The Linux Thread - The Autist's OS of Choice

[Jones McCann]

I'm inheriting a Lenovo laptop in the near future and I'm planning on running Linux on it. I used to be a little more into tech as a kid and I used Ubuntu as a daily driver for a while, but I've been on proprietary shit for so long I no longer have any idea what's good. I've seen Manjaro recommended as a first, idiot-proof OS but I'm curious what you guys would recommend?

It apparently has a touchscreen, which I'm not mad about but if it has the technology I'd like to have the option of using it if possible. In your guys' experience do touch controls tend to function well on Linux?

Forgive the amateur hour questions, I'm coming off MacOS so I'm medically retarded.

From a quick google Manjaro supports touchscreen. Worth a shot either way to just install it before deciding which OS to use. I know Ubuntu supports running the full OS from a boot device without installing, not sure about Manjaro.

 

[Never Scored]

Does YouTube in VLC still work without having to jump through hoops?

I find VLC is much more CPU efficient at playing video than a web browser whether it be Firefox or Chromium.

I copy the link, open VLC, go to Media -> Open Network Stream, paste link and hit enter. Then it just plays. Haven't ever had a problem with it, personally.

 

[byuu]

I copy the link, open VLC, go to Media -> Open Network Stream, paste link and hit enter. Then it just plays. Haven't ever had a problem with it, personally.

You can just drag & drop the link into an VLC desktop icon or an already open instance.

 

[Never Scored]

You can just drag & drop the link into an VLC desktop icon or an already open instance.

 

[Dick Justice]

Does YouTube in VLC still work without having to jump through hoops?

I find VLC is much more CPU efficient at playing video than a web browser whether it be Firefox or Chromium.

I copy the link, open VLC, go to Media -> Open Network Stream, paste link and hit enter. Then it just plays. Haven't ever had a problem with it, personally.

You can just drag & drop the link into an VLC desktop icon or an already open instance.

You know mpv supports yt links don't you?

Are there any lightweight DEs that don't tear like shit?
was considering MATE or CDE, but both of those are a bit buggy

Is something wrong with XFCE? I know one PRO LINUXER that likes Tom's Windows Manager which seems to be pretty light but that's pretty much all I know.

 

[AmpleApricots]

Tearing has nothing to do with the window manger but is more a result of how modern graphics cards work in combination with the X11 server. You need to use a compositing manager like picom, if not inbuilt into the DE. Another way is adding "TearFree true" to the section of your graphics card in xorg.conf, this might or might not work and will lower drawing performance though, also might only work with AMD and intel GPUs, I am not sure.

video players are more efficent than browsers because most browser packages floating around in various distributions still don't support GPU-accelerated decoding and it's all done in-CPU. Even if browsers moved to support it in linux in recent times, it's still often fickle and doesn't work right. Also youtube might serve up videos in formats that your GPU can't decode, sometimes a specific format needs to be forced, that is possible with parameters to mpv.

 

[milk]

Why do UNIX users hate linux more than windows?

 

[Andy Bandy Man]

Why do UNIX users hate linux more than windows?

like AT&T unix users?

 

[Cupronickel]

like AT&T unix users?

Pretty sure the only somewhat-real UNIXes today are Solaris and the BSD family. UNIX was a pain in the ass in terms of licensing back in the days and there aren't any real advantages in using AT&T's shit anyway.

 

[The Real SVP]

Are there any lightweight DEs that don't tear like shit?
was considering MATE or CDE, but both of those are a bit buggy

VSync is another thing that sucks about desktop Linux that is completely ignored by the devs who could do something about it. Have a look at your GPU drivers for a setting to force it, find out if your DE has a compositor with settings to force it, or use a stand alone compositor like picom.
And then don't forget to turn it off again, before you play a game or do something else where VSync would be annoying.

 

[Rozzy]

Tearing has nothing to do with the window manger but is more a result of how modern graphics cards work in combination with the X11 server. You need to use a compositing manager like picom, if not inbuilt into the DE. Another way is adding "TearFree true" to the section of your graphics card in xorg.conf, this might or might not work and will lower drawing performance though, also might only work with AMD and intel GPUs, I am not sure.

video players are more efficent than browsers because most browser packages floating around in various distributions still don't support GPU-accelerated decoding and it's all done in-CPU. Even if browsers moved to support it in linux in recent times, it's still often fickle and doesn't work right. Also youtube might serve up videos in formats that your GPU can't decode, sometimes a specific format needs to be forced, that is possible with parameters to mpv.

Fix video tearing in Linux Mint 19 Mate by changing the window manager from "Marco + Compositing" to "Marco + Compton".

1080p 30 fps video in fullscreen mode. The same local video used for VLC and Firefox.
Intel Core i5-2500 CPU with integrated Intel HD Graphics 2000.

VLC with hardware acceleration.

VLC without hardware acceleration (turned off).

Firefox browser which has no hardware acceleration.

720p VP9 25 fps video. The same local video used for VLC and Firefox.
VLC no hardware acceleration support.

Firefox no hardware acceleration support.

 

[stupidpieceofshit]

I wonder what happened to Linus Torvalds for him to fold so completely in regards to the insane Terms of Conduct that was put forward in the Linux community some years ago, by the way, given his history of being anything but a pushover? Regardless, I think I'll give OpenBSD a try!

There was talk in like 2015 that Linus was being targeted by the Ada Initiative by trying to get some false sexual assault claims on him.
Also at least one of his daughters is a self described "intersectional feminist" (aka what many consider to be an 'sjw').

 

[Aidan]

Does YouTube in VLC still work without having to jump through hoops?

I find VLC is much more CPU efficient at playing video than a web browser whether it be Firefox or Chromium.

Not sure if VLC works this way but with mpv you can just feed it a url from the terminal and it will play the video there. It's what I do for longer videos or just something I don't want to keep a tab open for.
mpv URL

I'm inheriting a Lenovo laptop in the near future and I'm planning on running Linux on it. I used to be a little more into tech as a kid and I used Ubuntu as a daily driver for a while, but I've been on proprietary shit for so long I no longer have any idea what's good. I've seen Manjaro recommended as a first, idiot-proof OS but I'm curious what you guys would recommend? It apparently has a touchscreen, which I'm not mad about but if it has the technology I'd like to have the option of using it if possible. In your guys' experience do touch controls tend to function well on Linux? Forgive the amateur hour questions, I'm coming off MacOS so I'm medically retarded.

Manjaro is good but I don't know if it's good for babby's first linux or not. Mint imo is unparalleled but if you're an eensy bit technically inclined you'll probably be fine with any Manjaro version with the desktop environment of your choice. I mention it may not be the best just because having used it, I did plenty in the terminal and while I know it has GUI options for package manager and such, I don't know how nice they are to use. Having access to the AUR is nice though.

I'd say just play with the live version and if you think it'll work, give it a go. Most notable headache with it I'm aware of is in December or early January they pushed out an update to their stable branch that broke some python stuff without a rebuild being a part of the update so people had to manually rebuild select packages or download a tool to find broken packages and use that, which should never happen for stable anything if you ask me, but it's not a deal breaker if you like Manjaro and are comfortable in the terminal even slightly.

edit: Just checked their site and this is on the home page

With the Stable-Update on the 2020-12-30 we decided to Remove outdated Nvidia Drivers. This resulted in a massive negative feedback and broken systems.

May be something to keep in mind if this applies to you. The Python stuff happened in that same update so it seems like December 30th was a bad day for them.

 

[Ahriman]

If you're into ricing out the DE, these are pretty cool.

Also, have been a KDE fanboy since the 3.x days so I may or may not be a bit biased towards KDE.

 

[Bongocat]

So far my biggest problem with linux is that for half the issues I run into, the only search results I can get are answers from 2008 that have long ceased to be relevant. Date filters don't seem to do much. Is there a better place to look than just trying to consult search engines?

 

[The Real SVP]

So far my biggest problem with linux is that for half the issues I run into, the only search results I can get are answers from 2008 that have long ceased to be relevant. Date filters don't seem to do much. Is there a better place to look than just trying to consult search engines?

Look at the official sites for your distro, they should have documentation and community sections. If that does not help look for an upstream or related distro. Like Ubuntu for Mint or PopOS, or debian for Ubuntu. And if that does not help, search the Arch or Gentoo wiki and figure out the differences to your distro.

 

[Bongocat]

RRRRRRRRREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
I just spent an hour and a half trying to figure out why my ftp server was no longer working after enabling SSL. The logs give you ZERO feedback on what's going on (none that I could find anyway, the only log offered pertained to user activities), only saying 'invalid parameter'. Turns out there was a FUCKING SPACE after one of the lines in the config file.

I don't understand how anyone could look at this and say "yep, that's pretty good UX".

 

[The Real SVP]

I don't understand how anyone could look at this and say "yep, that's pretty good UX".

Nobody thought about user experience, or even users, when those conventions where established. All that mattered for the developers back then was to make the software work within the limitations of the hardware of the time, and to do it in a way that would not make the system administrators of the time come over to their desks and strangle them.

 

[Bongocat]

Nobody thought about user experience, or even users, when those conventions where established. All that mattered for the developers back then was to make the software work within the limitations of the hardware of the time, and to do it in a way that would not make the system administrators of the time come over to their desks and strangle them.

So what you're saying is, I should always keep a linux developer within strangling distance.

 

[Aidan]

You should get used to these things and learn to love them because it's pretty nice at the end of the day.

As for help, I've had few issues with anything mainstream (Arch, Debian, Mint, etc) and usually there's an answer on stackexchange or stackoverflow. If not, the official community areas and wikis will definitely have something.
Usually your issue is not distro-specific and is for a service or something which really opens the internet up for some sort of helpful answer. I've had issues with the unused-but-neat areas of linux, especially with the tiny distros out there who often do things their own way to get things as tightly packed together as they can.