The Linux Thread - The Autist's OS of Choice

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We're going to be at the end of the 2020s by the time NixOS flakes are actually deemed stable by upstream, despite the contributors and everyday users having to provide scattered examples of flake usage because the wiki is only good for documenting how to enable them.
 
Really, to sum up my issue with systemd. I like having choice in linux. And systemd to some extent doesn't give you much choice now days. But when I actually use systemd, I do like it, and it does make my life easier. I don't think I've had it make something I was trying to do harder, than on one of my non-systemd distros. It almost always is the other way around.
Same for me, it always comes down to choice. Nothing makes me want to not do something more than being told I have to do it. Oh, and the fact that it is a tool for corpo control over the Linux ecosystem, but I've sperged about that enough already.

In a last ditch effort I looked for a different distrubution without systemd, found void and it actually works kinda, at least better.. But sometimes its like the display freezes just a little, hard to explain, i can still open new stuff but if I close something its still displayed.. doesnt happen often solved with a reboot, still annoying but i really like the setup so I went ahead and installed void on my desktop. I have a usb sound card and every time it boots theres a really loud popping sound coming from the speakers (sometimes even twice).
I had a similar issue with one of my NVIDIA thinkpads and it ended up being a GPU seating issue. Open your lappy up, dust, reapply paste and check cable connections. It really shouldn't be too hard to give it a basic touch up, you can easily find tons of guides on yt or follow along with official lenovo hardware manuals to dis and re-assemble it.
 
I had a similar issue with one of my NVIDIA thinkpads and it ended up being a GPU seating issue. Open your lappy up, dust, reapply paste and check cable connections. It really shouldn't be too hard to give it a basic touch up, you can easily find tons of guides on yt or follow along with official lenovo hardware manuals to dis and re-assemble it.
The display issues are one a new MSI laptop.. but could be hardware, it ran rellay hot under load in windows, although it worked without issues. It doenst get hot anymore but im mostly using an external monitor now. A new thing is happening, sometimes it wont shut down.. maybe i should send it back.
 
The display issues are one a new MSI laptop.. but could be hardware, it ran rellay hot under load in windows, although it worked without issues. It doenst get hot anymore but im mostly using an external monitor now. A new thing is happening, sometimes it wont shut down.. maybe i should send it back.
Gaming laptops do tend to get a bit warm. I'm not sure what it like on Windows but on Linux you can get the "sensors" package to help you check system temps and see what the safety thresholds are for your hardware. As for your issues, if it works flawlessly on Windows it may have just been a driver quirk, but still, cleaning and maintenance is important, so if you think you're willing to do that yourself, it usually doesn't take more than like, an hour max and one screwdriver. Just remember to mark which screw goes where, gaming laptops can be a bitch to work on.
 
TL;DR: NVIDIA on Linux still has completely garbage VRAM management, at least for now.

I first built my PC in 2017 with a Ryzen 3 1200 and a GTX 1050 Ti for budget constraints. Then my Ryzen 5 2600 and RX Vega 64 came when Micro Centre had them on sale c. 2019, the latter coming with a download code for Devil May Cry 5. FOSS compatibility was not a concern for me at the time but holy fuck: I'm so grateful that AMD got their shit together (relatively speaking) and have FOSS drivers on Linux that aren't total dogshit ass. To be clear: AMD's drivers on Linux used to be dogshit too (anyone remember FGLRX/Catalyst?) with the xf86-video-ati driver not being much better by comparison. Yet from what you've outlined, NVIDIA's binary drivers are somehow worse than FGLRX and I can only infer that Nouveau hasn't aged particularly well with the advent of the RTX series. How do you manage to have a double-whammy of dogshit binary drivers and dogshit FOSS drivers that are inexplicably worse than AMD's like 10+ years ago?
 
Xlibre now supports Ubuntu 24.04 LTS and Debian 12 and their derivatives such as Linux Mint. For Ubuntu 24.04 a newer version of presentproto has been added to the package, and on Debian 12 you're need to install libdrm from Debian backports.

If you have a Nvidia GPU you will need to uninstall the Nvidia drivers and switch to Noveau, and after rebooting install the driver directly from Nvidia's we sit as the driver manager will no longer work. Ensure you add the ignoreabi flag as directed or Xlibre will not start
 
Xlibre now supports Ubuntu 24.04 LTS and Debian 12 and their derivatives such as Linux Mint. For Ubuntu 24.04 a newer version of presentproto has been added to the package, and on Debian 12 you're need to install libdrm from Debian backports.

If you have a Nvidia GPU you will need to uninstall the Nvidia drivers and switch to Noveau, and after rebooting install the driver directly from Nvidia's we sit as the driver manager will no longer work. Ensure you add the ignoreabi flag as directed or Xlibre will not start

I presume that this will conflict with Xorg somehow; I wonder if the GitHub page has any instructions.
 
I presume that this will conflict with Xorg somehow; I wonder if the GitHub page has any instructions.
It automatically handles it, just follow the instructions and copy and paste that code block into the terminal. If you have a Nvidia GPU there's some more steps you have to do, I can post the guide in a little bit but it should be in the bugs/discussion area.
 
It automatically handles it, just follow the instructions and copy and paste that code block into the terminal. If you have a Nvidia GPU there's some more steps you have to do, I can post the guide in a little bit but it should be in the bugs/discussion area.

Xlibre installed successfully for me on Linux Mint; no bugs, my vidya plays perfectly thus far, and I have no complaints as of now. Minor change I would advise if anyone's on 22.1: make sure you modify

Code:
cat <<EOF | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/xlibre-deb.sources
Types: deb deb-src
URIs: https://xlibre-deb.github.io/ubuntu/
Suites: $(. /etc/os-release && echo "$VERSION_CODENAME")
Components: main
Architectures: $(dpkg --print-architecture)
Signed-By: /etc/apt/keyrings/xlibre-deb.asc
EOF

to the below

Code:
cat <<EOF | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/xlibre-deb.sources
Types: deb deb-src
URIs: https://xlibre-deb.github.io/ubuntu/
Suites: noble
Components: main
Architectures: $(dpkg --print-architecture)
Signed-By: /etc/apt/keyrings/xlibre-deb.asc
EOF

If you blindly copy/paste the instructions from GitHub on Linux Mint 22.1, you'll have it say "xia" and then apt will tell you "oi m8, not gonna work, wrong version flag."
 
Xlibre installed successfully for me on Linux Mint; no bugs, my vidya plays perfectly thus far, and I have no complaints as of now. Minor change I would advise if anyone's on 22.1: make sure you modify

Code:
cat <<EOF | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/xlibre-deb.sources
Types: deb deb-src
URIs: https://xlibre-deb.github.io/ubuntu/
Suites: $(. /etc/os-release && echo "$VERSION_CODENAME")
Components: main
Architectures: $(dpkg --print-architecture)
Signed-By: /etc/apt/keyrings/xlibre-deb.asc
EOF

to the below

Code:
cat <<EOF | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/xlibre-deb.sources
Types: deb deb-src
URIs: https://xlibre-deb.github.io/ubuntu/
Suites: noble
Components: main
Architectures: $(dpkg --print-architecture)
Signed-By: /etc/apt/keyrings/xlibre-deb.asc
EOF

If you blindly copy/paste the instructions from GitHub on Linux Mint 22.1, you'll have it say "xia" and then apt will tell you "oi m8, not gonna work, wrong version flag."
But then that code won't work on Plucky. Is there a way to pull the base Ubuntu version automatically?

Edit:
To automatically check the Ubuntu version when adding a repository on a downstream distribution like Linux Mint, you can use the cat /etc/upstream-release/lsb-release command, which displays the Ubuntu release codename and version that the current Linux Mint installation is based on.
This information is crucial for adding repositories that require the Ubuntu codename, such as when installing the latest version of VirtualBox in Linux Mint.
The output will show details like DISTRIB_RELEASE=22.04 and DISTRIB_CODENAME=jammy, indicating the base Ubuntu version.
This method provides a direct way to identify the underlying Ubuntu release without relying on the Linux Mint version number alone.
I submitted a pull request with the change which should help.
 
Last edited:
But then that code won't work on Plucky. Is there a way to pull the base Ubuntu version automatically?

Edit:

I submitted a pull request with the change which should help.

I think 22.04 isn’t supported because it’s too old. Not entirely sure why but the supported distros are Noble (24.04) and Plucky (25.04) per the GitHub page for xlibre-deb.
 
I think 22.04 isn’t supported because it’s too old. Not entirely sure why but the supported distros are Noble (24.04) and Plucky (25.04) per the GitHub page for xlibre-deb.
The current Xlibre build process requires presentproto 1.4 while Ubuntu ships with 1.3, requiring it to be manually included for 24.04. 22.04 requires more work, but I do not see how thays related to my question.
 
The AMDGPU drivers and even NVIDIA's Windows drivers do not seem to have this deliberate design limitation. It doesn't look like this will be addressed any time soon either, as the driver developers seem to be working on making the existing implementation work better.
The only target market for NVIDIA drivers on Linux is ML/CAD/rendering. This would be expected behavior in these domains where everything needs to run on VRAM and it's better to just crash if you don't have enough.

The fact that gaming works at all is just a happy accident of the unified driver design.
 
Found this ancient thing from '93 after snooping about. Apparently it inspired dpkg:
1755748562095.webp

StopAlop was a Bourne-style shell script that builds, installs, lists, verifies, and removes binary packages using only core Unix tools. It is largely a relic of early Linux days when tools like floppies and manual file tracking were common. As for the meaning behind the name:
1755748909333.webp
:story:
 
Found this ancient thing from '93 after snooping about. Apparently it inspired dpkg:
View attachment 7808115

StopAlop was a Bourne-style shell script that builds, installs, lists, verifies, and removes binary packages using only core Unix tools. It is largely a relic of early Linux days when tools like floppies and manual file tracking were common. As for the meaning behind the name:
View attachment 7808138
:story:
Must've been an avid reader.
1755749857242.webp
Seriously, how come there is not a single high resolution version of this cover available online?
 
Found this ancient thing from '93 after snooping about. Apparently it inspired dpkg:
View attachment 7808115

StopAlop was a Bourne-style shell script that builds, installs, lists, verifies, and removes binary packages using only core Unix tools. It is largely a relic of early Linux days when tools like floppies and manual file tracking were common. As for the meaning behind the name:
View attachment 7808138
:story:

I wonder if StopAlop has any real-world utility in distro-agnostic package management. Sounds like an Arch PKGBUILD or a Slackbuild, but with strictly POSIX tooling. Nix, Guix, and pkgsrc come close, but they're distinct from the core utilities that ship with any given Linux/BSD/insert mostly POSIX-compliant system here.
 
Does anyone have experience with using GNU/GUIX System? I'm currently looking into unifying all of my machines' OSes and at a glance, GUIX does seem to support all the stuff I need for each machine. Having a reproducible config that I can just copy paste onto another rig & roll back come breakage seems really, really appealing. Don't know diddly squat about LISP, but hey, never too late to learn.
 
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