The Linux Thread - The Autist's OS of Choice

[Susanna]

fdisk

That’s another one of those things making the install needlessly difficult. If your live image has a GUI, you should use gparted, if it doesn’t you can use cfdisk. They’re both a lot more intuitive than fdisk.

 

[wmaf1488]

Which one of OpenMandriva and Mageia is less dead?

 

[WielkiWapiesz2137]

fdisk is simple af and unironically one of the best partitioning tools

 

[Slav Power]

I remember that the only time the GUI Linux install partitioner fucked up massively was one time Kubuntu fucked up installing on my old old system install, back when I still ran Windows 7 off of a hard drive. It somehow managed to wipe the partition table, but thankfully TestDisk just figured it out and repaired it, after which the OS booted up like it was nothing. That hard drive still works and Windows 7 is still bootable.

Sometimes I wonder if I just have some natural skill of fucking and un-fucking my own shit or if I'm insanely lucky that I haven't suffered a major data loss despite doing shit like this.

 

[Vesperus]

Which one of OpenMandriva and Mageia is less dead?

OpenMandriva is still dropping releases every 6 months or so: Mageia's been quiet since '23, but not officially dead yet.

I'm insanely lucky that I haven't suffered a major data loss despite doing shit like this.

Are you really a Linux user if you haven't turbo-fucked your system by pressing the wrong button?

 

[Slav Power]

Are you really a Linux user if you haven't turbo-fucked your system by pressing the wrong button?

I don't even know if I fucked something up because I cancelled the install or if it fucked up on it's own. Though I know I fucked up when I manually repartitioned Win10 to get rid of the old recovery partition. Funny how both times it was a mishap caused by mixing Linux with Windows. First, it all went well; I'm confident in my gparted skills, I haven't accidentally formatted the wrong partition ever, and after the partition shift Win10 was seemingly booting up just fine. But then it would BSoD and fall into a boot loop. I tried everything to fix it, I had no fucking idea what could've been the cause of the bootloop. All the files were intact, yet I was left with a non-functioning system.

It forced me to quickly reinstall Win10 on a spare SSD just to get a working system, and then weeks later I decided to put that odd SSD into my ThinkPad. After it readjusted for the pre-Haswell Intel hardware, it booted up just fine. I then replugged it into my main system and it booted up just fine. I have done so much fuckery with that one install and it was messing with gparted that killed it, only for it to repair itself in the most inexplicable way possible. Microsoft must be hiring wizards given how resilient Windows is to fuckery like this.

I'm probably gonna get a 1TB NVMe SSD some time in the future, put either Win10 IoT LTSC or Win11 on it, try my best to not leave anything valuable on the current install, format the SATA SSD and repurpose it for portable storage. I never reformatted any of my drives due to me worrying I might leave something out that I'd need later and then lose it forever, my data hoarding disease is at a very advanced stage here but it's a 1TB SSD, perfect for a USB enclosure. I'm sure as hell not gonna reformat the voodoo SSD, that particular install went through so much shit and it still runs that it deserves to stay on there until the bits start to rot.

 

[GNU Abyss]

Another notch on my "hatred for Valve" belt. For two weeks I've been plagued by Steam games dropping frames, but not in an ordinary way. Methodical stutters whenever you move, but especially when moving the mouse around. Stand still and the framerate is same as ever, even if something is moving in the background. Happens on average about 40 minutes into the game.

Changed kernels, cleared shader cache, reinstalled Steam, verified the game files, killed the shit-ass abomination called steamwebhelper when it starts happening etc. Nothing worked. No other graphics application got affected, neither did non-Steam games. Then it hit me. I disabled Steam overlay because I didn't really need it. Two weeks ago. Surely not?

lag spikes after 25-40 minutes of playing on linux (#11446)

gameoverlayrenderer.so most likely culprit

Highlighting the root cause of this overlay issue, could underpin other bugs. #11729

My most recent study of this bug reveals that the steamoverlayvulkanlayer.so library is not loaded into the game process when the overlay is option is switched off, thus the vkQueuePresentKHR() callback-function which it provides means the gameoverlayrenderer.so's VulkanSteamOverlayPresent() frame logic function also does not get called.

(steamoverlayvulkanlayer.so) vkQueuePresentKHR() ->
(gameoverlayrenderer.so) VulkanSteamOverlayPresent() ->
ClearBufferIfFull

This main per-frame function (VulkanSteamOverlayPresent) inside gameoverlayrenderer.so is responsible for clearing the InputEvent Shared Memory when it gets full. So despite the gameoverlayrender.so being fully loaded, its not actually doing anything on a frame basis, only some other hooks like XCheckIfEvent() are functioning (which is what fills the buffer).

[snip]

The InputEvent buffer is 524268 bytes. 36 bytes are used every key input.
Which translates to being full after:

• 60 minutes if 4 input event a second
• 30 minutes if 8 input event a second
• 15 minutes if 16 input event a second

Also note, the InputEvent SHM is meant to increase every second of game-time too (by 8 bytes), naturally, without any input. If you don't see the number go up when not doing anything, it means the frame loop is not running, meaning its a quick way to see its still broken if it does not increment.

The solution?

LD_PRELOAD="" %commmand%

as the launch options to your game when the overlay is turned off, but even if it is it still loads its shit in the background anyway. Niggerlicious code by a company that can't maintain shit. Apparently the Steam Input library is tied into this bugfest as well.

Alternative Steam clients cannot come fast enough. In the meantime, I should probably start hunting which libraries to chmod -x, same way I dealt with steamwebhelper before it was made mandatory. Small, billion dollar indie company by the way, please understand.

 

[Vesperus]

I never reformatted any of my drives due to me worrying I might leave something out that I'd need later and then lose it forever

Oh, I know that feeling. I tend to keep my old home folders in case I missed transferring something, but never really get round to clearing it out: Dig into /home/vesperus/old_data/oldfiles/stufftosort/old-drive/oldsys/old_files/old_system/datafromoldpc/olddata/stuff/ and you'll find a bunch of funny cat videos, forgotten hits of the 90's and a limewire installation...

 

[prollyanotherlurker]

fdisk is simple af and unironically one of the best partitioning tools

Exactly. I have the option to use cfdisk most of the time. But I choose fdisk. Because it's actually easy. The only way I could see someone not being able to use it, or finding it annoying is if they just never use the command line.

If you want to talk about unintuitive, and needlessly complicated. Try running wpa_supplicant, only using the command line. It's not impossible to figure out or anything. But it's absolutely the most unintuitive command line tool I have ever used and the most painful way to manage wifi networks, especially if you have more than one router you want to use.

But talking about fucking stuff up. The only times I have actually truly fucked up my system, were using tui's and gui's. Idk if it's the abstraction, from what you are actually doing. But you can actually really easily just ruin your shit if you aren't paying enough attention. Having to actually type this stuff in, definitely makes you think about it at least a little before anything is done.

 

[One Angry Computer]

But talking about fucking stuff up. The only times I have actually truly fucked up my system, were using tui's and gui's. Idk if it's the abstraction, from what you are actually doing. But you can actually really easily just ruin your shit if you aren't paying enough attention. Having to actually type this stuff in, definitely makes you think about it at least a little before anything is done.

If I wasn't crippled with ADD, I would implement an output box of the commands you're doing through a GUI program, and let you confirm the changes. Abstraction is useful, but for system changes you NEED the info of what you are truly doing.

 

[longer-study]

Genuine question: why? What is the draw for GNOME? Every time I've tried it, I've gotten the impression that it looks nice, but it just felt clunkier to use than pretty much any other DE.

Is it just a "you'll like it or you won't" thing?

For me, I suspect that I like that "clunkyness" (what I call simplicity) because I only need the basics from an OS because I live in the terminal window. But the best Linux desktop is a combination of both Gnome and Plasma.

 

[TheDataHorder]

Alternative Steam clients cannot come fast enough.

There's one called Vapour, but it hasn't gotten an update in a month and its built in...Electron. shudder.
there isn't a lot of options, probably due to the amount of shit the proprietary steam client api handles, from simple chat stuff to complex game drm licencing verification. add in the fact that it changes all the time without warning, and voilà, no good alternatives.
honestly swap over to gog and use a proton manager to install and manage your games. you'll probably be better off.

 

[Harry Kuntz]

Arch does have an installer now.

That's good to hear. I haven't really used Arch for about 3 years, so makes sense why I had never heard of an installer for it.
I remember getting filtered out by the manual installation the first time I tried it.
I think the installation guide documentation is really bad, and needs a rewrite. Especially at the later steps and in particular the boot loader step is totally unhelpful.
But I did eventually succeed on the second try. Then I moved to Gentoo because Arch shit itself every 5 minutes.

 

[Betonhaus]

But the best Linux desktop is a combination of both Gnome and Plasma.

So Cinnamon.

 

[Rust Troony]

So Cinnamon.

This. I've used every single DE and WM. Cinnamon is the best. All window managers are tinker tranny shit that all are exactly the same and suffer from the same issues, the entire other part of a desktop that's not the compositor/wm. LXQT and XFCE goes too far old school with its panel that makes it painful to use without modifying it, KDE crashes a lot and breaks almost every major update, and gnome is a fishers price toy. Cinnamon has been rock solid, sure it might not be the fastest most up to date DE around, but it just works and doesn't get in my way.

 

[Harry Kuntz]

This. I've used every single DE and WM. Cinnamon is the best. All window managers are tinker tranny shit that all are exactly the same and suffer from the same issues, the entire other part of a desktop that's not the compositor/wm. LXQT and XFCE goes too far old school with its panel that makes it painful to use without modifying it, KDE crashes a lot and breaks almost every major update, and gnome is a fishers price toy. Cinnamon has been rock solid, sure it might not be the fastest most up to date DE around, but it just works and doesn't get in my way.

I've had too much trouble with GTK desktop environments over the years. I primarily use Qt programs and theming for them is always broken in GTK Desktops. Even with something like qt5/6ct it just breaks all the time.
Meanwhile in KDE world, GTK theming when just werks.
GTK programs are all hobbyist toys that aren't used for serious use compared to Qt stuff anyways, so I am not switching to something gay like GIMP or whatever terrible programs Gnome and the others have on offer these days.
I don't care enough to tinker anymore, my KDE desktop is stable enough. They have been doing an absolute boatload of bug fixing recently, so hopefully that continues.

 

[snotang]

Linux just works. You might have to download the linux-firmware package provided by your distro. But otherwise no other set up is needed.

You "just" have to download firmware on a system that likely has no working internet connection (if wired were a feasible option, you would've gone with that from the start). Download a .deb? No, no, you see, it's illegal to redistribute, you specifically have to download the original incompatible firmware from the manufacturer and then run a bunch of build steps to transform it into compatible firmware. You can do this by installing a package, and instead of actually installing a package like usual, it will instead transparently perform all these steps and install the result. Yes, this means you need a network connection to install it in all cases.

Don't get me started on the unholy rabbit hole of trying to autoload firmware onto a debian installer. They have a script that will basically just pick a single arbitrary block device and try looking for firmware on it. This script prioritizes an old windows install on the internal hard drive over a USB flash drive. So to get it to load the firmware you want, you need to boot it with the hard drive you want to install onto unplugged. Sure, you won't be able to install, but you'll (maybe) have network access!

I have no respect whatsoever for Broadcom or their "intellectual property" (insane newspeak phrase btw). "um, akshyually, the law says we can ban Linux from ever being easily usable with our hardware, because the thought of someone else distributing at no charge the files that we distribute at no charge is just as harmful to us as STEALING".

Remember, any time an "intellectual property" lawyer gets robbed in the street, you should shrug and ignore it, because if unauthorized sharing is the same as theft, then theft is the same as unauthorized sharing. Unauthorized sharing - literally the free propagation of information - is not only fine but essential to a healthy society, so I can hardly complain about an equivalent crime.

And if they complain about this, tell them to be glad they're merely experiencing actual theft, and not actual piracy.

 

[prollyanotherlurker]

Don't get me started on the unholy rabbit hole of trying to autoload firmware onto a debian installer.

or use a distro that isn't shit.

 

[Battlefield42]

Seems to me that they just install loads of shit into the global system and eventually it causes you problems or bricks.

Most of the problems i had with Manjaro was because of that.

Another notch on my "hatred for Valve" belt. For two weeks I've been plagued by Steam games dropping frames, but not in an ordinary way. Methodical stutters whenever you move, but especially when moving the mouse around. Stand still and the framerate is same as ever, even if something is moving in the background. Happens on average about 40 minutes into the game.

I found out it was the high polling rate on my mouse. Turned it down to 200 from 1000 on a spare windows system.

 

[Harry Kuntz]

I never understood (primarily) Linux users getting extremely autistic and chimping out over people wanting to use Windows or Mac OS as their main OS.
Especially when it concerns a program that someone needs that is not available on Linux (e.g., Photoshop, and they do need the advanced functionality), and will always encourage them to try something native (like Gimp or Krita) and if that fails, to try and run Photoshop in Wine or a VM.
Granted, its not Linux's fault that popular apps don't run on it, other then low desktop market share, which is a chicken and egg problem in itself. Some companies like Adobe are essentially niggers in a company form though.
It just seems like an excellent way to prevent new users from using it, and possibly a form of gatekeeping to keep it as the "L33t Hax0r OS" which I think is retarded. Its an Operating System for fucks sake.
Whatever happened to using the best OS for the job? I use Linux because for me, it really is the best OS for the job. But I also keep a Windows machine around for games and extremely niche programs, and I even have a Mac or 2 lying around for shits and giggles.
I also don't get into an autistic chimpout when I see a Windows machine in the wild, but that seems to be uncommon in the Linux world at this point in time.