The Linux Thread - The Autist's OS of Choice

AwesomeWM and IceWM are marketed as window managers but are really just a couple steps away from LXDE... In other words, desktops. They're only missing a desktop icon manager.
I used IceWM previously for years, but the window doesn't have unicode support and Wine programs have a weird mouse offset with clicks. I have to click slightly lower than what I am trying to click. I never figured out what the problem was and moved to XFCE.
 
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That's... Very strange. Good to know good old xfce pulls through.
 
I booted up Windows yesterday as I wanted to do something quickly and couldn’t be bothered to wait for shaders and was greeted with this (sorry poor quality):
View attachment 3751694
I’m not sure why they think I give a shit as I’m not American and I hate having things shoved down my throat.

I just want to thank everyone in this thread for all the informative posts that encouraged me to finally to try Linux. It’s been three or four months now and I’m a complete convert. One day I’ll be brave enough to scrub Windows entirely.
And then they ask why I think Windows 7 is the last good Windows...
 
I tried Hyprland last week and I'll say that it looks fucking fantastic and its quite easy to learn and manipulate the config files. I'd continue using it except for the fact that so much of my work flow is tailored around i3wm and I just outright cannot handle the transition to a new method of moving windows around, Sway exists but I'm just getting tired of rewriting all of my scripts to have conditions to work if its wayland or x server. Wayland has a future if more projects like Hyprland exist, I even ran it using the forbidden hardware, Nvidia.
 
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Would you use Vista?
I used it for a brief time period after SP2 dropped, it was alright. They've ironed out the kinks by that point, and general consoomer hardware was able to handle it too, so it was a pleasant experience.
Unfortunately, they were too late - the damage was already done. Its reputation as a buggy resource hog persisted (despite the fact that 7 required more resources), and nobody really cared anymore. So mainstream support ended soon after that, and because of that hardware and software support for it is about on the same level as Windows XP.
 
I used it for a brief time period after SP2 dropped, it was alright. They've ironed out the kinks by that point, and general consoomer hardware was able to handle it too, so it was a pleasant experience.
Unfortunately, they were too late - the damage was already done. Its reputation as a buggy resource hog persisted (despite the fact that 7 required more resources), and nobody really cared anymore. So mainstream support ended soon after that, and because of that hardware and software support for it is about on the same level as Windows XP.
I remember when I was a kid how awesome vista looked compared to XP. Hell I still think it looks awesome and aged the best compared to the other versions of Windows in terms of appearance. So glad most window managers lets you customize your desktop as much as you want.
 
WiFi and Linux (Debian, I know I did it to myself) on old laptops is an absolute nightmare. I want to punch whoever wrote NetMan and the logic behind RFKill.
 
WiFi and Linux (Debian, I know I did it to myself) on old laptops is an absolute nightmare.
Also on new laptops.

Speaking of though, you reminded me to check on how that vote turned out:
Looks like Debian might become slightly less of a lolcow when it comes to wifi, and publish installers that include drivers. Doesn't seem like they've actually produced their first delolcowified installer image yet, however.
 
I made a contraption where I have virtual soundcards (loopback devices) in ALSA and sound "follows" me to whatever computer I am at via piping. With bluealsa and, regrettably, dbus this even works with my bluetooth headphones but the latency is complete arse. There seems to be a lot of magic happening in windows to make bluetooth audio less arse in general. I haven't looked into pipewire or pulseaudio or how the million sound thingies are called because they're just stuff on top of ALSA and I don't think a longer code path would improve things?!

I have a bizarre issue with a small, outdated convertible I sperged in the GPU thread out about. The inbuilt panel has two detailed screenmodes in it's EDID, 60 Hz and 48 Hz, 48 Hz probably to play back movies without jitter (23.976 * 2) and it also works because such movies are smooth on it. So it follows that I can fiddle a bit and make a 50 Hz screenmode to cover PAL content, for e.g. emulators, right? Wrong. You're so wrong my friend, I can't even tell you. I tried absolutely everything from carefully adjusting the blanking times to bring down the pixel clock, it does not help, implementing tricks I found out about just this weekend like reduced blanking for LCD monitors in the new VESA Spec. No, doesn't help. Closest I can get is 49.5 Hz. 49.51 Hz and the drivers just refuse to set the resolution cryptically. Bizarre. It's an older screen and LCDs that can do variable refreshing aren't exactly around for long so maybe it implements some weird trick to get to that 48 that just refuses to work outside a very narrow window otherwise, I'm not really into LCD stuff so I do not know even if that's technically feasible. It might also be a Linux problem. I feel like I'm missing some major thing.

At least learning about these new VESA screenmode calculations made it possible for me to make some very exact 50 Hz, 60 Hz and 70 Hz screenmodes for my main screen. Useful for a lot of emulation.
 
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I remember when I was a kid how awesome vista looked compared to XP. Hell I still think it looks awesome and aged the best compared to the other versions of Windows in terms of appearance. So glad most window managers lets you customize your desktop as much as you want.
It was an era where window decorations were starting to be done via off-screen surface composting, GPUs were starting to become common even in low end systems. XP had some rudimentary support via uxtheme.dll, the Fisher Price GUI was the result. There were uxtheme.dll hacks to make it look better of course.

Linux has similar like Compiz. Its nice for awhile but the effects get tedious. Imagine watching the same effect over and over again and wasting time.
 
I know this isn't just Linux, but KDE 5.25 seems to be the shittiest release in a very long time. It's so bad I am going to have to downgrade to an LTS version of Kubuntu because of it - random lockups, unable to properly wake from sleep mode, compositor crashes leading to hard lockups, etc. It isn't just unique to Debian based distros, I see Manjaro is having some of the same issues. 5.26 beta doesn't seem much better.
 
I know this isn't just Linux, but KDE 5.25 seems to be the shittiest release in a very long time. It's so bad I am going to have to downgrade to an LTS version of Kubuntu because of it - random lockups, unable to properly wake from sleep mode, compositor crashes leading to hard lockups, etc. It isn't just unique to Debian based distros, I see Manjaro is having some of the same issues. 5.26 beta doesn't seem much better.
Just use XFCE: it may not be the prettiest DE around but it's rock solid with the only problem being the fact that it uses GTK. You can always try LXQT if you prefer a QT based desktop.
 
I know this isn't just Linux, but KDE 5.25 seems to be the shittiest release in a very long time. It's so bad I am going to have to downgrade to an LTS version of Kubuntu because of it - random lockups, unable to properly wake from sleep mode, compositor crashes leading to hard lockups, etc. It isn't just unique to Debian based distros, I see Manjaro is having some of the same issues. 5.26 beta doesn't seem much better.
KDE is a bloated hot mess. I ditched it a while ago after my install ran into a no boot situation after a routine kernel update.
 
KDE is a bloated hot mess. I ditched it a while ago after my install ran into a no boot situation after a routine kernel update.
It's a shame too since it's my favorite DE of the popular ones.

I will say that I have had no issue with it in Steam Deck, which makes me wonder if Valve has done anything special with it.
 
Linux DEs all suck. Instead of trying to do something fresh, minimalist or useful, they just try to be a poor man's Windows (complete with telemetry maybe even, hell if I know at this point) which is bound to fail because Windows, in it's current incarnation, is already a poor man's Windows (which lately apparently sometimes tries to be a poor man's Android, which in turn tries to be a poor man's iOS) So why would you install a windows that sometimes just is more incompatible to software and supports your hardware somewhat worse? What's the point?

Linux' kernel and software landscape's strengths is you being able to get into the guts of it and being able to write a kernel patch to change beacon timeouts for wireless because either your router is a piece of shit or your WLAN adapters firmware is doing something weird. Or to fix a bug in your window manager that caused me to get stuck in it's command entry if a window opens at a specific time. If you don't wanna do things like that, and never wanna do things like that, just install windows or get a mac. But that's just like, my opinion man.

(and I know you all have stayed up sleeplessly at night to figure out what was wrong with my 49.5 Hz kerfuffle - It's a bug in the intel drivers. I have hope that I can bypass it. In Windows that'd be just the way it is)
 
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