The Linux Thread - The Autist's OS of Choice

[elastic eye]

Anyone running an Asus Xonar Essence SXT I or II sound card?

 

[DavidS877]

Anyone running an Asus Xonar Essence SXT I or II sound card?

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That's amateur hour.

I did build an OpenStack cluster out of Raspberry Pis once. Totally useless but a fun exercise. I'm not nearly bored enough these days to try it with Kubernetes.

 

[prollyanotherlurker]

So would you consider puzzle games, like a Zachtronics game for example, to be a vice? Theres a lot of value in keeping your brain sharp, especially as you get older.
how about simulators, like DCS, or Assetto Corsa? are those vices? even if they're "realistic", they're still games, and they're a fun way to learn skills like flying or racing, albeit niche.
If a game can get you working together and chatting with friends, like playing an ArmA 3 Operation, is there no value in that?
If a game can get you legitimately thinking about the world around you, the same way a well written book or movie might, is it still a vice?

I think theres an argument to be made that theres a lot of mindless slop out there made for people interested in low-quality pleasures, thats part of why I frankly dont game much anymore, but I think its a bit reactionary to say all of this is like that. or perhaps I misunderstand what you're getting at here.

Im pretty sure GOG can be run off lutris as well, but I've mostly stuck to steam so far.

If the gaming ecosystem wasn't like it is, Maybe my opinion would be different.

What I see. With gaming, and just like anything. this isn't everyone that plays a video game. Just like someone can jack off to a porn video and not waste their life. But I do see people more and more seemingly, that I would definitely say are addicts. They behave like addicts, they are getting the same things addicts do, from other addictive behaviors.

If you can't look at the replies that's gotten, and see why I think it's sad. That people don't see there is a lot more to the world. There is so much potential I feel like people waste in the modern world, and gaming is just one thing I see, among many that lead to the same thing. But people seem to pretend it's somehow not.

That's another thing that really bothers me about it. There are actual things, you can do. Learning a real skill, learning to make something, do something. In the real world. Something that can be left behind where you're gone. Not a game that you don't even actually own, that's going to be useless probably even before your're dead, when the company stops supporting it.Things that can actually contribute to changing your life, making it better. Or making other people's lives better.

Life is short, a lot shorter than most people like to think about. And I know I've had plenty of people talk to me about things they've always wanted to do. And a lot of them, I never see actually put any action behind it. The complacency, I feel like is the most insidious thing about it. And what I was talking about when I said it's the current opiate for the masses.

 

["Controlled Demolition"]

What I see. With gaming, and just like anything. this isn't everyone that plays a video game.

And you can learn actual skills and do "actual things" in video games. Not all of them. I agree that Gaming, as it was originally formulated, is a fundamental vice. But not all video games are Gaming. Gaming is gambling, and you should absolutely kick the shit out of anyone who plays or even likes any incarnation of video game gambling, gachaslop and lootboxes included. They're addicts and they are consumed by vice. But outside that, condemning all of video games as immoral and a waste of time is the exact same as condemning all movies, books, radio and entertainment as a whole while taking slow sips out of a fresh bottle of Soylent™.

Video games can be enriching. Video games can be a way to socialize, to play together with friends. Video games can teach you something new and even new skills. Video games are another narrative medium through which stories can be told, just like in plays, books, radio and drama. Video games can make you see things in entirely different ways. Video games can change your life, and not for the worse. And, most importantly, video games are entertainment, with every connotation associated. "Wasting time" is the lowest common denominator, and if you're playing them solely for that, you're clearly doing something wrong.

Through nandgame you can interactively build yourself a computer. Is it a game? It sure uses game-narrative language to guide the player along. I can think of no better, no more interactive way to visualize actual orbital dynamics than the Principia mod for the game Kerbal Space Program, an experience which would be otherwise locked away behind a 3-year Astronomy course, a MATLAB script and a particularly vivid imagination. Through Hearts of Iron and its many map-painter games you can bring your childhood toy army fantasies to life along with an injection of history, and through LISA: The Painful you can experience a post-apocalyptic world gone mad without any women. The Farms have their own pet games in the forms of a tribute to Terry, the DOOM mapping project, or Fursan Al-Aqsa, all of which hold dear cultural value. If you can't find a game that's better than just a waste of time, or find any value in any video games, that's an indiction of your own character, not of gaming as a whole, and you may as well be denouncing all of entertainment as worthless as you pad your resume with more skills like a soulless goyroach.

But if you're shitting specifically on GaaS, League, CS:GOyslop and Gachashit, then yeah go ahead King. Those have negative cultural value.

tl;dr: Because it's so much fun, Jan!



I'm now going to complain about the cursed mire that is Steam and WINE emulation through it. These are the things that you have to find out by yourself, since nowhere in Steam or elsewhere are you going to find them explicitly listed:
1. Steam explicitly sandboxes every single game made compatible through Steam Play. It effectively isolates everything into its own WINE prefix, meaning you have to use some bizarre injection workarounds to, say, run another WINE application in the same prefix.
2. That also applies to save and configuration files, which get shuttled into their own sandboxed game-ID addressed folder: Instead of a nice, short and understandable AppData path on Windows:

C:\Users\[USER]\AppData\LocalLow\[THE GAME]

The Linux WINE-emulated equivalent is:

/home/[USER]/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/compatdata/[GAME ID]/pfx/drive_c/users/steamuser/AppData/LocalLow/[THE GAME]

Steam exposes no option to directly access the save path, as far as I'm aware, only the game path itself, so finding your save files for, say, a local backup will necessarily have you looking up the Steam game ID (if it even has one, in the case of a non-Steam game) and backtracking through a tangle of directories.
3. Proton does not include many of the codecs that come default with Windows. These codecs are proprietary and Proton cannot include them by default because of legal reasons. You aren't told this, and neither does any game using these codecs ever mention it. You won't find out until in-game cinematics are replaced with a placeholder rendering test and you've effectively bought a defective product. You have to use a custom version of Proton such as Proton-GE that adds those codecs. WINE-GE is a non-Steam equivalent, where Proton is essentially just WINE except compiled specifically to play nice with Steam. Steam itself doesn't make the process of actually using custom-compiled libraries like Proton-GE any easier, either.
4. It gets more complicated. There is a project, the UMU launcher, which should be able to launch Steam games without Steam as a dependency. Using Proton libraries. In addition to all the other ways of launching games outside of Steam via WINE, Lutris, etc. It's another example of "too much of a good thing" with Linux, where adding more and more choices doesn't inherently make for a good user experience.

 

[prollyanotherlurker]

Funny how things work out. This happens to be on topic. Also. Luke Smith finally uploaded a video again.

 

[Akerman]

Someone in here a few pages back suggested doing a Debian install with no DE and setting up Openbox then ricing it into something useful. Finally did this just now. Was a ton of fun, and I am a bit shocked at how fast my 10 y/o laptop boots with it so very useful as well. It's apparently largely trivial to turn this WM into a desktop environment, didn't really take long at all and the system is super snappy. With tint2 and PCmanFM you basically have a 'shell' ready to go. Panels, desktop icons, systemtray etc. I just installed packages that go into the system tray as you do on DEs. After I added them to the conf they just appeared there as normal with no need for configuration on the panel itself. There's even GUI programs to change the panels around and add launchers if you want which I did. I went with jgmenu for the "Start menu", a simple little menu that I only customized with shutdown, restart and log out buttons. I got myself a nice little Winlite system that boots in seconds thanks to the thread, ty!

Spoiler: Potential issues if you try this.

The only thing that turned into a wrinkle was my Kitty terminal launching slow as shit, I did a strace on it to see what's up and found that python tries to bytecode cache into the system folder which it does not have permissions to do. This led to it asking like hundreds of times before giving up after 3 seconds. I ended up just redirecting it to a cache in the home directory instead of messing about with permissions but maybe giving permissions is a better solution? I am new so I am not sure. That was the only legit issue, but there was also having to add yourself to sudoers which Debian insists on not doing during install. I say legit, because I genuinely don't know if not doing this is a security measure or if the minimal installer is just broken. This also didn't happen this time but it did before: I have a habit of doing a wipefs before installing Debian onto any drive because the last time I installed Debian the installer left a GRUB bootloader from another distro I hopped from and it didn't even boot as a result. So some heads up about all of that if anyone else does this. Would strongly recommend, it's a good learning experience if you are new as well.

 

[teriyakiburns]

Anyone running an Asus Xonar Essence SXT I or II sound card?

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Therapy is for pussies who want to be told they never did anything wrong. k8s will never pander to your delusions. It may confuse you, abuse you, or render you infertile and unfuckable, but it will never lie to you.

Mostly.

 

[DavidS877]

Today's "It's easier with Linux".

My main desktop as I mentioned the other day I added some stuff to, the other thing I added was a new, larger NVMe, but due to the boot fun I decided not to move everything over just yet. I decided today was the day.
The problem is I had LVM for / and /home and wanted to be rid of them, so usually I'd dd the partitions to the new drive. This time it was a bit more fun.

1. Make new partitions on new drive.
2. mkfs.fat(EFI) mkfs.ext4 and mkswap as appropriate.
3. Mount new root and rsync / and /home to it.
4. Reboot into live USB
5. mount new / and /boot/efi into temp dir.
6. Do one last rsync, including the EFI directory this time
7. Edit new /etc/fstab with proper UUIDs
8. Chroot into new root and run update-initramfs
9. Run update-grub. Which fails.
10. Bind mount /dev /sys and /proc into chroot.
11. Chroot back in and run update-grub
12. Check /boot/efi/EFI/debian/grub.cfg and notice it's still looking for LVM, fix the UUIDs there.
13. Check /boot/grub/grub.cfg and see it is correct.
14. Reboot
15. System doesn't boot
16. Boot back into live USB. Mount all the filesystems including /dev /sys and /proc
17. Run update-initramfs again and see the normal errors.
18. Reboot
19. Profit
20. Wipe old EFI partition to make sure the system doesn't try and boot the old drive.
21. Once all is confirmed, wipe now second drive and mount it somewhere for scratch space.

Windows, of course, would have been two steps:
1. Reinstall Windows on new drive.
2. Copy over any important files.

 

[⠠⠠⠅⠑⠋⠋⠁⠇⠎ ⠠⠠⠊⠎ ⠠⠠⠁ ⠠⠠⠋⠁⠛]

The only thing that turned into a wrinkle was my Kitty terminal launching slow as shit, I did a strace on it to see what's up and found that python tries to bytecode cache into the system folder which it does not have permissions to do. This led to it asking like hundreds of times before giving up after 3 seconds. I ended up just redirecting it to a cache in the home directory instead of messing about with permissions but maybe giving permissions is a better solution? I am new so I am not sure.

Sounds weird. I have no idea about Kitty. Do you have it starting up with a session already starting a sudo'd shell or something maybe?

That was the only legit issue, but there was also having to add yourself to sudoers which Debian insists on not doing during install. I say legit, because I genuinely don't know if not doing this is a security measure or if the minimal installer is just broken.

Your first login user will be setup as a member of the group if you don't set a root password. Otherwise it sticks to the way it has always been.

 

[Akerman]

Sounds weird. I have no idea about Kitty. Do you have it starting up with a session already starting a sudo'd shell or something maybe?

I did check but no, I also checked if the shell (or really anything) was running as root and for privileges, but it doesn't appear so unless I am mistaken. Pointing it to cache in home instead seems to have fixed the problem, though.

Your first login user will be setup as a member of the group if you don't set a root password. Otherwise it sticks to the way it has always been.

That's most likely it.

 

[prollyanotherlurker]

Today's "It's easier with Linux".

My main desktop as I mentioned the other day I added some stuff to, the other thing I added was a new, larger NVMe, but due to the boot fun I decided not to move everything over just yet. I decided today was the day.
The problem is I had LVM for / and /home and wanted to be rid of them, so usually I'd dd the partitions to the new drive. This time it was a bit more fun.

1. Make new partitions on new drive.
2. mkfs.fat(EFI) mkfs.ext4 and mkswap as appropriate.
3. Mount new root and rsync / and /home to it.
4. Reboot into live USB
5. mount new / and /boot/efi into temp dir.
6. Do one last rsync, including the EFI directory this time
7. Edit new /etc/fstab with proper UUIDs
8. Chroot into new root and run update-initramfs
9. Run update-grub. Which fails.
10. Bind mount /dev /sys and /proc into chroot.
11. Chroot back in and run update-grub
12. Check /boot/efi/EFI/debian/grub.cfg and notice it's still looking for LVM, fix the UUIDs there.
13. Check /boot/grub/grub.cfg and see it is correct.
14. Reboot
15. System doesn't boot
16. Boot back into live USB. Mount all the filesystems including /dev /sys and /proc
17. Run update-initramfs again and see the normal errors.
18. Reboot
19. Profit
20. Wipe old EFI partition to make sure the system doesn't try and boot the old drive.
21. Once all is confirmed, wipe now second drive and mount it somewhere for scratch space.

Windows, of course, would have been two steps:
1. Reinstall Windows on new drive.
2. Copy over any important files.

you can do the same thing on linux.

That's actually probably what I would have done lol. Just installed whatever distro. copied the files.

I've done it before actually. I've also done it with bsd.

To me, being able to do it the way I would have, but also having the option to go the route you did is the great thing about it. You have so much control, and so many options.

 

[YoRHa No. 2 Type B]

Windows, of course, would have been two steps:
1. Reinstall Windows on new drive.
2. Copy over any important files.

You can also image a Windows install to a different computer with a new drive, I have done it before.
It can get fucky if you do it with a new machine with totally new hardware, but modern Windows is surprisingly resilient to hardware changes, and outside of something as drastic as going from Intel to AMD and vice versa can at least get you into the OS to the point where you can get new drivers. You can always install some drivers manually to ensure it starts up on different hardware.

 

[Elysian]

Today's "It's easier with Linux".

My main desktop as I mentioned the other day I added some stuff to, the other thing I added was a new, larger NVMe, but due to the boot fun I decided not to move everything over just yet. I decided today was the day.
The problem is I had LVM for / and /home and wanted to be rid of them, so usually I'd dd the partitions to the new drive. This time it was a bit more fun.

1. Make new partitions on new drive.
2. mkfs.fat(EFI) mkfs.ext4 and mkswap as appropriate.
3. Mount new root and rsync / and /home to it.
4. Reboot into live USB
5. mount new / and /boot/efi into temp dir.
6. Do one last rsync, including the EFI directory this time
7. Edit new /etc/fstab with proper UUIDs
8. Chroot into new root and run update-initramfs
9. Run update-grub. Which fails.
10. Bind mount /dev /sys and /proc into chroot.
11. Chroot back in and run update-grub
12. Check /boot/efi/EFI/debian/grub.cfg and notice it's still looking for LVM, fix the UUIDs there.
13. Check /boot/grub/grub.cfg and see it is correct.
14. Reboot
15. System doesn't boot
16. Boot back into live USB. Mount all the filesystems including /dev /sys and /proc
17. Run update-initramfs again and see the normal errors.
18. Reboot
19. Profit
20. Wipe old EFI partition to make sure the system doesn't try and boot the old drive.
21. Once all is confirmed, wipe now second drive and mount it somewhere for scratch space.

Windows, of course, would have been two steps:
1. Reinstall Windows on new drive.
2. Copy over any important files.

Couldn’t you have just made a backup of /home/, partitioned the drive with a copy of gparted on the Live USB and done a full reinstall with the GUI installer like a normal person?

 

[Nothing Is Written]

Fresh format of Arch. Why the fuck is it such a headache to install ProtonVPN (WG) with a killswitch without it making Networkmanager sperg out about DNS resolutions. Like fuck me, I just want a bare bones nftables ruleset that's overridden by the VPN anyway because it'll always be on.

I just want to seed torrents with open ports without paranoia.

I don't know if I want to use Arch btw

 

[DavidS877]

Couldn’t you have just made a backup of /home/, partitioned the drive with a copy of gparted on the Live USB and done a full reinstall with the GUI installer like a normal person?

Sure, would have taken significantly longer as that would pull packages from the network. I'd have to make a package list to make sure everything gets installed and go find all the other non /home customizations. I think it was just network and Munin setup, but I'd probably forget a bunch of other stuff.

It took me as long to type out the steps as to do them. Especially as the initial rsync was done while I did other stuff and the follow-up only had to copy a few files.

You can also image a Windows install to a different computer with a new drive, I have done it before.
It can get fucky if you do it with a new machine with totally new hardware, but modern Windows is surprisingly resilient to hardware changes, and outside of something as drastic as going from Intel to AMD and vice versa can at least get you into the OS to the point where you can get new drivers. You can always install some drivers manually to ensure it starts up on different hardware.

I've got about a 20% success rate of doing that and Windows not blowing up. Most of the time I have to go in and run the startup fixes either in the GUI or command line. And then about 20% of the time that all fails too and I end up blowing it all away anyway.

 

[Dread First]

Canonical are swapping out sudo with a Rust version.

https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/adopting-sudo-rs-by-default-in-ubuntu-25-10/60583

Kek.

Fun fact: the OpenBSD project abandoned sudo in favour of doas. This was back in November 2015 with the release of OpenBSD 5.8. Biggest reason why they did so was because of perceived vulnerabilities with sudo, and to simplify the absolute mess that was /etc/sudoers. I love how Canonical Ltd is taking it upon themselves to reinvent sudo (but in Rust) instead of, oh I don’t know… ADOPTING A MATURE, WELL-ATTESTED PIECE OF SOFTWARE WRITTEN BY THE SAME PEOPLE WHO MADE OPENSSH & LIBRESSL POST-HEARTBLEED. I hope their Rust rewrite of sudo immolates itself upon first being distributed. Fucking Shuttleworth and his insistence on arbitrary, meaningless design choices for the sake of marketplace differentiation.

 

[Frederica Bernkastel]

I've heard Canonical is one of the worst open source companies to apply at for a job.

 

[Ferryman]

Does anyone here have any experience with "copying" a Gentoo installation from one machine to another, including to and from x86 and ARM architectures? Right now I have one "main" installation with all the packages I reasonably need, and I was thinking of compiling my own binaries to just port and install to my other computers, including a Pi 5 & Radxa Rock B+. AFAIK Gentoo does support ARM stuff, though I am not exactly sure if x86 packages will function on ARM.

 

[El Goblina]

Does anyone here have any experience with "copying" a Gentoo installation from one machine to another, including to and from x86 and ARM architectures? Right now I have one "main" installation with all the packages I reasonably need, and I was thinking of compiling my own binaries to just port and install to my other computers, including a Pi 5 & Radxa Rock B+. AFAIK Gentoo does support ARM stuff, though I am not exactly sure if x86 packages will function on ARM.

Learn crossdev: https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Crossdev#Build_packages_with_crossdev

It's the Gentoo way to do Gentoo on potatoes.

 

[Car Won't Crank]

I've heard Canonical is one of the worst open source companies to apply at for a job.

They're the Microshit of open source.