This may not work for everyone, but the only way to truly embrace Linux was to wipe the windows partition and start using Linux. That’s it, you no longer have to option to run back to your dual booted Windows if shit doesnt work. You sit down and figure it out.
I run GNU/Linux on all my computers except on the one I use for work because I need to run ETABS and SAP2000, I really wish I had the time and expertise to code my own structural analysis software so I could be free of these.
I got an Epson ecotank printer. It doesn’t work out of the box with Linux, but there are drivers and it does the job. Otherwise it’s been pretty dependable.
Nope, don’t like them. Nor snaps. I find the sandbox nature annoying and many developers don’t actually seem to understand it correctly anyway meaning you have to use flatseal etc. Then having to deal with some apps writing config within the sandbox and some writing it outside the sandbox…
My order of preference is generally I pick the “official” supported version as opposed to any community maintained ones. Then within that:
Install via the language’s package manager (cargo, npm, pipx, cabal etc.)
I’ve just had fewer issues with snaps. Honestly I don’t care for either of them so the difference between them for me is pretty slim but I just find Flatpak to be particularly annoying, Snaps just haven’t caused me any real issues other than polluting my device list with endless loop devices.
True. I have run into a lot of dumb issues with sandboxing, mostly in choosing a folder other than downloads for file interaction.
I have overlooked Appimage, and I will consider it. I am intrigued that you put it before native package. I had not considered using the package manager of the language it is built in, which honestly is probably the optimal way to install a package.
Alright, I have some reading to do. I love learning new ways to do things. I am glad I asked!
There is a bit more nuance to it I suppose - I like Appimages for “complicated” apps, i.e. big GUI apps like Inkscape where I prefer native packages for terminal tools. The nice thing about Appimages is that there just isn’t much in the way of integration and therefore its really easy to just try something out with no risk of installing a bunch of extra dependencies and no way of breaking your system - I use Appimagelauncher for managing them but have been considering swapping to something like Appman/AM.
The other thing that sometimes puts me off of native packages is having to deal with excessive numbers of PPAs or other repos when they aren’t in the main ones.
That is a great consideration that I have not looked into in awhile. It seems to be the ultimate third, or perhaps second, solution for getting software to just work. I will look into Appimagelauncher, and try out that version is native or flatpak fails me somehow.
Yeah, user submitted packages are such a risk sometimes.
I handle it by spinning up an lxd container to try new apps… then they have the whole machine to do what they like, and if the install doesn’t work or I hate the app, just delete the entire container.
lemmy was one of the harder ones to deal with because it needs docker… I have a special profile that runs docker in a container for apps like that (I never run docker bare, it f…s around with the firewalling and breaks stuff).
What’s good about AppImages? Imo they’re the worst packaging format; you can’t install and upgrade them from the command line like with native packages or Flatpaks, there’s not a repository-like centralized place for them, they get messy quickly since there’s not really an “official” default installation path so it’s up to you to keep them organized, they don’t integrate with system themes very well and you need a separate program (AppImage Launcher) to even get them to show up as an installed program or even pin them to your taskbar.
You have outdated information. There are no longer any tradeoffs to AppImages:
Yes there is no “official” default installation path, but like how XDG_DATA_PATH isn’t technically a standard but practically it is, the de-facto standard is ~/Applications now, and most AppImage-based tools respect that.
They integrate fine with the system. Better than Flatpack and Snap, actually. I’ve had lots of issues with flatpaks not respecting themes, but never AppImages. Not sure where you got that from.
I solved the other problem with AppImages with a package manager I wrote. Centralized location pointing to AppImage urls, and it downloads and keeps them updated. And no, you don’t need to write your own, there are multiple AppImage package managers out there.
On the flip side, there’s no weird extra locations like how flatpak installs apps, you know exactly where the program is in case you want to launch it manually, you can mix apps available in your package manager with ones you download directly seamlessly, no dependency hell or version problems as AppImages are self contained (even multiple versions at the same time), etc, etc, etc all the benefits people spout about AppImages.
AppImages imo are the superior cross-platform package format as there are no tradeoffs and no downsides, meanwhile:
Snaps are slow and proprietary
Flatpaks suck to create and maintainers select all on sanboxing, so it’s a complicated mess for no reason, and they also have bad theming that never works half the time.
I like this take. I am reading up on how flatpak works, and what seems to be most important is including the dependencies needed to run an application, regardless of what the system has, which is great.
I still need to try out Gentoo one day… but it seems like Nixos is the new Gentoo?
Idk about “new Gentoo,” as they’re going for different things, for sure, but a lot of the reasons people like Gentoo seem to be true for Nix. Definitely still give Gentoo a try some day.
I used it for a few months and only moved on bc compiling was taking too long and was annoying me :)
Buy a laser printer. They’ve come down in price a ton and are so so so so so so so so so so much better than fucking ink jet printers. I’ll never go back, and regret the years of anger and stress they caused me.
Brother printers are the best as well.
I got a Brother HL-3140CW and couldn’t be happier. Also just works with Linux.
I liked my Brother, but they have some tricks they pull. For one, when I got my Brother box duplex monochrome laser printer, it had just printed a fantastic looking page and then it stopped and declared it was out of toner. I turns out, there’s an option in the settings that is enabled by default to stop it from printing when it feels the toner is out. Anyway, I then ordered some aftermarket toner and the printer was fucked since. I’m not sure what happened, but the print quality went to crap. I’m guessing I’d need to buy a new drum kit or something, but for what I paid for it, I gave up on it and threw it out. I’ve not had a printer since. Occasionally, I wish I had a printer, but nowadays, you can get by without one fairly easily. I may purchase another Brother at some point, but it’s low on my list of things to get.
EDIT: I also forgot to mention that Brother label printers are annoying. I’m not sure if they own stock in battery companies, but if you let them sit with a battery in them, it will be fully depleted by the next time you’ll want to use it. I feel the engineers secretly offered a way to stop this without alerting upper management by leaving a void in the battery/media chamber with enough room to store a battery that you can pop out to disconnect the circuit and store the battery inside the unit. Also, they are overly generous with the margins for the labels by giving them like an inch on each side. Instead of a label printing out like [ TEST ], it prints out like [ TEST ]. Such horseshit!
They don't hype it as much as (I think) they should on that webpage, but VanillaOS does this thing with it's package manager, Apx, where it allows you to install applications from various distros via containers, and run them all side-by-side seamlessly. It's neat.
What about the packages that are not available in flatpak? I assume there must be some packages that are only available in certain corners of the internet?
Yeah, that's what I mean. You can use flatpak (or snap if you swing that way) but you can also install applications via containers. They're still not installed on the OS-- even "native" applications get installed via the container. So if the application you want is maintained for arch in aur, you can add the --aur tag to the apx command and it will install that version instead of the default, which is ubuntu. This also works for fedora applications.
Doesn't that result in a lot of wasted space from duplicated dependencies? Don't get me wrong, this looks great on paper, which is why I desperately need to find fault with it before I start distrohopping again.
I'm sure it does to some degree, though I don't know if it's enough to matter on modern computers, and isn't that what flatpak does, too? (duplicating dependencies)
In any event, if you don't need an application from a specific distro there's no reason to create that container. The non-ubuntu ones get created when they're needed. (And I think the next version of VanillaOS will be debian-based, not ubuntu; in case that matters.)
Flatpaks aren't the only option in Silverblue: you can also layer packages using 'rpm-ostree' (requires a reboot though), and you can also use toolbx (or even better, distrobox) to create an easy-to-use container that you can do anything with. With distrobox you can install an app inside of a fedora/ubuntu/arch/other container, and then use a simple terminal command to expose that app to your host system as if it was installed natively.
I'm on Silverblue and I have mostly flatpaks plus a handful of layered packages as my base system. Then I have a couple of distrobox ubuntu containers for software development (lots of libraries and build tools), music production (with Yabridge and Wine). Because the base system is immutable I've never had a problem that prevented my computer from booting, and if I ever do, it's extremely easy to roll back to before the last update. I've had a couple of issues working with containers in the past, but not big ones, and much of that comes down to my own user error.
I definitely recommend Silverblue for anyone who wants a rock solid, practically unbreakable Linux system.
I wonder how well it integrates with hardware. Arch with the pacman packages has been the only distro where I could get ROCm working reliably. I'd love to make a "ROCm container" and dump all that mess into it's own sandbox.
In fact, the thing I really want is more of a "Qubes but not for security tryhards" (aka I can actually use Wayland AND game on it) where everything gets it's own container mainly for organizational purposes, but something like this sounds like a fair compromise.
Again - I have no idea how well it's hardware support is. I assume 3d accel and whatnot would be fine because it's widely used, but dunno if anyone tried running ROCm on it.
That is actually awesome. It sound like the Fedora aliens (?) but probably more reliable. Cool. Adding VanillaOS that to the list potential new OS that makes computing easy and fun.
Seriously, there might be a debate of what printer company is better, but there is no debate which one is worst. It’s HP. 😅 They are so bad that they have no competitors of the worst fucking printer company. xD
Myself I got Brother printer. Works like a charm, no bullshits. People on Reddit also highly recommend this brand too. Totally agree.
I had a Brother printer, the costs were prohibitive. For over a decade now buy discarded office laserjet printers, chunky as hell, but for 100€ you get tens of thousands of pages out of them. And for those 100€, often a duplex unit is included. Am currently on my 2nd printer over 15 years.
I think the whole point of this is Brother being least annoying. You might save some buck with old HP printers, but i would prefer saving my sanity over bucks. 😅
Not at all, the old, chunky office printers you get for cheap work even without any special driver or so, just postscript. (You might get better quality for pictures with the original driver, but for simple letters it just works.)
Edit: Where HP really sucks is the consumer market.
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