The Linux Thread - The Autist's OS of Choice

[acid_ra1n]

And that's it. you should have working wifi.

I asked around and network manager despite not being super minimalist has a decent CLI so I used that

 

[August Levasseur]

Unironically install Guix. You can set up your server config once then have it reproduced bit for bit on any system, forever, with one simple "guix deploy". As far as suckless is concerned, you can definitely make Guix as minimalist or as maximalist as you want, and the best part is you can control the entire thing from one config file. TLDR, you can declaratively list packages you want in your config.scm file to install them system-wide, or simply run "guix install <package>" like on any other distro if you want them per-user. Its pruddy good. If you can't find the packages you want in the main repos, finding, inspecting & adding community repos is also trivially easy.

In related news, this recent patch added preliminary support for AppArmor and a default profile. It isn't activated by default yet but it can be manually applied. Even though both SELinux and AppArmor can be invasive at times, having some MAC framework functionality is definitely a big plus for the project. Debian has been shipping AppArmor by default for quite a while and I haven't really heard anyone complain about it, so it will probably be fine here too.

For the Guixers here, what hardware do y’all run? Seems to me the biggest limitation to using Guix would be the be the need to run a libre kernel, so some hardware will just never work right for you.

 

[ProudSkibidiTolietAryan]

Phoronix: ReactOS Starts 2026 With Another "Major Step" Toward Windows NT6 Compatibility (archive)

From the comments:

loss32: let's build a Win32/Linux (archive) (ghost) (mega)

View attachment 8361997

They need to UPDATE the wine file explorer. Like its SO annoying to use. Like JUST add the ability to search in the search bar and ill be happy.
I hope in 100 years Nautils will be able to intercept WIne file explorer calls and use it instead with direct integration or something

What is the ..... Im so sorry.... Usecase of this?

A dream of a Linux distribution where the entire desktop environment is Win32 software running under WINE. A completely free and open-source OS where you can just download .exe files and run them, for the power user who isn't necessarily a Unixhead, or just for someone who thinks this sounds fun.

So you want a MORE clanky version of windows, to run Nonfree software, that also has a performance impact AND, want to ONLY run windows programs.... JUST USE WINDOWS AT THAT POINT?? I DONT GET IT...
You can already RUN exe programs on linux with wine, WHAT would you get from this compared to Tiny11? You think someone who can install a operating system CANT navigate stuff on Linux, This seems 1000x MORE complicated than Linux...

• The late-90's-to-early-2010's PC desktop experience was great for power users, especially creative users. Let's keep the dream

If you talking about the User interface of WIndows during the early 90s and 2000s and are comparing that to now in practicality than fuck you whoever wrote this, Windows CMD fucking SUCKS and im pretty sure on xp you could not even COPY TEXT with command prompt, it was ALWAYS buggy and always fucked up your copy and pastes, You can still do almost everything on modern windows as well as Microsoft imcomptence means that they keep a bunch of core windows programs the same. No im sorry but in terms of usability nautilus absolutely rapes older windows file explorers even the good ones.

Windows 7 and Xp were "Ol reliable" not "Ol comfortable".

Its not even pleasent to look at the standard Wine UI, I mean its not even areo, its barely areo its annoying as shit to use, ANYONE whose had to use the WINE file explorer would NOT use it if there was a 1 button alternative.

LMAO THEY WANT IT ON WAYLAND TO

 

[WielkiWapiesz2137]

For the Guixers here, what hardware do y’all run? Seems to me the biggest limitation to using Guix would be the be the need to run a libre kernel, so some hardware will just never work right for you.

You don't need to by using nonguix you can just use normal kernel

 

[Dread First]

For the Guixers here, what hardware do y’all run? Seems to me the biggest limitation to using Guix would be the be the need to run a libre kernel, so some hardware will just never work right for you.

Pssst: it's an open secret that Linux-libre users sidestep either the device firmware requirement or the FOSS-only requirement. Trisquel users have workarounds to enable Ubuntu's restricted and multiverse repositories, nonguix exists for Guix, and so on. The biggest problem for Linux-libre is microcode updates for actual vulnerabilities caused by Intel ME or AMD PSP. Even if you eschew all other binary firmware, do you really wanna be a shmuck on the internet without the microcode mitigations? Rationalise it by saying it's like your BIOS. Don't think about it too hard, or else you'll invalidate the whole reason why you're running a Linux-libre distro (that ain't Guix) in the first place.

 

[Betonhaus]

What is the ..... Im so sorry.... Usecase of this?

Imagine Windows 10 but like Windows 7 and not shit or full of ads.

 

[ProudSkibidiTolietAryan]

What is the ..... Im so sorry.... Usecase of this?

Im not talking about Reactos btw. I think that project is cool because its meant to be a HOBBY OS and it probally does help the WINE community in some ways

Imagine Windows 10 but like Windows 7 and not shit or full of ads.

Ok but like... Wines UI is NOTHING like windows 7 in useability.
The File explorer in wine is 10000x worse and harder to navigate than what we have on Linux, Windows 7, Modern windows, etc like it does not even have a SEARCH BAR TO SEARCH FOR FILES.

AND its still linux, so when you have a problem your going to have to find a way to escape the windows userspace to fix issues from a command line level, at that point just use LINUX or windows,
Like you can get themes that emulate the good of old windows MUCH better than this, Like wines implementations of things are STUBS if anything, they are NOT meant to be daily drivers and lack features compared to most BASIC products over 30 years ago. Downgrading yourself to the standards established 30 years ago like searching files or copying and pasting in command prompt smoothly for "Le nostalgia" is reatrded

 

[prollyanotherlurker]

I asked around and network manager despite not being super minimalist has a decent CLI so I used that

Their cli isn't bad. I do actually prefer the iwctl over nmcli. But compared to everything else network manager's cli is the only one besides iwd's that isn't complete shit.

The only time I would say network managers cli is better is if you are using it for more than wifi, but if you are doing vpn stuff, or other networking things I would personally rather use tools made for them specifically, like mullvad's or wireguards. And for ethernet they have a seperate program I can't remember the name of it because I never use it.

 

[Ferryman]

For the Guixers here, what hardware do y’all run? Seems to me the biggest limitation to using Guix would be the be the need to run a libre kernel, so some hardware will just never work right for you.

Like others have said, nonguix is the most common way to go. I have two machines, a T480 and a W541. The T480 runs linux-libre just fine with an atheros wifi card, the W541 uses the standard kernel because the nouveau drivers for niggervidia are straight ass.

Pssst: it's an open secret that Linux-libre users sidestep either the device firmware requirement or the FOSS-only requirement. Trisquel users have workarounds to enable Ubuntu's restricted and multiverse repositories, nonguix exists for Guix, and so on. The biggest problem for Linux-libre is microcode updates for actual vulnerabilities caused by Intel ME or AMD PSP. Even if you eschew all other binary firmware, do you really wanna be a shmuck on the internet without the microcode mitigations? Rationalise it by saying it's like your BIOS. Don't think about it too hard, or else you'll invalidate the whole reason why you're running a Linux-libre distro (that ain't Guix) in the first place.

>IME/PSP
>he doesn't run Linux-Libre on a G505S or KPGE-D16

Might as well use a M*c at that p*int. Absolutely pr*prietary!

 

[Dread First]

Might as well use a M*c at that p*int. Absolutely pr*prietary!

Some hills just ain't worth dying on. Guix is the only FSF-endorsed distro that deserves to exist, Trisquel and Dragora being tied for a distant second. Nix comes close, it is what inspired Guix, but Scheme+Emacs+EXWM is what makes Nix look like the Soyjak. I'm sorry, Troonjak. Anyway, FSF-only distros were bullshit for a long time because... why run Parabola when you can just install Arch and use Linux-libre as your kernel? Why run Blag which was literally Fedora but with Linux-libre... and Fedora already has absurdly FOSS-forward licensing and distribution barring binary firmware in the Linux kernel? Why run Trisquel when it's basically an Ubuntu clone and is so ridiculously easy to sideload? It's a lovely FOSS-only distro, their modified MATE session is pleasant to use, the project cares more about promoting FOSS than dismantling proprietary, but that being said? Still an Ubuntu clone and really easy to invalidate the FOSS-only rule... and by that point, you might as well run full-fat Linux Mint.

At least with Guix, nonguix doesn't fundamentally invalidate running Guix. Guix doesn't need to be defined by it being an FSF-endorsed distro; it has actual merits to stand on. At least Dragora is a wholly independent Linux distribution instead of an Arch (Parabola/Hyperbola), Debian/Ubuntu (gNewSense/Musix/Trisquel), Gentoo (Ututo), or Fedora (Blag) reskin. Actually, I've heard of Guix through other mediums (i.e. System Crafters tutorials on Emacs scratch configs) but I know nothing about it beyond "it exists." It could just be a blinking text console with no networking and no package management, and Dragora would still have more reason to exist unlike Blag or gNewSense.

 

[the rat]

Most of the CODE it seems does not seem to be redone but rather BUILT ONTOP of existing code and they never remove anything? Its so bad that I had to restart explorer and there STILL USING THE SAME ALT TAB SYSTEM FROM WINDOWS XP

Doing some high quality research and looking at what this tranny says:


I suspect that stuff like the old alt+tab switcher still being present is likely because it acts as a "fallback" solution in the event that for whatever reason something goes very wrong and the regular fancy alt+tab switcher fails (which you know should be like fucking never but Microsoft can't make good userland software for the fucking life of them apparently. Dave Cutler's work all for some fat balding cunt to take a fat shit on it).

First off ALL WINDOWS are rendered non rounded. And then they become rounded after like a second. This means they keep ALL the normal window rendering code, and then just APPLY NEW STUFF AFTER ITS DONE INSTEAD OF JUST TWEAKING THE ALREADY EXISTING CODE BECAUSE THERE TO LAZY.

Well, rounded corners are achieved by making those pixels transparent (done through DWM) and that's for the client area. Issue is transparency is a FANCY effect that requires hardware acceleration (which is why you see squared corners (the full client area) when your graphics drivers aren't installed). I guess Microsoft is making the window render before the client is fully initialised and you see those square corners for just a moment.

While going off on that, funnily enough Windows 7 never had an issue like this despite having rounded corners in its DWM enabled state likely because it doesn't try to round off the client area, it rounds off the border completely skipping any need for waiting on the client to finish setting itself up.

You can apparently tell Windows 11 to fuck off with rounding off the client area and the page does state that this API was implemented in a build of 11 but whether it works or not IDK. (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/api/dwmapi/ne-dwmapi-dwm_window_corner_preference)

As for the use of using old shit, I mean, why rewrite something (in this case DWM) that is fast (DWM under Vista and a shitty GMA chip for 2007 was fine and since Windows 8 it even has software rendering WHICH IS WHY YOU DON'T SEE THE BASIC THEME ANYMORE cause it's all DWM now and not the XP theme engine which is what the vista/7 basic themes used FUN FACT) and does its job properly? The real issue here is that Microsoft are fucking homosexual with their implementation of rounded corners and not waiting until the client is finished initialising before rendering the window rather than DWM itself being the true problem.

But I mean I'm just guessing nigga.

 

[ProudSkibidiTolietAryan]

I GOT THE BOOTLOADER(in embedded words this means the BIOS) semi running in QEMU.

This is kinda insane because this is not a BASIC bios but one that supports Batch like scripting, direct loading, debugging, and binutils like commands.

View attachment 8358610
The crazy part? I got it running with basically NO changes.

All I had to do was change the memory address of the UART(Device that prints stuff to the console) and make it work. My previous hack and guess code barely made it go forward and QEMUS malta board which is COMPLETELY DIFFERENT) was able to get this far

THE BOOTLOADER or embedded boards bios works almost COMPLETELY In qemu with just a FEW tweaks its fucking insane.

I now am going to make it see if I can boot the vmlinux and make it pass a "BFFS partition"

HAHAHA YASSS. Ill be honest I had NO fucking hope and its only been like 1 day and I got it this far

See this its SCANNING AND FOUND A .TDF file that its now going to try and load.
(EVERYTHING THAT IS NOT [BOOTLOADER] IS MY QEMU CODE TALKING TELLING WHAT THE BOOTLOADER DID. [Bootloader} is the only time the bootloader actually talks )

 

[acid_ra1n]

t least with Guix, nonguix doesn't fundamentally invalidate running Guix. Guix doesn't need to be defined by it being an FSF-endorsed distro; it has actual merits to stand on.

i get what ur saying but systemcrafters posts on their site dont bother the guix people if ur running nonguix theyll tell u to fuck off

 

[analrapist]

If I'm gonna do anything in Guile Scheme, I'd ideally like to internalise the fundamentals instead of just treating Guile Scheme like Nix's in-house declarative language... or worse, using ChatGPT or Perplexity to give me the answers without imparting unto me the fundamentals.

The problem with Scheme is that you literally get what you see. When you open a Scheme file, you ought to see something that reminds you of most configuration files, except with more brackets than you're comfortable, maybe. If you see that, GREAT. That's how you want to think. You don't need to know anything about call-with-current-continuation or tail-recursion-optimization to do anything with a config file. The problem with Scheme is you can go for a lifetime learning the intricacies of the language, or you can just jump into the mud and thrash around a bit and see how things feel. You're not going to be using variables and whatnot when you're setting config options. Other than that, to translate from a C-nile headspace, the only thing to consider is that a function looks like (function arg-1 arg-2) instead of function(arg1, arg2).

I'll quote from that nonguix repo that was just linked, from nvidia support ( https://gitlab.com/nonguix/nonguix ):

(use-modules (gnu services gnome)
             (gnu services xorg)
             (nongnu packages nvidia)
             (nongnu services nvidia))

(operating-system
  (kernel-arguments '("modprobe.blacklist=nouveau"
                      ;; Set this if the card is not used for displaying or
                      ;; you're using Wayland:
                      "nvidia_drm.modeset=1"))
  (services
   (cons* (service nvidia-service-type)
          ;; Configure desktop environment, GNOME for example.
          (service gnome-desktop-service-type
                   ;; Enable NVIDIA support, only do this when the card is
                   ;; used for displaying.
                   (gnome-desktop-configuration
                    (gnome (replace-mesa gnome))))
          ;; Configure Xorg server, only do this when the card is used for
          ;; displaying.
          (set-xorg-configuration
           (xorg-configuration
            (modules (cons nvda %default-xorg-modules))
            (drivers '("nvidia"))))
          ...))
  ...)

use-modules loads the implementation details for various components. operating-system tells Guix that nvidia support wants certain kernel parameters at bootup. services describes services that the package wants, which involves editing gnome-desktop-configuration (I don't know what replace-mesa is doing, you can dig into that if you like.) And finally set-xorg-configuration describes a change to your xorg config needed to support nvidia.

 

[Baraka Obama]

I suspect that stuff like the old alt+tab switcher still being present is likely because it acts as a "fallback" solution in the event that for whatever reason something goes very wrong and the regular fancy alt+tab switcher fails (which you know should be like fucking never but Microsoft can't make good userland software for the fucking life of them apparently.

My guess: Windows Server 2008 R2 (released concurrent to Windows 7 in 2009) defaulted to the classic theme.

Windows Server 2008 R2 had an unusually long update life, what I assume is the final update (KB5074977) released 14 days ago.

Someone had to maintain all this code for any security issues and convinced their management chain to preserve as much code as possible that's used in Windows Server 2008 R2 in newer Windows releases so that when any random team fixes a security bug they have to fix it in anything used in 2008 R2 so it's easy to backport.

This would include the classic theme and it's alt-tab UI.

Now that it's no longer supported they'd be free to remove all remnants of the classic UI.

Well, rounded corners are achieved by making those pixels transparent (done through DWM) and that's for the client area. Issue is transparency is a FANCY effect that requires hardware acceleration (which is why you see squared corners (the full client area) when your graphics drivers aren't installed). I guess Microsoft is making the window render before the client is fully initialised and you see those square corners for just a moment.

Can someone explain why my laptop's display came with rounded corners? Like it doesn't really bug me that much, but why did they start doing that?

 

[WielkiWapiesz2137]

I don't know what replace-mesa is doing, you can dig into that if you like

Replace mesa is there because guix in it’s current iteration has no non niggerlicious way of replacing packages/having alternative dependencies(except funnily enough in it’s init system) as such if you want to do so you need to manually call function that rewrites dependencies on each package. While it isn’t inherent to it’s design and can be fixed doing so would require major changes especially concerning guix main selling point: reproducibility

 

[the rat]

This would include the classic theme and it's alt-tab UI.

The classic theme is just what Win32 programs look like without all the theme shit (XP theme engine and/or Vista DWM) on top of it. (it's kernel level GUI, win32k.sys)

Generally, Windows 11 is still doing the same thing Windows NT 4/2000 did but with things added on top of it in the most literal sense with the XP theme engine (still in use today for your button/scrollbar bitmaps and shit) and Vista's DWM. You rip away these layers and what you are left with is the raw form of Windows' GUI (so to change from the classic theme you'd have to change how Windows GUI initially renders shit and it's like, why fucking bother no one is ever going to see that shit anymore like ever we have DWM and our theme engine on 24/7).

I doubt it has anything to do with Server 2008 R2 / security and more that they just haven't bothered touching it since there has been no real need to since no one was working on that part of the OS (a why bother getting yelled at by my manager situation).

Currently iirc they're actually in the middle of bulldozing a lot of things related to the kernel and the GUI and I suspect the only reason they're doing this is due to being told to work on migrating shit to rust and/or just being told to remove old shit if it is not in use and does not break a billion things because it's not a core component hence the apparent breaking of the classic alt+tab in 24H2.

But uh yeah tl;dr classic theme is not really a theme and a lot of old components that you would consider as part of the classic theme are being bulldozed but they're not really part of a whole encompassing classic theme as they are just separate components in different places that utilised the raw forms of Win32 GUI and whatnot.

I think it'd massively help people if they stopped seeing Windows as a single gigantic monolith and more of a weird modular-isque (but not so modular) OS where things are usually layered on top of their NT 4 systems (if that makes sense lol).

 

[acid_ra1n]

whats some cool developments u guys saw in linux this year that u think directly contributed to linux's overall progress in the market
not necessarily stuff that made people switch to linux but stuff that makes linux a bit more usable for whoever

 

[Dante Alighieri]

whats some cool developments u guys saw in linux this year that u think directly contributed to linux's overall progress in the market
not necessarily stuff that made people switch to linux but stuff that makes linux a bit more usable for whoever

Idk about 2025, but generally Valve has been making good work on Linux gaming.

 

[cigint]

In Linux itself, no positive changes happened all year, other than bcachefs was kicked out of the mainline kernel. Every other development in the kernel and the major distributions is a slow march towards The Beast of systemd swallowing the Earth, and all souls being left stranded in an ever-encroaching Rust tranny purgatory.