The Linux Thread - The Autist's OS of Choice

[prollyanotherlurker]

highly doubt that, because that's an area I don't see valve focus on. if there will be a new steamos, I expect it more to be like turning your PC into a more open console with big picture (and the community adding smaller stuff to it), not necessary full blown desktop which they'd then have to support. for triple monitors the underlying distro (I think they're using arch these days) would be able to provide that. so you wouldn't really have to wait, you could use it right now.

considering this I can see why valve didn't really push a desktop steamos, because at least some there will know people will have completely different expectations that will never be met (like it being a big leap for linux or something), turning it into a shitshow.

The crazy thing to me. Is how many people think steam did something special. And that's why it works well. No. It's just Linux running on supported hardware, with a desktop. Any reasonably up to date just works distro is going to give you similar results. You can do the bazzite thing like what is suggested. Or just do endeavoros, or fedora, or a fedora spin. Probably opensuse. A ton of options.

 

[YoRHa No. 2 Type B]

>she
Don't listen to whatever Brodie says. "Lina" is a man and he is also Hector Martin.

He also has a thread here.

💪 Tough Guys Thread 'Hector Martin / Héctor Martín Cantero / @marcan42 / マルカン / @marcan42x / @marcan@treehouse.systems / Asahi Lina / Asahi Linux'

Aug 9, 2023

Héctor Martín Cantero / @marcan42 / @marcan@treehouse.systems​

​

Hector Martin is a Spanish software programmer living in Tokyo, Japan, whose main claim to fame is making Linux, but for Mac laptops. And that's the least weird thing about him.


source (archive)

He first gained notoriety because Sony sued him for hacking the PlayStation 3 in 2011.

Hector was part of a hacker group known as fail0verflow (formerly Team Twiizers), along with another hacker named...

• Markass the Worst
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[Slav Power]

2025 is the Year of the Linux Desktop:

>she
Don't listen to whatever Brodie says. "Lina" is a man and he is also Hector Martin.

Halfway through the video, paused on the beginning of the Arch part, and this gives a good perspective of the two main reasons why people are so keen on moving to Linux from Windows, even though they're somewhat misinformed and under the assumption that something that's possible on Linux is impossible on Windows.

1) Microsoft constantly tries to make Windows look like a black box even though the entire NT architecture is well documented and Windows comes with plenty of diagnostics tools by default. Because of that people just assume it's a black box. If something's fucked, it cannot be unfucked. Linux is very well documented down to a T thanks to it's open nature. Windows has Event Viewer, but most Windows users don't know it's there, let alone know how to use it due to the lack of documentation. systemd? It's FOSS so it's very easy to find comprehensive documentation on it. I'd argue that this apparent opaqueness of Windows and openness of Linux leads to people not being keen on even trying to figure out an issue on Windows, but on Linux they're way more interested in digging deeper. Like Felix only thinking about the concept of "checking what takes so long to boot" after switching to Linux instead of doing it on Windows, since both start with a Google search to lead to the same result.

2) The defaults on Windows are awful. Microsoft puts in their entire suite of BS that most people will then have to uninstall since they don't need it, and stuff like the file indexer is ass. That doesn't mean file search is forever doomed to be ass on Windows and only Linux with grep can be fast. Windows has Everything which is perhaps even faster than grep since it operates on a preexisting file index rather than looking through the file system on search, but that's a third party program that not everyone will know about. Technically grep is a third party program, but all of Linux is built on those. If Windows could be more like distros where Everything comes by default for file searches, then people wouldn't have this assumption that file searching on Windows is ass and forever will be. Not only that, old habits die hard. Felix complained how on Windows you have to manually download the installers for all the programs you want but on Linux it's sudo apt-get. Windows also has a command line, and Windows 10/11 has been coming preinstalled with winget for years now, it's as easy on Windows as it is on Linux. But he just assumed it's still the old manual installer spiel and never looked beyond that.

This is an interesting conundrum though. People are so unwilling to try and figure out how to make their Windows experience better where it doesn't take much effort to do so, but the moment they switch to Linux they waste hours on ricing their DE and fucking around with the command line. So, what is it exactly that people want? If they wanted to unfuck Windows to make it bearable, then they clearly have the mental capacity to do so if they're willing to rice Linux, making Windows a bit better takes less effort than that. Chris Titus' WinUtil does the bulk of the debloating, and it can also cut out the installing of QoL tools like Everything. Of course, to know about it you'd need to go off the path beaten by Microsoft, but if you go crazy on Linux then you absolutely can do so, yet you choose not to. Why? Felix talked about how great keyboard oriented workflow is on Linux and then saying that on Windows you have to click through the start menu to do anything. Microsoft has Power Toys with Command Palette, and there is already a ton of keyboard shortcuts baked into Windows. Why wasn't he compelled to make his Windows experience more keyboard oriented and only discovered it after ricing Arch?

In short: for some reason people refuse to put a modicum of research into making their Windows experience a bit better, suffer though Microsoft's defaults assuming they cannot do anything about them, but the moment they switch to Linux they find an entire new world of customization, where a good fraction of it that they find personally valuable already existed in some extent on Windows, but they refused to even consider looking for it. I really don't understand this mentality.

 

[YoRHa No. 2 Type B]

In short: for some reason people refuse to put a modicum of research into making their Windows experience a bit better, suffer though Microsoft's defaults assuming they cannot do anything about them, but the moment they switch to Linux they find an entire new world of customization, where a good fraction of it that they find personally valuable already existed in some extent on Windows, but they refused to even consider looking for it. I really don't understand this mentality.

As you said, Microsoft makes Windows as much of a black box as possible, since 10 every update your settings get reverted.
I used to customise Windows too. But I was tired of hacky "solutions" like ExplorerPatcher that would shit itself every update. Its clear Microsoft doesn't want you to customise Windows, so people either don't or they stop doing it.
The days of Windows being customisable died with the Classic theme.
Meanwhile on Linux, customisation is (generally) encouraged, as long as you avoid anything Gnome or GTK.

This is an interesting conundrum though. People are so unwilling to try and figure out how to make their Windows experience better where it doesn't take much effort to do so

"Just run these commands in PowerShell to make Windows usable"
"Wahhh Linux is hard to use, you need to use the command line"
If someone is proficient enough to use computers to use PowerShell, they can use Linux. And that just so happens to include all the people on Windows who "customised" everything (read: hacky things that break monthly)

 

[Betonhaus]

Call me curious - as a self proclaimed "paranoid type", what would you consider a secure system?

I'd guess that the absolutely most secure system would be Gentoo, because you compile the binaries yourself and can be absolutely certain nothing suspicious has been added in like what happened with xz. But that requires reading all to the code line by line.

 

[Ahriman]

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Pretty sweet rig.

 

[General Emílio Médici]

In short: for some reason people refuse to put a modicum of research into making their Windows experience a bit better, suffer though Microsoft's defaults assuming they cannot do anything about them, but the moment they switch to Linux they find an entire new world of customization, where a good fraction of it that they find personally valuable already existed in some extent on Windows, but they refused to even consider looking for it. I really don't understand this mentality.

Like @Harry Kuntz said: Windows goes out of it's way to stop you from doing it, while Linux never does.

Windows lies to you, tells you you can't do it and shouldn't do it. It tries to stop you, makes it intentionally obtuse to proceed through the system and it will try and undo everything you did every update it can.

Linux just tells you the truth "yes you can do it but you will need to put some work on it". When you update (which is when you want, if you feel like it, AND you can choose what gets updated) you won't have to worry about everything breaking and needing to wait days for the applications you had to use to customize your setup to be patched to work on the new update.

 

[Slav Power]

hacky things that break monthly

Here's the list of "customizations" that the average user wants to do on stock Windows:
-disable taskbar widgets, uninstall useless preloaded software, postpone feature updates etc etc: WinUtil does all of that. Run it once and forget it. If you just copy a string to make a shortcut you never touch the command line to even launch it. Rarely does Microsoft change something with an update to the point that you're compelled to run it again.
-better file search, better file management, better image viewing etc: installing extra software once and then using it. WinUtil comes with plenty of programs to choose from and there's always winget. Though, again, if someone is fine with the command line on Linux, then they should be fine with it on Windows.

That's it, that's how you get the average Windows user to improve their experience. Takes less effort than ricing Arch.

Now, my point is that the average Windows user doesn't even consider that something as simple as disabling the weather widget is possible on Windows. But the moment they go the Linux route, suddenly they go all-in on the ricing? Something isn't right here and that's what I find weird. As if people use their operating systems emotionally rather than practically. What I mean by this, the emotional attachment to Windows is that of hate. This hate then causes people to refuse to try and figure out why something is the way it is, but instead they rage at it and get annoyed by it endlessly. The emotional attachment to Linux is that of openness and freedom, and that leads to people going off the deep end with ricing. Except what the end goal those people had is achievable on both through more or less the same routes, but due to this emotional attachment they were under this false belief that they had to make the switch just to have a nice time using their computer.

It's as if you had power tool fanboys that would outright refuse to use a Makita, but would use every single feature of Milwaukee and deal with all of it's issues with acceptance, even though both are more or less the same. They would come to that conclusion if they treated those tools as what they are, tools, rather than having an emotional attachment to the label or what's inside. Same emotional sentiment prevails in this subforum, on /g/ and on a multitude of other places. You cannot have a civilized discussion about all the pros and cons of both operating systems because there will always be this emotional attachment that Windows is bad and you cannot say anything good about it, and Linux is good and you cannot say anything bad about it, leading to useless, pointless arguments and anger instead of helping each other out in getting the best experience.

An operating system is a tool. Windows is a tool. Linux is a tool. Both share a subset of abilities, as well as having unique ones. They're not sports teams.

Windows lies to you, tells you you can't do it and shouldn't do it. It tries to stop you, makes it intentionally obtuse to proceed through the system and it will try and undo everything you did every update it can.

Windows doesn't lie to you about not being able to disable the weather widget. It tells you that you can, and it will, and it won't come back no matter how many updates it installed because you told it you don't want it and it will respect your decision.

Imagine that someone installs Linux Mint, complains about the default layout of the Cinnamon taskbar, and does nothing but complain about some nitpick on it, all because it never occurred to them to try and right click on it to see if there's a settings menu. You'd say that's insane and it's natural to try and right click on something to find a settings menu, to try to see if something can be changed.

That's the average Windows user, like Felix. For some reason it never occurs to them that Windows lets you customize the taskbar to an extent, but to the one that they want to customize it, to disable the irritating things about it. But the moment they move to Linux, this natural instinct of right clicking around and seeing what can be changed suddenly gets unlocked, then this zeitgeist of "Windows 11 cannot be changed in any way" is upheld. It's illogical and I can't see any other reason than people having an emotional attachment to what's essentially a tool.

 

[Retarded Weeb]

Thanks, but I'm still sticking with Linux.

 

[NORMAL HUMAN]

That's the average Windows user, like Felix. For some reason it never occurs to them that Windows lets you customize the taskbar to an extent, but to the one that they want to customize it, to disable the irritating things about it. But the moment they move to Linux, this natural instinct of right clicking around and seeing what can be changed suddenly gets unlocked, then this zeitgeist of "Windows 11 cannot be changed in any way" is upheld. It's illogical and I can't see any other reason than people having an emotional attachment to what's essentially a tool.

People probably jump to ricing on Linux because, while you can customize Windows to a great degree, it's locked behind obtuse registry hacks and the control panel/system settings that have varying layouts from XP/7/11. Then you're looking at using a patcher to enable custom themes (instead of just having the option), debloat scripts, and the OS throwing a fit if you do try to tweak it. I set up a Windows LTSC VM for adobe products and found out the only way I could change certain keyboard shortcuts was through running autohotkey scripts on system startup (using the same shortcut to close windows on Linux/Windows). All of these settings are built into any decent Linux DE yet on Windows you're looking at regedits/needing extraneous programs just to enable/disable basic system wants (Windhawk for example).

 

[CheepMeds]

In short: for some reason people refuse to put a modicum of research into making their Windows experience a bit better, suffer though Microsoft's defaults assuming they cannot do anything about them, but the moment they switch to Linux they find an entire new world of customization, where a good fraction of it that they find personally valuable already existed in some extent on Windows, but they refused to even consider looking for it. I really don't understand this mentality.

To backup what @Harry Kuntz and @NORMAL HUMAN said about Windows having a "black box" vibe.
With Windows, there is also a strong psychological dread of bricking an OS with a paid licence that you can only run one instance of. That in combination of the "black box" thing, is a very strong incentive to just never fuck with it or else you might break your only usable computer. (Even if the belief is misguided)

On the other hand, Linux is free to set up and knock down as much as you want on the cheapest of hardware that people are often just stuck with.
If people don't have hardware, Linux is also very friendly with virtual machines.
Then there is the aspect of Internet and YouTube being filled with countless Linux tutorials, showcases and a vibrant proselytizing subculture of bullshit distro dick-measuring and ricing which can be very fun and captivating to observe or engage in with the lowest entry bar.

I can't imagine a better environment to encourage people to learn how all computers work than what the Linux space has.

 

[Sangue e terra]

In short: for some reason people refuse to put a modicum of research into making their Windows experience a bit better, suffer though Microsoft's defaults assuming they cannot do anything about them, but the moment they switch to Linux they find an entire new world of customization, where a good fraction of it that they find personally valuable already existed in some extent on Windows, but they refused to even consider looking for it. I really don't understand this mentality.

I can answer this: Windows update. One update can undo all the tweaks you had, only to have the default settings back again and you have to start over. This can happen ever other month or so and you can't do anything about it. Any spirit you had to optimize windows will be gone in less than 3 months, so eventually you just accept it.

 

[Mark Goldbridge]

2025 is the Year of the Linux Desktop:

>she
Don't listen to whatever Brodie says. "Lina" is a man and he is also Hector Martin.

It will hopefully refresh and rejuvenate the Linux scene, it's been stale for the past 5 years.

 

[Slav Power]

It will hopefully refresh and rejuvenate the Linux scene, it's been stale for the past 5 years.

I doubt it'll do much, people will get excited about the biggest name on YouTube shilling Linux, then in a few weeks people will forget about it. For the Linux scene to actually rejuvenate, you'd need all the Linux devs to pull their heads out of their asses, curb their egos and start writing better code instead of getting fussy whenever someone makes a GitHub issue. One Pewds video won't help with that unfortunately.

 

[Sangue e terra]

I doubt it'll do much, people will get excited about the biggest name on YouTube shilling Linux, then in a few weeks people will forget about it. For the Linux scene to actually rejuvenate, you'd need all the Linux devs to pull their heads out of their asses, curb their egos and start writing better code instead of getting fussy whenever someone makes a GitHub issue. One Pewds video won't help with that unfortunately.

Every small step counts. Only an idiot wouldn't dare to dream about escaping the digital kike poojet realm.

 

[Mr. Ghoul]

Damn he caught that linux bug hard. Impressive rice as well. Good for him. Fuck Microshit and Adobe.

I doubt it'll do much, people will get excited about the biggest name on YouTube shilling Linux, then in a few weeks people will forget about it. For the Linux scene to actually rejuvenate, you'd need all the Linux devs to pull their heads out of their asses, curb their egos and start writing better code instead of getting fussy whenever someone makes a GitHub issue. One Pewds video won't help with that unfortunately.

Even if it's just a few new converts It's good. Like he said, Linux is not for everybody. But for those who it is for it's like an awakening.

 

[Hooked on phobics]

Honestly between windows between microsoft being retarded, and steamOS proton making MOST shit for windows run on PC anyway, being free, and everything else, why am I even supposed to disagree with him??

Doesn't help steam deck has been my PC for a while, but yeah, I can do anything I need to do. definitely has growing pains, but its the easiest time to get into it I figure.

 

[ZMOT]

and the OS throwing a fit if you do try to tweak it.

it's even worse than that since even simple changes can have wide fucking impact that doesn't make sense. linux tells you when it needs a package because that's how it's build. windows missing something? good luck with that, first figuring out that it does, and then what it is.

my favorite windows feature is still updates breaking when you move user folders. because who wouldn't want to separate user and system files... (and don't get me started on the recent development of shit getting installed in your user folder instead of program files).

 

[big pauper]

In short: for some reason people refuse to put a modicum of research into making their Windows experience a bit better, suffer though Microsoft's defaults assuming they cannot do anything about them, but the moment they switch to Linux they find an entire new world of customization, where a good fraction of it that they find personally valuable already existed in some extent on Windows, but they refused to even consider looking for it. I really don't understand this mentality.

windows sucks shit and i hate it but i have been using it for my entire life. i've tried to switch to linux 3 separate times and each of them i ran into an issue and consulted the greybeards and was told linux can't really do what i already use windows to do, so this entire paradigm of thought has always struck me as a manipulative rhetorical tactic.

linux, despite presenting itself as a single project, is really multiple contradictory things all wrapped into one name. like sure gnu/linux is a complex ideological concept pursuing the platonic rational ideal of the best software suite imaginable - but most people engaging in the linux community are not stallman groupies, linus himself wasn't, they're just people who want to use a computer. linux is caught in between the ideological ideals of its creators and the pragmatic ideals of its maintainers and that is why there are 200 different distros that all say that they do things the best

 

[analrapist]

200 different distros that all say that they do things the best

No, it's mostly zealots (see this thread for more, eg. pug-fag) who "all say that they do things best". The designers mostly realize that their points of differentiation are small (eg. glibc-replacement, systemd-replacement, etc.) or negligible (no difference, just different context).