The Linux Thread - The Autist's OS of Choice

[Belisarius Cawl]

Really the main difference between arch and anything debian/ubuntu based, is arch's packages aren't years out of date. Compiling your packages really doesn't have anything to do with it.

I'm intrigued. I'll probably be using Mint for the foreseeable future just because of inertia but how do Arch and any successors handle Vim and R, both of which I needed to compile from source for desired results on Mint? Would the Python extension for Vim be readily available so that I can use YouCompleteMe?

 

[Darkholme's Dungeon]

I am finally strongly considering giving gentoo a real shot, since their binhost option seems to be pretty powerful.
Is anyone currently using it?
How deep can you go with USE flags and still get a binary, generally? Assuming a typical x86-v3 processor?
Is there a way to browse those options?

It's okay (You could binhost for your other machines previously, but there was no "official" binhost). If you need edge use cases like odd CPU extensions or a nonstandard toolchain(gcc glibc, mutilib) you'll have issues. That's stated on their page. See the bug list for details.

Are you conflating USE flags with CPU_FLAGS for the x86-v3? If not, then answer "It depends" on how large the use flag is. It will attempt to build that specific package + deps via a compile. So you could theroetically have a pulseaudio less system with chrome compiled for alsa. Read the news article.

The binary packages under amd64/binpackages/17.1/x86-64 are compiled using CFLAGS="-march=x86-64 -mtune=generic -O2 -pipe" and will work with any amd64 / x86-64 machine.

The available useflag settings and versions correspond to the stable packages of the amd64/17.1/nomultilib (i.e., openrc), amd64/17.1/desktop/plasma/systemd, and amd64/17.1/desktop/gnome/systemd profiles. This should provide fairly large coverage.

The binary packages under arm64/binpackages/17.0/arm64 are compiled using CFLAGS="-O2 -pipe" and will work with any arm64 / AArch64 machine.

The available useflag settings and versions correspond to the stable packages of the arm64/17.0 (i.e., openrc), arm64/17.0/desktop/plasma/systemd, and arm64/17.0/desktop/gnome/systemd profiles.

If you mean by CPU_FLAGS, then it the performance loss is not major unless you have a special processor (hello, F15h and whatever the fuck the new Intel E/P core designs are), need odd extensions not commonly used yet or already obsoleted (FP16,4FMAPS, MPX)

 

[prollyanotherlurker]

I'm intrigued. I'll probably be using Mint for the foreseeable future just because of inertia but how do Arch and any successors handle Vim and R, both of which I needed to compile from source for desired results on Mint? Would the Python extension for Vim be readily available so that I can use YouCompleteMe?

For vim specifically idk for sure. But i know neovim does basically everything I want. I just add plug in managers on top of neovim basically and already when you add nvchad or lazy vim it basically does most of the work for you with setting up completions and all of that.

I just needed to install the specific language stuff I wanted and for the most part the work is done.

Some things take a little extra effort, but its really nothing crazy. Especially if I can do it. Like I have gone back to start configuring awesomewm which is written and configured and lua, so i have been slowly making myself learn how to mess with it, but even before that it wasn't too hard for me to figure out what i needed to so for the lua in the neovim configs.

Also, besides just pacman, arch has something else that I don't see talked about much, if you do want to compile your own stuff. It has the ABS (arch build system), where it has all the stuff in the main repos but source, and can configure and build everything by fetching the pkgbuild, editing it if you want, and doing makepkg

. I really havent messed with it much because I really don't find it necessary to change anything I have, and the stuff in the normal repos work fine. But its there. Also a lot of the stuff in the aur is based off the main branch of projects git repos, so if you want to use the newest version of anything using the aur makes using that really easy so you don't have to worry about getting the program to work on arch, and also handles updates for you if you either make your own database or use an aur helper like paru.

Sorry theres a lot in that hopefully what i said is clear. I tried to get everything in there without taking forever to post it.

 

[seri0us]

For vim specifically idk for sure. But i know neovim does basically everything I want. I just add plug in managers on top of neovim basically and already when you add nvchad or lazy vim it basically does most of the work for you with setting up completions and all of that.

Does neovim also have the ebegging message about helping African babies?

 

[Susanna]

Another thing I love about ZFS is having multiple Linux installs on the same pool. This night I set up a Gentoo dataset for fun, and also because I'm just fed up with QT6 bugs on NixOS, and now I can easily switch back and forth by just toggling the BIOS boot menu and picking NixOS or Gentoo.

I have a lot of configuration ahead of me if I want to actually daily run this thing, but I'm pleasantly surprised at how straightforward EFIstub into ZFS actually was. I'm currently running a distribution kernel because it's been years since I compiled a kernel and I cba to get back into that right now, but still. Just install the system, install ZFS, tell the kernel which dataset to import, make a generic EFI entry, and let ZFS automount stuff. Don't get me wrong, root on ZFS was in no way tricky on NixOS, it's just a matter of setting mounts to legacy and listing the system datasets in your config, so it's not like this is in any way an improvement apart from saving a few seconds not having GRUB, I'm just surprised how smooth setting this up on Gentoo turned out to be. I was expecting it to be a whole struggle, Gentoo has that reputation, but instead it just works. I'll admit using a simple distro again is rather relaxing, NixOS can be really annoying when it wants to be.

 

[jeff7989]

You may want to try ZFSBootMenu, it will streamline your lunacy. You will be able to choose datasets or snapshots to boot, even chroot into any if you break stuff and can't be bothered to restore snapshot. Maybe you could even bootstrap Gentoo from chroot.
For people outside ZFS world, pools are kinda like LVM, and datasets are equivalent to partitions so it's not that crazy to have multiple distros on single pool.

 

[Latex Catmaid]

Does neovim also have the ebegging message about helping African babies?

use nano like real men

 

[Susanna]

You may want to try ZFSBootMenu, it will streamline your lunacy. You will be able to choose datasets or snapshots to boot, even chroot into any if you break stuff and can't be bothered to restore snapshot. Maybe you could even bootstrap Gentoo from chroot.
For people outside ZFS world, pools are kinda like LVM, and datasets are equivalent to partitions so it's not that crazy to have multiple distros on single pool.

I looked at ZFSBootMenu, and it looks pretty good, but I don’t really need it. ZFS is in my initramfs so if I need to roll back something that broke I can just do that from the emergency prompt, or boot a live image (I have a flash drive with dozens of live images). ZFSBootMenu doesn’t really do anything I need, it’s just an extra step during boot, same as GRUB.

 

[Coolio55]

Err... Waylandsisters?
Why is another large organization (Valve) making their own separate standards pool?

https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/mesa/mesa/-/merge_requests/31329/#note_2580740

https://github.com/misyltoad/frog-protocols

 

[Trans Fat 41g]

Err... Waylandsisters?
Why is another large organization (Valve) making their own separate standards pool?

https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/mesa/mesa/-/merge_requests/31329/#note_2580740

https://github.com/misyltoad/frog-protocols

It would be the fucking funniest thing ever if Valve leaves the inevitable deranged messages from Devault and GNOME devs on read and takes over Wayland by majority.

 

[Rust Troony]

It would be the fucking funniest thing ever if Valve leaves the inevitable deranged messages from Devault and GNOME devs on read and takes over Wayland by majority.

This was a response to the post they made on mastodon by the tranny that banned vaxry from freedesktop (I couldnt get an archive of it because they deleted their reply so this is a screenshot from vaxrys twitter). Bunch of troons cant figure out that banning anyone for going against identity politics and allowing gnome to screech and whine over new protocols getting into the wayland protocols that they aren't going to use is only going to halt real work.

 

[TheDataHorder]

It would be the fucking funniest thing ever if Valve leaves the inevitable deranged messages from Devault and GNOME devs on read and takes over Wayland by majority.

they managed to get pc gaming on linux to become viable, not so sure that they can apply their autistic magic to wayland though.
it might just be eaiser to retrofit gamescope as a normal desktop compositor then to fix wayland.

 

[Betonhaus]

they managed to get pc gaming on linux to become viable, not so sure that they can apply their autistic magic to wayland though.
it might just be eaiser to retrofit gamescope as a normal desktop compositor then to fix wayland.

That would be hilarious, especially if it gets mass adopted and becomes the default compositor for Linux Mint.

Honestly I expect people to get sick of the Wayland Dev's bullshit and either fork Wayland or start back porting it's features to X11

 

[Susanna]

Sat down this evening and sorted out my Gentoo config, and emerged a tonne of stuff. Currently posting from it, seems to work fine. I'll have to get compiling the kernel sorted out tomorrow though, along with minor stuff like bluetooth, right now the only thing I'm actually having issues with is KDE (which is annoying because issues with that was what made me consider this in the first place, just different ones). Currently, even though the nvidia driver works fine, and output on the card works fine, I can't get KDE to actually run on the damn thing. I'm rendering everything on the CPU and outputting on the GPU. No, not the iGPU, I'm literally sitting on llvmpipe right now. Sigh.

If you were to compile a list of ridiculous uses for a 4090, “displayport adapter for llvmpipe” has to be near the top.
Edit: I figured it out. I forgot to add my user to the video group. Massive facepalm moment.

 

[Belisarius Cawl]

For vim specifically idk for sure. But i know neovim does basically everything I want. I just add plug in managers on top of neovim basically and already when you add nvchad or lazy vim it basically does most of the work for you with setting up completions and all of that.

Don't worry about the length of your post as it was very informative and for the longest time I was wondering what the big deal with Neovim is. Again for inertia reasons (like with using Mint) I will currently be sticking with regular Vim but in the future it is entirely possible that I will install Neovim on a fresh install when I don't have anything to lose and see whether configuring Neovim to do what I like is more straightforward. (The other thing I need to do is install plugins and then actually use them.)

 

[Sperg Coalition]

start back porting it's features to X11

X12 is now a real possibility... Fucking finally.

 

[Psychonaut]

If you use an AMD GPU does Fedora, Arch, and Debian run the drivers out of the box, like no command required? Or do you still need to install it via the command. I don't know that much about AMD GPU on Linux.

 

[Belisarius Cawl]

X12 is now a real possibility... Fucking finally.

I've never used Wayland but I was under the impression that it emerged due to the X Window System being a fucking mess. We probably don't think about it much now that we can look at GUI toolkits that aren't Xaw (most of the time) but back in the day X often did not have a good reputation. You can see evidence of that in fortune-mod output:

X windows:
        Accept any substitute.
        If it's broke, don't fix it.
        If it ain't broke, fix it.
        Form follows malfunction.
        The Cutting Edge of Obsolescence.
        The trailing edge of software technology.
        Armageddon never looked so good.
        Japan's secret weapon.
        You'll envy the dead.
        Making the world safe for competing window systems.
        Let it get in YOUR way.
        The problem for your problem.
        If it starts working, we'll fix it.  Pronto.
        It could be worse, but it'll take time.
        Simplicity made complex.
        The greatest productivity aid since typhoid.
        Flakey and built to stay that way.

One thousand monkeys.  One thousand MicroVAXes.  One thousand years.
        X windows.

There's even an entire chapter devoted to the X Window System in the aforementioned Unix Haters' Handbook.

 

[AmpleApricots]

It's not so much that X is so elegant and lightweight, it's more like that software in general got even worse.

 

[DavidS877]

I've never used Wayland but I was under the impression that it emerged due to the X Window System being a fucking mess. We probably don't think about it much now that we can look at GUI toolkits that aren't Xaw (most of the time) but back in the day X often did not have a good reputation. You can see evidence of that in fortune-mod output:

X windows:
        Accept any substitute.
        If it's broke, don't fix it.
        If it ain't broke, fix it.
        Form follows malfunction.
        The Cutting Edge of Obsolescence.
        The trailing edge of software technology.
        Armageddon never looked so good.
        Japan's secret weapon.
        You'll envy the dead.
        Making the world safe for competing window systems.
        Let it get in YOUR way.
        The problem for your problem.
        If it starts working, we'll fix it.  Pronto.
        It could be worse, but it'll take time.
        Simplicity made complex.
        The greatest productivity aid since typhoid.
        Flakey and built to stay that way.

One thousand monkeys.  One thousand MicroVAXes.  One thousand years.
        X windows.

There's even an entire chapter devoted to the X Window System in the aforementioned Unix Haters' Handbook.

We didn't know how good we had it...