The Linux Thread - The Autist's OS of Choice

[One Angry Computer]

The internet just fucking off and dying is a more acceptable outcome. I'll see y'all on freenet.

Thanks for the tip, I'll bust out an old laptop with a broken screen to host a freenet server, and perhaps something else.

 

[Spilled Spaghett]

I'm finding things are a smidge easier on Mint then Arch, but I keep being compelled to try Arch based distros. Fuck it, everything just weeks on Mint except for little things I can ignore.

I'm still a linux noob but over the last month or two I finally forced myself to daily drive linux. I've messed with Mint but not seriously. I've been using plain Arch with KDE for about two months now and it's really not so bad. Getting used to the terminal to manage programs was the hardest part. I still don't know all the tricks to it but I know enough. At some point I'll need to learn how to better clean out my system of unused packages, search for left over files, stuff like that.

I mainly installed Arch just to see if I could. It took some troubleshooting but the answer is yes. If you use archinstall it's actually braindead how easy it is. But without being technologically savvy I truly can't tell you what the advantage of Arch over say Mint is other than I guess the default package manager. My issues are almost never with Arch but with KDE or pipewire whatever. As much as I like KDE as a desktop environment it does often feel kind of bloated. It's also easily the gayest DE on the market, backed by Google, built by trannies, and has a social media presence on every site imaginable except for X.

All this to say, unless you have a specific reason for switching to Arch, if it works there's no reason to switch.

 

[Angie Wormwood]

Nuking RedHat off the face of the earth is too good for them.

Your first mistake was doing container work.

 

[DavidS877]

Your first mistake was doing container work.

I'm not, at least not by choice. The product I'm installing has an option of 'container' or '7 individual VMs' for the installation. And it's using RHEL UBI for the base for the images so there's no reason at all it can't simply install on a RHEL VM into different directories on different ports for each component like the previous versions did.

 

[Belisarius Cawl]

Your first mistake was doing container work.

Can someone redpill me on why containers are ass? I've only dicked around with Docker a bit

 

[Belisarius Cawl]

I'm still a linux noob but over the last month or two I finally forced myself to daily drive linux. I've messed with Mint but not seriously. I've been using plain Arch with KDE for about two months now and it's really not so bad. Getting used to the terminal to manage programs was the hardest part. I still don't know all the tricks to it but I know enough. At some point I'll need to learn how to better clean out my system of unused packages, search for left over files, stuff like that.

I asked ChatGPT what Arch has as the equivalent of sudo apt autoremove on Debian and derivatives and because I am not going to blindly suggest what an LLM says to do without researching I ended up here:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Pacman/Tips_and_tricks#Removing_unused_packages_(orphans)

The article was written by a human but, still, tread carefully

I mainly installed Arch just to see if I could. It took some troubleshooting but the answer is yes. If you use archinstall it's actually braindead how easy it is. But without being technologically savvy I truly can't tell you what the advantage of Arch over say Mint is other than I guess the default package manager.

The main advantages I see people citing, not having used Arch or any derivative myself, is leading (or maybe bleeding) edge packages and a higher degree of customization more readily attainable. Mint, being based on Debian, is much more conservative, but I have had few problems. I had to compile R from source because Mint's R binaries are fucking old and I just installed SDKMAN! so I could have an up-to-date version of the JVM build tool Gradle but that's working with the system Java JDK which is actually recent enough for my needs.

My issues are almost never with Arch but with KDE or pipewire whatever. As much as I like KDE as a desktop environment it does often feel kind of bloated. It's also easily the gayest DE on the market, backed by Google, built by trannies, and has a social media presence on every site imaginable except for X.

I didn't know KDE was trooned out. I use Xfce4 and as I understand it it's substantially more lightweight than KDE. I barely had to change any settings but YMMV. Here's an idea of what Xfce4 looks like:

 

[Spilled Spaghett]

The main advantages I see people citing, not having used Arch or any derivative myself, is leading (or maybe bleeding) edge packages and a higher degree of customization more readily attainable. Mint, being based on Debian, is much more conservative, but I have had few problems. I had to compile R from source because Mint's R binaries are fucking old and I just installed SDKMAN! so I could have an up-to-date version of the JVM build tool Gradle but that's working with the system Java JDK which is actually recent enough for my needs.

I really only understood some of those words. I was a comp sci drop out for a reason. Really my system is for gaming. I'm sure to tech wizards those differences are actually meaningful.

I didn't know KDE was trooned out. I use Xfce4 and as I understand it it's substantially more lightweight than KDE. I barely had to change any settings but YMMV. Here's an idea of what Xfce4 looks like:

Google alone is like the mark of the beast. They have their fingers in everything. Canonical now gets to join the ranks of knowingly hiring literal child rapists. I try to take Null's stance that if the tech is good why not use it and make them seethe that they can't stop chuds from using their perfect software. But I mainly care that there is nothing obviously annoying built in. KDE doesn't come bundled with a bunch of pride themes but when I installed Gnome and Cinnamon they did. I don't even want it on my system.

Those were the only other two DEs I've tried so I haven't done a ton of exploring. My main system is stable so I don't know if I want to change just yet. I typically fuck around on my laptop so if something breaks I just wipe it and start again. Right now it has CachyOS with KDE but I might install Xfce4 and try it out.

 

[prollyanotherlurker]

All this to say, unless you have a specific reason for switching to Arch, if it works there's no reason to switch.

I would say that isn't just arch. If you don't have a reason to move to some distro, and the one you are using now works. There really isn't any reason to switch.

Can someone redpill me on why containers are ass? I've only dicked around with Docker a bit

I don't think they're that bad. Generally they can be pretty convenient, at least compared to a full VM. The tools you use to manage them will probably be a big deciding factor in how much of a pain they are to manage. And how much complexity needs to go into the thing you are doing.

There is lxc/lxd, docker, podman, and some others so it will probably make a difference which you have to use. On how much of a pita it's going to be. Some make it pretty simple.

 

[Belisarius Cawl]

I really only understood some of those words. I was a comp sci drop out for a reason. Really my system is for gaming. I'm sure to tech wizards those differences are actually meaningful.

The long and short of it:

• R is a programming language used for statistics and machine learning (aka data science). It was initially a clone of another language called S and became so successful that the main commercial implementation of S, S-PLUS, completely fell out of favor and is no longer developed
• SDKMAN! is kind of like pacman but for Java and related languages that run on what is called the Java virtual machine or JVM, an extra layer between the programming language and the operating system which increases portability and security and has a few other substantial benefits
• The JDK (and this may actually help you with understanding certain Linux package names, including on Arch from what I can tell) is the Java development kit, which has everything in the JRE (Java runtime environment) that makes running Java programs possible in addition to extra stuff that developers of Java and other JVM languages would need
• Gradle is a build tool, a software tool that helps convert human-readable Java code or other code (not even just other JVM languages) into a format that a machine can actually execute and does so in an automated, (relatively) easy way

 

[Akerman]

My fonts appeared kinda bleh on my screen recently after getting a bigger monitor. I didn't notice it before but now it's very apparent. I tried this potential solution from a recent Debian thread and it appears to have fixed it for me. Here is a before and after from the site:



It's very slight and still an experimental setting that's turned off by default on most distros according to the documentation, and some users don't see any difference or prefer that it stay off. But if it was blurry & washed out slightly before and it fixed it then you definitely notice it when you change it. It's very apparent on bold text I feel.

 

[Belisarius Cawl]

My fonts appeared kinda bleh on my screen recently after getting a bigger monitor. I didn't notice it before but now it's very apparent. I tried this potential solution from a recent Debian thread and it appears to have fixed it for me. Here is a before and after from the site:

View attachment 7707217 View attachment 7707218

It's very slight and still an experimental setting that's turned off by default on most distros according to the documentation, and some users don't see any difference or prefer that it stay off. But if it was blurry & washed out slightly before and it fixed it then you definitely notice it when you change it. It's very apparent on bold text I feel.

I've heard laptop screens can also be a bit finicky, though I haven't noticed any deficiencies myself

 

[Banana Hammock]

Just be careful with that shit. LLMs are sometimes useful, but always remember that whenever they get something right is is ALWAYS by accident. People might be alright with an 85% getting it right by accident rate, until it writes a script that deletes a year's worth of music projects like this moron:

https://archive.is/58qQj

Recently, Adrien's Digital Basement used DeepSeek to try to understand some assembly code for an old Zenith device. It did surprisingly well, but still guessed totally wrong on several key pieces and Adrien was smart enough to know better and look it up on actual hardware datasheets: https://youtu.be/5Cdh13hjNf0

Never run any code it gives you in a terminal without reading all of it carefully first! If you do not know how to read code/program, DO NOT RUN SAID CODE. You can use LLMs to write code piece by piece and run the small parts your understand to build up what you want to do first.

Nah, ChatGPT and I are cool. I make sure to thank it before closing the tab.

 

[The Big Bad D]

My fonts appeared kinda bleh on my screen recently after getting a bigger monitor. I didn't notice it before but now it's very apparent. I tried this potential solution from a recent Debian thread and it appears to have fixed it for me.

Pretty sure that only applies to fonts that don't have their own hinting information and have to fall back to the autohinter. That's what the docs say, at least.

 

[Akerman]

Pretty sure that only applies to fonts that don't have their own hinting information and have to fall back to the autohinter. That's what the docs say, at least.

Did some further research. Apparently it's a long standing bug with some applications and this variable fixes it, Arch Wiki:

 

[innocent jogger]

I really only understood some of those words. I was a comp sci drop out for a reason. Really my system is for gaming. I'm sure to tech wizards those differences are actually meaningful.

View attachment 7706939View attachment 7706948
Google alone is like the mark of the beast. They have their fingers in everything. Canonical now gets to join the ranks of knowingly hiring literal child rapists. I try to take Null's stance that if the tech is good why not use it and make them seethe that they can't stop chuds from using their perfect software. But I mainly care that there is nothing obviously annoying built in. KDE doesn't come bundled with a bunch of pride themes but when I installed Gnome and Cinnamon they did. I don't even want it on my system.

Those were the only other two DEs I've tried so I haven't done a ton of exploring. My main system is stable so I don't know if I want to change just yet. I typically fuck around on my laptop so if something breaks I just wipe it and start again. Right now it has CachyOS with KDE but I might install Xfce4 and try it out.

I rarely see anyone mention it but I have been test running LXQT lately and so far it is really smooth. If you are looking for a light weight, modular DE it is worth checking out.

 

[The Saltening]

I really only understood some of those words. I was a comp sci drop out for a reason. Really my system is for gaming. I'm sure to tech wizards those differences are actually meaningful.

View attachment 7706939View attachment 7706948
Google alone is like the mark of the beast. They have their fingers in everything. Canonical now gets to join the ranks of knowingly hiring literal child rapists. I try to take Null's stance that if the tech is good why not use it and make them seethe that they can't stop chuds from using their perfect software. But I mainly care that there is nothing obviously annoying built in. KDE doesn't come bundled with a bunch of pride themes but when I installed Gnome and Cinnamon they did. I don't even want it on my system.

Those were the only other two DEs I've tried so I haven't done a ton of exploring. My main system is stable so I don't know if I want to change just yet. I typically fuck around on my laptop so if something breaks I just wipe it and start again. Right now it has CachyOS with KDE but I might install Xfce4 and try it out.

Ahhhh it would figure that the most advanced KDE with the most up to date features like hdr would be supported by the devil

 

[TJT]

I'm still a linux noob but over the last month or two I finally forced myself to daily drive linux. I've messed with Mint but not seriously. I've been using plain Arch with KDE for about two months now and it's really not so bad. Getting used to the terminal to manage programs was the hardest part. I still don't know all the tricks to it but I know enough. At some point I'll need to learn how to better clean out my system of unused packages, search for left over files, stuff like that.

I mainly installed Arch just to see if I could. It took some troubleshooting but the answer is yes. If you use archinstall it's actually braindead how easy it is. But without being technologically savvy I truly can't tell you what the advantage of Arch over say Mint is other than I guess the default package manager. My issues are almost never with Arch but with KDE or pipewire whatever. As much as I like KDE as a desktop environment it does often feel kind of bloated. It's also easily the gayest DE on the market, backed by Google, built by trannies, and has a social media presence on every site imaginable except for X.

All this to say, unless you have a specific reason for switching to Arch, if it works there's no reason to switch.

Arch's advantages are mostly related to your ability to truly mess with it. Which you can do in other distros as well Arch just explicitly has few guardrails. This is beneficial if you are making your own stuff but less so if you just need a reliable daily driver.

I just use Fedora these days because it has more support. I do not use GNOME though because I hate it.

 

[innocent jogger]

Arch's advantages are mostly related to your ability to truly mess with it. Which you can do in other distros as well Arch just explicitly has few guardrails. This is beneficial if you are making your own stuff but less so if you just need a reliable daily driver.

I just use Fedora these days because it has more support. I do not use GNOME though because I hate it.

It has been well established that nobody
uses GNOME.

 

[ghastlyretard]

It's also easily the gayest DE on the market

I don't know the sexual preferences of KDE's contributors, but I suppose even Jeremy Bicha (friend to Debian, Gnome, and Canonical) at least raped underage girls instead of boys.

Arch just explicitly has few guardrails. This is beneficial if you are making your own stuff but less so if you just need a reliable daily driver.

I'm probably literally an retard, but when I made my decision to daily drive I went for Arch despite warnings in this thread to avoid it for a first real attempt. I've found that it's been incredibly reliable with the only issue I've run into being my move to Xlibre. I use it on my desktop, laptop, and my work issued laptop. I haven't moved to Xlibre yet on my personal devices only because I have nvidia graphics and haven't had the chance to look into whatever shit is involved in getting that to work with Xlibre.

 

[Aidan]

I rarely see anyone mention it but I have been test running LXQT lately and so far it is really smooth. If you are looking for a light weight, modular DE it is worth checking out.

I've used LXQT for awhile before and had no problems with it. I'd put it on par with XFCE for nice, easy-to-use relatively lightweight desktop environment. Underrated and probably overshadowed by XFCE for people who are looking for desktop environments like that.