The Linux Thread - The Autist's OS of Choice

[Rekeita's Kidneys]

If SpaceFM was still updated I'd recommend it as well, it was the best graphical file manager for a long time

Dolphin is unironically really good. Tabs, panes, terminal, both search and filter options, etc.

 

[AbendCode12]

Consider reading the entirety of a post before replying to it.

Ay. You're right. Carry on.

 

[AnOminous]

So you can write scripts to automate the repetitive processes you wish to run.

I've actually had jobs where within a couple weeks I'd scripted my way out of 90% of what I was supposed to do and only had to do stuff like walk over to put a DAT tape in for an incremental backup or revert some new version of a program back to something that actually worked because some asshole programmer assumed that just because his code compiled that meant it worked.

Then I could spend the rest of my shift smoking dope.

 

[Rei is Shit.]

Dolphin is unironically really good. Tabs, panes, terminal, both search and filter options, etc.

Can any other fm play videos in the preview pane?

 

[gibbslets]

Dolphin is unironically really good. Tabs, panes, terminal, both search and filter options, etc.

hard agree, it kept me on kde for a while because it's so good

What I will say though is I find myself needing "poweruser" features in my file manager less and less now when I can just open a terminal inside the folder and ask chatgpt to write me a 1-liner to "convert all the contents to webms and move them to a folder called output, and create another folder within that with thumbnail files". Dontcha just love convergence..

 

[Slav Power]

I don't get people who unironically install and daily drive Gentoo.

Because it makes things run faster? I've heard that Arch runs super smooth so many times yet they distribute pre-compiled binaries. Has this ever been benchmarked with modern distributions of Debian, Arch and Gentoo to see how much more performance you get from much more time spent on installing and configuring your installation?

Because it's safer? Yet you don't check the code to make sure you're not compiling something malicious because that can happen in FOSS?

Because it gives you more control over you OS? As in, compared to Arch or any other distro where you already have that?

What is it exactly that you do on your computer that you're incentivized to use Gentoo over any other distro? Because I really cannot see any other reason besides a very very very VERY edge case scenario where compiling all the binaries for your specific system is actually very important so Arch is out of the question or just wanting to show off how much of a Linux expert you are despite never actually using your PC for anything more than web browsing, spending most of your time just fucking with Linux instead of, you know, actually using your PC.

 

[419]

I don't get people who unironically install and daily drive Gentoo.

Because it makes things run faster? I've heard that Arch runs super smooth so many times yet they distribute pre-compiled binaries. Has this ever been benchmarked with modern distributions of Debian, Arch and Gentoo to see how much more performance you get from much more time spent on installing and configuring your installation?

Because it's safer? Yet you don't check the code to make sure you're not compiling something malicious because that can happen in FOSS?

Because it gives you more control over you OS? As in, compared to Arch or any other distro where you already have that?

What is it exactly that you do on your computer that you're incentivized to use Gentoo over any other distro? Because I really cannot see any other reason besides a very very very VERY edge case scenario where compiling all the binaries for your specific system is actually very important so Arch is out of the question or just wanting to show off how much of a Linux expert you are despite never actually using your PC for anything more than web browsing, spending most of your time just fucking with Linux instead of, you know, actually using your PC.

I like the idea of it as a way to control that the things you do compile and install are only compiled against certain dependencies and don't use those that you don't want to use on your machine via USE flags, but... you can do the same thing on Arch with a custom PKGBUILD. In fact, that's exactly what I use for things like custom dependencies and patches.

I won't fault people for their own distro preferences, but I am also curious in that regard what makes USE flags more advantageous over the PKGBUILD approach.

 

[Betonhaus]

I don't get people who unironically install and daily drive Gentoo.

Because it makes things run faster? I've heard that Arch runs super smooth so many times yet they distribute pre-compiled binaries. Has this ever been benchmarked with modern distributions of Debian, Arch and Gentoo to see how much more performance you get from much more time spent on installing and configuring your installation?

Because it's safer? Yet you don't check the code to make sure you're not compiling something malicious because that can happen in FOSS?

Because it gives you more control over you OS? As in, compared to Arch or any other distro where you already have that?

What is it exactly that you do on your computer that you're incentivized to use Gentoo over any other distro? Because I really cannot see any other reason besides a very very very VERY edge case scenario where compiling all the binaries for your specific system is actually very important so Arch is out of the question or just wanting to show off how much of a Linux expert you are despite never actually using your PC for anything more than web browsing, spending most of your time just fucking with Linux instead of, you know, actually using your PC.

i suspect it's primarily for systems that lack the performance to compile code itself

 

[WTBOnlineFather]

snip

Arch and Gentoo aren't that comparable. Daily driving Gentoo is for autists who want to constantly be learning about the inner workings of their system and can make use of its extreme customizability. Arch is just a developer-friendly distro with bleeding edge repos that until recently didn't have a GUI installer, which for your typical redditor somehow means it's "minimal" and "custom" even though it isn't really.

 

[Slav Power]

i suspect it's primarily for systems that lack the performance to compile code itself

Counterargument: compiling the OS by hand bit by bit is in no ways a normal thing to do for a reason, and it's why Windows, Debian and Arch offer precompiled universal binaries. Because the normal thing to do is to offer something that installs and works, not something that's autistically fine tuned to every single machine with it's slightest quirks.

Gentoo may be good when you have a very purpose-specific machine, or a set of those that are all unique, like digital kiosks, so you create a compilation that's meant specifically for those machines with what they're meant to do. If you're building a regular PC or using a regular laptop you're just flexing at that point, or you're using something so ancient that the purpose compiled binaries actually make a difference, by which point the issue is not the distro but the machine, and even a perfect Gentoo install will be shitting itself while you're trying to browse KF, because all modern websites and browsers have a higher resource demand.

The point is: manually compiling OS binaries on a computer you're going to use to browse the web, play games, do taxes and other normal things is incredibly stupid and by that point you're using your PC as a flex of your Linux skills instead of, well, using it as a PC. Debian is enough for most people that want a PC and not a tinker box.

Daily driving Gentoo is for autists who want to constantly be learning about the inner workings of their system and can make use of its extreme customizability.

Yeah AKA people who don't really use their PC for any normal tasks and use them as tinker boxes. I see Gentoo and Arch as tinker distros, too complex and unreliable for any regular use, but great if you want to learn about Linux and how it works, assuming you're doing it on a separate machine where you won't lose anything important when you fuck up the dd command.

 

[WTBOnlineFather]

I see Gentoo and Arch as tinker distros, too complex and unreliable for any regular use, but great if you want to learn about Linux and how it works, assuming you're doing it on a separate machine where you won't lose anything important when you fuck up the dd command.

You're definitely right about Gentoo (although I have seen interesting use cases for it when you want a highly customized purpose-built system for a specific application and you know you will never be changing it again) but Arch isn't even very useful for learning. You get to install some packages on your own and edit some config files but that's about it. If that's the level of depth you'd want to learn I think Slackware is an infinitely better distro for that, it's very vanilla and doesn't have many specific intricacies like Arch does nor does it come pre-pozzed with systemd and other shit that tries to abstract basic system configuration away from you.

Arch is a distro that has been astroturfed to high heavens and it's both shilled by and shilled to users who have no business using that shit for any reason. Gentoo is a /g/ meme but most people have the sense to avoid using it unless they have genuine interest. Few things are more cringe to me in the linux world than seeing the hordes of Arch zealots who should really be using Mint.

 

[Mister Uno]

Few things are more cringe to me in the linux world than seeing the hordes of Arch zealots who should really be using Mint.

Hey I like having the most up to date packages. Especially with my system where it's still on the newer side, so it's a bit fucky with Linux and has been getting better. I like Mint, but I am more of a Debian guy myself.

 

[Betonhaus]

Hey I like having the most up to date packages. Especially with my system where it's still on the newer side, so it's a bit fucky with Linux and has been getting better. I like Mint, but I am more of a Debian guy myself.

MX Linux AHS?

 

[analrapist]

Hey I like having the most up to date packages. Especially with my system where it's still on the newer side, so it's a bit fucky with Linux and has been getting better. I like Mint, but I am more of a Debian guy myself.

The big problem with "newer" systems is that the kernel subsystems for newer hardware are found in newer kernels. Debian lags here hard. But the great part about Debian is that it's a big fat target, so there are many solutions. My favorite is the Liquorix community kernel. https://liquorix.net/

For "newer" software packages, I just build and install off github. For fast moving targets like yt-dlp, you want to be doing this anyhow, because no community packager can move as fast as I can git pull && make && sudo make install.

But again, with Debian, you can just use apt-pinning to select out of testing, unstable, and experimental packages.

 

[Mister Uno]

MX Linux AHS?

Nope, just EndeavourOS, which is just Arch but holds your hand more. Basically a successor to Manjaro since it went to shit. Comes pre-bundled with Nvidia drivers so less work to do. Otherwise I would be on Debian with experimental/testing repos.
I get wanting to have full control and learning the ins and outs of your system, but I am lazy and want to do less work unless I'm bored.

 

[Gatdam Animal Person]

Nope, just EndeavourOS, which is just Arch but holds your hand more. Basically a successor to Manjaro since it went to shit. Comes pre-bundled with Nvidia drivers so less work to do. Otherwise I would be on Debian with experimental/testing repos.
I get wanting to have full control and learning the ins and outs of your system, but I am lazy and want to do less work unless I'm bored.

EndeavourOS (or any GUI installers for Arch) is great when you do a basic/standard install. However, whenever you stray from that path (LVM partition, Secure Boot, TPM2, etc), it always shits on me.

With the Arch Wiki beside me, I can do everything and more, takes a bit more time configuring everything, but it works. Bonus points if you have means of recovery in case of shit happening.

 

[Ahriman]

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/linux/kde-advises-extreme-caution-after-theme-wipes-linux-users-files/

https://www.reddit.com/r/kde/comments/1bixmbx/do_not_install_global_themes_some_wipe_out_all/

Yes, do as I say!

KDEbros... did we get too cocky?

 

[Slav Power]

>be Windows user
>can't install custom themes officially

>be Linux user
>custom themes wipe hard drive

 

[AnOminous]

The point is: manually compiling OS binaries on a computer you're going to use to browse the web, play games, do taxes and other normal things is incredibly stupid and by that point you're using your PC as a flex of your Linux skills instead of, well, using it as a PC. Debian is enough for most people that want a PC and not a tinker box.

Maybe if you're actually going to be editing Makefiles and shit to do custom compiles it makes some sense, but even then, you can do that on nearly any other Linux anyway. I can see doing it to get better at internals and actually understand them, sort of like learning machine code because you have some hyper-specific thing you want to do, but you want to do it a gorillion times a second and you want to make it 1.25 gorillion instead.

Sort of like most things won't require an ASIC or even an FPGA, but if you want to do something like crypto, it's the shit.

 

[Ahriman]

I don't get people who unironically install and daily drive Gentoo.

Plain old autism, that's why.

I remember reading some TXT and learning how to compile a kernel for my old K6-2 450Mhz, I think I must have been running like SLES or something like that. It was a nice exercise, but it felt rather pointless. Never done it again, and I couldn't be bothered to do that if I tried.

My dayjob involves fixing Linux shit, when I come home I want something that just works. Much like those BMW techs who daily a Nissan Altima.

Having said that, daily reminder that Gentoo (and by proxy Arch) is a meme distro. Anybody who unironically runs Gentoo fell for it.