I have old history with Linux and am just coming back. I did my first test build for my office to get away from the dying Windows 10/avoiding 11. I went with a basic Linux Mint cinnamon build, got our network printer and core software working. Will you let me live?
My toaster is electromechanical. No µC / mutable memory available. Not even a manual switch (turn on/off using the wall switch). So no arch there unless I swap some components. I use EndeavourOS with DWM on one of my VMs, though.
Nah, as an arch user most people don’t likely need it. Mints a great option. No matter what you do with arch (even endeavor) there’ll always be alot of setup, by design, and with how fast things move they’ll break commonly. Like the grub issue a bit back, or the kernal that could have caused screens to die, or more recently the nvidia drivers forcing many screens to be stuck at one brightness.
I love arch, it’s a testing bed for the linux ecosystem. The first place where things exit beta and interact with each other in the wild. It’s definitly not what most people want for a computer though especially not for work. That’s why I duel boot with OpenSuse tumbleweed for my contract work (also, separating work and regular life makes things easier but that’s not relevent)
Not to sound condescending, but I’d like to caution against this language. Mint is a perfectly fine OS to run permanently and never look back, and you absolutely can take a bigger bite while never having to install another OS. Distros are for the most part just a jumping off point and a set of defaults.
I know right, I didn’t get it until someone posted the tilted monitor image. I kept thinking that it had something to do with the text being out of bound
Most Linux users like the benefits of having a single command/interface to search for, install, and update software. The problem is when the source(s) for those programs is locked down.
Yup, that’s been my experience with getting people to at least consider Linux as well. The first thing they ask when I tell them it’s a different OS like Mac is, “so can it run XYZ?” Most people don’t actually care and just want something that runs the apps they use.
Interestingly, my mom (a Windows user her whole life) seemed just as alienated by macOS as by Linux. Her work gave her a Mac and she couldn’t understand anything after about a week so she just asked for a Windows system instead.
The problem would be that graphical UIs can look very different. Each distro with all their supported desktops would require documentation. The more I think about it, the more I like the idea of a short introductory documentation for people who have no clue about linux. Debian claims to be the “universal operating system”, but new users are usually directed towards Mint/Ubuntu/PopOS, but why? There’s a possibility here.
Legit question. Outside of FOSS and a few more frames per second on some steam games, why would anyone go through the trouble of installing and configuring a Linux box? Last time I tried I couldn’t get my Bluetooth headphones to work and I had to buy a new webcam because I didn’t know how to compile drivers.
I sorta just accept I’m running a bit slower and everything works on my TinyPC win10 box.
Nvidia drivers can be a hassle on Linux but on windows you need to use the Nvidia driver installer (as far as I know) with a gui and ads, so also a bad experience.
If you get used to the terminal, to connect your bluetooth headphones you turn on your bluetooth and type bluetoothctlscan on it’ll scan and return devices by mac address, find yours, type pair [the mac address]connect [mac address]exitexit done.
It wasn’t recent. I think it has to be at least 5 years ago.
The noname webcam I had was awesome. Had a bright LED when you’re on a call. This was before covid, so before all the webcam innovations. I could get the camera to engage but couldn’t get the LED to turn on.
why would anyone go through the trouble of installing and configuring a Linux box?
It doesn’t cost any money and it doesn’t spy on you. It tends to be “lighter” than Windows, so it generally runs better on older hardware. It is easier to tweak and customize.
I just switch my gaming rig to linux 3 or 4 months ago. First time daily driving linux. I haven’t touched a driver or anything system config related. I don’t think there is a single peice of hardware not working on my box. Im on pop_os! With an amd gpu. Can play any game thanks to steam proton or lutris. Playing wow and cyberpunk right now.
That’s awesome. Thanks for sharing. I honestly haven’t thought about drivers either. Sounds like outside of No ads and bloatware, which is completely removed with the Tiny11 build, I don’t see an advantage. At least not worth the trouble learning it.
FOSS is a really big reason to run Linux. In ten years you can trust that your Linux install will be running and up to date. In ten years there’s a non-zero chance Microsoft will have moved to a forced subscription model for Windows.
It also just runs faster, can fully update itself and all installed software with a few button clicks or one terminal command, and has tons of options for people who have more technical skill.
In my experience it usually doesn’t just work at first but after you get used to it and it’s fine. More importantly, if you have a problem you can find it and fix. If you’re not happy with how it looks, change it and if you don’t want companies spying on you, don’t install their software.
Also as someone that sometimes has to use windows I absolutely hate being forced to do updates, like come on I just wanted to turn it off and leave and then I have to wait 5 minutes for it to go through the update and boot again just to turn it back off because it can’t remember that I pressed the off and not reboot button.
AFAIK games generally still run worse on Linux, there are cases that seem to beat Windows performance, but I’m not kidding myself about that - it’s just not big enough of a difference to worry.
Aside from other reasons people are saying, I love my package manager. Having a centralized system where my stuff comes from and is installed, not having to deal with searching for websites, finding installers, and dealing with the bullshit they sometimes throw your way. And guess what, if something’s not available in the repositories, perhaps because it offers no installers in the first place, I can usually easily make my own build script and install it in the system anyways.
And then when it comes to updating my stuff, I also don’t have to deal with every program having its own updating/auto updating system, I just run a few commands and update everything I have installed.
And then when it comes to updating my stuff, I also don’t have to deal with every program having its own updating/auto updating system, I just run a few commands and update everything I have installed.
This is the best part for me… well, one of the best parts 😁.
When was that last time? In the last 5 years, except for brand new graphics cards, I’ve never had any hardware that didn’t simply work out of the box.
And for the first question, it works much better and breaks less often (these memes exaggerate for comedic effect, usually it’s rock solid), has much greater privacy, and it’s free.
I don’t mind Wayland but I sure hope flatpack will not become the default way to distribute packages. Most packages I tried so far didn’t work. I just avoid it now.
That’s strange? I’ve never come across a single broken Flatpak across multiple computers with Linux installed. Do you have examples of broken Flatpaks?
Which version? 2007 runs just fine. 2010 requres some custom libs, but there are tutorials (there is also a patch that makes it an endless free trial). 2013 is not a finished product IMO, so I haven’t used it all or tried in Wine. 2016… yeah, that’s a PITA to get working. One thing I can suggest is go with the MSVC++ installer from this link and go from there. You might also need x64dbg, but I seriously doubt it.
MS Word past 2007 is not MS Word anymore. Microsoft fucked up the menu and the toolbar intentionally, to lock new users into their new fancy user interface with menus-as-buttons. LibreOffice is more MS Word from the usability standpoint than the MS Word 2016. Like, you can select Format - Paragraph and edit your paragraph formatting, all in one dialog, and not search for the right icon out of a hundred pictograms spread evenly over ten dynamic toolbars.
I completely agree, I like LibreOffice way more than MS Office. It’s basically got the pre 2007 look and feel, and that is what I like and what I’m used to.
I just happen to work on getting MS Office working on Wine for a small local company and know a thing or two about getting it working in Wine.
MS took over that market in the 90’s when shit was settlig down after the UNIX wars and people didn’t actually have an alternative. MS came in and swooped the market.
It is hard to switch when ”the defaults"are in place.
What’s “custom layout tables”? Anyway, I now only play typst.app card, because I don’t use LO Writer anymore, only LO Calc for some stuff. Typst has a ton of scripting capability and granular customization, so it will probably beat your “custom layout tables” by a mile kilometer!
Typst is the future for document creation. Mark my words.
Matrix room? Where? There is no official Matrix space.
I agree, I hate discord, but that’s where everybody is messaging, including authors. BTW, we had a “community call” a few days ago in the discord. It’s a monthly thing.
Systemd was half baked literally when it came out and figuratively as an idea, so much so that there’s already a replacement for it in the works.
A longer version:
Systemd replaced the init script style of boot and process management, which had been in place for decades. init scripts were so simple they could be understood just by looking at the name: the computer is Initialized by Scripts. Systemd was much more complex and allowed many more tools to interact with the different parts of the computer, but people had to learn these tools. Previously all a person had to understand to deal with the computer was how to edit a text file and what various commands and programs did. After systemd a person has to understand how to use the dozens of invocations of systemctl and it’s variants and if they are dealing with a problem, —you know, the only reason a person would ever be dealing with initializing services— they gotta know what’s going on with the text files that systemd uses to run different commands and programs.
So a person who already understood what was going on might rightly say “hey, this systemd thing is just the same shit with different file locations and more to learn”.
People complain about the creator and maintainer of systemd, lennart poettering . Poettering is also the person behind pulseaudio, an powerful but complex audio management daemon in Linux whose name you only recognize because it’s caused you no end of trouble. Pulseaudio was also replaced relatively quickly by pipewire.
The argument could be made (and probably has) that poetterings work is indicative of the problems with foss developers working as employees of major companies with their job responsibilities inclusive of their foss projects. The developer in that situation has an incentive to make big sweeping changes, they’re being paid for it after all, instead of being more careful and measured.
When every big foss maintainer is trying to find a way to justify being paid for it, their projects are never done.
At least poettering is working for Microsoft, ruining windows now…
E: oh my god I forgot about the binary log files! So before (and now), the universal format for log files was plain text. You know, because it’s a log that’s text. Systemd uses binary log files that need a special tool to open and parse. So if you want to look through them on a computer without that tool you’re kinda screwed. Now systemd isn’t the only software package with binary log files, but many people have made the very persuasive argument that it’s not a trait to copy.
E2: actually spelled the man’s name right. Thanks @floofloof !
It is by the juice of distro that thoughts acquire speed, the fingers acquire stains. The stains become a warning. It is by will alone I set my rig in motion.
Honestly anything that doesn’t get ported to wayland is probably old enough that it doesn’t really make sense to use as your primary desktop anyway. The most niche DE I regularly use is NsCDE, but it’s entirely FVWM scripts and FVWM is planning on adding wayland support. It’ll be a little sad to lose things like Trinity, WindowMaker, and Afterstep, but they were never amazing anyway and either way I doubt X will actually be unusable for a long time still.
I miss bspwm, none of the Wayland compositors work quite the same. Hyprland is close, but it’s just not quite as good. I moved to Wayland for the security benefits, but I miss X11/bspwm.
The worst part is there’s no standardization around screenshots/screen sharing/etc. so every DE/WM in Wayland has to be supported separately, or implement wlroots; which restricts how the software can be written.
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