The Linux Thread - The Autist's OS of Choice

[Susanna]

I tried 3 different distros tryign to get nvidia drivers to work until i tried manjaro after some one told me to and everything works perfect now.
What kind of nerd stereotype have i accidentally boxed myself into?

I don't recommend Manjaro. The devs have repeatedly made serious errors, and there are no benefits to this distro over its parent, Arch. Out of the base Arch install you'll boot with the nouveau driver, which should work flawlessly, but comes with severe performance limitations. To install the proprietary driver, you'd run sudo pacman -S nvidia, and add MODULES=(nvidia nvidia_modeset nvidia_uvm nvidia_drm) to your /etc/mkiniticpio.conf (or rather, add the nvidia modules to the list of modules already present), and run sudo mkinitcpio -P. No further configuration should be necessary, just reboot the computer. When new kernel or nvidia updates are installed, pacman should automatically run mkinitcpio, so you only need to do this separately the first time.

I've gotten Wayland and KDE to work reasonably well with the Nvidia drivers lately, but that's with a 4090. 30-series would probably work fine as well. Earlier than that is where you still have serious issues, and unfortunately they're unlikely to be fixed, even the open-source drivers they're working on are only intended for 30-series and up. If you've got something older than that you'll either need to upgrade your card, or stick with X11.

 

[Demonslayer1776]

I currently use NixOS. I wouldn't switch to anything else as it is the only thing that can easily handle the workflow and setup I want but I would never ever recommend it to someone else.
The NixOS documentation is a glorified API reference, their graphical installer used to save the plaintext encryption key on the unencrypted partition and I don't remember seeing any news about it on the usual channels and you will be in a lot of pain trying to figure out how to install something the idiomatic way. Also you'll be running into weird Nix specific problems like scripts not working because they assume bash is installed at /bin/bash.
If you are willing enough to spend time, are a programmer and already know your way around Linux I might consider giving it a look but the learning curve is really bad.
p.s. QubesOS entirely supports the workflow I want, but QubesOS needs a really specific hardware setup to work nicely.

Tbf, I want to try it out of interest in the concept more than just wanting an easy to use distro. I enjoy dealing with new problems and learning from it, so I don't mind the challenges. The fact that Nixos is different and has its own learning curve is part of why I'd consider trying it. I'd generally say distro hopping is a waste of time since many of them are various flavors of the same thing, something with a completely different mentality offers more to learn.

With that said, I won't be swapping out my servers or main workstations anytime soon, I think I'll just play with it on a spare desktop when I'm bored at work. If I get comfortable with it and like the workflow maybe it'll become a more permanent fixture within my environment.

I tried 3 different distros tryign to get nvidia drivers to work until i tried manjaro after some one told me to and everything works perfect now.
What kind of nerd stereotype have i accidentally boxed myself into?

Not sure how much time you spent in each distro, but you may need to enable the proprietary drivers in your grub config. Dealing with Nvidia has generally been one of the more frustrating aspects of Linux for me lately, but I'm also using a poorly support GPU that has led its own complications. Hopefully it doesn't give you too many issues going forwards, I'm hoping Nvidia makes Linux a higher priority in the future.

 

[Prj4MW8iPT3vmFM2rzDc]

I don't recommend Manjaro. The devs have repeatedly made serious errors, and there are no benefits to this distro over its parent, Arch. Out of the base Arch install you'll boot with the nouveau driver, which should work flawlessly, but comes with severe performance limitations. To install the proprietary driver, you'd run sudo pacman -S nvidia, and add MODULES=(nvidia nvidia_modeset nvidia_uvm nvidia_drm) to your /etc/mkiniticpio.conf (or rather, add the nvidia modules to the list of modules already present), and run sudo mkinitcpio -P. No further configuration should be necessary, just reboot the computer. When new kernel or nvidia updates are installed, pacman should automatically run mkinitcpio, so you only need to do this separately the first time.

I've gotten Wayland and KDE to work reasonably well with the Nvidia drivers lately, but that's with a 4090. 30-series would probably work fine as well. Earlier than that is where you still have serious issues, and unfortunately they're unlikely to be fixed, even the open-source drivers they're working on are only intended for 30-series and up. If you've got something older than that you'll either need to upgrade your card, or stick with X11.

I have a second M2 ssd being delivered this week, I'll give arch a try but i fear i won't be able to get it to work because i'm catastrophically heterosexual and cis gender and fueled by racism, misogyny, islamophobia, antisemitism, homophobia, and transphobia.


Edit (to prevent double post):

Not sure how much time you spent in each distro, but you may need to enable the proprietary drivers in your grub config. Dealing with Nvidia has generally been one of the more frustrating aspects of Linux for me lately, but I'm also using a poorly support GPU that has led its own complications. Hopefully it doesn't give you too many issues going forwards, I'm hoping Nvidia makes Linux a higher priority in the future.

I hadn't used linux in like 8-10 years but when i bought a steam deck and seen how well it was working in desktop mode and how well it ran games on the steamdeck i decided to give it a shot again so i'm definitely not a super user but i am a tech literate person who understands things like primative data types vs class objects, compilers, libraries, rendererers, neural networks, etc.

So i'm by no means a person who is an expert in specifically linux but i'm also not a fisher price level computer user.
My goal with this install setup was to have a windows 10 install (for break glass in case of emergencies needing to use windows for something i absolutely have no choice in but to run in windows, [or don't have time to figure it out in linux]), have one of the baby bitch distros up and running (like ubuntu or mint) for basic video playing/web browsing, gaming, everyday use shit that i can depend on while i make a third partition for one of the more expertise requiring distros that i expect to fuck up and have to start over and reformat and install repeatedly while i learn how not to suck.
Ubuntu, mint failed me then i tried manjewro and the nividia drivers just worked and so did everything else except the app store like "add/remove software" gui tool. but every time it fails to install something, it says the library name and i just" sudo pacman -S <whatever the name the error had where it said it couldn't find it>" in terminal and it finds it just fine.
thats the only issue i've had so far in mandingo distro and i figured its okay because it'd probably better for me to use the terminal a little more anyway to get use to it.

 

[teriyakiburns]

I'll give arch a try but i fear i won't be able to get it to work because i'm catastrophically heterosexual and cis gender and fueled by racism, misogyny, islamophobia, antisemitism, homophobia, and transphobia.

None of that matters. Are you as wide as you are tall? Then you can use Arch.

 

[GNU Abyss]

Biggest complaint is they don't allow prebuilt bin, browser forks, or electrum applications in their repo, which is also a pro. Had to resort to flatpak for a few pieces of software, and found a nice cli tool for managing application updates from both sources, topgrade. With flatpak I typically would go without frequent updates, but this takes care of it. Runit takes a whole 4 seconds from grub to my login manager. You can also install .deb files without much effort for the real oddballs such as Mullvad.

The Runit team of package maintainters is fairly small and they don't have a lot of hardware. No browser forks or Electron anything is a good trade-off. Keeping all the "sleek & modern practices" bullshit confined also helps with package bloat on your actual system.

Topgrade looks nice, but how is is different from a 4 line shell scipt? xbps-install -Su, check $?, proceed with flatpak update, check $? again for the sake of neatness.

 

[Yandex Captcha Solver]

The Runit team of package maintainters is fairly small and they don't have a lot of hardware. No browser forks or Electron anything is a good trade-off. Keeping all the "sleek & modern practices" bullshit confined also helps with package bloat on your actual system.

Agreed, it's nice to avoid some packages on top of that and discourages using Electron shitware. Keeps trannies out as well, I just noticed they lack a Code of Conduct which is a nice change of pace.

Topgrade looks nice, but how is is different from a 4 line shell scipt? xbps-install -Su, check $?, proceed with flatpak update, check $? again for the sake of neatness.

I could just run an alias 'alias upgrade="sudo xbps-install -Su && flatpak update". The one nice thing is it manages quite a few different things including zimfw a zsh framework, so it keeps that up to date, will also do git repos if configured, nix packages if I ever find a really oddball package that is maintained there that I don't want to manually build or write a template for. Not seeing much that it won't update. It's simply a nice tool that sits everything under one roof without any fiddling.

Edit: One thing I've really appreciated with Void was when installing KDE, it simply installed KDE and no base apps, while retaining all of the functionality. On Arch, Debian, Gentoo, etc I've always had to fight to get a base KDE install without all of the KDE application suite. If I want them, I'll add them, simple as. I don't want kwallet, I don't want kwelcome, discover, etc, etc.

 

[jeff7989]

Small warning, disable Troonland greeter in SDDM if you are testing 555.42.02 Nvidia drivers. It caused black screen and system to be unresponsive. Guess I'll have to re-enable SSH for such occasions to see if control can be restored or if it's hard hang. Not sure why I had it enabled in the first place.

 

[Yandex Captcha Solver]

Small warning, disable Troonland greeter in SDDM if you are testing 555.42.02 Nvidia drivers. It caused black screen and system to be unresponsive. Guess I'll have to re-enable SSH for such occasions to see if control can be restored or if it's hard hang. Not sure why I had it enabled in the first place.

control+alt+f2 should exit SDDM and bring you to the CLI login

 

[Prj4MW8iPT3vmFM2rzDc]

Small warning, disable Troonland greeter in SDDM if you are testing 555.42.02 Nvidia drivers. It caused black screen and system to be unresponsive. Guess I'll have to re-enable SSH for such occasions to see if control can be restored or if it's hard hang. Not sure why I had it enabled in the first place.

only 47% of the time though right ?

 

[std::string]

Biggest complaint is they don't allow prebuilt bin, browser forks, or electrum applications in their repo, which is also a pro.

Well neither does Fedora but you don't really see them getting the same praise, do you?

 

[jeff7989]

control+alt+f2 should exit SDDM and bring you to the CLI login

It wouldn't switch VT.
Edit. Just noticed that it's a combo for switching TTY, guess it's time for bed.

 

[Yandex Captcha Solver]

Well neither does Fedora but you don't really see them getting the same praise, do you?

It was a neutral point. Leads to less half assed package builds. Meanwhile Fedora is packaging high quality stuff such as Firefox extensions for who knows what reason. Fedora is also not lightweight nor is it quick.

 

[std::string]

It was a neutral point. Leads to less half assed package builds. Meanwhile Fedora is packaging high quality stuff such as Firefox extensions for who knows what reason. Fedora is also not lightweight nor is it quick.

Wow you found a package last updated six years ago good job

 

[Yandex Captcha Solver]

Wow you found a package last updated six years ago good job

Is this extension better?
>updated 3 months ago

 

[std::string]

Is this extension better?
>updated 3 months ago

Does the existence of packages in a repo that you do not have to install trigger you?

 

[Yandex Captcha Solver]

Does the existence of packages in a repo that you do not have to install trigger you?

No, you just merely mentioned that Fedora had certain standards for their packages. I pointed out that they aren't that great out after you complained my previous example wasn't recent enough. After I didn't compliment Fedora or something.

 

[GNU Abyss]

I could just run an alias 'alias upgrade="sudo xbps-install -Su && flatpak update". The one nice thing is it manages quite a few different things including zimfw a zsh framework, so it keeps that up to date, will also do git repos if configured, nix packages if I ever find a really oddball package that is maintained there that I don't want to manually build or write a template for. Not seeing much that it won't update. It's simply a nice tool that sits everything under one roof without any fiddling.

That's a way better sell, especially managing nix packages. Fuck ever working with their native package manager by hand.

Well neither does Fedora but you don't really see them getting the same praise, do you?

People who run Fedora want everything and the kitchen sink included, no? That's normally the expectation for big mainstream distros.

 

[Another Char Clone]

To install the proprietary driver, you'd run sudo pacman -S nvidia, and add MODULES=(nvidia nvidia_modeset nvidia_uvm nvidia_drm) to your /etc/mkiniticpio.conf (or rather, add the nvidia modules to the list of modules already present), and run sudo mkinitcpio -P.

Sometimes, I feel lucky I run gentoo, since I never had any issues with nvidia drivers with my 3090 for LLM stuff. Kernel modules and firmware binaries in initrd is hell to manage. Oh yeah, did I mention needing to make sure all the firmware binaries are pulled in by whatever initrd setup mechanism you're using? Check the "modinfo nvidia" output and cpio -t on your initrd to make sure they are actually included if you want to load the drivers from initramfs.

In my case, I sidestep the entire issue by just having any boot path related disk drivers built into the kernel. All drivers that require firmware binaries will be built as modules, so by the time udev and friends come in to load them, whatever dependencies on disk are already mounted and available. My kernel boot param is just a simple root=PARTUUID=XXXX. It will only fail to find the disk if I have a very bad disk corruption. My demands aren't huge, just boot to the console so I can login and run startx or something.

It would be a good idea to keep at least 2 older kernels in grub so you can attempt to boot the system if the new upgrade breaks something. If I fuck up bad enough that the system won't boot, I just pull out an external bootable Linux like SystemRescueCD and chroot into my system to roll back whatever I did, happened a few times, but that was due to RTC battery dying and wiping out the EFI boot configuration for grub.

 

[std::string]

People who run Fedora want everything and the kitchen sink included, no? That's normally the expectation for big mainstream distros.

Well that's why most people who install Fedora immediately enable RPMFusion

The actual Fedora repos are clean. They have a commitment to making everything reproducible from source and the only exception they allow is firmware. Electron and Node stuff, for example, usually want to update before building something and so the binary they make today may differ from the binary produced tomorrow. So that's out.

 

[SCV]

I tried 3 different distros tryign to get nvidia drivers to work until i tried manjaro after some one told me to and everything works perfect now.
What kind of nerd stereotype have i accidentally boxed myself into?

My goal with this install setup was to have a windows 10 install (for break glass in case of emergencies needing to use windows for something i absolutely have no choice in but to run in windows, [or don't have time to figure it out in linux]), have one of the baby bitch distros up and running (like ubuntu or mint) for basic video playing/web browsing, gaming, everyday use shit that i can depend on while i make a third partition for one of the more expertise requiring distros that i expect to fuck up and have to start over and reformat and install repeatedly while i learn how not to suck.

I have a second M2 ssd being delivered this week, I'll give arch a try but i fear i won't be able to get it to work because i'm catastrophically heterosexual and cis gender and fueled by racism, misogyny, islamophobia, antisemitism, homophobia, and transphobia.

Use Artix. It will mesh well with your various disabilities such as being straight and able to notice patterns but more importantly it has a live cd/usb image with the calamares installer (a GUI installer) and because it's arch based has access to the AUR. I have an artix machine using nvidia cards and it literally just werks. I don't even think I had to install the nivida package but if I'm just forgetting it's because it is literally just "sudo pacman -S nvidia".

I think AUR access is essentially required to daily drive linux just because not everything you need will be in your distros repo. Also the "baby bitch" distros not only don't have this but also won't teach you anything useful because of how different they are. Half of being good with linux is just knowing how to use your package manager effectively and debian based stuff (ubuntu/mint) use apt but arch/artix/fagjaro use pacman. This will sound dumb in so far as "how much better could it be?" but apt fucking blows.

Also of interest is that you might not need to setup a windows 10 install on bare metal depending on what the "something I absoluresly have no choice in but to run in windows" is. Just install virtual machine manager / KVM / QEMU and you get a nice GUI for all your virtual machines needs. Setting up a windows 10 vm is easy and as long as whatever you need doesn't need gpu acceleration it should work out of the box. Basically as long as it's not a video game you're good.

If you do decide to trust this random asshole on the internet I would recommend artix with open-rc and xfce. I would also highly recommend you pick btrfs as the filesystem when installing. I moved to that from windows 7 with not much linux experience and it's worked out pretty good.