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linux

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HumanPerson , in Question: If windows is required, what distro do you recommend?

Any distro you’d like. Use the office / outlook stuff in a browser. I believe kde has a way to use onedrive in dolphin, though personally I would keep my data on my computer unless it is for a group project, just make sure it’s backed up. I’d also have a VM handy with the spice guest tools. It is good to have at least for when you have to hand your computer to someone who may be uncomfortable with linux. I would use debian on a school computer for the ludicrous stability, but use whatever floats your boat.

RmDebArc_5 , in OpenSUSE is the best
@RmDebArc_5@sh.itjust.works avatar

Zypper may be a better name than apt, but it doesn’t have super cow powers.

avidamoeba , (edited ) in Question: If windows is required, what distro do you recommend?
@avidamoeba@lemmy.ca avatar

Any distro.

Use a Windows VM for things that are unavailable or don’t work well as a web app. The absolute easiest way to run a Windows VM is VMware Player especially if you use a stable OS like Debian or Ubuntu LTS. The built-in KVM hypervisor works fine too but it requires more work to setup a Windows VM with all the drivers, shared folder, etc. And it won’t have graphics acceleration of any sort. With that said I’ve personally migrated from VMware to KVM in anticipation that Broadcom who recently purchased VMware will turn their software to shit or start asking for more money, or both.

emergencyfood , in Question: If windows is required, what distro do you recommend?

Any distro that can run Chromium / Chrome. And everything other than Teams will work even on Firefox.

melroy ,
@melroy@kbin.melroy.org avatar

Teams can be installed as a native app.

helpimnotdrowning ,
@helpimnotdrowning@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

Teams works for me as long as I’m not taking calls, just have to switch the user agent to pretend to be Chrome (but only sometimes)

pixeled , in OpenSUSE is the best

You find Zypper a better name than Pacman?

Telorand ,

I would say zypper up is the better command, just because it’s kinda funny. pacman is better overall, but it gets less fun when you start adding arguments like -Syu, if only because it’s a “language” you have to learn and isn’t self-documenting in any way.

pixeled ,

Haha, zypper up is a nice one, didn’t know that.

Pacman gets huge bonus points though for having a config option to turn to progress bar shown during package installation into a ‘pacman’ (letter c) chomping from left to right :)

(done by adding ILoveCandy under the Misc options in /etc/pacman.conf)

GravitySpoiled , in Question: Just got a Surface Go; want to install linux (use case details in post)
boredsquirrel , in Question: If windows is required, what distro do you recommend?
@boredsquirrel@slrpnk.net avatar

No distro can just do that.

Try crossover, which is said to have best Windows app support. But Microsoft is actively fighting it, on their apps.

Your school is very, very, very shitty.

melroy ,
@melroy@kbin.melroy.org avatar

Wine support of Office is horribly bad, so yea maybe only crossover can save us.

boredsquirrel , in OpenSUSE is the best
@boredsquirrel@slrpnk.net avatar

I think Tumbleweed is pretty great, Slowroll even better for people that just need a working Distro.

But Fedora Atomic Desktops win by far over OpenSUSEs “immutable” variants which are just pointless.

bsergay ,

To me, it seems as if openSUSE Aeon is heading towards providing an even more stable rolling release distro experience than what people have come to expect from Tumbleweed. However, it seems as if lack of customization/tinkering -even more so than what we expect from other ‘immutable’ distros- will be the tradeoff. Personally, I regard the diversity in vision for these projects as a net positive; let’s see what sticks you know. The project is still relatively young, though.

Let’s see what the future will bring us.

boredsquirrel , (edited )
@boredsquirrel@slrpnk.net avatar

The way they handle package updates and backports is one, and I suppose really good. I dont understand Fedoras versioning. One rolling, one semi-rolling, one more stable, that makes sense.

But the most important reason, for me, for image-based/ostree-based distros is the possibility to reset to have a bit-by-bit clone of the upstream configuration.

Normal distros just build up entropy, over time. Users do random shit and it just gets harder and harder for support to find issues. And in my own experience I just started to get weird issues I couldnt trace back.

This may have been because of KDE Plasma 5 which was often pretty messy. But on Kinoite I always knew it was because of this, as I can reset the system and reapply one by one the changes I did.

This is so awesome for administration too.

OpenSUSE does not handle this at all. They just use BTRFS snapshots so your system of reference is your previous one. If you want to resrt to 100% upstream, at least currently you cant.

You cant even see the changes you did to the system.

I asked them how to install Librewolf on there, where to add their repo. They to the end did not answer my question, but instead told me

  • installing any RPMs is not supported
  • but it is needed to install drivers etc.

This is complete nonsense, their system is just useless in such a state. And the people were so toxic, ignorant and childish, … yeah no.

I asked them “does your package manager support resetting the system” and other questions where the answer is no, they ignored them and kicked me out of the group.

I dont cry that nobody cares for their 2 semi-supported Distros lol. Fedora meanwhile is flourishing!

/rant end.

bsergay ,

Thanks for the reply!

In general, I’d have to say I agree with your post:

  • Reset option is indeed a necessity. Especially on ‘immutable’ distros. Because, why even bother otherwise?
  • Their community seems less diverse compared to Fedora’s. Granted, I believe Fedora’s community is probably most diverse due to how (relatively speaking) popular it is in combination with its release cycle being (roughly) in the middle of what you’d get otherwise with Arch on one end and Debian on the other.

However, I’m hopeful of what they’ll cook for their ‘immutable’ spins.

Btw, FWIW, regarding the reset option, perhaps there’s reason to be optimistic regarding its future; here’s Richard Brown on the topic and here’s a page he refers to related to this.

just_another_person , in OpenSUSE is the best

🤦

“MY FAVORITE SPORTSBALL TEAM IS THE BEST!!!”

Can we just moderate these posts?

HumanPerson ,

This post seems lighthearted and not mean-spirited. I do wish they said “awesome” or “great” instead of “the best,” but they’re not trashing other distros and it is relevant so I don’t see the problem.

just_another_person ,

At least it’s those positive things. From the influx of newcomers here, I just hate that they see posts like this before than can objectively see the field for the trees.

If this entire sub becomes “OMG THIS IS THE BEST”, it’s going to be nothing but noise real fucking fast.

HumanPerson ,

Do we have a linux circle jerk community yet? If not, that might help.

bsergay ,

I would normally 100% agree with you. But if it’s an underrated distro, then I tend to be more lean on this. However, I agree that OP should have done a better job at ‘advertising’ openSUSE. For example; not mentioning YaST is just criminal.

just_another_person ,

Then JUST say that. You don’t need to be out here making insane and absolute statements.

bsergay ,

I think I agree with the other commenter that you should just take a break.

just_another_person ,

Start a fanboy sub then? The noise ratio here is already way too loud.

bsergay ,

I definitely hope that the noise ration will improve (by the amount of noise decreasing) over time. But, as it stands, the community is still relatively small. I get your grievances, but I honestly don’t know what the best set of directives would be.

InternetCitizen2 ,

So what should this community talk about then?

earmuff ,

Maybe you should take a break.

Tekkip20 OP ,
@Tekkip20@lemmy.world avatar

That person should take a break, I’m just jostling you know, bit of tomfoolery and joking around.

It’s almost like some people like that user should eat some snickers and read a book on bunny rabbits or something

earmuff ,

Don’t worry, almost everyone did get the joke and it was funny imho.

rotopenguin , in BUSTING some packaging format MYTHS! App verification, sandbox, package maintainers...
@rotopenguin@infosec.pub avatar

Installer.exe is still safe af

Laser ,

curl $URL | sudo bash anyone?

eager_eagle ,
@eager_eagle@lemmy.world avatar

I non-ironically like this approach for package managers (cargo, gvm, conda, poetry, etc), because I eventually have problems when installing a manager with another manager.

Laser ,

It’s your system mate, do whatever you want with it :) I’d prefer it if libraries for these systems could be installed similar to C libraries through the system package manager but I guess that train has left the station

someacnt_ ,

This is not desirable, as requirements for dev environment differs from that of released apps. You often want sandboxing individual projects, which the package manager need not have to do.

wfh ,

AUTOEXEC.BAT has entered the chat

warmaster ,

_AUTOEXEC.BAT.RAR

^password ^is: ^123

Instructions: when windows prompts you, click on install anyways.

julianh ,

Had to install a VPN for work, and if you didn’t have a rhel-based distros you had to use a bash install script, and the installed executable had embedded bash and sh scripts. Needless to say I ran that thing in a docker container.

Telorand ,

How did you get it to work? I can’t seem to figure out how to get my container VPN to connect with the host (and the containerized systemd daemon.service just crashes).

julianh , (edited )

For me it had to be run with --privileged and --network=host

For some reason I also had to do “ip r add {remote IP}/{mask} via {the public IP assigned by the vpn}”. A friend who knows more about networking found that out for me though, so I’m not entirely sure about it.

Telorand ,

Hmmm, I’ll have to dig into that some more. Thanks for the tip!

Virkkunen ,
@Virkkunen@fedia.io avatar

Wouldn't running it on privileged mode cancel out whichever safety measures of running that script in a container?

julianh ,

Somewhat, but it’s not a virus. It’s contained to it’s own file system unless it does something really stupid, and I can easily remove the while whole thing. But the reason i needed it privileged is because it loads the ppp kernel module, so if you know a way to do that without privileged mode, lmk.

Pekka , in Question: Just got a Surface Go; want to install linux (use case details in post)
@Pekka@feddit.nl avatar

I installed Fedora 40 with Gnome and Wayland a few days ago on my Surface pro gen 1 and have been very happy with the results so far. I do have a type cover and I do use it a lot and I use touch input instead of a mouse. Gnome supports most touch input, and that hasn’t been an issue so far. Some third party applications don’t understand what ‘pinch to zoom’ is though. The onscreen keyboard situation on Wayland seems to be a bit messy. I didn’t really like the default gnome keyboard and I couldn’t get a better keyboard to work (note that for me, it is also important that the OSK is disabled when the type cover is attached, so you won’t have that issue).

The performance on the original Surface Pro is fine, I can even emulate Windows games trough Steam, I tried RuneScape (OldSchool and RuneScape 3) and Tunic. Browsing, reading Discord, watching videos all work fine. The main limitation when working with the device seems to be the 4 GB of RAM. So close other apps like the browser when starting a game, or the entire system can freeze. This seems to be mostly an issue when running multiple Electron based applications, gaming and compiling code.

The newer Surface devices have some Microsoft specific hardware that is not always well-supported by the kernel. If you have issues you can try the kernel made specifically for the Surface devices. github.com/linux-surface/linux-surface Personally I haven’t tried it as everything just worked so far on my device (they do try to get their patches upstream, so that is probably the reason).

For drawing, I always used Adobe and Affinity software, I did try to get Affinity Photo installed, but I did not succeed yet. I tried both version 1 and 2.

TropicalDingdong ,

IS general gesture control better supported than it is in pop_os? Because I find the pop_os gesture support basically worthless. Can’t scroll, no smart regions, cant pinch, flip etc.

Pekka ,
@Pekka@feddit.nl avatar

On the touchscreen I can use pinch to zoom in browsers like Firefox and Microsoft Edge (I use it because Firefox doesn’t have PWA support), it is also supported in apps like Gnome Maps and Kirta. In Krita I can even move and turn the canvas with two finger input, it seems moving and turning are both supported in GNOME.

Outside of apps, you can also use a three finger up gesture to go to the active app overview. And you can switch between the active workspace with a three finger swipe to the right or the left (this can make switching between applications really fast). Long press for right click seems to work in most places.

You can drag an app to the left or the right of the screen to make it fill up half of the screen, and drag it to the top to make it full screen.

TropicalDingdong ,

Yeah I have a HP envy which is a fliptop touch screen. This sounds identical to what I have and I consider it basically worthless.

2xsaiko , in Question: If windows is required, what distro do you recommend?
@2xsaiko@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

When I had to use Office and LibreOffice wasn’t sufficient, I just had a Windows VM running. The web versions are hot garbage (or at least used to be 3 years ago and I doubt that’s changed). I’m not sure if there’s a direct way to mount OneDrive on Linux (rclone maybe?) but if there isn’t you could do that via a network share over the VM.

KMail can connect to Exchange mailboxes. KOrganizer might even be able to access the calendar from one, I don’t remember.

ZeroHora ,
@ZeroHora@lemmy.ml avatar

The web versions are hot garbage (or at least used to be 3 years ago and I doubt that’s changed)

It’s better, less hassle than run a VM just for that.

2xsaiko ,
@2xsaiko@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

I’d rather take the hassle of doing initial Windows setup once than the hassle of continuously fighting against awful software.

bamboo ,

continuously fighting against awful software

Arguably this is why some people don’t bother with a VM and use the web apps instead.

possiblylinux127 ,

It is pretty is to setup a Windows VM

cows_are_underrated , (edited ) in Question: If windows is required, what distro do you recommend?

I would go with the web apps for the office stuff and recommend Thunderbird as a client for outlook.

Orbituary ,
@Orbituary@lemmy.world avatar

Outlook is a client. Do you mean Exchange?

cows_are_underrated ,

Yes

bsergay ,

Sorry, I tried to search it but to no avail. What are the WRB apps?

cows_are_underrated ,

I meant web apps

bsergay ,

Thank you!

Matt , in OpenSUSE is the best

openSUSE also remains one of the only distributions that have automatic Btrfs snapshots setup out of the box. I am very surprised other distributions have not done the same. Especially Fedora, since they use Btrfs already.

bsergay ,

IIRC, it was related to Fedora Atomic. Out of the box, Fedora Atomic offers functionality that’s very close to what you’d expect from Btrfs snapshots. It doesn’t use Snapper, but instead relies on (rpm-)ostree; at least, that’s my understanding of it. So, in order to make Fedora Atomic more palatable and attractive, this feature was not directly built into Fedora. Furthermore, I wouldn’t be surprised if ‘politics’ play a role in this; Snapper is kinda like openSUSE’s project. While Fedora Atomic’s implementation is Fedora’s take. Unfortunately, it happens to be (by design) not available on traditional Fedora.

Ramin_HAL9001 , in OpenSUSE is the best

Never tried it, but everyone I know who has tried it says its the most stable rolling release OS ever. That is pretty cool. Btrfs support is cool too, copy-on-write, deduplication, and whole-disk snapshot and rollback capability, its great for keeping your data safe.

I don't care about rolling releases, I get my stability from Debian, or sometimes Mint. If I want the latest software I’ll install Guix packages or FlatPaks. And I can still use Btrfs on Debian.

Cenzorrll ,

I used both tumbleweed and leap for a bit and they really are good. I’m actually using tumbleweed on a home server right now and it’s been a champ. But…

  1. My biggest gripe is opensuse seems to use different package names than any of the other distros for basic packages. I had to install a package that used capitals in the package name, and coming from mostly debian based distros, that made me rationally angry when trying to find the package I needed. I think it was network-manager or something that’s usually installed by default and I wanted something familiar.
  2. Online directions for setting something up usually has deb and/or fedora rpm directions, which is usually just some difference in package names and the equivalent install command, searching the base package will let you figure it out. I had very few issues following debian/Ubuntu directions and translating them for fedora. Opensuse is always non-existent so you always need to translate those directions for opensuse, which is usually like doing it for fedora until you run into point (1).
Ephera ,

I agree that (1) is particularly painful on openSUSE, because of (2), and I do agree that Fedora tends to be more similar to Debian/Ubuntu, but package names differing between distros is pretty universal for any non-derivative distros.

For example, I tried to use nix-shell, which basically lets you set up a small, reproducible build environment using packages from NixOS. And it was working excellently, except I could not figure out for the life of me, what the names of the NixOS packages are that provide certain C libraries…

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