and selling it to pay for server upkeep and also maybe profit?
In this case it's referring to the fact that the OS is built upon the same containerization technology used on cloud platforms such as Kubernetes. As a marketing tool it's a bit buzzwordy, but it's not about running the core OS components outside of the physical machine here.
Both are incredibly stupid attempts to convince people they need something they don’t.
You all should look into a ‘blue ocean’ business strategy. Lots of shitty businessmen are constantly trying to push ‘new’ things and have a vested interest in convincing laymen of their necessity.
Needs are born from solving problems, not making them.
So glad they’re moving forward on the non destructive front! Non destructive editing such a useful feature. I will always prefer to be able to non-destructively edit things I’m working on to easily be able to change things if necessary or to be able to see how I did something in the future!
KDE nerds: Is there a way to get a normal app launch indicator (cursor with a loading icon/hourglass) instead of either nothing or the little hopping icons that don’t animate right?
I don’t know about an hourglass specifically, but there are some options. Should be in system settings, applications, launch feedback and/or busy cursor.
I think you mean different. I find the bouncing very normal after all these years. The spinning wheel and hourglass is there but they are used to indicate system waits, rather than launches.
Of course you can shut the bouncing launch off if you dont like it.
No. Some people wanted to change it to that for Plasma 6, but on Xorg there’s apparently no way to make that happen, as the cursor is always decided on by the window you’re hovering over…
Oh, I see, thank you! Never noticed the cursor changing back when I put it over another window in XFCE, but I also never looked for that. I really just want that brief feedback, especially when I’m using a touchpad.
I’ve got this now, looks pretty cool, thanks! Gonna keep looking over the documentation, but I can’t quite see the particular behaviour I’m looking for. It has the snapping (and better options than Win10), but I want to be presented with the list of other available windows for snapping on the other side.
Assuming this isn’t a troll post, why wouldn’t it be possible? Not everything has an open source alternative that’s nearly as good. I use Linux, I like open source, but I still use Discord and google services and occasionally a bunch of other closed source apps like Steam. Not everything ever made has to be open source.
You’d have an easier path just modding the existing keyboard to something more like you want. You’re likely not going to fit any other keyboard in your machine for a long list of reasons.
Still proprietary garbage Bios and a VEEERY shitty company behind it.
Try to get free support for a product you paid. Bot possible. They dont even answer a question like “Windows doesnt want to install, you support Windows, how the hell do I do that”.
Look up replacements for the key actions bits and such and see if there is anything out there that gets you closer. Laptops are made to be portable, but not very customizable. Good luck 👍
Not a good idea, to share copyrighted material with your university account. Especially in DE. Archive.org would suit better!
Nevertheless thanks for your work and I would recommend to include Dism++ and maybe use an Enterprise version of Win11. But yeah, versions can be easily changed with Massgravel’s activator.
Usually less bloat ootb and less/no feature updates, longer update support. But actually I haven’t compared those Win11 versions by myself. I use Enterprise versions since Win7, with Win10 Iot Enterprise LTSC being the best version of all (at least currently) and it has support till 2032 :)
Okay thats crazy! I think Win10 is unusable and Win11 us a bit better and also worse, like an Explorer with Tabs wtf how long did that take? But the apps seem very bloated too, using bad libraries or something, its just slow. But I am quite happy with my setup currently, will switch the VM to Win11 enterprise if Win12 is even worse
There’s a variable that contains the number of cores (called cpus) which is hardcoded to max out at 8, but it doesn’t mean that cores aren’t utilized beyond 8 cores–it just means that the scheduling scaling factor will not change in either the linear or logarithmic case once you go above that number:
code snippet/* * Increase the granularity value when there are more CPUs, * because with more CPUs the ‘effective latency’ as visible * to users decreases. But the relationship is not linear, * so pick a second-best guess by going with the log2 of the * number of CPUs. * * This idea comes from the SD scheduler of Con Kolivas: */ static unsigned int get_update_sysctl_factor(void) { unsigned int cpus = min_t(unsigned int, num_online_cpus(), 8); unsigned int factor; switch (sysctl_sched_tunable_scaling) { case SCHED_TUNABLESCALING_NONE: factor = 1; break; case SCHED_TUNABLESCALING_LINEAR: factor = cpus; break; case SCHED_TUNABLESCALING_LOG: default: factor = 1 + ilog2(cpus); break; } return factor; }
The core claim is this:
It’s problematic that the kernel was hardcoded to a maximum of 8 cores (scaling factor of 4). It can’t be good to reschedule hundreds of tasks every few milliseconds, maybe on a different core, maybe on a different die. It can’t be good for performance and cache locality.
On this point, I have no idea (hope someone more knowledgeable will weigh in). But I’d say the headline is misleading at best.
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