The Linux Thread - The Autist's OS of Choice

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If you aren't a free software extremist you should not be using guix. If you are, I'm not sure why these problems bother you.

Extremism is good.
ED: Poettring has been caught conspiring to allow malware to target and then hijack process dumps of suid binaries, with the purpose of enabling the CIA & Mossad to dump passwords and private keys stored in the memory of system daemons that provide critical services (i.e. anything that actually should be running on your system and doesn't have 'systemd' in the name).

https://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2025/05/29/3

 

[Kosher Dill]

ED: Poettring has been caught conspiring to allow malware to target and then hijack process dumps of suid binaries

I don't see anything in there about Poettering (or anyone else) "conspiring" to do anything though, is there more to this story?

 

[jONALD]

I did a retarded, subtarded even, move of distro hopping back to Endeavor OS for a few months and I have had nothing but pain thanks to a perceived problem that didn't exist. I have also missed the simplicity of using the Slackware 15's "slackpkg clean-system" command to remove packages with ease.

 

[Akerman]

What the fuck is going on with these HEADER issues with KDE/Qt? I have been tracking this one down for a day, but it pops up every time you mouse over Firefox on YouTube on the plasmashell/panel specifically. Should be reproducible on Arch with Plasma (updated 3 days ago).

Spoiler: Thoughts

Qt 6 now enables HTTP/2 by default, so Plasma’s requests to Google’s servers all attempt to use HTTP/2. It then fails due to Qt’s HTTP/2 client and Google’s HTTP/2 server disagreeing on the protocol exchange. AFAIK Qt’s HTTP/2 handler (qhttp2protocolhandler.cpp) throws a connectionError(PROTOCOL_ERROR, "HEADERS on invalid stream") as soon as Google sends the frame back, Qt’s QHttp2ProtocolHandler::handleHEADERS() rejects the response headers on the grounds that Qt has already decided the stream is closed for some reason. Sometimes it still gets an image either by caching it from something or a fallback to HTTP/1. Maybe it times out and then falls back too quickly leading to conflicts when the frame is sent back? IDK. All ik is when plasmashell gets an empty QPixmap you see a blank or fallback tooltip plus log spam from qt.network.http2.connection. At least that's what I think is happening from the cryptic ass strace. I found a recent bug report that included this same protocol error elsewhere recently.

maybe I am wrong though. it's also not a super bad bug, the fallback works most of the time and nothing is crashing. Thats my guess as to why nobody is really talking about this very easily reproducible issue, but its annoying when u have a system set up to actually notify you when journalctl tells you of CRITICAL prio stuff.

 

[YoRHa No. 2 Type B]

I have also missed the simplicity of using the Slackware 15's "slackpkg clean-system" command to remove packages with ease.

Slackware is amazing, I really love using it. Always put it on computers I never want to touch because its the most stable distro I have ever used, by far.
Also a good just works distro if KDE or Xfce is your thing, which are two sane desktops included out of the box, with their main programs bundled in too.
I never found no automatic dependency resolution to be a problem either, because of how much stuff is included by default.
If you care about bloat so much that a few extra desktop icons hurts you, I think you have bigger problems to deal with.
Slackware current has mpv too. so a lot of Python stuff will be easier to deal with when the next version comes out (one day...)
Gentoo is nice but there's also something comfy about Slackware. I do miss it, my main hardware is too new for 15 and I had trouble with Current last time I tried, but maybe its time to give it another try.

 

[Dirty Harry]

The primary difference is that in the end Linux Mint isn't really its own distribution, it's built off stable releases of other distributions. If you're using a full distribution like Devuan, there should be testing and unstable branches that let you use the latest software, like Arch, but more coherently.

Kinda sorta. Mint does do some in house development including Timeshift, Cinnamon, and Nemo that is of course shared with the linux community. But not on the level that Canonical, Red Hat or Debian do. A lot of the real hard core development is on the kernel itself. Mint though doesn't pretend to be based on anything but Ubuntu (or Debian with LMDE).

Edit: Haven't tried slackware in a long long time since the days of WinNuke. I'll have to try it on a VM and have a round or two with it.

 

[Betonhaus]

The primary difference is that in the end Linux Mint isn't really its own distribution, it's built off stable releases of other distributions. If you're using a full distribution like Devuan, there should be testing and unstable branches that let you use the latest software, like Arch, but more coherently.

In the strictest sense it's built off Ubuntu Server but with snaps removed. Everything graphical that the user actually sees is maintained or curated by the Linux Mint devs. Ubuntu server is solid if you remove snaps, it's the graphical stuff that has tranny bullshit and user hostile decisions

 

[Dirty Harry]

Snap implementation was bad by Ubuntu and snaps is why the iso image has blown up so much in size.. I don't think they are bad now and some of the pushback is more of a hatred of Canonical but the damage was done.. . Mint has flatpak enabled but none installed by default. Outside of the *buntu universe, I don't think any major distros/spins uses preinstalled snaps. I've dicked around with *buntu distros and removed snaps and didn't have major problems on VirtualBox afterwards, mostly having to install the Gnome software manager afterwards (though I prefer synaptic) and having to pull in a repository to install Firefox.

By the way, I went ahead and put slackware into a VirtualBox, but I had forgotten how to use basic tools like fdisk so had to Bing how to do it. I installed LXDE on it and honestly, it's not bad and boots rather well. Still got to play with it somewhat and get used to things being different outside of the GUI. Not going to use it though on real hardware as I am debian and it's children fan.

 

[Akerman]

Also a good just works distro if KDE or Xfce is your thing, which are two sane desktops included out of the box, with their main programs bundled in too.

If Slackware packages Openbox, and I don’t see any reason why it wouldn’t, and if you are looking for stability and don’t mind using old code because "its old" then I would say that this should also be an option considered. Openbox is the most stable environment on Linux IMO. Makes sense considering it's probably the most UNIX-like by philosophy. It literally does one thing well by design. Display the desktop and the windows on top of it. That's it. It delegates everything else to other packages. There's no internal hell of 100 spinning wheels like these huge DEs have nowadays. Just pure "one thing well" simplicity. No wonder it's been over a decade without major work done on it and it still functions flawlessly. It's the most underrated *NIX environment, or at least it is with newer users.

There will be no version of Openbox for Wayland; that will finally mark the end of life for Openbox after decades of reliable service. For that we have labwc which seems promising, but it's still a bit fresh and the number of people working on it is disappointing. It's not even in the Arch repos yet so I assume it's probably rough or at least not compelling enough to drop Openbox for as long as Openbox works. Last time I tried it I wasn't too impressed but that was a while ago. I already like that they aren't fucking around with their own compositors or w/e. Just using wlroots. I need to get around to configuring it one of these days with Waybar now that PCmanFM reportedly works on Wayland with the `--desktop` flag which is something I personally need as I like having the file manager handle my .desktop launchers and background when using stacking WMs.

 

[YoRHa No. 2 Type B]

If Slackware packages Openbox, and I don’t see any reason why it wouldn’t, and if you are looking for stability and don’t mind using old code because "its old" then I would say that this should also be an option considered.

The DE/WMs included on a default install are;
KDE and Xfce for DE's,
Fluxbox, Blackbox, WindowMaker, FVWM2, TWM and MWM (Motif WM) for WMs.

No Openbox by default, but you do get several choices for lightweight window managers. Openbox was originally a Blackbox fork, which is on brand for Slackware to still package ancient software (they still package the original XMMS and GTK1 after all).
Openbox is still installable via a Slackbuild if you want it (also has no dependencies so no trouble to install).

For that we have labwc which seems promising, but it's still a bit fresh and the number of people working on it is disappointing.

labwc is currently included in Slackware Current to get Xfce's Wayland session running, I found it worked decently for a basic session but it was buggy and several basic things were broken (e.g., scaling the desktop). Overall, pretty good considering its new, and it does look very promising to be a proper Openbox replacement in the future.

 

[Frederica Bernkastel]

If you want Wayland, with Openbox, couldn't wayfire or weston serve as a decent replacement? Wayfire is the best non-DE I've ever used. The ,ini is simple enough, and it has great documentation and plugins.

 

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I don't see anything in there about Poettering (or anyone else) "conspiring" to do anything though, is there more to this story?

He is well-documented to have inflicted the curse of systemd upon the world

 

[A pig by Jove!]

Just rename the thread to SystemD and Wayland Seething General at this point, fucking hell.

 

[Ferryman]

The funniest part of Windows bloat is how much code is in there just to prevent other code that is in there from breaking things.

Legacy code is a nasty, nasty mess sometimes.

Exactly why I love how the BSDs, especially Net/OpenBSD do things in regards to cleaning up redundant code. One can only imagine how much time and effort it would take to audit current day Windows like that from the bottom up. Might as well rewrite the entire thing at that point.

 

[YoRHa No. 2 Type B]

One can only imagine how much time and effort it would take to audit current day Windows like that from the bottom up. Might as well rewrite the entire thing at that point.

Would it even be possible, even with unlimited time and effort?
Rumours are that Windows 11 is between 60 and 100 million lines of source code, and going off the XP source code leaks I imagine its a flaming pile of spaghetti code hell (was already bad enough back then, imagine now).
I respect Windows developers solely because its a miracle that it can be compiled at all.

 

[Ahriman]

 

[A pig by Jove!]

I doubt MS gives a shit. If they're worried about anything it's SteamOS itself, given the peculiarly timed ASUS partnership announcement right after the SteamOS version of the new Lenovo handheld utterly BTFO'd the Windows one. Even that's a big if.

 

[prollyanotherlurker]

Now Windows users can say "I use Arch BTW" https://github.com/yuk7/ArchWSL

what is the actual use case of WSL? I can't imagine it's very useful for anyone other than developers that want to work on their programs for linux along with windows. Or for sysadmins or something that need to work with linux.

Slackware is amazing, I really love using it. Always put it on computers I never want to touch because its the most stable distro I have ever used, by far.
Also a good just works distro if KDE or Xfce is your thing, which are two sane desktops included out of the box, with their main programs bundled in too.
I never found no automatic dependency resolution to be a problem either, because of how much stuff is included by default.
If you care about bloat so much that a few extra desktop icons hurts you, I think you have bigger problems to deal with.
Slackware current has mpv too. so a lot of Python stuff will be easier to deal with when the next version comes out (one day...)
Gentoo is nice but there's also something comfy about Slackware. I do miss it, my main hardware is too new for 15 and I had trouble with Current last time I tried, but maybe its time to give it another try.

Slackware just felt like way more of a pain to me. Than using distros like gentoo, or arch. Mostly because I don't really care about most of the programs they package. Most of the software I actually use they don't have in the 30Gb of packages they install out of the box. So I had to deal with installing them myself. And if I have to do that. I would much rather just use a distro that has a modern package manager.

It being more unix like isn't much of a selling point to me. Neither is the old school model of how they handle packages. I really do want things to just work. For what I want, gentoo and arch just work. Which could be contradictory to what some people might think. They offer the path of least resistance for me though.

And something that does bother me. That I don't like about slackware, also debian, and ubuntu for that matter. Is how much they clutter up some of the system directories. Like /etc. Maybe just a personal taste thing. But I find it helpful when I'm trying to deal with issues, Or changing settings having them nice and minimal like I get with arch. I only really started caring about it after having some issue I was trying to trouble shoot on debian, and it took me way longer than it would have on something like arch because /etc/X11 was filled with a bunch of preconfigured bullshit that was causing my problem. And I had to look through it all to fix it.

 

[Rust Troony]

Tranny shit thats just fedoras atomic distro with steam preinstalled. Its not unique, nor is it the best "gaming distro". I hate that people tech illiterate tech youtuber shill it.

 

[A pig by Jove!]

what is the actual use case of WSL?

Winfags will tell you you get all the good parts of Linux in a OS that isn't shit. My use case is that I'm being held hostage by a Windows-only company policy and a crumb of Linux is better than nothing at at all.