The Linux Thread - The Autist's OS of Choice

[Taser Confetti]

Can you guys recommend me a video editor that works on linux? I used to use sony vegas but it is either incompatible with linux mint or I am too retarded to correctly install it

Kdenlive as others have said or DaVinci Resolve.

 

[Betonhaus]

Cmon nigga the libxtrans screenshot is absolutely an ironic shitpost. All of those other bits sound perfectly rational.

It was definitely a shitpost, just them declaring that they managed to make Xlibre work on one of the tranny OSs (I don't recall which one)

 

[Ferryman]

It was definitely a shitpost, just them declaring that they managed to make Xlibre work on one of the tranny OSs (I don't recall which one)

You're thinking of NixOS. I lament the fact that there is no non-systemd fork of Nix, declarative OSes are a hard drug to get off of once you take that first hit. If only it wasn't cut with SystemDalit...

 

[thirstytux]

FreeBSD >>> OpenBSD in terms of pure usability. You should look through my post history in this thread for “FreeBSD” so that you can see my rundowns

In addition, there is a thread called, "BSD & Other Non Linux / Windows / Mac OS Thread" in which I wondered if "Fuguita" is a good project to explore, being an OpenBSD LiveCD, (you don't find many of those around these days) which has screenshots on their site of desktop environments and such. I haven't had the time to play with it yet but I wouldn't suggest it as an *installable* replacement for OpenBSD.

Maybe it's time for a completely dedicated BSD thread.

 

[General Zoider]

Fedora Xfce

I need to atleast try a fedora setup because I was exposed to the package manager via https://www.openmandriva.org/ and any time i needed to edit a package I had to use the fedora docs as a syntax refrence.

This is a seporate thought but can somone explain how immutable OS's dont run into issues with file handles and overhead due to all the layers? While I know its probably not hitting syscalls all the time, it still must have some overhead that can appear under heavy load conditions.

 

[Dread First]

This is a seporate thought but can somone explain how immutable OS's dont run into issues with file handles and overhead due to all the layers? While I know its probably not hitting syscalls all the time, it still must have some overhead that can appear under heavy load conditions.

Short answer: they don’t. The overhead is still present. You just don’t notice it if you have powerful enough hardware.

Longer answer: There is no value in “atomic” or “immutable” distributions if you’re a home user. All the perceived benefits are overridden by:

a) Process overhead from having so much shit actively containerised with an assload of different runtimes being used at any given time. You don’t notice it on a high end enthusiast gaming PC running Bazzite because you have so much headroom, but try running Fedora Silverblue, Kinoite, or COSMIC Atomic on a used Dell Optiplex off eBay from an enterprise reseller. It’s a miserable experience.

b) You must explicitly avoid layering or otherwise altering the standard image of the atomic/immutable distro, otherwise you’re on your own. The workaround is to host your own custom image so that you can “rebase” to it after major upgrades.

c) not everything is containerised out the gate. Even low level or mid level system dont have containerised binaries like Flatpaks. This comprises a ton of libraries, runtime environments, and so on that you specifically need to layer on.

d) Upgrades take a LONG fucking time. Oh sure you can roll back if your shit gets borked… but OpenSolaris already accomplished that with a transactional package manager operating on a normal, mutable file system. IPS was also the brainchild of the late Ian Murdock btw, devised during his tenure at Sun Microsystems from 2007-2010.

Moral of the story? Don’t fucking bother with atomic/immutable distros if you’re not some turbo dork sysadmin spinning up hundreds upon thousands of instances and need uniformity across all those environments. In a home user context, the consequences outweigh any supposed benefits by a million orders of magnitude.

 

[Taser Confetti]

Longer answer: There is no value in “atomic” or “immutable” distributions if you’re a home user. All the perceived benefits are overridden by:

Hard disagree. They’re absolutely perfect for your grandmother or boomer parent who’s just going to use Chrome and maybe Thunderbird and VLC or normies who are really just looking for Chrome and Steam to run perfectly.

 

[Trans Fat 41g]

Moral of the story? Don’t fucking bother with atomic/immutable distros if you’re not some turbo dork sysadmin spinning up hundreds upon thousands of instances and need uniformity across all those environments. In a home user context, the consequences outweigh any supposed benefits by a million orders of magnitude.

Imagine requiring an internet connection to do any low-level maintenance, even things that don't/shouldn't touch the internet.

That's the scariest part about these atomic systems.

 

[Dread First]

Hard disagree. They’re absolutely perfect for your grandmother or boomer parent who’s just going to use Chrome and maybe Thunderbird and VLC or normies who are really just looking for Chrome and Steam to run perfectly.

Counter argument: Linux Mint because it’s frictionless and you could just set yourself up as an administrator with SSH and VNC access while giving your boomer parent or befuddled grandparent a standard user account.

As to the normies who just want Chrome and Steam? Linux Mint offers that too. Let me reiterate: there is absolutely no conceivable value that atomic/immutable distros have to offer to a home user context. It’s all enterprise and cloud bullshit being thrust upon end users because it’s convenient for developers.

 

[Betonhaus]

Hard disagree. They’re absolutely perfect for your grandmother or boomer parent who’s just going to use Chrome and maybe Thunderbird and VLC or normies who are really just looking for Chrome and Steam to run perfectly.

Run perfectly for a little while then shuts the bed because a big update requires manual intervention. If you love grandma you'd set her up with Linux Mint.

 

[Taser Confetti]

Counter argument: Linux Mint because it’s frictionless and you could just set yourself up as an administrator with SSH and VNC access while giving your boomer parent or befuddled grandparent a standard user account.

As to the normies who just want Chrome and Steam? Linux Mint offers that too. Let me reiterate: there is absolutely no conceivable value that atomic/immutable distros have to offer to a home user context. It’s all enterprise and cloud bullshit being thrust upon end users because it’s convenient for developers.

Why would I setup SSH and VNC access when I can install two flatpaks and never worry again about them fucking it up?

Bazzite Linux is essentially rolling. The vidya consumers can never worry about touching their system again until it’s time to buy a new one. If a bad update gives their rig a pozz load they can rollback a snapshot and wait a week until the next one patches.

These distros aren’t for everyone - but they serve a purpose.

 

[Trans Fat 41g]

Imagine requiring an internet connection to do any low-level maintenance, even things that don't/shouldn't touch the internet.

That's the scariest part about these atomic systems.

To elaborate further, bootc/ostree based systems all "chunk" the OS commits into hashed directories, and in those hashed directories a lot of the files locked behind ro (read-only) are accounted for by the pulling and pushing of system changes which are all done "in the cloud". The layout of these hashed directories are a nightmare and I would recommend reading House of Leaves over trying to process these in your mind. If you try to fuck around with any of these files in a way you would an actually normal Linux distribution with a normal file system hierarchy your only intervention is a rollback since the hashes changed, or, if you destroyed those rollbacks a complete and total reinstall.

 

[YOU ARE]

Nix privilege escalation security advisory (a)​

The NixOS project has announced a critical vulnerability (a) in many versions of the Nix package manager's daemon. The flaw was introduced as part of a fix for a prior vulnerability in 2024 (a). According to the advisory (a), all default configurations of NixOS and systems building untrusted derivations (a) are impacted.

A bug in the fix for CVE-2024-27297 (a) allowed for arbitrary overwrites of files writable by the Nix process orchestrating the builds (typically the Nix daemon running as root in multi-user installations) by following symlinks during fixed-output derivation output registration. This affects sandboxed Linux builds - sandboxed macOS builds are unaffected. The location of the temporary output used for the output copy was located inside the build chroot. A symlink, pointing to an arbitrary location in the filesystem, could be created by the derivation builder at that path. During output registration, the Nix process (running in the host mount namespace)would follow that symlink and overwrite the destination with the derivation's output contents.

In multi-user installations, this allows all users able to submit builds to the Nix daemon (allowed-users - defaulting to all users) to gain root privileges by modifying sensitive files.

9/10 severity critical vulnerability. Guix seemingly unaffected (a):

I don't believe it does impact Guix. The bug was introduced in a commit (a) that was made after Guix separated from Nix, and which does not appear in the Guix repository (a).

 

[Dread First]

Why would I setup SSH and VNC access when I can install two flatpaks and never worry again about them fucking it up?

You very specifically brought up the notion of using an atomic/immutable distro in the context of giving a boomer parent or a grandparent a distribution that, in your opinion, would be easier to handle than a garden variety Linux distro with a standard, mutable filesystem. If you're already in the position where you have the leverage to decide a parent or grandparent's operating system for whatever computer you set up, remote access is a requirement unto itself unless you wanna constantly rush over to their aid whenever shit goes tits-up; not "if" but rather "when".

SSH - remotely update your parent or grandparent's computer so that they don't have to manually trigger updates on a user account and invoke admin privileges.

VNC - remotely take control of your parent or grandparent's computer graphically so that you get a birds-eye view of what precisely the relative in question is troubled by.

If you're seriously in that position where you're the de-facto sysadmin for your mom, grandma, or $insert_relative_here's computer, then tools like SSH and VNC on a mutable distro with a normal, transactional package manager like Linux Mint are vital. Don't bring up the hypothetical granny in this situation if you're not willing to take this thought experiment to its logical conclusion.

Bazzite Linux is essentially rolling.

Guess what? Bazzite is hardly unique in this regard. It's built off the back of Fedora Atomic, and there are far superior projects that utilise mainline Fedora as its base. Case in point: Nobara. If you're a GAMER(tm) who absolutely needs the latest and greatest kernel+assorted patches and optimisations for GAMING(tm)+Mesa+drivers, Nobara is far and away the superior project by sheer virtue of the fact that it's based off mainline Fedora and it's arguably the closest that the Fedora ecosystem has to a Linux Mint equivalent. Except GloriousEggRoll ain't Clement Lefebvre and he knows it.

I personally run mainline Fedora 43 Cinnamon because my logic is "why the fuck do I need all these abstract and obtuse patches and optimisations if my monitors are used 1080p enterprise panels that can't even push past 75Hz? 1080p@60fps is 1080p@60fps regardless of whether I'm running Bazzite, Nobara, Fedora Cinnamon, or Linux Mint."

The vidya consumers can never worry about touching their system again until it’s time to buy a new one.

Uh... have you seen how awful this economy is? Have you tried negotiating with used parts sellers on eBay for auctions? Have you tried rolling the dice with Facebook Marketplace? Spoiler alert: AM4's massive longevity, even continuing into 2026 with SKU refreshes on the 5000 series despite "officially" going EOL in 2022, basically means that people are clinging to their older hardware for much longer. Ain't no one out here buying a wholly new, top-of-the-line AM5/AM6 X3D system with maxed out RAM and all the bells and whistles such that they'd actually stand to benefit from all those obscure tweaks, patches, parameters, flags, and so on.

If a bad update gives their rig a pozz load they can rollback a snapshot and wait a week until the next one patches.

Spoiler alert: this is not unique to the Fedora Atomic ecosystem. Transactional package managers on mutable filesystems have already achieved more-or-less seamless rollbacks entirely offline the way that @Trans Fat 41g outlines Fedora Atomic and variants cannot categorically achieve. Not to mention that, ignoring the package manager entirely, the Fedora ecosystem already gives you Btrfs snapshots that you can roll back to if you bork something.

These distros aren’t for everyone - but they serve a purpose.

Spoiler alert: the only "purpose" they're valid for are in obtuse enterprise and cloud deployments where dozens upon hundreds upon thousands of systems get deployed and only a handful of people are there to manage them all during the standard M-F 9-5 business cycle. To reiterate for basically the third fucking time: there ain't any value to Fedora Atomic and assorted variants in a home user context. Any hypotheticals about old people or normies are already better served by standard, mutable distros with transactional package managers.

 

[Taser Confetti]

You very specifically brought up the notion of using an atomic/immutable distro in the context of giving a boomer parent or a grandparent a distribution that, in your opinion, would be easier to handle than a garden variety Linux distro with a standard, mutable filesystem. If you're already in the position where you have the leverage to decide a parent or grandparent's operating system for whatever computer you set up, remote access is a requirement unto itself unless you wanna constantly rush over to their aid whenever shit goes tits-up; not "if" but rather "when".

SSH - remotely update your parent or grandparent's computer so that they don't have to manually trigger updates on a user account and invoke admin privileges.
VNC - remotely take control of your parent or grandparent's computer graphically so that you get a birds-eye view of what precisely the relative in question is troubled by.

Except I actually have installed Fedora Kinote onto two helplessly normal people’s machines and over the course of nearly two years ran into exactly zero issues. I couldn’t ask for better stability from those machines if they were Chromebooks.

Uh... have you seen how awful this economy is? Have you tried negotiating with used parts sellers on eBay for auctions? Have you tried rolling the dice with Facebook Marketplace? Spoiler alert: AM4's massive longevity, even continuing into 2026 with SKU refreshes on the 5000 series despite "officially" going EOL in 2022, basically means that people are clinging to their older hardware for much longer. Ain't no one out here buying a wholly new, top-of-the-line AM5/AM6 X3D system with maxed out RAM and all the bells and whistles such that they'd actually stand to benefit from all those obscure tweaks, patches, parameters, flags, and so on.

Literally what’s your point? These atomic distros will serve the terminal normies perfectly fine when and if the hardware market corrects itself. This is an irrelevant tangent.

Spoiler alert: the only "purpose" they're valid for are in obtuse enterprise and cloud deployments where dozens upon hundreds upon thousands of systems get deployed and only a handful of people are there to manage them all during the standard M-F 9-5 business cycle. To reiterate for basically the third fucking time: there ain't any value to Fedora Atomic and assorted variants in a home user context. Any hypotheticals about old people or normies are already better served by standard, mutable distros with transactional package managers

Yeah, I don’t feel like having to remember to ssh in (hoping their computer is on) and typing “sudo dnf upgrade — refresh” every couple of weeks when I can give them a system even they can maintain.

You act as if these are some sort of existential threat to your hobby. Nobody’s taking Gentoo and NixOS from you.

The whole point of Linux is there’s three hundred distros that serve to interest or use case for you.

 

[Dread First]

Except I actually have installed Fedora Kinote onto two helplessly normal people’s machines and over the course of nearly two years ran into exactly zero issues. I couldn’t ask for better stability from those machines if they were Chromebooks.

Okay, I'm genuinely curious: how the hell did you manage to sidestep the rebasing problem with Fedora Kinoite? You do realise that Fedora Kinoite does not ship with mutlimedia codecs, hardware acceleration, let alone any proprietary graphics drivers in the first place, right? This is stuff that you must necessarily download via RPM Fusion, and layer on top via rpm-ostree. At that point, the "helplessly normal people" that you set up Kinoite for would necessarily have modified images that they'd have to rebase to after upgrading from say, Kinoite 42 to Kinoite 43. Did you completely avoid setting up anything from RPM Fusion, and those normies just completely lack multimedia codecs, hardware acceleration, and all the other multimedia stuff? Did you set everything up via RPM Fusion and they just stayed on that Fedora Kinoite image for the last two years without them ever directly intervening to update or otherwise upgrade their systems? Are you actually upgrading and rebasing the system on their behalf and you just neglected to mention it?

Literally what’s your point? These atomic distros will serve the terminal normies perfectly fine when and if the hardware market corrects itself. This is an irrelevant tangent.

My point was tied to your original mention of Bazzite, and how you brought up GAMERS(tm) who'll cycle through hardware. All the oblique modifications that Bazzite makes on its end with kernel parameters, flags, optimisations, and so on are only viable if you have the latest and greatest hardware that can necessarily take advantage of it. If you're still using anything at or below Zen2, Bazzite specifically won't provide any noticeable benefit over Linux Mint, let alone mainline Fedora.

Yeah, I don’t feel like having to remember to ssh in (hoping their computer is on) and typing “sudo dnf upgrade — refresh” every couple of weeks when I can give them a system even they can maintain.

Well, ignoring the fact that you should probably communicate to the person in question that you want to remotely update their PC, you do realise that GNOME Software, KDE Discover, and dnfdragora are already baked into all Fedora editions and spins, right? You don't even need to manually trigger sudo dnf --refresh update -y manually if there's already a graphical means to achieve that exact outcome, and if that graphical means pings them with a notification saying "oi m8 u gotta update," right?

You act as if these are some sort of existential threat to your hobby. Nobody’s taking Gentoo and NixOS from you.

It's not an existential threat so much as it is a perennial nuisance with infinitely more consequences that outweigh any supposed benefits on a desktop user paradigm. Also, Gentoo is squarely @prollyanotherlurker's domain and ain't no one here a faggot tranny who uses NixOS. GNU is our Shepherd we shall not want, so sayeth @Ferryman

The whole point of Linux is there’s three hundred distros that serve to interest or use case for you.

Yeah, except two hundred ninety distros are basically reskins of the first ten distros out there that are hardly any different from their upstream. Tons of reduplicated effort to serve use cases that their upstreams already handle with a little more elbow grease.

 

[Betonhaus]

Okay, I'm genuinely curious: how the hell did you manage to sidestep the rebasing problem with Fedora Kinoite? You do realise that Fedora Kinoite does not ship with mutlimedia codecs, hardware acceleration, let alone any proprietary graphics drivers in the first place, right? This is stuff that you must necessarily download via RPM Fusion, and layer on top via rpm-ostree. At that point, the "helplessly normal people" that you set up Kinoite for would necessarily have modified images that they'd have to rebase to after upgrading from say, Kinoite 42 to Kinoite 43. Did you completely avoid setting up anything from RPM Fusion, and those normies just completely lack multimedia codecs, hardware acceleration, and all the other multimedia stuff? Did you set everything up via RPM Fusion and they just stayed on that Fedora Kinoite image for the last two years without them ever directly intervening to update or otherwise upgrade their systems? Are you actually upgrading and rebasing the system on their behalf and you just neglected to mention it?

1. They don't update
2. They don't go back to him for technology advice

 

[Taser Confetti]

Okay, I'm genuinely curious: how the hell did you manage to sidestep the rebasing problem with Fedora Kinoite? You do realise that Fedora Kinoite does not ship with mutlimedia codecs, hardware acceleration, let alone any proprietary graphics drivers in the first place, right? This is stuff that you must necessarily download via RPM Fusion, and layer on top via rpm-ostree. At that point, the "helplessly normal people" that you set up Kinoite for would necessarily have modified images that they'd have to rebase to after upgrading from say, Kinoite 42 to Kinoite 43. Did you completely avoid setting up anything from RPM Fusion, and those normies just completely lack multimedia codecs, hardware acceleration, and all the other multimedia stuff? Did you set everything up via RPM Fusion and they just stayed on that Fedora Kinoite image for the last two years without them ever directly intervening to update or otherwise upgrade their systems? Are you actually upgrading and rebasing the system on their behalf and you just neglected to mention it?

These shitboxes are intel integrated graphics machines that work flawlessly out of the box. Doing it on newer hardware I’d just go with a Bazzite image that has the appropriate drivers.
As for codecs? Normies don’t need them - if they can’t run a media file with Chrome or VLC they don’t need it. As for updates, they can keep clicking the button for updates until I show up at minimal once a year. Worst case scenario they can copypasta what I send via email or telegram to rebase the system. Even if the system gets long in the tooth - Chrome for updates via Flatpak - not worried about it in the short term.

ain't no one here a faggot tranny who uses NixOS

I used NixOS for like a weekend out of boredom. I remembered that spending all day in neovim to make a functional desktop is for fags and went back to Fedora w/ KDE. If the age verification apocalypse ever occurs for real I’ll go to Gentoo since at least I’ll get some performance improvements for eating my time.

 

[Dread First]

These shitboxes are intel integrated graphics machines that work flawlessly out of the box.

That makes more sense, but to that end: there's hardly any tangible difference between Fedora with the latest kernel and Linux Mint using an LTS kernel when you're dealing with Intel integrated graphics. At that point, you're just better off using Linux Mint because the update cadence is far slower and easier to manage.

Doing it on newer hardware I’d just go with a Bazzite image that has the appropriate drivers.

Or... and lock in with me here: you could just eschew trannyware slop Bazzite for Nobara and have all the benefits of a mutable filesystem with a transactional package manager, with all the same hardware tweaks that Bazzite already imports from Nobara via GloriousEggRoll. And you'd also have RPM Fusion right out the gate with all the multimedia codecs, hardware acceleration, and drivers to boot. Bazzite is fucking worthless dude.

As for codecs? Normies don’t need them - if they can’t run a media file with Chrome or VLC they don’t need it.

Uh... what?! That's the most terrifying statement I've ever read coming out of a man who admits he set up computers for allegedly helpless normies. Chrome can't play certain file formats online without ffmpeg-freeworld because the stock ffmpeg that Fedora ships with is deliberately gimped for legal reasons. Not to mention that you're deliberately eschewing hardware acceleration, which necessarily forces everything to run in software mode. Intel iGPUs are more than capable of media transcoding with hardware acceleration, but you still need to enable RPM Fusion and download mesa-freeworld because the default Mesa in Fedora is deliberately gimped.

Also... just putting this out there: who the hell are you to decide what normies do or don't need? You do realise that multimedia playback was a huge bottleneck for Linux historically due to the messy patent situation that codecs and formats like MP4, H.264, and so on had for decades, right? MAYBE, and I'm more than willing to put myself on the chopping block here, I'm just a Linux boomer stuck in 2012 mentally... but hearing someone saying "As for codecs? Normies don't need them" while saying that anything that Chrome and VLC can't handle is something a normie doesn't need in the same sentence sends shivers down my spine. What kinda maniacal psychopath are you? VLC ain't flawless either considering how there are still pitfalls in VLC that other media players like MPV sidestep entirely... with the aid of ffmpeg-freeworld.

As for updates, they can keep clicking the button for updates until I show up at minimal once a year. Worst case scenario they can copypasta what I send via email or telegram to rebase the system. Even if the system gets long in the tooth - Chrome for updates via Flatpak - not worried about it in the short term.

Yeah... in the short term until Chrome Flatpak's own SSL certificate expires and that specific binary goes kaput because they waited too damn long to upgrade between versions. Jesus fucking Christ dude, I would be mortified if I were a normie using a computer you set up on my behalf. At that point, I'd just git gud with Linux Mint specifically to avoid the Kinoite hassle.

 

[Taser Confetti]

Bazzite is fucking worthless dude.

It’s worthless to you. Not to everyone else.

Uh... what?! That's the most terrifying statement I've ever read coming out of a man who admits he set up computers for allegedly helpless normies. Chrome can't play certain file formats online without ffmpeg-freeworld because the stock ffmpeg that Fedora ships with is deliberately gimped for legal reasons. Not to mention that you're deliberately eschewing hardware acceleration, which necessarily forces everything to run in software mode. Intel iGPUs are more than capable of media transcoding with hardware acceleration, but you still need to enable RPM Fusion and download mesa-freeworld because the default Mesa in Fedora is deliberately gimped.

Chrome’s flatpak works just fine. I dare you to find a website that doesn’t work out of the box.

Also... just putting this out there: who the hell are you to decide what normies do or don't need? You do realise that multimedia playback was a huge bottleneck for Linux historically due to the messy patent situation that codecs and formats like MP4, H.264, and so on had for decades, right? MAYBE, and I'm more than willing to put myself on the chopping block here, I'm just a Linux boomer stuck in 2012 mentally... but hearing someone saying "As for codecs? Normies don't need them" while saying that anything that Chrome and VLC can't handle is something a normie doesn't need in the same sentence sends shivers down my spine. What kinda maniacal psychopath are you? VLC ain't flawless either considering how there are still pitfalls in VLC that other media players like MPV sidestep entirely... with the aid of ffmpeg-freeworld.

We’re talking about a generation that never pirated media anyways. They moved seamlessly from watching NCIS on DirectTV to Watching it on the Paramount+ app on their smartTV. If the Chrome I installed from Flathub works flawlessly for Facebook and YouTube they’re happy. Grandma doesn’t need alternate subtitles for .mkv files in her anime.

1. They don't update
2. They don't go back to him for technology advice