The Linux Thread - The Autist's OS of Choice

[analrapist]

If I ever do that while compiling anything it would fail 2 minutes after I left it.

Gentoo fails a lot less than any competing build system I've tried. But being light on USE flags goes a long way. People like to try and do too much with global USE. Been months since my last emerge fail.

 

[Trans Fat 41g]

Speaking of bluetooth, what do I have to do to get Bluez to acknowledge that my wireless headphones have both Audio AND Headset functionality every time it's detected?

EDIT:

To be more specific the issue is sometimes Bluez wants to detect the hands-free headset and not the audio out.

 

[SchizoDaemon]

Bluez picks up the headset automatically on mine.

Gentoo fails a lot less than any competing build system I've tried. But being light on USE flags goes a long way. People like to try and do too much with global USE. Been months since my last emerge fail.

It is more of a sod's law thing for me. I was upgrading FreeBSD ages ago now (2015), and the whole compile just died after 8 hours on a Core 2 Duo.
It is the same at work. I get a compile error at the end of a 20-minute deploy to AWS.

 

[Dread First]

Reject Enhanced Edition Modernity, Embrace S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Tradition

Testing the GOG version of the original S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl with the Heroic Games Launcher on Linux as of 10JUN2026

WHY DO THIS TEST?

• Steam no longer offers the original S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games, instead offering "enhanced editions" that have many substantial changes to the original.
• GOG is the only storefront left (to my knowledge) who offers not only the original games, but also bundles in the equivalent Enhanced Edition free of charge with purchase of the original games.
• Heroic Games Launcher is my substitute for GOG Galaxy on Linux. Launcher args are more finicky to add, I can theoretically import the game into Steam, but WINEPREFIX management is much easier in Heroic relative to Steam. This includes graphical winecfg and protontricks buttons.
• All the reports on ProtonDB are horrifically outdated for the original Shadow of Chernobyl (i.e. within the last 8 months to 2 years), and do not reflect the current state of affairs with the software or hardware stacks.

HARDWARE

• CPU: Ryzen 7 5800XT
• GPU: RX 9070 XT
• RAM: 32GB

SOFTWARE

• OS: Fedora 44 (Cinnamon; all 32-bit libraries installed)
• LK: 7.0.11-200.fc44.x86_64
• WM: Muffin (Xorg)
• 3D: Mesa (4.6 Mesa 26.0.7; radeonsi, gfx1201, ACO, DRM 3.64)
• GL: Heroic Games Launcher

TESTING METHODOLOGY

1. Install the GOG version of the original game.
2. Start with Valve Proton Experimental, and work backwards through all Valve versions, all GE-Proton versions, and finally the three most recent Proton-CachyOS versions. *NO* launcher args whatsoever. It must run as close to OOTB as possible.
3. grep the logs I have to see if there are any obscure failure points (i.e. mfplat, ELFCLASS64 errors, etc)
4. Move onto the next Proton version after logging failure points, and repeat the same test.
5. No Mangohud for now. That will come with further testing at a different time.

TEST ENVIRONMENT CONSIDERATIONS

• I have modified my global game defaults under "Settings -> Game Defaults." Of note: Esync and Fsync are disabled because Fedora 44 enables `ntsync` by default rendering Esync and Fsync wholly redundant.
• RDNA4 GPU paired with Zen3 CPU using a *current* kernel/firmware/mesa stack.
• "Default" launch option in Heroic Games Launcher always selected. You can also choose "Shadow of Chernobyl" and "Settings."

PASS/FAIL RUBRIC

The goal of each test is "Am I able to do the Life of Boris 0 to Cheeki-Breeki speedrun?" To wit: How fast from the start of the game am I able to find a bandit who'll shout the Cheeeki-Breeki meme phrase at me? Normally happens in under the first 2-3 minutes of proper gameplay. Subjective questions I'm evaluating as "yes/no" or "true/false" or "pass/fail."

• Does the game launch?
• Am I able to get to the title screen/menu?
• Does audio/video playback work without issue?
• Does this feel "playable?"
• Is there any need for me to resort to external modding?

PRELIMINARY TESTING WITH PROTON EXPERIMENTAL

So far so good. I think it helps that the original Shadow of Chernobyl is a certified "Good Old Game." I know the certified GOGs go through an additional layer of testing and have more or less indefinite support from the GOG team themselves. How extensive is that testing? Does that testing render the need for external modding moot? I dunno. At any rate:

• Does the game launch? Yes.
• Am I able to get to the title screen/menu? Affirmative.
• Does audio/video playback work without issue? Oui, absolument.
• Does this feel "playable?" You better believe it. 1920x1080p running at the full 75FPS my monitors can support, and with all the fancy volumetric lighting and maximum detail settings enabled..
• Is there any need for me to resort to external modding? Not that I can tell, but I'm literally doing short segments of the opening map.

I'm still going through the motions of testing right now. As it stands? This is a comfortably playable experience. I might actually pause my testing right now and actually play the damn game just to see. If a certified Good Old Game is QA tested to such an extent that increasingly baroque and bespoke external modding tools are rendered obsolete, that's a huge point in this game's favour running under Proton Experimental.

WHAT DO MY PROTON LOGS SAY THUS FAR?

Nothing of importance. This game starts up without issue and closes without drama. No Media Framework bullshit, no ELFCLASS64 bullshit, no borked FMVs, the only thing that seemed concerning were all the "stubs," but they're nonfatal and more of an issue with implementation and logging defaults than anything to do with the game. As it stands: the bandits shout Russian obscenities at me. No borked Ukrainian/English hodgepodge nonsense like in the Enhanced Edition because GSC decided to remove all the goddamn Russian dialogue because of the Russia-Ukraine war (at least have the decency to make the original Russian dialogue free DLC ffs).

WILL THERE BE ANY UPDATES ON THIS ENDEAVOUR GOING FORWARD?

Maybe? Maybe not? Haven't really thought that far ahead. I was just sorta drafting my thoughts out as I was testing. Anyone else in this thread, please feel free to test the GOG version of STALKER Shadow of Chernobyl the way I did and see how it works for you.

 

[Stephanides]

Bookmarking the post above in case if I want to play the STALKER games again.

 

[Dread First]

Bookmarking the post above in case if I want to play the STALKER games again.

Upshot to the GOG version over Steam: DRM was historically a bitch and a half to overcome. The STALKER trilogy is $20 a piece, 60 bucks plus state tax, and you automatically get the equivalent Enhanced Editions for free. I was waiting for a while for the games to drop in price... but I just said "fuck it" and bought them wholesale.

 

[Stephanides]

Upshot to the GOG version over Steam: DRM was historically a bitch and a half to overcome. The STALKER trilogy is $20 a piece, 60 bucks plus state tax, and you automatically get the equivalent Enhanced Editions for free. I was waiting for a while for the games to drop in price... but I just said "fuck it" and bought them wholesale.

One of my first modding experiences as a kid was tweaking shit in the game's files to prevent my shaders and weather effects overhauls from crashing alongside Call of Chernobyl and it makes me miss the fact that Shell wasn't that necessary on Windows 7/10

 

[analrapist]

Reject Enhanced Edition Modernity, Embrace S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Tradition

Sounded like a bunch of horseshit, so I wondered how much of a headache it'd be to just do the stupidest thing with the game and see how well it worked. All on up-to-date Gentoo.

Over to archive.org. Search. Find a release labeled THC. Figured, eh, sounds fun.



Game is in .7z. Extract. There's an ISO there. Extract again with 7z. Run the installer in up-to-date Wine Staging. Asked me for a key. I just clicked Next. Everything installed. Didn't want to run at first. Just turned my monitor black. Fuckin niggers. One xkill later, okay, probably some gay fullscreen shit. Look up executable flags. -nointro and -window, nice. Add them.

And then this. Seems fine...

2:41

So what are the retardocorps doing that makes this such a challenge?

 

[teriyakiburns]

So what are the retardocorps doing that makes this such a challenge?

In-kernel DRM (which is a polite way of saying they install a rootkit on your computer).

 

[Hakase Shinonome]

I wanted to install limitcpu on my arch server, it gets a bit loud whenever heavy programs are running on it and it disturbs my sleep. Decide to ssh into it, run `yay -S limitcpu`. ERROR: /etc/mtab not found! - Huh. That's odd, might as well look up how to fix that then. - Huh. That's odd, pacman provides a segfault even though it says it finishes. - Huh. That's odd, none of my packages work now. - Huh. That's odd, my entire grub is inoperable now. - Huh. That's odd, vmlinuz not found.

My server decided to fry itself to death and give me i/o errors, the kind of error whereby you can't even perform the press of an enter key without an error returning. That was so fun, you don't even know. I had to reinstall the entire Arch installation just to fix it all up. Thank fucking God I keep all the files on a separate drive than the root partition.

A tale of terror to those who don't regularly `pacman -Syu`.

 

[Dread First]

I wanted to install limitcpu on my arch server, it gets a bit loud whenever heavy programs are running on it and it disturbs my sleep. Decide to ssh into it, run `yay -S limitcpu`. ERROR: /etc/mtab not found! - Huh. That's odd, might as well look up how to fix that then. - Huh. That's odd, pacman provides a segfault even though it says it finishes. - Huh. That's odd, none of my packages work now. - Huh. That's odd, my entire grub is inoperable now. - Huh. That's odd, vmlinuz not found.

My server decided to fry itself to death and give me i/o errors, the kind of error whereby you can't even perform the press of an enter key without an error returning. That was so fun, you don't even know. I had to reinstall the entire Arch installation just to fix it all up. Thank fucking God I keep all the files on a separate drive than the root partition.

A tale of terror to those who don't regularly `pacman -Syu`.

Question: why are you using Arch as a substrate for your home server? That's not like one of those angry rhetorical questions, either. I'm genuinely curious. I can definitely understand the appeal behind Arch, insofar as having recent kernels and other such software doodads to muck about with. But therein lies the problem: it's Arch. You know the perennial meme, don't you? It's never a matter of "if" your Arch install gets borked, only "when" it gets borked.



Fedora Server feels more appropriate to fill the niche that Arch once did on your home server. If you're able to live with SELinux and Firewalld, it would probably do you better. I've demoed it at least twice thus far: once on my Raspberry Pi 3B+ (side note: never run Fedora Server on a Raspberry Pi; stick with Alpine, Dietpi, Raspbian, or Ubuntu Server) and in QEMU. The Fedora Project even goes out of its way to provide QEMU images if you wanna try it out in virt-manager. Unfortunately, Fedora Server's landing page on the website grossly undersells what it's capable of and the Fedora Documentation portal is total dogshit ass no matter what. So I'll give you the pros/cons of Fedora Server as I experienced it.

(+) It's about as close to rolling release as you can get while still maintaining a fixed release cycle. On a "heuristic" level: Fedora Server "feels" like it's about 3-4 days behind Arch's curve. Maybe more, maybe less. I'm basing that on when the latest kernels hit Fedora vs. Arch. Normally it's like a 3-4 day delay since the latest kernels always hit Rawhide first and then they get pushed out not too long after to the rest of the Fedora ecosystem once it builds cleanly and wont' break anything important. Upshot to Fedora Server over mainline Fedora: no GUI by default on Server, so you don't have to worry about "frozen" window managers or desktop environments. In a text console, Fedora Server is almost indistinguishable from Arch.

(+) Some modicum of QA testing goes into Fedora Server while Arch is a caveat emptor affair. I'm not gonna pretend like the Fedora team is flawless in all that they do, and that there aren't glaring holes in the broader Red Hat packaging ecosystem, let alone baseline assumptions. With that disclosure out of the way, one huge upshot to Fedora Server over Arch? limitcpu won't make dnf segfault and delete your vmlinuz.

(+) Fedora's official repositories are far larger than Arch's, and RPM Fusion + COPR sidesteps the need for the AUR. Your shit borked itself because you pulled something from the AUR that had no business even compiling, let alone building into something that Pacman could interface with. Standard cpulimit exists in Fedora's default repos, and I'm 99.99% sure it won't fuck up the way the AUR package did. RPM Fusion still works for Fedora Server all the same as mainline Fedora, but if you wanna be fancy nigga and have the "thrill" of fixing a PKGBUILD before pulling it in via git and running makepkg -si, allow me to introduce you to Fedora Community Projects (COPR). Open to all users with a Fedora account. You basically create an RPM SPEC file (analogous to a PKGBUILD), plug that SPEC file into COPR, set up a webhook to pull the latest release from the upstream git tree, and then it automatically builds the shit for you. If the build succeeds, you get a prebuilt RPM no muss no fuss. If the build fails, no harm no foul. Success or failure, you still get logging data out of it. Most of the time, COPR packages fail to build due to a misconfigured SPEC file.

(+) Cockpit comes preinstalled on Fedora Server, and with the systemd service already enabled and running. Yeah, other distros can get Cockpit too without issue. It's still nice to have. I almost never use a GUI terminal to access my home server ever since I set up Cockpit on it. Even if you're running QEMU VMs of Fedora Server, Cockpit's more than accessible.

(-) SELinux and Firewalld are inescapable. Firewalld is slightly more amenable to fiddling with considering how it interfaces cleanly with nftables and you're also more than capable of manually opening and closing ports with firewall-cmd. Where Firewalld feels hideously overbuilt is the fact that it relies on a "zone mapping" methodology, where ranges of ports have various permissions associated with them depending on the use case. It's fun to learn if you're doing home server stuff because you can feel like a DevOps intern doing all the hard work for no pay. It sucks to commit learning to considering how Fedora Server (unlike Fedora desktops) basically ships with all ports closed by default and you either manually open them one at a time or rely on the Firewalld zone methodology. As to SELinux? I fucking despise it with the white hot intensity of a thousand suns, but it's better to learn to live with it instead of setting things to setenforce 0.

(-) The install process is ugly as sin. Whereas Ubuntu Server gives us a nice ncurses-based TUI for the installer, as do most other text-console distros and OSes like Slackware, Arch (with archinstall), and FreeBSD, Fedora Server's installation process is fucking horrible to look at. It is prompt-based, but you just press the key and hit enter every time until the setup finishes. It gets the job done, I'm not mucking about with manual installation or supervising dubious install scripts, but still... you'd think Red Hat would insist on a polished TUI for Fedora Server considering how this is what builds into the CLI-only versions of RHEL, right?

(-) Fedora Server's documentation is egregiously awful relative to the dismal standards set by the Fedora Documentation portal; expect to rely on RHEL docs and the ArchWiki. Use the ArchWiki to set up a cheat sheet on Firewalld and SELinux, pivot over to the RHEL docs when you need more Red Hat specific information, curse the devils and dogs responsible for the horrid Fedora Documentation portal to dwell in their graves before the Lord of Mankind and the Heavens judges them on the Day of Resurrection, and casts them deep into the pits of eternal fire for their treachery. This is one of those pain points I can "qualify" a million ways, and it still won't properly "click" until you're doing the troubleshooting song and dance.

 

[babaisyou]

Phoronix: "YSERVER: Modern X11 Server Written In Rust With The Help Of Claude Code "

Spoiler: Article text

Open-source developer Jos Dehaes wrote in to Phoronix today in announcing a new X11 server he has been working on from scratch that has been quietly developed to this point but now ready to announce to the world... The YSERVER.

The yserver is a "modern X11 server written from scratch in Rust." In looking at the latest Git activity, it's also written with the help of Claude Code AI.

The stated goal is to not be a 1:1 replacement to the X.Org Server but focusing on modern functionality for X11 clients and foregoing the legacy bits:

"The goal is not to clone Xorg. It is to provide a practical X11 server that runs real desktop environments, window managers, and applications on modern Linux while dropping legacy baggage (multiple screens, non-TrueColor visuals, indirect GLX, the DDX driver ABI, endian-swapped clients, and so on)."

The yserver can currently run a full MATE, Xfce, or Cinnamon X11 desktop. The prominent X11 extensions from RandR to DRI3, GLX, MIT-SHM, Composite, and others are supported. And, yes, with working Compiz goodness too:

This Rust-based X11 server is open-source under an MIT license. Those wishing to learn more about the YSERVER can do so via the GitHub repository.

(Link) (Archive)

Tried it out but it clearly needs more work as I saw obvious issues with it like ignoring caps lock and missing GLX configs needed for hardware acceleration

 

[Betonhaus]

You can decide based on how often you want to be messing with your server:

1. If you’re working on it daily and can spend unplanned hours doing fixes, arch
2. If you will be working on or fine tuning your server once a week or so, fedora
3. If you only want to work on it once a month or so, Ubuntu
4. If you want to set and forget, Debian

 

[SchizoDaemon]

Just run Debian on your server or one of the RHEL clones and forget about it.

 

[Stephanides]

Tried it out but it clearly needs more work as I saw obvious issues with it like ignoring caps lock and missing GLX configs needed for hardware acceleration

Gee, I wonder why.

 

[Nwah Slayer]

I love it when people post their specs like anyone should even care. I run Ubuntu because it's easy, and I'm not going to lose all my data in a kernel panic like an Indian youtuber pretending to be an engineer. Unless your specs are relevant you shouldn't even bother posting them. I have a windows box that I game on, because Wine is freeware garbage, and I just run subsystem ubuntu on that.

 

[sodaboard]

Steam no longer offers the original S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games, instead offering "enhanced editions" that have many substantial changes to the original.

except it is still on steam, they just made the page unlisted because the hohols only want you to play the AI de-vatnik'd edition. you can browse to it manually and buy it, same thing they did with CS:GO

 

[DavidS877]

Imagine updating your servers.
Linux piintheattic 4.19.97-v7+ #1294 SMP Thu Jan 30 13:15:58 GMT 2020 armv7l GNU/Linux