The Linux Thread - The Autist's OS of Choice

Is anyone here actually using Parabola Linux or any other Linux-Libre setup? What's it like?
 
seri0us said:
any other Linux-Libre setup
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Guix is Linux-Libre, though it sounds like one of the first things most sane people do is add in non-GNU packages. Perhaps some of the Guix guys will share some anecdotes about Linux-Libre though. I kinda wonder this too.
 
Ferryman said:
Sway is a drop in copy of i3 and is made by the same people that make wlroots, a compositor library used by every standalone Wayland WM except Hyprland and Niri, meaning it should, in theory, experience fewer breaking changes than other compositors. You'll need to fuck around with xdg desktop portals to make shit like screen sharing work. Tbh if you want something fresher than stock X, you might be better off switching to XLibre instead of Wayland.

As far as Wayland compositors are concerned, Hyprland probably has the most normal dev and community around, followed by Niri, then Sway, then smaller ones like Mango or DWL for suckless autism.
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Big big fan of Sway over here. It's simple and to the point and doesn't get in your way. Super fast and super stable. No problems at all. Can recommend.
 
prollyanotherlurker said:
it's what they do is functionally identical to basically every single other distro. All of them have basically the same concept with slight differences. Again, the only one I think has any kind of real improvement on /etc file handling is gentoo, which has the normal handling, and prompt that says you have a file that needs looking at in /etc they have the config-archive dir, which as far as I know is unique to gentoo.

There are tools (or an abstraction layer builtup around other tools really) like etc-keeper which i think was originally made for debian which you can use on any distro to at least get the functionality gentoo has by default (kind of, it basically just adds git tracking to your etc dir, since wont have old versions in config-archive like on gentoo).

but for the most part debian doesn't do anything different from arch as far as I've seen, I guess the prompt is different in the package manger? not a huge difference as far as I'm concerned.
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It just isn't the same, though. Debian prompts you to make the choice up front as part of the configure step. Arch relies on potentially unfamiliar or distracted users manually checking and merging things. That's dumb.
 
seri0us said:
Is anyone here actually using Parabola Linux or any other Linux-Libre setup? What's it like?
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analrapist said:
Guix is Linux-Libre, though it sounds like one of the first things most sane people do is add in non-GNU packages. Perhaps some of the Guix guys will share some anecdotes about Linux-Libre though. I kinda wonder this too.
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Pinging @Ferryman because he's the only Guix chad among us.

The Enola Gay said:
Big big fan of Sway over here. It's simple and to the point and doesn't get in your way. Super fast and super stable. No problems at all. Can recommend.
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Drew DeVault apologist detected. 🕋🕌☪️
 
Dread First said:
Drew DeVault apologist detected. 🕋🕌☪️
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I don't know what that means. I just like simple interfaces:

screenshot-winter.png
 
Taser Confetti said:
Doesn’t the Libre kernel only run smoothly on absolutely prehistoric Thinkpads?
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Linux-libre eschews non-free binary blobs (re: firmware, microcode, drivers, etc) from the mainline Linux kernel. If you're using hardware that's FOSS-friendly (re: Ryzen CPU, AMDGPU card, Intel/Realtek/Atheros network cards, etc), Linux-libre will run just fine on your modern kit. The problem with Linux-libre is that the de-blobbing process deliberately eschews binary CPU microcode updates from Intel and AMD. The prehistoric Thinkpads angle stems from the FSF's "respects your freedom" certification.
 
I dist upgraded to Kubuntu 26.04 from 25.10 and it actually didn't fall over, even with my dock requiring DisplayLink. Good job Canonical.
 
seri0us said:
Is anyone here actually using Parabola Linux or any other Linux-Libre setup? What's it like?
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Works on Guix without issue. Only real hardware quirks I've encountered are with Nvidia drivers because Nouveau tongues asshole, or wifi cards not being supported. If you're fine having piss slow ath9k wifi and don't use an nvidia GPU, Libre works fine. That being said, I don't think that I've seen a single dotfile collection that uses the Libre kernel, so make of that what you will. I use it on my laptop and can't tell the difference between it and mainline.
 
Dread First said:
Pinging @Ferryman because he's the only Guix chad among us.
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>_>
Dread First said:
If you're using hardware that's FOSS-friendly (re: Ryzen CPU, AMDGPU card, Intel/Realtek/Atheros network cards, etc), Linux-libre will run just fine on your modern kit.
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If your graphics card wasn't in middle school by the time the AMDGPU driver was a thing, it will not work well on Linux-libre. If the label on it says "AMD" instead of "ATI", it will probably not work well on Linux-libre. If your AMD GPU from the last 15-20 years can display to multiple monitors independently, you are not using Linux-libre. I am continually shocked by how many people just assume and repeat as fact that because AMD's stuff usually works well on Linux, surely it will work well on Linux-libre. In fact, of the GPUs you can get to a semi-functional state with Linux-libre, the more recent ones tend to be from NVIDIA (and some Intel IGPUs) because their firmware is baked in to begin with, and therefore doesn't have to be loaded by the kernel. But none from the past 10 years, at minimum, will work well regardless of who made it.
 
I stand by what I said. @Ferryman's the only Guix chad among us. I've only ever flirted with Trisquel and gNewSense in the past.

snotang said:
If your graphics card wasn't in middle school by the time the AMDGPU driver was a thing, it will not work well on Linux-libre. If the label on it says "AMD" instead of "ATI", it will probably not work well on Linux-libre. If your AMD GPU from the last 15-20 years can display to multiple monitors independently, you are not using Linux-libre. I am continually shocked by how many people just assume and repeat as fact that because AMD's stuff usually works well on Linux, surely it will work well on Linux-libre. In fact, of the GPUs you can get to a semi-functional state with Linux-libre, the more recent ones tend to be from NVIDIA (and some Intel IGPUs) because their firmware is baked in to begin with, and therefore doesn't have to be loaded by the kernel. But none from the past 10 years, at minimum, will work well regardless of who made it.
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I understand that you're correcting an overstatement I made, but fuck you for reminding me about Fire GL and Radeon for X that later metamorphosed into the monstrosity that was ATI and later AMD Catalyst.

Question for clarity's sake: Are you talking strictly in terms of Linux-libre, or are you also including Mesa in the discussion here? I am aware that there are (or maybe were?) some binary blobs wrapped up in AMDGPU that were once distributed under Pro. There's also some blob stuff happening in Mesa more generally, at least from the way that Fedora gimps Mesa by default. I'm asking because I have successfully tested Trisquel live ISOs on my older PC (now a home server) and it would appear that Linux-libre+Mesa ran just fine on a Ryzen 5 2600 and an RX Vega 64. But I never committed to bare metal and only really fiddled to see if it would boot, I could open up Firefox, and browse the web for 10-15 minutes.

I Googled it. So there is a dependency on proprietary firmware included in linux-firmware, and Mesa may or may not be gimped depending on patented or otherwise proprietary hardware codecs. It cuts both ways, but Linux-libre categorically traded proprietary drivers for a more sinister dependence on proprietary firmware. Apparently, GCN is less dependent on firmware than RDNA. That's a surprise to learn. Holy fucking shit. So my RX Vega 64 can actually run better on Linux-libre than my RX 9070 XT can. That's fucking nuts.

I stand corrected. Cheers for pointing that out, homeboy.
 
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Dread First said:
Linux-libre eschews non-free binary blobs (re: firmware, microcode, drivers, etc) from the mainline Linux kernel. If you're using hardware that's FOSS-friendly (re: Ryzen CPU, AMDGPU card, Intel/Realtek/Atheros network cards, etc), Linux-libre will run just fine on your modern kit. The problem with Linux-libre is that the de-blobbing process deliberately eschews binary CPU microcode updates from Intel and AMD. The prehistoric Thinkpads angle stems from the FSF's "respects your freedom" certification.
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AMDGPU does not work without a firmware blob (as I had to install it on Debian 10). Pretty sure Intel Wireless requires a blob. Almost anything that isn't ancient requires it, unfortunately.

There loads of dumb and homosexual shit around HDMI (CEC isn't in AMDGPU because there is a patent on it, the GPU on the PI works better with my TV than my proper discreet GPU), radio laws etc which means the drivers can't be fully open and if the blob isn't loaded you get reduced functionality. It isn't worth the hassle IMO for the vast majority of users.
 
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⠠⠠⠅⠑⠋⠋⠁⠇⠎ ⠠⠠⠊⠎ ⠠⠠⠁ ⠠⠠⠋⠁⠛ said:
It just isn't the same, though. Debian prompts you to make the choice up front as part of the configure step. Arch relies on potentially unfamiliar or distracted users manually checking and merging things. That's dumb.
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you get a prompt in pacman. Again it's a pretty arbitrary difference. And it's not just pacman that does it like that.

If you want to know how an actually shit package manager handles it. Look at what happens when you try making any change to a flatpak runtime.
 
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