The Linux Thread - The Autist's OS of Choice

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Frederica Bernkastel said:
SteamOS does a lot to solve this issue. Everyone seems to love the Steam Deck.
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The big issue with SteamOS that fuels the mythos of Valve saving everyone from Windows with SteamOS for desktops is that the reason SteamOS is so good is because it's fine-tuned to a handful of hardware configurations. The moment Valve would try and make a "Windows but Linux" that tech illiterate mongoloids long for all of the smoothness of SteamOS would evaporate at an instant when you're now trying to make fucking Arch of all distros "just werk" on millions upon millions of varying hardware configurations. All of Linux's shortcomings would peek their ugly head in.

The fact that Windows handles different hardware configurations so well despite the clusterfuck that NT development is, from Win9x being a mess, then initial NT versions being full of issues, then the Longhorn project and it's final result that was Vista, the constant layering of legacy code dating back to NT 3.1, and the enshittification at the hands of the chief Pajeet since 2015, is nothing short of a fucking Christmas miracle. Valve would need a Christmas miracle of their own for SteamOS to be what people envision it as.
 
Slav Power said:
The big issue with SteamOS that fuels the mythos of Valve saving everyone from Windows with SteamOS for desktops is that the reason SteamOS is so good is because it's fine-tuned to a handful of hardware configurations. The moment Valve would try and make a "Windows but Linux" that tech illiterate mongoloids long for all of the smoothness of SteamOS would evaporate at an instant when you're now trying to make fucking Arch of all distros "just werk" on millions upon millions of varying hardware configurations. All of Linux's shortcomings would peek their ugly head in.

The fact that Windows handles different hardware configurations so well despite the clusterfuck that NT development is, from Win9x being a mess, then initial NT versions being full of issues, then the Longhorn project and it's final result that was Vista, the constant layering of legacy code dating back to NT 3.1, and the enshittification at the hands of the chief Pajeet since 2015, is nothing short of a fucking Christmas miracle. Valve would need a Christmas miracle of their own for SteamOS to be what people envision it as.
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Is it a miracle or the product of business deals with hardware manufacturers to make sure all of this stuff works? And leaving opensource products like linux to just kind of figure it out. I think another example that can apply is android, or chromos. They are being built to work together. And it wouldn't make sense to not provide good support for drivers. Because these companies actually want to make sure it's going to work properly (or at least good enough).

On the desktop. Linux drivers are basically an afterthought. With a bit of support being given here or there, depending on how much it will benefit the company. If nvidia or amd, really wanted to. I have no doubt within a year, linux could be 1 to 1 with windows for driver support. But I don't think either company see's enough of an incentive to bother.
 
Slav Power said:
The big issue with SteamOS that fuels the mythos of Valve saving everyone from Windows with SteamOS for desktops is that the reason SteamOS is so good is because it's fine-tuned to a handful of hardware configurations. The moment Valve would try and make a "Windows but Linux" that tech illiterate mongoloids long for all of the smoothness of SteamOS would evaporate at an instant when you're now trying to make fucking Arch of all distros "just werk" on millions upon millions of varying hardware configurations. All of Linux's shortcomings would peek their ugly head in.

The fact that Windows handles different hardware configurations so well despite the clusterfuck that NT development is, from Win9x being a mess, then initial NT versions being full of issues, then the Longhorn project and it's final result that was Vista, the constant layering of legacy code dating back to NT 3.1, and the enshittification at the hands of the chief Pajeet since 2015, is nothing short of a fucking Christmas miracle. Valve would need a Christmas miracle of their own for SteamOS to be what people envision it as.
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I take the general point and am sure Steam OS is being overhyped, but would question the extent to which what was definitely true (and a major issue) a decade or so ago is still such an issue. Speaking as the kind of Linux ignoramus who can't remember when I last used the terminal, I find Linux gives me less problems in general usage than Windows did. Steam "just works" (tm). And it's easier to install. I do use Mint so that might colour my experience but have no need to be on the bleeding edge with a customised Arch install and suspect that's true with the vast majority of PC users.

The only Linux issue I had was with a logitech keyboard. It worked as a keyboard fine but it's one of these programmable multicolour key jobbies and was in full cat mesmeriser disco mode. The logitech control software is of course Windows only. A painless interweb search and following the instructions as to what to copy and paste into the terminal and all was well having returned to tedious sold blue lighting. Thinking about it that was probably the last time I used the terminal!
 
Every keyboard and mouse I have plugged in has worked out of the box on Linux, the only problem I had once was related to USB autosuspend which is easily fixed by just setting an udev rule to stop that from happening to keyboards and mice but the keyboard and mice would still work regardless. PewDiePie saying his F1, F2, etc keys didn't work is literally the first time I have heard of that type of stuff not working out of the box in over a decade. Granted I don't use "gamer" shit that thinks a device needs bells and whistles just to function normally as a keyboard, mouse or w/e. I exclusively buy "office keyboards" and "office mice" even though I just use them for anything.
 
Akerman said:
PewDiePie saying his F1, F2, etc keys didn't work is literally the first time I have heard of that type of stuff not working out of the box in over a decade.
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I've had that issue once, with my current keyboard, which has a switch on the side of it to flip between MacOS and windows signal formats. The F keys don't work in the OSX setting, which I found out one day, when I accidentally nudged the switch while plugging it in. I assume mac-specific linux distros have some way of catering to that. Bet he had the same issue.
 
Akerman said:
PewDiePie saying his F1, F2, etc keys didn't work is literally the first time I have heard of that type of stuff not working out of the box in over a decade.
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This seems to be the default setting for laptops, as volume, brightness, etc apparently take precedence. I have used several distributions on my laptop over time and always had to hold down the Fn key to use the F keys.
 
I got an old junker laptop to take traveling with me and wanted to put linux on it. My usual go to is xfce for weaker hardware so put mint xfce on it and I never realised how shit the scaling options are. On the 1080p laptop screen it either looks like it was made for ants because its so tiny or for 75 year olds with poor eyesight if you choose the 200% scale option. Even then it doesn't scale everything and some elements of the UI still look tiny.

There is also an issue with window snapping, the shortcuts (win+arrow keys) to snap windows are all set up but they don't work and pressing the win/super key just opens the whisker menu. Apparently its a know and very old bug and the only "solution" I found online was users suggesting changing the button input for opening the menu to win+alt because its easy to fat finger both buttons :story:

I tried cinnamon instead and its apparently a bit of a hog. It was using 30% CPU at idle and having a single browser tab with youtube running pegged the CPU at 100% and choked the system.

MATE looked and felt like shit and I didn't even bother trying to install it after messing with the live USB.

In desperation I gave kubuntu a try and...everything just worked? The UI scaling option all work fine, the theming options are good, the keyboard shortcuts function and it doesn't pummel the CPU into submission. I was pleasantly surprised. For some reason I was always under the impression that KDE was a bit of a resource hog.
 
Max Weber said:
Usually there's either a button combination or a BIOS setting to flip that.
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yeah, that's how my laptops are. the Fn key and Esc. That toggles the function keys or I can hold down the Fn key and use them in the other mode without switching.

Stasi said:
In desperation I gave kubuntu a try and...everything just worked? The UI scaling option all work fine, the theming options are good, the keyboard shortcuts function and it doesn't pummel the CPU into submission. I was pleasantly surprised. For some reason I was always under the impression that KDE was a bit of a resource hog.
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You are NOT allowed to use anything that uses wayland by default chud. Remove it from your computer now, or you will have your linux privileges taken.
 
Stasi said:
I got an old junker laptop to take traveling with me and wanted to put linux on it. My usual go to is xfce for weaker hardware so put mint xfce on it and I never realised how shit the scaling options are. On the 1080p laptop screen it either looks like it was made for ants because its so tiny or for 75 year olds with poor eyesight if you choose the 200% scale option. Even then it doesn't scale everything and some elements of the UI still look tiny.

There is also an issue with window snapping, the shortcuts (win+arrow keys) to snap windows are all set up but they don't work and pressing the win/super key just opens the whisker menu. Apparently its a know and very old bug and the only "solution" I found online was users suggesting changing the button input for opening the menu to win+alt because its easy to fat finger both buttons :story:

I tried cinnamon instead and its apparently a bit of a hog. It was using 30% CPU at idle and having a single browser tab with youtube running pegged the CPU at 100% and choked the system.

MATE looked and felt like shit and I didn't even bother trying to install it after messing with the live USB.

In desperation I gave kubuntu a try and...everything just worked? The UI scaling option all work fine, the theming options are good, the keyboard shortcuts function and it doesn't pummel the CPU into submission. I was pleasantly surprised. For some reason I was always under the impression that KDE was a bit of a resource hog.
Click to expand...
I had to give up on using Mint on my old laptop because of those scaling reasons. There is an option to turn on fractional scaling that makes it much better, but it also introduces horrific screen tearing and is basically useless. This was years and years ago and apparently they still have not fixed it.
 
Slav Power said:
The big issue with SteamOS that fuels the mythos of Valve saving everyone from Windows with SteamOS for desktops is that the reason SteamOS is so good is because it's fine-tuned to a handful of hardware configurations. The moment Valve would try and make a "Windows but Linux" that tech illiterate mongoloids long for all of the smoothness of SteamOS would evaporate at an instant when you're now trying to make fucking Arch of all distros "just werk" on millions upon millions of varying hardware configurations. All of Linux's shortcomings would peek their ugly head in.

The fact that Windows handles different hardware configurations so well despite the clusterfuck that NT development is, from Win9x being a mess, then initial NT versions being full of issues, then the Longhorn project and it's final result that was Vista, the constant layering of legacy code dating back to NT 3.1, and the enshittification at the hands of the chief Pajeet since 2015, is nothing short of a fucking Christmas miracle. Valve would need a Christmas miracle of their own for SteamOS to be what people envision it as.
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You see this with people trying to get their early 2010s hardware running anything meaningful.
 
Stasi said:
In desperation I gave kubuntu a try and...everything just worked? The UI scaling option all work fine, the theming options are good, the keyboard shortcuts function and it doesn't pummel the CPU into submission. I was pleasantly surprised. For some reason I was always under the impression that KDE was a bit of a resource hog.
Click to expand...
KDE has been fine for all around use in my experience as well, even on a lot of bad hardware. I run it on my 10+ year old laptop. For me the only real issues as an end user are some of the stupid defaults it ships with. The floating panel on the bottom, the remembering desktop sessions on reboot, the sound bell that beeps at you everytime you lower or raise volume. You have to turn off so much stuff the moment you boot into a new install of it. It used to be worse too, I think they used to ship with one click to open by default which was hated for good reason.
 
Akerman said:
Every keyboard and mouse I have plugged in has worked out of the box on Linux, the only problem I had once was related to USB autosuspend which is easily fixed by just setting an udev rule to stop that from happening to keyboards and mice but the keyboard and mice would still work regardless. PewDiePie saying his F1, F2, etc keys didn't work is literally the first time I have heard of that type of stuff not working out of the box in over a decade. Granted I don't use "gamer" shit that thinks a device needs bells and whistles just to function normally as a keyboard, mouse or w/e. I exclusively buy "office keyboards" and "office mice" even though I just use them for anything.
Click to expand...
Hamsteroid said:
This seems to be the default setting for laptops, as volume, brightness, etc apparently take precedence. I have used several distributions on my laptop over time and always had to hold down the Fn key to use the F keys.
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Does he perchance have a Razer laptop? If they're anything like their keyboards, and I've no reason to believe they aren't, using the Function-layer key might be done in software. I think it was Razer that did that...
No idea whether they did it maliciously to get more people to install their software, or they're just that incompetent, but either way you're not going to get keyboard manufacturer "drivers" to run on Linux. Thankfully most of the time settings like that will be stored on the keyboard itself (for BIOS configuration compatibility, I guess?) so you can just pass the keyboard through to a Windows VM and do the settings in there, but in the cases it isn't, you'd better hope your keyboard has reasonable defaults.
 
Susanna said:
either way you're not going to get keyboard manufacturer "drivers" to run on Linux. Thankfully most of the time settings like that will be stored on the keyboard itself (for BIOS configuration compatibility, I guess?) so you can just pass the keyboard through to a Windows VM and do the settings in there, but in the cases it isn't, you'd better hope your keyboard has reasonable defaults.
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In the case of Razer, there's an subtle irony in that Linux kinda/sorta offers a better experience for some peripherals. Only OpenRazer and long since discontinued Synapse versions correctly save values back for permanent storage, meaning it's actually useful to have a Linux VM just to program how everything looks when there isn't a connected Windows session (because Synapse 3 and 4 will revert to those when on the lock screen or pre-logon) while having OpenRGB handle dimming of lights when disconnecting. Real malicious compliance is that some of their peripherals can only technically save LED enabled/disabled values (or the modes) instead of the actual colour values!

On Linux, the main issues are the lack of a proper Chroma API REST server, per-process profile swapping (so you don't get lovely game integrations) and ways to adjust the newer optical keyboards which have analog thresholds for what constitutes a digital keypress. Razer Synapse can officially expose WASD and other keys as a virtual Xbox controller, but in theory more raw values could be scraped to emulate other types of controllers with some creativity (e.g. PS3 sixaxis). But you do gain the benefit of no cloudslop dependencies and genuinely better reliability with what does work.
 
Stasi said:
For some reason I was always under the impression that KDE was a bit of a resource hog.
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This hasn't been true since around 5.12 or so. They've made a ton of performance improvements.

I would turn off the file indexer on older hardware though, whether KDE or GNOME. It's under the Search options in settings. Indexing a pdf file is torturous for older CPUs.
 
Froggy Fresh Sextape said:
This hasn't been true since around 5.12 or so
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fixed in mid kde 5, worse in 6.0 with the move to qt6, i still remember plasmashell using almost a gig of ram at idle, not even counting the memory leak, now back to being good. People exaggerate the memory/performance differences between all the DEs, most of them use less than a gig if you starve them, and they will rightfully balloon when they realize they can actually cache stuff into memory.
 
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