The Linux Thread - The Autist's OS of Choice

[Kosher Dill]

What's the best partitioning scheme for a Linux laptop?

$1500 is on the line

All right, I'll ask, how is money riding on your partitioning scheme? Can't you just start over if you get it wrong? If you're distrohopping aren't you doing a lot of start-overs anyway?

@Mikoyan has it right, anyway.

 

[Uncle Ted's Cabin]

Honestly I still can't understand the niggercattle wanting to play le ebin gaymes on a linux installation. Trying to cram in Windows executables into a UNIX-like environment and reimplementing a Windows environment in $HOME/.wine of whatever is just retarded. These two were never meant to go together.
If you're going to play games, why don't you just play it on Windows where it's natively supported? Oh because Windows is proprietary? Games that require WINE because it doesn't have a Linux port are all proprietary you retard nigger. You will forever cope about having to deal with games shitting up Xorg and Wayland lacking features for gayming and you will forever have to troubleshoot. Go back to Windows.

There are a lot of games that run natively on Linux now (thanks Valve). I actually see more games supporting Linux now than Mac!

Buying a new game only to need Wne/Proton to actually play it does strike me as a bit cucky though. Have a spine and tell the developer you won't give them a cent unless they build their releases for Linux too. Anyone who refuses to develop software that is easily portable to other operating systems in the year of our lord two thousand and twenty two doesn't deserve your money anyway.

Anyone who uses a rolling release as a daily driver is already plenty retarded in my opinion.

Daily driving a rolling release distro is not my personal choice. Running a rolling release distro on critical infrastructure is actually suicidal.

 

[Carpe Jugulum]

I booted up Windows yesterday as I wanted to do something quickly and couldn’t be bothered to wait for shaders and was greeted with this (sorry poor quality):

I’m not sure why they think I give a shit as I’m not American and I hate having things shoved down my throat.

I just want to thank everyone in this thread for all the informative posts that encouraged me to finally to try Linux. It’s been three or four months now and I’m a complete convert. One day I’ll be brave enough to scrub Windows entirely.

 

[Another Char Clone]

What's the best partitioning scheme for a Linux laptop?

- 512 GB SSD, 32 GB RAM (max)
- no Windows, no encryption
- distro hopping
- normie home use
- several user accounts
- potentially massive docker shit

imma ping @Kosher Dill , sorry to bother you but $1500 is on the line and I like money

I like to use the following (assuming you are on a modern x86 with EFI/GPT):
/boot/efi FAT32 - for boot partition
/boot/recovery EXT4 - minimal alternate Linux root in case you screw up bad
Swap partition - encrypt with LUKS as required.
Root - your main OS
/var/lib/docker - your docker mountpoint, in case you have a second drive just for docker.
/home - mount point for user home directories.

Fix up your fstab to mount them on boot as required. Just switch out your root partition and kernel/initramfs to point to another Linux install to switch OS through grub (or whatever bootloader you use).
Might be a bit too complicated for anyone new to Linux.

 

[Uncle Ted's Cabin]

I booted up Windows yesterday as I wanted to do something quickly and couldn’t be bothered to wait for shaders and was greeted with this (sorry poor quality):
View attachment 3751694
I’m not sure why they think I give a shit as I’m not American and I hate having things shoved down my throat.

I just want to thank everyone in this thread for all the informative posts that encouraged me to finally to try Linux. It’s been three or four months now and I’m a complete convert. One day I’ll be brave enough to scrub Windows entirely.

Best of luck! I went one year of dual booting and at the end of said year, I barely remembered my Windows partition was there.

/var/lib/docker - your docker mountpoint, in case you have a second drive just for docker.

Are people using docker outside the context of commerical infrastructure? Genuinely curious what desktop Linux users are using docker for.

 

[Another Char Clone]

Are people using docker outside the context of commerical infrastructure? Genuinely curious what desktop Linux users are using docker for.

Sometimes, it is convenient for dev work "Does my shit work on Ubuntu 18.04 to 22.04?". It is also a convenient way to ship an entire runtime environment like https://kiwifarms.net/threads/stable-diffusion-novelai-machine-learning-art.130730/.

I've been meaning to switch to unshare(3) when there's no need for binary compatibility. Just namespaces, no need for multi-gigabyte dev/runtime environments . With namespaces, it can also be completely isolated from the rest of the system, like non-root chroot, or faking root capability for dumb shits that insist they need root but don't really use any capabilities.

 

[Uncle Ted's Cabin]

Sometimes, it is convenient for dev work "Does my shit work on Ubuntu 18.04 to 22.04?". It is also a convenient way to ship an entire runtime environment like https://kiwifarms.net/threads/stable-diffusion-novelai-machine-learning-art.130730/.

I've been meaning to switch to unshare(3) when there's no need for binary compatibility. Just namespaces, no need for multi-gigabyte dev/runtime environments . With namespaces, it can also be completely isolated from the rest of the system, like non-root chroot, or faking root capability for dumb shits that insist they need root but don't really use any capabilities.

Ah, I figured as much. I haven't used anything more complicated than chroot for anything not directly related to my job.

 

[Pavel Duracellov]

Sometimes, it is convenient for dev work "Does my shit work on Ubuntu 18.04 to 22.04?". It is also a convenient way to ship an entire runtime environment like https://kiwifarms.net/threads/stable-diffusion-novelai-machine-learning-art.130730/.

I've been meaning to switch to unshare(3) when there's no need for binary compatibility. Just namespaces, no need for multi-gigabyte dev/runtime environments . With namespaces, it can also be completely isolated from the rest of the system, like non-root chroot, or faking root capability for dumb shits that insist they need root but don't really use any capabilities.

Docker is a hilarious idea but it's necessary evil because most software on Linux don't know how to organize their shit and are dynamically linked, so even minor dependency version breaks can make the software get borked.

The biggest problem with Linux, and FreeBSD to some extent, that it mix&matches too much software, often nonstandard and non ABI-conforming.
Look at Python for example, I might want to install NiggerLib 2.3 in Debian 9, and then Debian 10 comes out and NiggerLib 2.3 doesn't work in Debian 10 somehow because LibNiggerCattle 2.3 got upgraded to 3.1 and now the shared object name is different and it provides different functions or may have removed some. This is a real problem and that's why standard environments to let people distribute software in a singular format exist.

Remember when a glibc update broke some anticheat thing? It's because glibc deprecated the standard symbol table for binaries, instead using GNU's own symbol table format. I do like the notion of free software(although I just use the word nigger all over my code which acts as a license) however GNU is very nonstandard and breaks a LOT of things. I've had a better experience programming for the Win32 API than low-level Linux software.
OpenBSD does not have this problem as they absolutely stick to the standard and have an extremely stable ABI, like Win32, but again, Win32 is controlled by a corporation and although it has never changed we don't know what MacroShart® Inc. will do.

Personally I don't buy into the idea of dynamic linking somehow increasing security, as dynamic linking has serious issues regarding runtime code injection such as malware that takes advantage of LD_PRELOAD. Windows also suffers from DLL injection but Windows Defender is smart enough to take care of that.
The reason for this is because dynamic linking just pulls external functions from another binary, and although some critical bug is fixed in that shared library it might break compatibility with other software, and there are a lot of things to consider in dynamic linking. I just think that all binaries must be self-contained.
https://drewdevault.com/dynlib explains this very well.

 

[Japanese Beavis]

I uhh use Mint, cinnamon to be specific.

 

[Kosher Dill]

Docker is a hilarious idea but it's necessary evil because most software on Linux don't know how to organize their shit and are dynamically linked, so even minor dependency version breaks can make the software get borked.

The biggest problem with Linux, and FreeBSD to some extent, that it mix&matches too much software, often nonstandard and non ABI-conforming.
Look at Python for example, I might want to install NiggerLib 2.3 in Debian 9, and then Debian 10 comes out and NiggerLib 2.3 doesn't work in Debian 10 somehow because LibNiggerCattle 2.3 got upgraded to 3.1 and now the shared object name is different and it provides different functions or may have removed some. This is a real problem and that's why standard environments to let people distribute software in a singular format exist.

All this is a side effect of just one problem: the binary's directory isn't part of the library search path.
On Win32 you can just say "My application needs version 14.88 of NIGGER.DLL so I'm just putting that right with my EXE file so it doesn't pick up C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\NIGGER.DLL". (leaving aside WinSxS and other complications)
Yes, it's not the same as chroot or firejail or distributing an entire goddamn VM image with your autistically fragile build setup, but for a great many purposes it's good enough.

 

[DavidS877]

All this is a side effect of just one problem: the binary's directory isn't part of the library search path.
On Win32 you can just say "My application needs version 14.88 of NIGGER.DLL so I'm just putting that right with my EXE file so it doesn't pick up C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\NIGGER.DLL". (leaving aside WinSxS and other complications)
Yes, it's not the same as chroot or firejail or distributing an entire goddamn VM image with your autistically fragile build setup, but for a great many purposes it's good enough.

How I learned to stop worrying and love LD_LIBRARY_PATH.

(Also, with Docker these days, I prefer Podman, it's RedHat but it's like 1.4% less evil.)

 

[Kosher Dill]

How I learned to stop worrying and love LD_LIBRARY_PATH.

I actually tried once to get LD_LIBRARY_PATH working "Win32-style" to work around Linux DLL Hell, but I concluded that it's either impossible or would be such a filthy, disgusting, fragile hack that it has no place being used.

 

[Neil McCauley]

So... I'm trying to get my knowledge of Linux up to speed, and the PrivacyGuides writeup is giving me terminal amounts of fucking cancer.

The write-up starts off really strong and addresses major issues that Linux has, especially insofar as verified boot chains, Flatpak/Snap being inadequate compared to proper sandboxing, and the like (all 100% valid statements I agree with, mind you). However... their recommendations are abhorrent to me (i.e. Arch, Fedora, Tumbleweed), and their rationale is equally confusing.

View attachment 3741174

These lunatics recommend that you stay with rolling release distros and their rationale is... not technically incorrect, but it's such a narrow paradigm from which to view the situation at hand. I'm an autistic Linux enthusiast like 90% of the people who frequent PrivacyGuides/PrivacyTools/etc but like... I do not have the fucking mental acuity to actually fucking handle maintaining a rolling release distribution like Arch, Fedora, Tumbleweed, or anything of the sort on a fucking Linux-based system. Linux as an ecosystem of broadly related operating systems who share the same kernel and overwhelmingly similar userland utilities (largely taken from GNU most of the time) is far too chaotic for me to trust with a rolling release solution.

Even though I didn't ultimately stick with FreeBSD because the software selection was too finicky for my tastes (excellent ports collection be damned), the one thing I will always praise it for doing better than Linux distros could ever hope to accomplish is their total separation of "core system" and "external applications." I know the situation has changed somewhat in the last decade because of how much power Silicon Valley consolidated within the realm of open source projects, but I'm 99.99999% sure that every fucking Linux distribution on the goddamn planet is literally just a slapdash amalgam of independently developed programs that just "coalesce" into a functional operating system when all the right versions align. It doesn't happen anywhere near as often as it used to, but a simple upgrade to a different system tool like Bash, glibc, or the kernel itself could completely bork your system if all the other parts that interact with each other aren't in complete lockstep.

FreeBSD (and other BSDs) handles this quite well because their core system is engineered entirely independently from the ports tree. The default shell, the C library, the kernel, bootloader, and all that other boring shit are all engineered together to make sure that they play nicely and don't break between upgrades. The package manager will default to quarterly package updates from the ports tree, but this is easily remedied by editing the proper text file and changing the parameter to "latest" so that you're always on the latest stable version available in the repositories. In practice, this means that you have up-to-date user applications while maintaining a core system that's less liable to break when you're applying security fixes. No such solution exists on Linux, which is a crying shame because FreeBSD's Linux compatibility layer can only go so far.

Now let's think about my use case here: I'm autistic about Linux, there's a lot of Linux shit that I enjoy, but I don't log into my Linux drive often enough to really "maintain" it. If I only log into my Linux drive once or twice a month tops, what sense would it make for me to maintain a rolling release distribution if I would miss the advisory to implement fix foo before running "package-management-command update && package-management-command upgrade" in the terminal like I normally would for literally any other non-rolling release Linux distribution.

I mean if you're only checking your junk out once or twice a month, Debian should be fine.

I wish International Bitch Machines or the Fedora foundation or whatever made Fedora releases like RHEL, conservative 6 or so month releases. Actually, what's stopping me from just using RHEL for personal use? Isn't the only thing that costs money is the support?

 

[Another Char Clone]

All this is a side effect of just one problem: the binary's directory isn't part of the library search path.
On Win32 you can just say "My application needs version 14.88 of NIGGER.DLL so I'm just putting that right with my EXE file so it doesn't pick up C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\NIGGER.DLL". (leaving aside WinSxS and other complications)
Yes, it's not the same as chroot or firejail or distributing an entire goddamn VM image with your autistically fragile build setup, but for a great many purposes it's good enough.

This is deliberate, libraries are only loaded by paths specified to the runtime linker as configured by whoever was administering the system. If you wanted to load it from the program's directory, put $ORIGIN in your program RPATH when you compile it, like: gcc -o app '-Wl,-z,origin,-rpath,$ORIGIN' ....
Beware of the security implications, just about anything can be injected in the directory.

 

[Kosher Dill]

If you wanted to load it from the program's directory, put $ORIGIN in your program RPATH when you compile it

I had no idea about this and I'll make a note of it.
However it is unfortunately about 20 years too late to make a "Win32-like" Linux distro compiled this way and have it catch on.

 

[ZMOT]

I had no idea about this and I'll make a note of it.
However it is unfortunately about 20 years too late to make a "Win32-like" Linux distro compiled this way and have it catch on.

there's always gentoo...

 

[Mister Uno]

Fuck man. I getting sick of this shit. I'm 90% sure its my hardware, but I keep getting issues with my display.
One day on Debian its fine, updated and all, had to reinstall since I fucked something up somehow. Now the display drivers (which was the same) decides it no longer wants me to use 144Hz on my monitor. And if I do switch to it, the monitor will go blank and I can't revert it. So damn frustrating. And almost every other distro has a variety of my issue except Pop_Os, which also fixes my long going mouse issue where I can only change acceleration but not sensitivity. I just want to use Debian for more than a month without some damn issue, and I don't even edit much once I finish the initial install. Again, I am 90% sure its my hardware not agreeing with Linux.

EDIT: I have a Nvidia 3080

I don't mean to go on about my technical issues, but damn it seems to be most of my experience on Linux since I built this PC a bit more than a year ago. Makes it hard for me to want to fully commit. Note to those reading, check to see if your shit is compatible with Linux before buying.

 

[Dr. Geronimo]

Fuck man. I getting sick of this shit. I'm 90% sure its my hardware, but I keep getting issues with my display.
One day on Debian its fine, updated and all, had to reinstall since I fucked something up somehow. Now the display drivers (which was the same) decides it no longer wants me to use 144Hz on my monitor. And if I do switch to it, the monitor will go blank and I can't revert it. So damn frustrating. And almost every other distro has a variety of my issue except Pop_Os, which also fixes my long going mouse issue where I can only change acceleration but not sensitivity. I just want to use Debian for more than a month without some damn issue, and I don't even edit much once I finish the initial install. Again, I am 90% sure its my hardware not agreeing with Linux.

I don't mean to go on about my technical issues, but damn it seems to be most of my experience on Linux since I built this PC a bit more than a year ago. Makes it hard for me to want to fully commit. Note to those reading, check to see if your shit is compatible with Linux before buying.

All that text and you didn't even say what you GPU is.

I'm not knowledgeable enough to help but I feel for you. Linux was nothing but trouble with my 3070. I'm really just waiting until 2025 when win10 dies to make the switch.

 

[Mister Uno]

All that text and you didn't even say what you GPU is.

I'm not knowledgeable enough to help but I feel for you. Linux was nothing but trouble with my 3070. I'm really just waiting until 2025 when win10 dies to make the switch.

You're right, I'll edit it in (Nvidia 3080). And yeah, I tried looking up solutions but they seem beyond me.

 

[Dr. Geronimo]

You're right, I'll edit it in (Nvidia 3080). And yeah, I tried looking up solutions but they seem beyond me.

General consensus is that if you have an Nvidia card then lmao.
Nvidia doesn't support Linux like AMD does.