The Linux Thread - The Autist's OS of Choice

[AmpleApricots]

wait, is this steam thing why you see so many normies lately stumbling into linux places and having a meltie?

 

[The Anarki Main]

Wine even has some implementation on apple iirc.

Or something using wine. I cant remember the specifics because I can't be bothered to care much about apples shit.

WINE hasn't officially supported the Mac platform eversince they dropped 32-bit support.

wait, is this steam thing why you see so many normies lately stumbling into linux places and having a meltie?

Yes/no/kinda

That's been a thing for years, Youtubers are a large part to blame.

 

[Rust Troony]

At least distro tube sometimes is willing to say things that are a bit against the grain sometimes.

Not saying he doesn't make cringe stuff to. But he is a bit better imo.

The thumbnail that caused dozens of linux devs to dilate.

wait, is this steam thing why you see so many normies lately stumbling into linux places and having a meltie?

Yesn't, after the steam deck launched, big tech youtubers started to shill it to the point where now normies have linux in their eyes, causing them to want to use it since windows keeps getting worse and worse. Most are waiting for SteamOS 3 for some reason even though it doesnt do anything different and could easily be substituted for kinoite if they wanted 90% of the experience, but some are brave enough to try to install it only to immediately have problems because they either dont want to learn how to actually use linux or choose the most problamatic distros (Ubuntu, Manjaro, hell some even thought using HoloISO was a smart choice even though it was maintained by a single russian furry.)

 

[The Anarki Main]

SteamOS is only really built for one purpose and the desktop mode is very limited before you get into expert level fuckery that the Valve repos don't account for. Daily driving HoloISO on your main system is just a terrible idea but people insist on it because its "just arch" and arch is good.

We need to really dismantle the common misconception that Arch is hard (gentoo, anyone?) and that Manjaro and HoloISO the solution. I can't believe people actually recommend that garbage Manjaro still.

EndeavourOS and Cachy are at least maintained well by comparison, but you should ideally daily drive them after you already know what you're doing. Arch teaches you to get comfortable with maintaining the system yourself. The setup doesn't even do anything radical that Windows doesn't do. You're just forced to think about it a little bit. Thats a GOOD thing.

People say Arch is not for beginners, but I seriously believe it should be introduced to new users early on. Maybe start them off on Mint, then when they want to do more stuff, move them to Arch so they have the RTFM skills they need to be self-dependant.

Tech illiteracy is a real problem and the more we try to hand-hold to the extreme the more we make newbies confused.

 

[TheDataHorder]

Part of me wonders if they ever will, considering that many of the people in their target audience are normalfags who have never installed an OS before.

they added support for the rog ally's extra keys in a beta update and then later confirmed that they're actually gonna start supporting the ally in the future so i wouldn't be surprised that they will.
the only thing that's really an issue is gamescope, their compositor, as it currently only supports AMD officially. i think some have gotten it working on nvidia but don't quote me on that.
i bet valve knows people are gonna try and use it on their hardware for a console like experience like the old steam machines. that and there's enough bugs with the damn thing on the deck itself so they're probably just being cautious.
(who can blame them, if you were them you'd wanna avoid having another steam machine like scenario on your hands again)

 

[Yandex Captcha Solver]

the only thing that's really an issue is gamescope, their compositor, as it currently only supports AMD officially. i think some have gotten it working on nvidia but don't quote me on that.

No fuckery needed for NVIDIA and gamescope, well at least no more configuration needed which Wayland already covers (and most distros already include the config bundled with the proprietary driver now). Works just fine for me and any distro with NVIDIA propriety drivers will run it just fine, even running with drivers released 2 years ago. Granted your running with a 900 series or newer NVIDIA card due to legacy cards not being supported.

From Gamescope Github

For NVIDIA's proprietary driver, version 515.43.04+ is required (make sure the nvidia-drm.modeset=1 kernel parameter is set).

 

[WULULULULU]

Can't go wrong with OBS.

I tried OBS but everytime I record, I have to use screen recorder than game capture. And when I record, say modded XCOM 2 and Kingdom Come Deliverance, the games grind into a screeching 30-50 fps. Absolutely unacceptable.

OBS crashes on half the RTMP servers I send it to, and capture performance has gotten worse for me over the past couple of years. Its over-reliance on FFMPEG for screen-grabbing being a large part of the problem. Same issues on Windows.

GPU screen recorder seems to be by far the most efficient option. But it lacks a lot of the professional encoding settings OBS has.

Steam Recording Beta is only optimized for Radeon at the moment and in my experience the hardware encoder straight up doesn't work with NVIDIA. If you have a Geforce card, it hogs resources from the game and the recording ends up being like 10 FPS.

Steam Recording Beta, when I tested it seems to have the same issue as OBS above but its less intensive. Not a really good first impression Valve.

GPU Screen Recorder seems to work but I cannot for the life of me access AV1 encoding. It says that it is apparently unavailable in your system. Switching to HEVC works, kind of, as when you view the game record, it fluctuates sometimes on whether or not the video will lag.

 

[Sperg Coalition]

GPU Screen Recorder seems to work but I cannot for the life of me access AV1 encoding. It says that it is apparently unavailable in your system. Switching to HEVC works, kind of, as when you view the game record, it fluctuates sometimes on whether or not the video will lag.

Have you tried SimpleScreenRecorder? I personally find it really easy and straightforward to use.

Half the time it doesn't even work properly on hardware it was made for https://www.reddit.com/r/SteamDeck/comments/tnwohy/anyone_figure_out_how_to_reset_default_display/
It has been 2 years since this reddit post was made and the issue has still not been fixed, I know this because just an hour ago I finished a 40 minute long phone call guiding a friend on how to fix it. Should I put the blame on Valve being incompetent retards or Linux being a piece of shit?

I am not familiar with SteamOS but if it uses Gamescope then it's Valve's fault.

 

[Miller]

they added support for the rog ally's extra keys in a beta update and then later confirmed that they're actually gonna start supporting the ally in the future so i wouldn't be surprised that they will.
the only thing that's really an issue is gamescope, their compositor, as it currently only supports AMD officially. i think some have gotten it working on nvidia but don't quote me on that.
i bet valve knows people are gonna try and use it on their hardware for a console like experience like the old steam machines. that and there's enough bugs with the damn thing on the deck itself so they're probably just being cautious.
(who can blame them, if you were them you'd wanna avoid having another steam machine like scenario on your hands again)

Yeah, I think they want to make sure that most of the key features work properly. It's like when they introduced HDR, I think it's only available in KDE but it's cool that managed to bring that feature to Linux.

 

[Latex Catmaid]

Half the time it doesn't even work properly on hardware it was made for https://www.reddit.com/r/SteamDeck/comments/tnwohy/anyone_figure_out_how_to_reset_default_display/
It has been 2 years since this reddit post was made and the issue has still not been fixed, I know this because just an hour ago I finished a 40 minute long phone call guiding a friend on how to fix it. Should I put the blame on Valve being incompetent retards or Linux being a piece of shit?

Valve, i never had no issue with linux and ive been using it for a long tme. Support for multiple monitors has gotten better over the years. This sounds like this is something valve caused by using something outdated.

steamos is essentialy closed-source (the os on steamdeck, not the freely downloadable iso for pcs that's not updated anymore), so if anything breaks its rarely the fault of the user, but the fault of the maintainers. If it was a linux-specific problem itd be easy to replicate on any distro

Heck it's easy to fix it according to reddit, you reset the config

wait, is this steam thing why you see so many normies lately stumbling into linux places and having a meltie?

Lately? Steam os was a thing as far back as 2019 and noobs would struggle to use anything new. When I jumped from windows xp to linux I had a few problems too, problems I accidentaly caused, but couldnt fix myself. I'm still not entirely comfy with the os, but I can manage and avoid the problems better than before

 

[Dread First]

People say Arch is not for beginners, but I seriously believe it should be introduced to new users early on. Maybe start them off on Mint, then when they want to do more stuff, move them to Arch so they have the RTFM skills they need to be self-dependant.

I disagree with the assertion that Arch has anything of value to teach a Linux noob. The only thing that Arch is capable of teaching a Linux noob is how to build up a base system into a usable desktop distribution; it's a valuable skill to have, but that's not where the complexities of Linux end. Arch doesn't necessarily teach critical things that most long-time users are remotely good at.

i.e. Something goes wrong with a PKGBUILD that you're trying to set up from the AUR.

The ArchWiki has a good write-up on how PKGBUILDs work, but it does not teach you how Bash scripting works because it's assumed the user is already capable of modifying PKGBUILDs to suit their needs.

i.e. You have a need (or desire) to compile software from source (assuming what you want isn't in the AUR or that you distrust the AUR).

Git repositories have streamlined the process significantly, compared to 10-15 years ago. Even so, the Arch Wiki doesn't teach you how to compile software from source code; the AUR simply provides scripts that the user would then execute.

 

[The Anarki Main]

The only thing that Arch is capable of teaching a Linux noob is how to build up a base system into a usable desktop distribution; it's a valuable skill to have, but that's not where the complexities of Linux end.

The idea is that it teaches you how to find & follow directions and how to get around the shell, which is the core to learning literally everything else on the wiki. It is the most important thing you could possibly learn as a new user.

Steam os was a thing as far back as 2019

No, it came out years before that as part of their first Steam Machines experiment. Technically not the same SteamOS as it was Debian based, but SteamOS in some form is now 12 years old.

 

[Dread First]

The idea is that it teaches you how to find & follow directions and how to get around the shell, which is the core to learning literally everything else on the wiki. It is the most important thing you could possibly learn as a new user.

Okay, and you can just as easily learn how to navigate the shell and follow directions on quite literally any Linux distro. Arch can frontload the process and give you a crash course, but that's ultimately not what it's designed for. Telling a Linux noob to pivot to Arch if they wanna learn terminal stuff seems like a troll answer you'd give on LinuxQuestions before getting jannie'd.

I never learned terminal shit by using Arch to teach myself. My first Linux distro was Ubuntu, and this was during a time before my wireless card drivers were integrated into the kernel itself. Ubuntu documentation at the time basically gave a step-by-step overview of how to get the chipset to work: download the binary firmware package on another device, move it to a flash drive, dpkg -i wirelessdriver.deb, then create a udev rule in /etc/modprobe.d using the output that's on the Ubuntu wiki.

If you don't have the drive to fiddle with the terminal on a beginner-friendly distro using step-by-step instructions on that distro's wiki, I fail to see how you'd be able to get started with Arch, much less how it'd be a beneficial learning experience.

 

[Sperg Coalition]

It's like when they introduced HDR, I think it's only available in KDE but it's cool that managed to bring that feature to Linux.

I hope that HDR will at least be available to Xfce if Wayland support will be added to it. See here.
EDIT: As I said back in this very thread Nvidia did propose an extension to X11 named DeepColor that would have made HDR content available to X11 and Xorg but sadly it has not been implemented.

 

[He Who Points And Laughs]

I suspect that the whatever reason is that while Arch Linux is really good when you are targeting one or two unique hardware configurations, it's a bit different when you have to target every gaming PC in existence. Might as well make the UI a package you can install yourself

There is Garuda. Installs with ease and is designed for gaming. Also based on Arch.

 

[TheDataHorder]

-snip-

huh, didn't know that they added that. to be fair i haven't checked out the repo since they first announced it back in 2020 or something, i don't think it had support back then.
it's always good to be wrong once in awhile, you actually learn and improve instead of stagnating.
its sad that the 900 series cards aren't supported well in linux (yes i know why) since a lot of budget gamers still use the damn things. hell, i only upgraded from my 1070 to a 3070 a year ago because the fan broke and i couldn't find a replacement, and my attempts to jerryrig something else to it didn't cool it properly. it's still in use on my server with server fans being just enough to keep it at a reasonable temp with it's main job to transcode jellyfin streams. its a single slot card, it gets really hot. its a galax katana 1070 if you're interested, sold mainly down here in Australia in some asian countries. those heat warning lables aren't for decoration, I've burnt myself several times handling it.

i just now realized that i went on a tangent...
sorry about that...

 

[GNU Abyss]

Should I put the blame on Valve being incompetent retards or Linux being a piece of shit?

99% of the time you can assume the former. Steam has a super old issue of not conforming to X11 windowing standards which, on minimal WMs that don't implement specific workarounds, leads to fun stuff like your Steam window slowly drifting, starting halfway off your screen or doing a single random jump the first time you grab it (every popup menu will be misaligned until you do this). It's still the only program I've seen doing this. Sad state of affairs when, on the software side, any other game store company including Epic is miles ahead.

 

[The Anarki Main]

99% of the time you can assume the former. Steam has a super old issue of not conforming to X11 windowing standards which, on minimal WMs that don't implement specific workarounds, leads to fun stuff like your Steam window slowly drifting, starting halfway off your screen or doing a single random jump the first time you grab it (every popup menu will be misaligned until you do this). It's still the only program I've seen doing this. Sad state of affairs when, on the software side, any other game store company including Epic is miles ahead.

My personal favorite is the bug on TWin / KWin 3 where steam sometimes is permanently in full screen on one of your monitors and the only way to make it stop is to switch to openbox

They need to undo all of the fucking electron shit and just give us vgui again, that will singlehandedly make steam less autistic

 

[Catnip40]

How's EndeavourOS for gaming?

Almost all linux distributions works the exact same with games (depending on the desktop environment and how much services it's running) unless the distro uses a custom kernel (like how Garuda linux uses the zen kernel).
Overall EndeavourOS it's pretty minimalist and it run games pretty well., Just install steam and run games with proton or wine-GE

 

[The Anarki Main]

unless the distro uses a custom kernel (like how Garuda linux uses the zen kernel).

Zen kernel is optimized specifically for gaming. And honestly unless you're using something like realtime or hardened, the compatibility is going to be the same across the board no matter what.

Drivers, session type, proton/wine version, and how up to date your system is are the biggest factors in compatibility usually.