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- Jan 22, 2018
The Linux Thread - The Autist's OS of Choice
- Thread starter tehpope
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- Joined
- Dec 17, 2019
Mental Outlaw really should just drop Linux and focus exclusively on his chicken farm. Ever since I saw him shill for OpenWRT I can't take this grifter schmuck seriously. Confidently presenting it like the bee's knees, actively struggling with the installation, clearly showing that his first contact with OpenWRT was when he was recording that video, and after he got it installed he called it quits there, he didn't even show how to change the admin password or do a basic setup. If he actually practiced what he preached then I'd expect him to have more on-hands experience with OpenWRT as he would most definitely be running his home network on it, so he wouldn't struggle on basics and show some basic setup and what it can actually do.
At least I know that it takes very little to do a grift like this on YouTube and have people praise you like you're a messiah. All you have to do is go on /g/, look at threads with article/Xitter screencaps to build your opinion on the current thing, then make a video regurgitating all of it with confidence, acting like you totally know what you're talking about, and get easy AdSense money from all the views that treat you as a confirmation bias. Him repeating some headlines about Linux gaming performance while he barely browses the web, let alone plays any vidya on his computer is hilarious. He's like an ever-so-slightly better skilled and informed Jason Hall.
I have more respect for Luke Smith since he was able to go offline and evolve his content. Mental Outlaw is just a terminally online broken record.
- Joined
- Aug 23, 2018
I get that.
What I assume is going on is you have people who put a lot of time and effort into making people want to use Linux, but every time they achieve a major success, the angry, insular people who want Linux to be an exclusive club crawl from the baseboards and start attacking people.
It's the same with the flip flopping on if distro or de matters or not.
I also see this as the problem with assimilation. Some don't want to learn. Fuck them. Some people want to learn, but have a few noob questions, and most of the google results will be out of date or unreliable but will sometimes get hostile responces for asking.
I also assume this is the same with gaming. Though to be clear, I mostly see this on the SBC side of things. It's a weird contraction where I can see a video about attaching a 4080 to a raspberry pi, followed by posts angry that people are using a computer for gaming, and that it's a waste.
- Joined
- Dec 17, 2019
The real waste is buying Raspberry Pi in 2025. Underpowered and overpriced. For SBC project computers you have much better and more affordable Chinese clones, and for emulation boxes, self-hosting machines and other applications like that you have used business minicomputers like Dell OptiPlex Micro or Lenovo ThinkCentre Tiny.
Though the "you can but you shouldn't" projects like hooking up a 4080 to a Pi are fun and no one does them to actually use them. At least I hope they don't.
Halbschwanz
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Jan 31, 2025
All I know is that I installed Linux Mint on a 6 year old laptop and it immediately stopped having issues overheating. I haven't messed around with Wine or the like overly much since I've mostly been using it for web browsing and running stuff in VLC, but if it means Windows Store doesn't randomly lag my machine out for 2-3 minutes at a time I might consider putting a Linux distro on my desktop.
Akerman
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Apr 12, 2023
A recent update for the .deb package of Steam on Debian Bookworm started a weird habit of running dozens of apt-cache policies and dpkg helpers every startup leading to 30+ second startups for some reason. apt-cache sequentially read and decompressed 50 - 100 MB or so of metadata in /var/lib/apt/lists/ meaning apt-cache had to open every Packages/Sources file every startup of Steam for every enabled repository and architecture, mmap or gunzip it, then scan. I noticed this behavior in the debug .log Apparently, this is something that Debian used to do by default for Steam for some Debian reason, but it should not be done any more after a recentish update a few months ago. Maybe a regression.
I fixed it by just forcing a full upgrade of Steam via sudo apt full-upgrade steam. If someone has the same issue, then this is how to solve it. I thought maybe it would be useful to post here since it was recent, and this thread has a lot of gamers.
I fixed it by just forcing a full upgrade of Steam via sudo apt full-upgrade steam. If someone has the same issue, then this is how to solve it. I thought maybe it would be useful to post here since it was recent, and this thread has a lot of gamers.
- Joined
- Mar 4, 2019
Of course it's fucking youtube. Google deliberately break yt on firefox whenever they can. Did you mention YT specifically before? Firefox on wife's computer keeps throwing up an error about low disk space because youtube is constantly writing gigabytes to the profile whenever it's open. I don't know why I didn't make the connection.
- Joined
- Mar 29, 2014
I closed all tabs with YT and also found out it is YT. So not only is that festering pile of crapsite filled with ads, it also writes that crapload of data. How infuriating.
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Akerman
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Apr 12, 2023
YouTube is a pile of shit; it somehow runs slow on my older laptop with less elements on the page than it had 10 years ago when that website ran without issue on the same laptop. So they bloated the website up while still taking elements away from the page. I am now wondering if I have your same issue, but since my hardware is older I notice it more. I would say YouTube is the worst performing website on this laptop out of any modern websites I frequent. It's not even the videos that lag on the laptop it's all the elements around it. I mostly just stream videos to mpv now by doing "mpv" + link in the terminal. Maybe you can do that too to avoid this bullshit.
And where did Google outsource their development to again? Oh right, jeetware... Jeetware everywhere...
- Joined
- Mar 29, 2014
It's even more outrageous when they try to shut down competing frontends with the "this helps protect our community" BS, pushing people to then use the overbloated crapsite.
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- Joined
- Aug 23, 2018
One solution I've heard a bunch are cheap NUC boxes. For the price of a Pi 5 starter kit, you can get a N100 mini PC that has more power, memory, compatability, and has features like bluetooth out of the box. The cost is higher power draw, so if it's not something that's always on, you can get a NUC, put linux on it, and be good to go.
I get that. The thing I don't understand is that, if your only need for a computer is web browsing and productivity. I don't see the point in chasing the latest and greatest.
Things like 4k video have been locked down for a while. Old optiplex machines can handle it no problem, and any cpu after 2021 should have hardware decoding and even encoding in some cases. Maybe in SBC land that kind of stuff is still an issue? But even "home lab" set ups where they run read-write speed tests. I have to wonder just what kind of job they're doing where they have to move 80gb files back and forth so regularly that a 4% speed increase is significant.
- Joined
- Apr 11, 2023
And it's not even that much more power draw. The Mele Quieter 4C pulls 24W max, versus ~15W for the 3 and earlier. IDK about the 4 and 5. These are max power figures. I haven't run ammeter tests, but it wouldn't surprise me if all of Intel's power management tech means it runs leaner than the Pi.
- Joined
- Nov 21, 2020
I use Pis mostly because they're much better supported than the rest of the Chinese ARM devices. The rest of them get support eventually, and maybe even a modern kernel whereas the Pis just work(tm).
Now, most of my fleet of Pis are used to interact with the physical world that wouldn't be a good fit for my server. There's a Stratum 1 NTP/GPS Pi, an ADS-B Pi, a Z-Wave Pi, a label printer Pi, a 433MHz temp sensor Pi, a couple 3d Printer Pis. And then there are a couple I use for isolation. There's a Pi Zero with a POE converter that sits outside and powers a Purple Air Sensor and also acts as its WiFi access point, since it needs power anyway there was no reason to put it on my 'real' WiFi. And then there's the one that the Chinese cameras talk to so they can store files to my file server without direct access. Most of these are older so back when they were reasonably priced.
Now, most of my fleet of Pis are used to interact with the physical world that wouldn't be a good fit for my server. There's a Stratum 1 NTP/GPS Pi, an ADS-B Pi, a Z-Wave Pi, a label printer Pi, a 433MHz temp sensor Pi, a couple 3d Printer Pis. And then there are a couple I use for isolation. There's a Pi Zero with a POE converter that sits outside and powers a Purple Air Sensor and also acts as its WiFi access point, since it needs power anyway there was no reason to put it on my 'real' WiFi. And then there's the one that the Chinese cameras talk to so they can store files to my file server without direct access. Most of these are older so back when they were reasonably priced.
- Joined
- Mar 27, 2025
I'd just like to interject for a moment. What you're refering to as MacOS, is in fact, GNU/MacOS, or as I've recently taken to calling it, GNU plus Steve Jobs. MacOS is not an operating system unto itself, but rather another component of a fully functioning GNU system made useful by the GNU corelibs, shell utilities and vital system components comprising a full OS as defined by POSIX.
Many computer users run a modified version of the GNU system every day, without realizing it. Through a peculiar turn of events, the version of GNU which is widely used today is often called MacOS, and many of its users are not aware that it is basically the GNU system, developed by the GNU Project.
There really is a MacOS, and these people are using it, but it is just a part of the system they use. Apple's Darwin is the kernel: the program in the system that allocates the machine's resources to the other programs that you run. The kernel is an essential part of an operating system, but useless by itself; it can only function in the context of a complete operating system. MacOS is normally used in combination with the GNU operating system: the whole system is basically GNU with MacOS added, or GNU/MacOS. All the so-called OSX versions are really versions of GNU/MacOS!
- Joined
- Mar 29, 2014
update: Even sans YT, the excess unexplained writing continues. Same 20 MB blocks every half hour or so.
- Joined
- Sep 20, 2024
Snackbarism
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- May 13, 2025
I'm thinking about giving Linux another go given Microsoft's best attempts to force Windows 11 down peoples throats (last Linux usage was about a decade ago).
What's the best out there these days worth trying for regular general usage and game playing too?
What's the best out there these days worth trying for regular general usage and game playing too?
- Joined
- Sep 20, 2024
- Joined
- Mar 27, 2025
It's probably just your swap file, Chromium and many other applications are designed to write to the swap file of your SSD as a form of RAM. If you really care about this, it should be possible to resize your swap file so that this stops.
GNU was a free operating system project started by RMS that never completed because Linus Torvalds published his kernel before GNU could secure a free kernel in the way they wanted, and so Stallman wanted to claim Linux as the completion of GNU so that people would appreciate his work. There is about as much reason to refer to GNU/MacOS as GNU/Linux since they both utilized the GNU core utilities (and other GNU software).
- Joined
- Dec 19, 2022
Unless you need hibernate function (as opposed to just normal sleep mode), you probably shouldn’t have a swap file/partition in the first place. If your computer has 16GB or more RAM you’ll probably be just fine using only RAM and ZRAM (compressing contents of RAM).