The Linux Thread - The Autist's OS of Choice

[Susanna]

So what is the general consensus on VFIO? Is it worth it?

Super worth it if you have some software that only runs on Windows, for example Solidworks, or an AMD GPU and you want to enjoy some macOS.
I use VFIO quite heavily. I have my screen plugged into my iGPU, and the graphics card just idling with nothing plugged into it. When I do something using graphics on Linux and the VM isn't running, the graphics card quickly kicks in and takes care of the rendering, kind of like how it works on a laptop. Very power efficient. If I fire up the VM, because the display is connected on the iGPU, my Wayland session remains up, and I can use RDP to control the virtual machine, which gets graphics acceleration through whatever magic Microsoft poured into that. RDP genuinely works really well, you can tell Microsoft put a lot of effort into it. My VM can handle Solidworks etc as if the graphics card was plugged in natively, and input lag through RDP is low enough that I can even play games this way, since the paravirtualised network adapter it's talking through has such high throughput and low latency. If I plug in a dummy HDMI plug to the GPU I can use this same setup with Looking Glass, which involves dumping the framebuffer into a shared memory space between the host and the guest, letting you have even less latency. With RDP I can just barely tell there's a bit of input lag, with Looking Glass there is none. But it's a bit unreliable, so I stick with RDP, which just works.
More interesting is running a macOS virtual machine. macOS GUI relies very heavily on hardware graphics acceleration, so it's nigh unusable with the basic CPU graphics virtual machines normally get, but with an (AMD) graphics card it runs quite smoothly. You do have to be very careful looking for a bluetooth dongle because Apple's driver only supports a handful of them (and you do want one since macOS works best with a trackpad and the only way to get gestures into the guest is by passing through a bluetooth dongle and pairing the trackpad to the guest directly), but apart from that everything just works. Hackintosh is way easier to do through a virtual machine than on bare metal, and is how I use my computer most of the time.

Lately I've had some issues with the script I use to detach the GPU, though, and the card will sometimes get "stuck" in the guest, which hangs on shutdown. I then have to reboot the Linux host to get the GPU working in anything again. Oh well, it's annoying but kind of a second world problem.

 

[TheBigZee]

VFIO

Worth it for what? It delivers exactly what it promises. In the past I used it to LAN with someone using the same machine (with an old gpu thrown in), and before proton I used it plus an HDMI cheater to in home stream from a VM on my box.

Unless you absolutely love desktop Linux, or you need hardware access (like libusb, or direct serial access), Windows + WSL2 might make more sense. I haven't used it since proton got good.

nVidia's drivers used to hate it.

Two, whenever I visit my niece and nephew I take my laptop and I would love to be able to show them classic PC games. As it is they usually only get to see those at my own house.

Depending on your laptop, PCEM emulating a Pentium II might be an option under Windows or Linux. With mitigations=off my n4020 can manage a Pentium 90 at 100%. Just make sure you enable dynarec.

 

[volatile]

Linux STILL CANNOT perform efficient fractional scaling in $CURRENT_YEAR, Plasma on X11 scales apps properly but just maximizing a window uses up all my iGPU. Plasma Wayland kinda works with the latest update but XWayland apps look like dogshit, also with GTK refusing to add fractional scaling for god knows why the inefficiency problem is only a tad bit better than X11(plus, because of XWayland, the downscaling problem persists). Guess I'll be using LTSC again on my HiDPI laptop.

 

[Ahriman]

I can't quote your comment @snov , thanks for the insightful reply. The reason I was thinking about VFIO is to mess around with some MacOS or Windows VMs just like you said, if it's still a viable solution for retro VMs, for instance.

Also,

No one seems to talk much about this DE, looks pretty comfy and it could give the mouse (XFCE) a run for its money, it seems.

 

[SphinxItOver]

Anyone here tried installing clip-snap-paint, did it work for you? I tried first on Zorin (result: zilch), then on Manjaro (installer ran well and even downloaded materials, but trying to run CSP itself ended up just as zilch).
Currently trying to get CLIP Studio to run on latest Manjaro via Bottles. Running with its library (with pretty much all required libraries installed, mind ya) just gives 5-6 blank Wine windows on the panel and nothing else. What am I doing wrong? :/


/Inb4 Krita + GIMP. Know and like both (Krita more as per lately, can't get used to GIMP after a long break since 2.7), just don't wanna put CSP on the shelf completely.

Interested if you get the snap package running since it's using wine 6 staging and version 1.11.10 of CSP. I never got CSP to run correctly on wine versions older/lower than 6.13. CSP just released ver 2 last week and wine is at 8.4.

Just been using wine with the app data base instructions and some of the comment modifications and it works well enough for me. Currently assembling projects together for the convention season.

 

[osooolemiiio]

I never got CSP to run correctly on wine versions older/lower than 6.13.

Will know (though currently had to get back on 11 lmao )!
Some post on reddit mentioned OP made it run on Pop! with Lutris 6. I tried to do that via Bottles, also with Lutris 6 for a launcher + mono & gecko in "needed" apps. Six blank windows as a result, with an occassional " X is not responding"

Funny enough, lightweight FireAlpaca and Medibang launched both fine, just didn't read the tablet pressure.
More or less close to them turned out to be Azpainter 3. Played around with interface, brushes, etc., liked the quickness and lightness, but the transformation tool is kind of meh and EACH fucking brush have to be recreated manually if you reinstall the OS.

 

[gnephelos]

So what is the general consensus on VFIO? Is it worth it?

It works pretty well. I use it for running windows or macOS occasionally for work or gaming if proton wont cut it

 

[SphinxItOver]

Will know (though currently had to get back on 11 lmao )!
Some post on reddit mentioned OP made it run on Pop! with Lutris 6. I tried to do that via Bottles, also with Lutris 6 for a launcher + mono & gecko in "needed" apps. Six blank windows as a result, with an occassional " X is not responding"

Funny enough, lightweight FireAlpaca and Medibang launched both fine, just didn't read the tablet pressure.
More or less close to them turned out to be Azpainter 3. Played around with interface, brushes, etc., liked the quickness and lightness, but the transformation tool is kind of meh and EACH fucking brush have to be recreated manually if you reinstall the OS.

Can't say that I'm experiencing the same issues just sticking to wine with it's prefixes and not using Bottles or Lutris. Mono and Geko provides wine's version of .NET and IE/Edge and will be need for most programs that have online connectivity/log-in. When you said "needed apps" I thought you were talking about specific dll, dxvk, or corefonts. I'm guessing the tablet pressure issue is only affecting the wine programs and not the linux ones? Did you look into if it's a tablet brand driver issue? Check and see if you have libwacom installed.

 

[osooolemiiio]

When you said "needed apps" I thought you were talking about specific dll, dxvk, or corefonts.

That too, after stumbling upon an instruction here. One of vcruns wasn't listed in Bottles, but as for the rest, I installed whatever could find in list.
...but then again, that was Bottles, not plain ol' winetricks, and I'm still relatively a n00b. Maybe will try it exactly by-the-book one day, when again will get tired of Windows, we'll see.

Check and see if you have libwacom installed.

There was both libwacom and a separate Wacom settings app from an AUR, and yet :/ Unless the pen was originally set to forced tapering, brushes didn't react, no matter if "wintab" was checked or not.

 

[ryuichi]

Is there a Linus OS that functions like a Windows XP?

 

[Ahriman]

Footfags rejoice

Our guy weighs in

 

[volatile]

After doing some autistic security tuning on my laptop I've settled on a pretty reasonable configuration that doesn't compromise unreasonable amounts of performance while still being more than secure for your everyday needs:
1. Enable Secure Boot
It's not evil. Enroll your own keys and generate a UKI with sbctl, it's hassle free because it has a pacman hook. That way you don't need to have an unencrypted /boot, just an EFI partition with one single signed bundle. That way you can be safe even when you're v& or have an adversary that has access to your machine.(I expect you to encrypt your disk)
2. Install LKRG
It's a small kernel module for detecting runtime kernel exploits. It doesn't seem to slow down my system at all.
3. Tweak sysctl
Linux has a bad habit of caching your files in RAM for too long, I suspect it's optimized for servers.

Spoiler

vm.dirty_background_bytes=0
vm.dirty_background_ratio=0
vm.dirty_bytes=0
vm.dirty_ratio=1
vm.dirty_expire_centisecs=1000
vm.dirty_writeback_centisecs=1000
vm.dirtytime_expire_seconds=300

Set your sysctl settings in /etc/sysctl.d, so that you flush to disk more often. This also fixes the annoying problem of Linux not syncing USB file transfers immediately.
4. Kernel parameters
Add:
init_on_alloc=1 init_on_free=1 page_alloc.shuffle=1
so that you're less vulnerable to memory-related information leaks.
5. Use AppArmor
It's a simple tool, add security=apparmor to your kernel parameters, enable apparmor.service and you're all set. Generate new profiles for programs that need to be restricted with aa-genprof. SELinux is niggerlicious to get it working and I don't recommend it.

 

[ZMOT]

Is there a Linus OS that functions like a Windows XP?

you mean in terms of light weight or looks?

 

[Blackhole]

Is there a DLC unlocker or a version/fork of CreamAPI/SmokeAPI/Koaloader that works on Linux? Preferably one that automatically installs and works with Paradox Interactive games.

 

[SNEED.EXE]

 

[Miller]

Footfags rejoice

It's the end of an old meme.

 

[Car Won't Crank]

View attachment 4911098

I choose Hampture.

 

[Day of the Cope]

Actually surprised how well Bluetooth works on Linux. Honestly better than getting it running on fucking Windows.

Is there a Linus OS that functions like a Windows XP?

If you want something that looks like Windows XP, you can reskin xfce to look like it. There's also an option for KDE Plasma.

 

[AmpleApricots]

The worst thing about bluetooth in linux is it's dependence on dbus and the mess you'll get if you want a direct bluetooth audio - alsa bridge. (It is possible, it's just messy) Then again, bluetooth audio kinda sucks anyways. For other devices it works fine and even latency and such isn't really a problem. I noticed that when a bluetooth device acts up with linux it usually will also act up with other OSes and it's really the device, not the OS. It's hard to stress how far wireless has come in Linux from how terrible it used to be.

I have this Thinkpad X1 Tablet I am in weird love with and I use as a tiny desktop. The other day I got the idea to put it on top of my actual desktop and use it as a wireless screen with a direct WLAN connection between the two and running apps via remote X/ffmpeg streaming. It actually worked really, really well (even for fast games) and the integration between both systems felt absolutely seamless. Then I knocked the Thinkpad over (it was not on the desktop) and it fell so unluckily that the screen's busted now. Oh well. Strictly spoken it's uneconomical to fix because of the age of the device but I might anyways. I developed a soft spot for it because it works very well with Linux, often not a given with more mobile devices.

 

[Just Some Other Guy]

I bet this question has been asked before, but hey, let's do it again.
Interested in Linux. Have only ever used Windows and currently hate Win11 and kind of want to be done with it in general.

What are some Linux distros I should check out?