The Linux Thread - The Autist's OS of Choice

  • 🐕 I am attempting to get the site runnning as fast as possible. If you are experiencing slow page load times, please report it.
I recently got my hands on a newish, high end chromebook and I've been fucking around with it before I use the mrchromebox script to install a full-blown distro. You know, with the built Crostini environment, it wouldn't be that bad to use as is if you didn't have to be logged into a Google Account at all times to use it. I was surprised by how robust it is. I got Firefox, Thunder Bird and Libre Office installed and got some games from GOG up and running using Wine. You can pin the icons for your Linux shit and you never have to use the built in Google apps at all if you don't want to. The Google account thing creeps me out, though.

If you were a student who was just learning about Linux and wanted to fuck around in the terminal but you still wanted it to be functional for school/email if you fucked something up, it's a downright decent option. Color me surprised.
 
Last edited:
  • Informative
  • Semper Fidelis
Reactions: ⠠⠠⠅⠑⠋⠋⠁⠇⠎ ⠠⠠⠊⠎ ⠠⠠⠁ ⠠⠠⠋⠁⠛, Sperg Coalition and Aidan
21DF9748-353C-425D-BEB3-4CA8B1391B78.jpeg
Somehow, the Manjaro devs thought this was a good idea as a piece of merchandise.
 
  • Thunk-Provoking
  • Like
  • Feels
Reactions: Concentrate Juice, Knight of the Rope, Darkholme's Dungeon and 13 others
How is laptop battery life with Linux? I've heard bad things but have never tried any distros on a new laptop with fresh battery, and want to know if there are any distros, programs, or just tweaks & tips that'd let me wring maximum battery life from a portable Linux PC.
 
crowabunga said:
How is laptop battery life with Linux? I've heard bad things but have never tried any distros on a new laptop with fresh battery, and want to know if there are any distros, programs, or just tweaks & tips that'd let me wring maximum battery life from a portable Linux PC.
Click to expand...
With Thinkpads you can install tlp. Defaults are usually pretty good and you can tweak it to get the most out of your battery.
That said, I've never seen a brand new computer have better battery life with Linux on it versus Windows but my sample size is quite small.

For me it's never been a major concern as I'm seldom unable to charge for 3 hours which is usually how long my main laptop lasts from normal use. If I anticipate it, I set it to powersaving mode and can get to 5 hours but haven't pushed it beyond.

edit: Adding by "3/5 hours" I mean active use, not counting meantime.

Never Scored said:
I recently got my hands on a newish, high end chromebook and I've been fucking around with it before I use the mrchromebox script to install a full-blown distro. You know, with the built Crostini environment, it wouldn't be that bad to use as is if you didn't have to be logged into a Google Account at all times to use it. I was surprised by how robust it is. I got Firefox, Thunder Bird and Libre Office installed and got some games from GOG up and running using Wine. You can pin the icons for your Linux shit and you never have to use the built in Google apps at all if you don't want to. The Google account thing creeps me out, though.

If you were a student who was just learning about Linux and wanted to fuck around in the terminal but you still wanted it to be functional for school/email if you fucked something up, it's a downright decent option. Color me surprised.
Click to expand...
With VMs/WSL it's easier than ever to get into Linux hazard-free. Chromebooks I know make it more difficult than usual to actually install Linux. I'd never buy or use one with ChromeOS due to a strong disdain for Google.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
  • Informative
Reactions: Knight of the Rope, Never Scored and crowabunga
crowabunga said:
How is laptop battery life with Linux? I've heard bad things but have never tried any distros on a new laptop with fresh battery, and want to know if there are any distros, programs, or just tweaks & tips that'd let me wring maximum battery life from a portable Linux PC.
Click to expand...
Generally speaking it is worse and atrocious if the laptop has a discrete card.
 
  • Informative
Reactions: crowabunga
Aidan said:
With VMs/WSL it's easier than ever to get into Linux hazard-free. Chromebooks I know make it more difficult than usual to actually install Linux. I'd never buy or use one with ChromeOS due to a strong disdain for Google.
Click to expand...
Well yes and no. Yes, the bootloader is locked down out of the box and you have to jump through hoops to install a full blown distribution on bare hardware, but you literally just have to click two or three buttons in the GUI to have a fresh Debian install ready to go within Chrome OS. No jailbreaking or anything required, no developer mode, it's just built right into a standard install under developer options. It's technically a VM, but it's integrated well with the rest of the OS. I was actually blown away by the fact that their little mini Debian environment lets you install whatever you want. Totally unexpected. I was expecting some little walled garden intended for kids who had to use Python for school or something.

You could install a virtual machine within the Linux environment and use that to run Windows XP and play old games if you really wanted.
 
Last edited:
crowabunga said:
How is laptop battery life with Linux? I've heard bad things but have never tried any distros on a new laptop with fresh battery, and want to know if there are any distros, programs, or just tweaks & tips that'd let me wring maximum battery life from a portable Linux PC.
Click to expand...
The answer is, as always, "it depends". Windows in general has the better hardware support for newer hardware and with that applies power savings better. The bloated nature of windows though can easily wipe that advantage out with it's three billion background tasks never letting the CPU idle. As can the bloated nature of a distribution as Ubuntu do the same.

The important thing for somewhat modern intel systems (which is the vast majority of x86 laptops) is being able to enter S0ix and deep Pkg idle states all the way down to C10. This can be made impossible by a variety of UEFI firmware, software and kernel configuration combinations and often needs some experimentation. Then, it's also important to set a RAPL limit for the hardware in question which no linux distribution AFAIK does out of the box. Some UEFI Firmware does, the majority doesn't though, or at least not in a sensible way for the device in question. Lots of windows drivers from laptop manufacturers do this with their various versions of "power management software". In linux you don't need such software, it's a simple sysfs knob.

Then there's various ways to analyze power consumption and enable runtime PM and autosuspend for pci(e) and usb devices, (for example powertop, which also does nothing else than to tweak sysfs knobs though, just like TLP) on top of that various kernel parameters and intel cpu scaling governor settings. Linux actually has all the tooling to be just as power efficient if not more than Windows with the right hardware, most distros just aren't configured for it out of the box as such settings can be something very individual to a specific model of hardware and Linux distributions don't enjoy the direct support for specific software touching hardware settings like Windows does. If you do some research there's a lot of tweaking you can do to get there though, or even be more efficient than a given Windows installation.
 
  • Informative
  • Agree
Reactions: Wol, gentoofag, Sperg Coalition and 2 others
Sperg Coalition said:
This further cements the fact that Manjaro sucks ass, not because of the merchandise but because of the used slogan.
Click to expand...
So is this a known thing that Manjaro has gotten shitty? I recently had a fresh Manjaro install up and running for all of three weeks. Installed Chromium to use a government website that wasn't compatible with Firefox. I shit you not, my entire Manjaro install broke and I had to flatten the machine. Every time I tried to minimize a window after installing Chromium from the repositories, all window controls would stop responding.
 
  • Horrifying
  • Informative
  • DRINK!
Reactions: Knight of the Rope, Fuck It We'll Do It Live and Aidan
Never Scored said:
So is this a known thing that Manjaro has gotten shitty?
Click to expand...
Yeah, pretty much. You are better off using something like Ubuntu or one of it's derivatives (Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Lubuntu) if you are not used to Linux. When you have gained enough confidence you can switch to Arch, Gentoo or Slackware which is what I've started using after 6-7 years of being with Linux.
Or you can just keep using your preferred distribution, after all Linux is a tool and only a retard would make a religion out of an operating system imho.
 
  • Agree
  • Like
Reactions: RyePonic, Knight of the Rope, Smith Banquod and 1 other person
Friedrich Hayek's Ghost said:
Realistically, what is the draw of Slackware? I looked at it briefly a while ago, and it just seemed like a pain in the ass for the sake of being a pain in the ass. What am I missing here?
Click to expand...
Nerd cred? Oldest original Linux still in use edging out Debian by a few months.
 
  • Like
  • Agree
Reactions: Knight of the Rope, Aidan and Friedrich Hayek's Ghost
Friedrich Hayek's Ghost said:
Realistically, what is the draw of Slackware? I looked at it briefly a while ago, and it just seemed like a pain in the ass for the sake of being a pain in the ass. What am I missing here?
Click to expand...

Slackware just happens to "stick to tradition the closest" from what I read. How much that matters to you only goes as far as your patience.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Knight of the Rope, The Ghost of Kviv and Friedrich Hayek's Ghost
Friedrich Hayek's Ghost said:
Realistically, what is the draw of Slackware? I looked at it briefly a while ago, and it just seemed like a pain in the ass for the sake of being a pain in the ass. What am I missing here?
Click to expand...
Simple, sometimes just for simplicitys' sake. It started as a hobby project that gained popularity. And like most hobby projects, the idea is to keep things simple and replaceable. It's almost LFS, but without building the whole userland from scratch.

Usually most people use it because of inertia, or they don't like emerge for some reason.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Sperg Coalition
Friedrich Hayek's Ghost said:
Realistically, what is the draw of Slackware?
Click to expand...
Does not use systemd :smug:
In all seriousness, I personally found Slackware to just werk for me at least, it stays out of my way and everything that I need is installed when installing Slackware instead of searching for extra programs. I also like its stability while not being a fossil like Debian.
 
  • Like
Reactions: WTBOnlineFather and ⠠⠠⠅⠑⠋⠋⠁⠇⠎ ⠠⠠⠊⠎ ⠠⠠⠁ ⠠⠠⠋⠁⠛
Never Scored said:
I recently got my hands on a newish, high end chromebook and I've been fucking around with it before I use the mrchromebox script to install a full-blown distro. You know, with the built Crostini environment
Click to expand...
Yeah, the only real downside with Crostini is that because only certain kernel modules are allowed through to the hosted environment, so VPNs that use PPP won't work.
 
  • Informative
Reactions: Never Scored
Rusty Crab said:
I have recently discovered git annex. It is an incredibly niche piece of software. It serves a similar purpose to git lfs but you explicitly manage the big files and most people don't seem to use it in the same way they would use git
Click to expand...
As I'm fond of pointing out, Git's usefulness is directly proportional to how similar your use case is to Linus Torvalds'. This is pretty far out there.
 
  • Feels
Reactions: Bongocat
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back