The Linux Thread - The Autist's OS of Choice

[The Ghost of Kviv]

But is there anything better?

Check out imagemagick, it's designed to be automated from the CLI. I've only used it to extract images from ico files, but it's supposed to be powerful.

Edit: derp didn't see the next page

 

[YE24]

Be sure to check out the Usage guide for ImageMagick; it is very thorough and documents the ridiculous number of weird corner cases that ImageMagick can handle. https://imagemagick.org/Usage/

Here's an example of some of the more esoteric morphology stuff, including a particular filter/function/whatever called... DILATE! Looking to find the intersection of three lines? ImageMagick is the tool for you!

 

[Kosher Dill]

Thanks everyone. I tried out Darktable but ImageMagick looks more like what I need because I want to convert pixel formats in bulk in addition to adjusting levels.

 

[Ahriman]

LinuxScoop with some really clean customization vids

The only thing I'd change is the MacOS window button style to the left hand side.



I'd like to see that guy try his hand at something more vintage, to see what he can come up with.

EDIT: Good morning sirs

 

[Aidan]

I've toyed with Garuda, it's good looking at a glance but I'm in no hurry to hop to it. I've shown some non-techies Garuda before and they were impressed by something that isn't Windows or Mac looking the way it does, but I think the "gamer feel" or whatever that they have going on offsets any normie appeal it could otherwise gain.
Nothing a few config changes couldn't fix, just a thought.

 

[Carpe Jugulum]

Garuda was my first distro and I still use it nearly a year in. I’m probably pretty close to a “normie” (also a newbie) and part of the appeal was it looked completely different.

 

[Trans Fat 41g]

Fish as the default shell is an interesting choice as well. I've demoed Fish and in spite of what it does under the hood, it seemed cozy enough.

 

[Miller]

To me, Garuda is like those riced DE that you can find on R*ddit and think that whilst it's nice on paper, you know that it would hurt your eyes and give you headaches if you had to use it every day.

 

[PFM]

It's time I either upgrade my distro or try a new one as Kubuntu 20.04 LTS support ends this month. I'm considering Fedora but their release cycle is 13 months, I want something that I can install and not worry about upgrading for 3-5 years or so. Is upgrading Fedora to the next release much of a hassle? Any experience with this?

Edit: I'd probably go with Mint if they still had a KDE edition.

 

[crowabunga]

It's time I either upgrade my distro or try a new one as Kubuntu 20.04 LTS support ends this month. I'm considering Fedora but their release cycle is 13 months, I want something that I can install and not worry about upgrading for 3-5 years or so. Is upgrading Fedora to the next release much of a hassle? Any experience with this?

Edit: I'd probably go with Mint if they still had a KDE edition.

Is there a big issue with running plain Ubuntu and installing KDE Plasma? It's what I've been doing with Ubuntu 20.04 and, other than a roughly once-a-week issue where part of KDE crashes and prevents me from shutting the PC down through the GUI (this only seems to crop up when I try shutting down, so all it practically means is sometimes when I shut my PC off I need to do it through the terminal), I've not had problems with it.

Not exactly "just works" but it's KDE on a distribution with very long long term support.

 

[PFM]

Is there a big issue with running plain Ubuntu and installing KDE Plasma? It's what I've been doing with Ubuntu 20.04 and, other than a roughly once-a-week issue where part of KDE crashes and prevents me from shutting the PC down through the GUI (this only seems to crop up when I try shutting down, so all it practically means is sometimes when I shut my PC off I need to do it through the terminal), I've not had problems with it.

Not exactly "just works" but it's KDE on a distribution with very long long term support.

At that point why not just use Kubuntu?

 

[crowabunga]

At that point why not just use Kubuntu?

Because of the longer support: Ubuntu's 20.04 release will receive updates up until 2025 (https://ubuntu.com/about/release-cycle). If all I need to do to avoid needing to jump distro for another 2 years is manually install KDE Plasma and deal with occasional bug-induced tedium when shutting down, I'll take it. A cursory glance at Kubuntu's release schedule shows that the pattern holds for their 22.04 release, too: I'd be losing up to 2 years of support by going with the pre-configured Ubuntu-with-KDE experience.

 

[Kosher Dill]

So let's talk about GIMP. 50% of the time it's the best photo editor because it's made by autistic pants-shitters, and 50% of the time it's the worst photo editor because it's made by autistic pants-shitters.

Today's exhibit: resolution.
As it happens, according to the PNG spec, all resolutions are specified in pixels per meter.
http://www.libpng.org/pub/png/spec/1.2/PNG-Chunks.html#C.pHYs

So whenever you open a PNG in GIMP, it'll default to displaying everything in... pixels per millimeter because it's on "the metric system", and there's no option to change that default. Look, either go full autism and refuse to use any non-SI unit, or let the user decide.
On the other hand, TIFF files can specify different units of resolution: either inch or centimeter. If you make a regular "pixels per inch" TIFF, GIMP will follow that. I haven't tried making a metric TIFF yet, I wonder if GIMP would stick with its own "per millimeter" interpretation of metric, or follow exactly what's coded into the file.

Meanwhile, if you have a TWAIN device, the TWAIN specification lets devices specify their units as inches, centimeters, picas, points, twips, millimeters, or unitless pixels...

 

[Dirty Harry]

Because of the longer support: Ubuntu's 20.04 release will receive updates up until 2025 (https://ubuntu.com/about/release-cycle). If all I need to do to avoid needing to jump distro for another 2 years is manually install KDE Plasma and deal with occasional bug-induced tedium when shutting down, I'll take it. A cursory glance at Kubuntu's release schedule shows that the pattern holds for their 22.04 release, too: I'd be losing up to 2 years of support by going with the pre-configured Ubuntu-with-KDE experience.

You can get support for Ubuntu 20.04 until 2030 if you sign up for free ESM (extended security maintenance). However, that's mostly security updates, a good chance by 2030 that Chrome, Firefox and other browsers won't update on that platform.

I'm using Debian 12 (bookworm) XFCE which is doing perfect on my laptop and it's not even released yet.

 

[Spasticus Autisticus]

It's time I either upgrade my distro or try a new one as Kubuntu 20.04 LTS support ends this month. I'm considering Fedora but their release cycle is 13 months, I want something that I can install and not worry about upgrading for 3-5 years or so. Is upgrading Fedora to the next release much of a hassle? Any experience with this?

Edit: I'd probably go with Mint if they still had a KDE edition.

I have servers running Fedora and upgrading was as simple as running one command (or one click of a button in Cockpit).

I will never understand why people run LTS distros on any machine that doesn’t cost thousands of dollars for every minute of downtime.

 

[SilentDuck]

I have servers running Fedora and upgrading was as simple as running one command (or one click of a button in Cockpit).

I will never understand why people run LTS distros on any machine that doesn’t cost thousands of dollars for every minute of downtime.

Before virtualization and all the imaging and instant snapshotting options the "one command" would randomly BTFO your server with no going back.

Why? Because someone somewhere failed to mention something will be broken or better yet they have an ego and they will autistically fight you in public swearing their experimental shitcode is your fault until a plurality of others comes along with the same issue. Maybe in an hour, a day, a week or a month they'll admit they fucked up and hey just run that "one command" again and hope something else in the ecosystem is not currently broken while that one thing that "totally wasn't broken" gets patched. Server downtime? who would care about such a thing? You shouldn't be updating anything on a production server at all, but also you must always keep a production server updated with the latest updates for security reasons.

LTS is the first choice and nearly standard for anyone who survived earning a living through the smug retard shit. Things are different now for procedure and declaring things experimental but the autism sure as hell will never change.

 

[Trans Fat 41g]

Speaking of LTS I decided to jump from Fedora over to MX Linux.

Other than having to wrangle with defaults to get secure boot working, it's a very cozy experience, probably even more-so than Mint.

 

[SilentDuck]

Speaking of LTS I decided to jump from Fedora over to MX Linux.

Other than having to wrangle with defaults to get secure boot working, it's a very cozy experience, probably even more-so than Mint.

Long ago I was living in a not so nice place and had a non-pae CPU jank laptop that worked great with it and used that rather than taking out a shimmering new elitebook that would likely get you stabbed on the spot.

MX and antiX were the only distros along with a few other light-weight oriented ones that still had non-pae versions available. Excellent distros. Going down that non-pae rabbit hole all you get is smug, especially from Ubuntu which surprised me until I realized the entire community is retards and losers but not in the cool computer outcast way, only in the wannabe Mac and suck dix way.

 

[PFM]

Long ago I was living in a not so nice place and had a non-pae CPU jank laptop that worked great with it and used that rather than taking out a shimmering new elitebook that would likely get you stabbed on the spot.

MX and antiX were the only distros along with a few other light-weight oriented ones that still had non-pae versions available. Excellent distros. Going down that non-pae rabbit hole all you get is smug, especially from Ubuntu which surprised me until I realized the entire community is retards and losers but not in the cool computer outcast way, only in the wannabe Mac and suck dix way.

pae?

 

[Another Char Clone]

Physical Address Extension - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

tldr for 32bit CPUs to access memory beyond the 4GB boundary through page table hierarchies.

For those who are not in the know, x86 memory management under the hood is esoteric magic, it is not a flat 32bit space. Likewise for newer 64bit modes. You need tables in memory to keep track of which parts of memory is in use to map "virtual" addresses used by the OS and its applications to physical RAM addresses. Not all memory addresses fall into the RAM, some are used for PCIE configuration or BIOS bits for example.

Swap/pagefile is also closely related, the OS kernel gets a pagefault notification if said memory was swapped out, pauses the application and then does a swap in before the app resumes running seamlessly.