The Linux Thread - The Autist's OS of Choice

[Hulkster]

I have moved over to Debian for my home machines lately. I used to use Ubuntu (and later Xubuntu because fuck the bloated mess that KDE has become)

I tried using Debian KDE, and it sucked. This was my first distro, and I had so many weird issues. The scaling and fonts looked off. I tried using different browsers before settling on Firefox because Brave looked like it was zoomed out to 120, but Firefox still had terrible-looking fonts. I then tried asking the Linux forums and looking up the issue, but I couldn't find any solutions. Linux is not ready for the consumer market, and I'm tired of fanboys pretending otherwise.

but their increasing insistence on treating the user as fundamentally retarded finally hit my last nerve when they insisted on everything being a Flatpak. Because fuck you, you're doing it the Canonical Way™, and we know better.

The Linux packaging system is terrible. Linus Torvalds figured this out decades ago, while Linux YouTube shills told me, "Guys, installing software on Linux is so much easier than Windows, trust me, bro," only for me to try sudo apt installing software and getting constant errors. I then tried installing Flatpaks, only for it to glitch. I think I eventually just downloaded deb files from the web browser, but it was a pain compared to Windows simple click and install. That's before you even mention how bad the so-called solutions like SnapPaks are.

Shame that no business will do it. Because I've been done with RH for quite a while now (despite my earlier praise of LEAPP), and now Canonical being on my shit-list.

I would've said Debian could fill the Ubuntu void, being community-run as opposed to corporate-owned, but now that community is full of more left-wing nuts than UC Berkeley.

But no, we have to have a vendor to give us support. After all, why hire professionals to do things?

And on top of this, the "professional" vendors gave up on supporting some distros that many people relied on, like that one fork of Red Hat I forgot the name of. Then it was only supported by Linode, but then Linode sold out to some Japanese company, and I'm not even sure if they still support that distro as far as I'm aware, so the people who relied on it got backstabbed and either had to change distros or deal with the security issues. Ubuntu works good as a server, but it seems like a choice between shooting yourself and drinking cyanide; they both suck, but one's better depending on your opinion. Do you want corporate troons or grassroots troons? Pick your poison.

 

[SCV]

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

First they are bloat. And not in the "this uses 2mb more ram in order to have this great feature that I specifically don't need" bloat. They are essentially a psuedo VM for whatever is running in them. Imagine if every single program you ran was in a separate VM how much ram/cpu/etc. you would need.

But surely there are some advantages right? After all, all these big companies wouldn't be in love with containers if there wasn't some benefit. Well the benefit is it allows shitters to write brittle software and doesn't work unless everything is setup juuuust right (see also: python venvs). Normally no one would use the shitters software because setting it up would be hard/impossible but now they can distribute this freely.

So containers allow substandard (read: indian) coders to write garbage by wasting everyone's individual computer resources. Other advantages include being able to move to the cloud easily so you can be spied upon (or if you are a programmer, replaced easily), having dozens of versions of the same software (better hope ALL your snaps update when there's a vulnerability!) and being bent over a barrel when broadcomm buys VMware.

Edit: I almost forgot

What the fuck is up with the version of zsnes in the software manager? 486mb to download and 1.3gb of disk space required. I just checked their website and it's only 1mb there.

It;s a flatpak. It includes all the dependencies needed by the app to create a semi-isolated environment.

I've tried Xfce4, but I got put off by the global bar at the top. I've never liked that style of window manager.

I know people already told you that this is changeable but it's not even "you didn't know this obscure CLI command" changable. You literally right-click, choose "unlock", and can drag the task bar to where you want it. Literally completely GUI and the same as windows when windows wasn't aids.

 

[Flabba Wabba Jabba]

This is where Debian, or a Debian based distro would be the strongest. A server. Especially if you want long uptime.

If you want something that will be really light, and likely pretty solid, I could see alpine working for a server. I wouldn't recommend using the edge version. Which is basically their rolling release.

What specifically do you mean by hating debian binaries? I'm not sure I've heard of anyone that was bothered about that.

Do you think Debian's best because it's just more stable?

Alpine looks pretty good, so thank you for the suggesting I don't need much, just the lightest Linux distro (I'm considering using OpenBSD for this reason as well).

I've never liked systemd or any of the proprietary driver binaries that Ubuntu has (if they still have them). I much prefer OpenRC (hence my use of Artix). It's just too heavy in my opinion.

 

[Cpt. Stud Beefpile]

Got to be one hell of a rabbit hole behind this...

 

[SCV]

I've got Artix running and installed xlibre.

Apparently runit has these things called daemons and services? Besides starting my dhcp stack and window manager, what else would be good to set up in there? It's like a wide open sky, I don't even know what I'm missing (if anything at all), it just kinda works.

If it works then you don't need anything. Still there are a few things I expect you'll need at some point (IMO these should be defaults but alas) that I can recommend.

-ntpd: it is annoying to have your clock drift
-pacman hook to remove old packages: otherwise one day you will find your pacman cache is 50gb after you've run out of space. You could just learn the command for it but putting it in a hook means it's solved forever.
-yay (or another AUR helper): telling you to build and install AUR packages manually is the same arch snobbishness that keeps them from just having a GUI installer.
-more repos: add the community repos (universe, omniverse), 32-bit repos (lib32), and arch repos (install artix-archlinux-support, follow instructions)
-htop: much better task management. Even if the default layout kinds sucks.
-neofetch: to post on /g/ and the farms, of course.

World is your oyster really. I have like 5 browsers installed because I use too many tabs. Vidya? Steam is in the repos (so is starsector), most emulators will be in the AUR. Anything in particular you want to do?

 

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View attachment 7716372
Got to be one hell of a rabbit hole behind this...

It's just general emulation development derangement. The DuckStation dev was basically as normal as other emulator developers, then he (very understandably) got pissed off because some parasite behind 'SwanStation' forked his code and made it into a shitty plugin for the cancer on the human race that is RetroArch, and sold a paid version. So they deliberately made HIS emulator worse and made money off it.

Yes, technically that's legal, but it doesn't mean it's right. I don't like homosexuals, but I'd make an excuse for any who raped the RetroArch developers to death.

The DuckStation guy got understandably angry and changed the license to a non free one. This seems to have led to some drama where he was driven so insane that he distributed a FlatPak, which of course didn't work because they don't work, which convinced him that linux was the problem.

 

[Palmer Bangs]

The one thing that turned me off debian based systems was specifically installing and configuring httpd. They would shit up the install directory with their own preferred way of doing things. Led to many frustrated hours when I first started learning.

 

[DavidS877]

They are essentially a psuedo VM for whatever is running in them.

But they're not a VM, not even pseudo. VMs have actual separation, containers have the hope the user setup the container engine right and the kernel has no bugs.

The fun thing is you think "oh, containers, lighter weight" maybe for not having 37 systemd binaries running but the fun thing is unless the containers have a shared image in common and the container driver only keeps one copy of that image every single container has 0 shared memory with each other even when using the same libraries.

Anyone remember "shared libraries" and how they were supposed to save ram.

Running both VMs and containers you could use KSM(Kernel Samepage Merging) but that seems to have fallen out of favor. It basically wanders through memory and looks for read only pages that are identical(like libraries) and makes only one instance of them.

But they are nice for dependency hells like the WhisperX one I mentioned and other "AI" software.

 

[Retarded Weeb]

View attachment 7716372

Got to be one hell of a rabbit hole behind this...

Stenzek is well known in emulation circles for being a drama queen who frequently has schizo meltdowns over stupid bullshit. Just use Mednafen like a normal person.

 

[Hieronymus Lex]

If it works then you don't need anything. Still there are a few things I expect you'll need at some point (IMO these should be defaults but alas) that I can recommend.

-ntpd: it is annoying to have your clock drift
-pacman hook to remove old packages: otherwise one day you will find your pacman cache is 50gb after you've run out of space. You could just learn the command for it but putting it in a hook means it's solved forever.
-yay (or another AUR helper): telling you to build and install AUR packages manually is the same arch snobbishness that keeps them from just having a GUI installer.
-more repos: add the community repos (universe, omniverse), 32-bit repos (lib32), and arch repos (install artix-archlinux-support, follow instructions)
-htop: much better task management. Even if the default layout kinds sucks.
-neofetch: to post on /g/ and the farms, of course.

World is your oyster really. I have like 5 browsers installed because I use too many tabs. Vidya? Steam is in the repos (so is starsector), most emulators will be in the AUR. Anything in particular you want to do?

I recommend using btop instead of htop, it's much nicer looking.

Also consider using fastfetch instead of neofetch, since neofetch is no longer in development, though you should be aware that fastfetch is chinkware and it's a pain in the ass to config (config file is in JSON and the docs for doing that is extremely obtuse since it's autogenerated)

 

[HalHalliday]

Here's the photo from DebConf 25. They do have a pride flag, they do not have the gay nigger trans pride flag.
View attachment 7715979
You can zoom in and see if you see anyone interesting.
Here's a few interesting ones from the rest of the photos I found.
View attachment 7716006View attachment 7716008View attachment 7716010View attachment 7716012View attachment 7716015

I was told by anime-picture-profile-furry-witch-tranny on Xitter that "debian install media" is slang for estrogen in China. I would normally disregard the they/them, however I find this funny. X | XCancel | A

 

[ghastlyretard]

I know people already told you that this is changeable but it's not even "you didn't know this obscure CLI command" changable. You literally right-click, choose "unlock", and can drag the task bar to where you want it. Literally completely GUI and the same as windows when windows wasn't aids.

My bad for being in a rush to get a usable interface so I could do some work and not liking a Mac style global bar I guess. I do intend on going back and trying it again because I admit it was a rushed decision and KDE is not viable in the long term as they gut X11 from it.

 

[Anti Lolicon Bomb]

Here's the photo from DebConf 25.

Do ugly people use Linux because they are ugly or are they ugly because they use Linux?

 

[YoRHa No. 2 Type B]

I was told by anime-picture-profile-furry-witch-tranny on Xitter that "debian install media" is slang for estrogen in China. I would normally disregard the they/them, however I find this funny. X | XCancel | A

You should have included some of the replies too. Some of these are lunacy.

https://xcancel.com/SettingInAgain/status/1948054426951815440#m

https://xcancel.com/GlitchyBastard/status/1948067427839033778#m

Translation of the main message: "No, the Debian installation media meme pictures have spread abroad???"
It seems like Linux turning autists trans is not just a Western society problem.

Here's the photo from DebConf 25. They do have a pride flag, they do not have the gay nigger trans pride flag.

You can zoom in and see if you see anyone interesting.

I couldn't find Jeremy Bicha in that picture unfortunately. But maybe I didn't search hard enough.

 

[Slav Power]

This fuckface has really soured Debian as an OS, even if it's rock solid reliable.

 

[Ferryman]

It seems like Linux turning autists trans is not just a Western society problem.

Chinese forums are a fucking gold mine man, I swear. A good friend of mine moved there while we were still in highschool and I am beyond thankful that we've stayed in touch because of the sheer volume of turbo shitposts he sends my way. Never thought that China of all places would be one of the biggest bastions of old Internet culture, but, here we are.

 

[Angie Wormwood]

The problem is professionals who can do actual support are pretty rare. I mean RedHat can't hire any so how you can you expect a business whose primary focus isn't IT to be able to hire any. I think so far in my career the number of times RH support had fixed an issue before I figured it out is maybe once, out of hundreds of attempts. It's even worse when you have the fix and you try and explain to them "Please send this to someone in your organization who understands computers so it can get put into the Linux kernel." or whatever package they broke this time.

This has been brought to you by the letters R and H and the word sucks.

Usually the issues I've contacted them with have been their own developed stuff because it's doing things that it shouldn't. Like LEAPP failing with a traceback and giving no useful output. And it's not just RH. SuSE has the same problem. Years ago I had to go to their support because my employer at the time was moving to SuSE from RH (as it was cheaper). And one box needed a physical device attached for backups, but udev wasn't behaving in the way it should. After I finally got through their useless first-line support I was told by their second-line (who was actually very competent) that they do things differently. Yes, give me non-POSIX compliant udev plz and thnk u. Fuck outta here with that bullshit.

As I understand, it is not Flatpaks but Snaps that Canonical via Ubuntu is trying to force on everyone. Snaps are much worse since they're centralized.

As an example of pushback, Mint is based on Ubuntu, but they have opted to remove and block Snap (though this can be overridden). This is explained in their blog post https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=3906

You're right, what I get for posting when I'm tired. Flatpaks are still retarded, though less retarded than Snaps. And Ubuntu's insistence of fuck you, we're right, you're going to use snaps, when trying to install Firefox pushed me over the edge. I looked up how to get around that and said no, I don't think so, buh-bye.

<A bunch of retarded drivel>

Have you considered a Mac?

This fuckface has really soured Debian as an OS, even if it's rock solid reliable.

Honestly, his touch in Debian is fairly minor. As long as you stay away from KDE (and you should), you avoid him. And as long as it stays that way, everything will be good.

 

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Do ugly people use Linux because they are ugly or are they ugly because they use Linux?

SystemD disrupts facial symmetry

 

[Nice Stick]

What's the best htpc DE for Linux? Something I can install on Linux Mint and have a dedicated user that logs into it at startup and it handles Emby and YouTube? Maybe emulators but the intended computer is a potato

I've got a cheapo $100 amazon chinaman mini pc with an N5000 and 6G/128G running Devuan. It doesn't look special, but video playback is fine and it will even run some GC games with Dolphin.
If Emby does transcoding, then you'll need something with a more powerful CPU though.

Yes, but you can just use Devuan, which has all the Debian advantages without the main disadvantage and the dangerous freaks.

I can't really recommend Devuan for general users until the installer is improved and there's a winner in the alt-init system war.

The GUI installer on the live CD version is not suitable for general users and it has some bugs with non-windows created EFI partitions. The TUI installer on the desktop ISO works well though.

The systemd alternatives in Devuan are either old (sysv), slow (sysv, openrc), broken on my system (openrc), or lacking in googlable answers for common problems (runit). (I went with runit since it seems fastest). Resolving common Linux problems such as switching the audio stack or network manager often become show stoppers with these alt-init systems.

 

[Max Weber]

As I understand, it is not Flatpaks but Snaps that Canonical via Ubuntu is trying to force on everyone. Snaps are much worse since they're centralized.

AFAIR, Snaps aren't centralized any more than Flatpaks are. Sure, Canonical is running the pretty much only repository for them, but that's because nobody cares about them, not because nobody can. And running your own repo is centalization, sure, but is kind of the whole point of a distribution?

Honestly, his touch in Debian is fairly minor.

Heh.

As long as you stay away from KDE (and you should), you avoid him

He's a GNOME packager, which is the actual DE you want to avoid. KDE is fine from user perspective. Unless you're talking about politics, which, uh, good luck finding somehing at all then.