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Linux users with uncommon or unusual setups: tell us about it

I’ll start with mine. yes part of this was to brag about my somewhat but not too unusual setup. But I also wanna learn from your setups!

Anyways: I primarily use Gentoo Linux.

I have two headless servers: a Raspberry Pi 4B and a Oracle cloud VM (free tier). Both running OpenRC, and both were running mainline kernel with custom config (I recently switched the Pi to PiFoundation kernel due to some issues). The raspberry pi boots from SSD and has no sd card inserted.

Both servers were running musl libc instead of glibc for a while. This gave me a couple of random issues, but eventually I got tired and switched back to glibc.

I have a desktop running gentoo and a laptop running arch, but hoping to switch the laptop to gentoo soon.

Both are daily driving wayland (the desktop had nvidia card and used for gaming). The desktop is running a kernel with a minimal config that compiles in 2-3 minutes.

What’s your unusual setup like?

henfredemars ,

Not mine, but while I was an intern for a lab I enjoyed using a very normal-looking desktop with a casual 4TB of DDR4 and no SSD or HD, dual Xeon configuration. Rather, it did network boot and pivot root into an in-memory filesystem. It had a UPS and typically ran for months entirely from volatile storage and was used to run experimental photo and video processing. This was about ten years ago.

GnomeComedy ,

I can only imagine what that much RAM and a system that could hold it cost 10 years ago. Yikes.

flashgnash ,

I use Microsoft edge

amminadabz ,

I’ve got a thunderbolt chip on an AMD motherboard, which doesn’t usually happen, and I’m running an LG 5k monitor through it. I use an IBM model M over native PS/2. I’ve got a Ryzen 7, but a GTX 1060 cuz it still works. It’s running Ultramarine Linux, based on Fedora.

flubba86 ,

Is it that Asus ProArt Creator motherboard? To my knowledge that’s the only AMD board that shipped with the special Intel chip required to use Thunderbolt.

I’ve been thinking of picking one up, but I can’t justify the crazy price for it.

amminadabz ,

That’s the one! Damned good on the eyes, too.

mjpc13 ,
@mjpc13@programming.dev avatar

I have a Microsoft Surface 7 running NixOS. Everything works, even touch/pen

gigatexal ,
@gigatexal@mastodon.social avatar

@mjpc13 @cyclohexane that’s impressive. Would mean the laptops should also be supported ? Was it hard to do?

mjpc13 ,
@mjpc13@programming.dev avatar

It was not too hard if you are already familiar with Nix. The features supported (and the custom Linux kernel) can be found in surface-linux. For NixOS I used the nix-hardware flake to simplify things.

The worst part was the compilation of the Linux kernel, that took hours on the surface. Eventually, I used the remote nix build feature to compile on a more capable computer.

gigatexal ,
@gigatexal@mastodon.social avatar

@mjpc13 this would be an amazing blog if you wrote it up. Front page HN content right here. Very cool stuff. Thank you for sharing.

mjpc13 ,
@mjpc13@programming.dev avatar

Maybe I’ll write something in the future

domi ,
@domi@lemmy.secnd.me avatar

On my desktop I use 2 virtual audio devices that are linked to my real audio card with qpwgraph in order to split audio between VoIP applications and desktop/game audio.

https://lemmy.secnd.me/pictrs/image/fec58474-b115-4197-8777-7c8840ed1a57.png

ReakDuck ,

But what benefits do you get. At the end it lands on your real audio card anyways

domi ,
@domi@lemmy.secnd.me avatar

When recording in OBS, I can split the voice and desktop audio and edit them separately.

ReakDuck ,

I want this now

domi ,
@domi@lemmy.secnd.me avatar

Pretty easy to do if you use Pipewire, just add a file named ~/.config/pipewire/pipewire.conf.d/10-virtual.conf with the following content:


<span style="color:#323232;">context.objects = [
</span><span style="color:#323232;">    {   factory = adapter
</span><span style="color:#323232;">        args = {
</span><span style="color:#323232;">            factory.name     = support.null-audio-sink
</span><span style="color:#323232;">            node.name        = "Virtual-Sink-1"
</span><span style="color:#323232;">            node.description = "Virtual Sink 1"
</span><span style="color:#323232;">            media.class      = "Audio/Sink"
</span><span style="color:#323232;">            audio.position   = "FL,FR"
</span><span style="color:#323232;">        }
</span><span style="color:#323232;">    }
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">    {   factory = adapter
</span><span style="color:#323232;">        args = {
</span><span style="color:#323232;">            factory.name     = support.null-audio-sink
</span><span style="color:#323232;">            node.name        = "Virtual-Sink-2"
</span><span style="color:#323232;">            node.description = "Virtual Sink 2"
</span><span style="color:#323232;">            media.class      = "Audio/Sink"
</span><span style="color:#323232;">            audio.position   = "FL,FR"
</span><span style="color:#323232;">        }
</span><span style="color:#323232;">    }
</span><span style="color:#323232;">]
</span>

This will add 2 virtual sinks to your device list after a restart, which you can use in all applications.

After that you can install qpwgraph and add it to autostart: flathub.org/apps/org.rncbc.qpwgraph

Now you can drag & drop all connections from your Virtual sinks to you output device (as shown in the image I posted). You can even send it to multiple output devices at the same time.

When you are done hit Ctrl + S to save your patchbay and select Patchbay -> Activated. Now qpwgraph will load your connections every time it starts.

Jimmycrackcrack ,

I tried to set this up on a mac using soundflower so I could share my screen with an edit project with the director during lockdown and still chat to them at the same time. Didn’t work for some frustrating reason relating to Skype.

some_guy ,

soundflower

Funny, I was going to suggest Audio Hijack, but a search for soundflower revealed that Rogue Amoeba were the stewards of that app for a few years. Anyway, Audio Hijack might be what you need if you’re still in the market for such a tool. Rogue Amoeba are the experts in Mac audio-routing.

Jimmycrackcrack ,

I believe while I was figuring this out I discovered one of rogue amoebas apps that I could use in conjunction with sound flower and I was nearly certain I had it, it was something to do with how Skype worked that sabotaged me, I couldn’t believe how stubbornly persistent Skype was despite how hard I tried to workaround it. I believe I was trying to make a single virtual sound device that combined my mic output with the system Audio so I could choose that as my microphone in Skype but SOMEHOW it was always able to fuck me over don’t remember how, only that I was extremely angry.

nobleshift ,
@nobleshift@lemmy.world avatar

deleted_by_author

    •
    Turbo ,

    Very cool! Thanks for sharing. I’ll pass this on to my friend who’s been at sea with his family for over 1 year.

    some_guy ,

    I’ve long wanted to attend Ultra Music Festival. It’s somewhat reassuring to hear that I’m not missing out (this year). Sorry that wasn’t better.

    gkpy ,

    i have a gentoo system with a custom s6-rc service tree that fully replaces openrc and boots via s6-linux-init.

    instead of a display manager i have tinydm (from postmarketos) and autologin setup. since i use full-disk encryption and suspend-to-disk i find that i don’t need the extra login step into my user session.

    i have a bunch of bemenu-based helpers for wifi, bluetooth, vpn, audio, passwords, mounting drives, etc.

    i don’t have polkit or sudo installed. i use doas.

    theshatterstone54 ,

    Do you have those bemenu helpers in a repo somewhere? I’ve been really getting into bemenu scripting recently and I’m really enjoying the results (case in point: when I do a logout/shutdown via my bemenu logout script I feel like an absolute boss).

    theshatterstone54 ,

    Fedora Hyprland, with Floorp and Emacs. Not very unusual, especially when compared to what people are saying here. Umm… floating Waybar and EWW as a conky replacement? A customised Neofetch?

    Oh, I got it! I’m using my own handcrafted colourscheme! It’s not perfect but it looks very good and is quite nice and blue! And I use Bemenu for a logout menu in a homebrew script.

    I’m getting into using Syncthing to synchronise my Notes directory between my devices, which I use on my phone to access my orgmode notes and todo items via an app called Orgzly.

    I use a Launcher called Olauncher on my phone which runs LineageOS rooted with KernelSU (that’s quite unusual I guess).

    My backup solution is 2 USB sticks and Syncthing.

    I run the teams-for-linux flatpak for education-related purposes.

    Even with all that I still feel like the most Plain Jane user when I’m seeing people using servers and niche distros, even though I’m sure combining it all together will leave us with only 1 user in the world that does things in that exact way: me.

    someacnt_ ,

    Wellll, so I practically used to write my own WM

    tetris11 ,
    @tetris11@lemmy.ml avatar

    Stump user huh?

    theshatterstone54 ,

    Or maybe DWM?

    d3Xt3r ,

    I use Wayfire (which not many people use for unknown reasons), and one of the things I like to do with it is have a fiery drop-down Kitty terminal. :)

    https://lemmy.nz/pictrs/image/bde87b3d-479b-478a-bb4c-107bb55b9c57.webm

    I haven’t seen anyone else do a drop-down Kitty in Wayfire before, so I’d like to boldly claim I’m the first one to do so. :) Yes I know it’s pointless, but it’s also cool, and it’s fast thanks to being fully GPU-accelerated, so why not?

    And no, I don’t use the fire effect for other windows - that’d get real old, real fast. Thanks to Wayfire, I can define window rules so the effect only applies to my drop-down kitty. Also, my regular kitty windows open normally, without any fancy effects - and it’s possible to differentiate this thanks to kitty allowing you to specify an custom appid.

    I also use doas instead of sudo. I just got tired always fighting with sudoers, doas is so much more easier to setup and work with.

    Finally, I use grc to colorize all my log output. Makes my journactl looks nice. :)

    https://lemmy.nz/pictrs/image/52ab097d-1c8f-450b-81a8-0b0f8617e1d3.png

    enbee ,

    what issues were you having with sudoers?

    cyclohexane OP ,

    Wayfire is not tiling right? I imagine its a similar reason people didn’t use open box much. It’s a non-tiling window system, and people who go that route tend to to full DE. But I am with you. I wonder why not many more people use them.

    Doas is cool. I actually switched to it shortly before ditching both it and sudo, and deciding to rely on a users/groups system.

    d3Xt3r ,

    Yes Wayfire is a floating WM, but it does have a tiling module which supports simple tiling (up/down/left/right/top/bottom), and you can even define window rules for automatic tile and workspace assignment.

    Of course, this is probably not enough for hardcore tilers, but personally don’t think I’d ever need more than 4 tiles per screen - and if one or more of those tiles is a terminal, I can easily multiplex it using Kitty’s built-in splitter, or Zellij.

    daddyjones ,
    @daddyjones@lemmy.world avatar

    Just a reboot. There’s an EFI menu listing all the available images - I keep a couple of old ones around to roll back to in case of problems - and I just select the one I want.

    lemmylem , (edited )

    Libreboot Gaming Desktop

    • Dell OptiPlex 9020 MT Motherboard
    • i7 4790K
    • 32GB DDR3 1600Mhz RAM
    • 9TB (1TB M.2 NVME, 2x4TB Hard drives) RAID 0 with LUKS and LVM (/boot stored on SD card)
    • NVIDIA 2080 SUPER 8GB VRAM
    • NZXT S340 Elite Case
    • EVGA 700W BR
    • Kicksecure GNU/Linux

    Libreboot Server

    • Dell Precision T1650
    • Xeon E3 1275 V2
    • 32GB DDR3L 1600Mhz RAM (ECC)
    • 8TB (2x4TB Hard drives) RAID 1 with LUKS and LVM (/boot stored on SD card)
    • AMD RX580 8GB VRAM
    • Proxmox VE / Learning to use YunoHost inside VM

    Libreboot Laptop

    • Lenovo Thinkpad T440P
    • i7 4810MQ (Recommend i7 4700MQ for better battery life)
    • 16GB DDR3 1600Mhz RAM
    • 1TB SSD (/boot encrypted with Argon2)
    • 100% Free BIOS (LibreMRC), Intel Management Engine is still present but neutered
    • Intel AC 7260 (Can run without blobs when running Linux-libre kernel)
    • AR9271 USB for WiFi (100% FOSS)
    • Kicksecure GNU/Linux with Linux-libre kernel (Removed all non-free-firmware with vrms)

    GrapheneOS Phone (100% FOSS in the OS layer)

    • Cheogram / JMP.chat for Calling / Texting
    • Mint Mobile for Service (Cash)
    • Ported number into JMP.chat
    • F-Droid

    LibreCMC Routers (100% Free Firmware/Software)

    • ThinkPenguin R1400 Ethernet (1Gbps)
    • ThinkPenguin R1300 WiFi Router (100Mbs)
    • Running under MullvadVPN (Paid in XMR)

    OpenWRT Network Switch

    • D-Link DGS-1210-28MP
    • VLAN Support

    Yeah that’s pretty much my setup, don’t know if it’s really strange or not lol

    downhomechunk ,

    It’s strange!

    azvasKvklenko ,

    The Optiplex gaming setup is quite bizzare. Isn’t that CPU a bit of a bottleneck for this relatively powerful GPU?

    Btw I used to own the same Thinkpad but it was supplied with a dedicated NVIDIA GeForce 6xx-something, but never tried Libreboot on it. Given that I sold it in 2020, not sure if libreboot was even doable on it back then.

    lemmylem ,

    A bit, it’s actually not too bad. Rarely any micro stuttering on ultra settings in RDR2, I am actually planning on buying the AMD 7900XTX graphics card to put in this machine. I want to run local LLMs on it, I’m not too much of a gamer as I used to be. Anyways, this thing rocks! I love it. Eventually, I’ll plan on buying a MSI Z690-A DDR5 motherboard and install Dasharo firmware onto it.

    fruitycoder ,

    How does it game for you so far?!

    lemmylem , (edited )

    It can play all my games at 1440p and ultra settings (RDR2, GTA V, etc.) I’ve never had a time where I’ve wanted to upgrade from it. I built most of this computer for about $450-$500, all used parts I got off eBay plus some other parts that I pulled from my other computer

    ExtremeDullard , (edited )
    @ExtremeDullard@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

    My work machine isn’t too unusual, apart that it has 52 USB devices connected. And here’s something you may not know: Linux can’t enumerate more than 16 USB ports if the root is configured as USB3, so I had to force all the ports to run in USB2 mode - which is fine in this case, since most of them are serial ports.

    Telodzrum ,

    Linux can’t enumerate more than 16 USB ports if the root is configured as USB3

    What? Really?

    ExtremeDullard ,
    @ExtremeDullard@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

    I’m not sure it’s a kernel limitation or a hardware limitation. But it does throw an error in syslog when you connect the 17th device. Not as USB2 though.

    riskable ,
    @riskable@programming.dev avatar

    This is caused by your root controller’s limited bandwidth and it’s inability to handle that many 3.0 devices at the same time. Some of the newer motherboards with USB C PD have controllers in them that can do a lot more.

    It’s basically a hack on part of the company that made the root controller IC. They know they only have enough internal bandwidth to support 16 USB 3.0 devices so they intentionally bork things when you plug in more than that since their Transaction Translator (TT) can’t handle more and they were too lazy to bother implementing the ability to share 2.0 and 3.0 properly.

    I’m guessing the decision went something like this…

    “We have enough bandwidth for 16 3.0 devices… What do we do if someone plugs in more than that?” “Only a few people will ever have that many! We don’t have the budget to handle every tiny little use case! Just ship it.”

    So it’s not Linux fault in this case. Or at least, if it is (a problem with the driver) it’s because of some proprietary bullshit that the driver requires to function properly 🤷

    ExtremeDullard ,
    @ExtremeDullard@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

    Yeah I figured it might be something like that. But I wasn’t sure it wasn’t a kernel limit - or even a limit in the USB3 specification - because I actually only have one USB3-capable device connected (my cellphone). All the other devices are low-bandwidth USB2 FTDI USB serial converters. I thought it couldn’t be a bandwidth issue when all but one device can only use a fraction of what’s available.

    reallyzen ,
    @reallyzen@lemmy.ml avatar

    Uh, you’re outputing 52 DMX universes straight from USB? I have questions!

    • What software are you using, and is qlcplus really able to do that?
    • Have you ever heard the words ArtNet? SACN?
    ExtremeDullard ,
    @ExtremeDullard@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

    I had no idea what you’re talking about so I had to look it up 🙂

    I think you’re making assumptions on what I need many serial ports for and it’s nothing like what you think.

    I work for a company that makes measuring instruments that talk serial (RS232, RS422 and UART), we have many variants of our products and I’m tired of plugging and unplugging devices to the same serial ports to test code. Also, I can’t do that remotely when I work from home. So I have many serial ports and all the different devices I need to test my code on regularly are all plugged in and powered at the same time.

    No lighting here 🙂

    reallyzen ,
    @reallyzen@lemmy.ml avatar

    Oh, here I thought you was running a fancy dancefloor or something! TIL the creator of that chip was a prick.

    toastal ,

    Lenovo support seems to think I have an unusual setup since I run Linux on their Thinkpad & while the NVMe even after an RMA fails under heavy IO despite their partner WD, who sent me an email response saying they never test or certify drives for Linux or BSD. Many users have been experiencing similar failures with their controllers WD proudly boasts as in-house. Note that Lenovo also has a support PDF about running the device on Linux, but the support is ran by a bunch of clowns. Also not that when you purchase, the hardware brand is never mentioned so there is na room for due diligence.

    Tl;dr: if you want a working Linux system, don’t purchase Western Digital or Sandisk drives.

    eagertolearn ,

    I have been running my linux installs off of wd drives for years without any issues. Most of the devices I run are Asus laptops, maybe it is a Lenovo issue?

    toastal ,

    github.com/openzfs/zfs/discussions/14793

    It seems to be an issue in the last year-ish but across a range of WD/Sandisk drives. They build controllers in house &, if the support is to be believed, don’t test or support Linux/BSD.

    eagertolearn ,

    Ah, i see now. I use btrfs and the issue is with zfs.

    toastal , (edited )

    Nope. Read it a bit deeper as the failures are for ZFS, BtrFS, Bcachefs, & Ext4.

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

    I have NixOS running on my main desktop with some unusual changes:

    • / is mounted as tmpfs, with /etc, /nix and /var being mounted from the actual system partition (this actually isn’t too uncommon on NixOS)
    • For swap, zswap and dynamically allocated swapfiles using swapspace daemon (this is imo the best swap setup if you don’t need hibernation)
    • Akonadi (KDE’s PIM server) using PostgreSQL instead of MySQL
    • ISO8601 date format, for this I have glibc’s en_DK locale which does this copied to en_SE because Qt has en_SE as the locale with ISO date
    • A couple changes to make the layout more like macOS because I can:
      • Partitions are either mounted or auto-symlinked (if they can’t be mounted there, such as for the system partition) under /Volumes
      • I patched udisks to also mount devices under /Volumes
      • User home directories are under /Users and root’s home is /var/root
      • Keyboard layout changed as far as I can to be mostly like Mac’s so I don’t have to rethink layouts as much when switching between this and my MacBook
    • Can’t technically list this anymore since I’ve had to tear it down for unrelated reasons but NFS using Kerberos authentication for my NAS
    • This is apparently very unusual since a lot of games completely break with it but two monitors with the main monitor on the right
    starman ,
    @starman@programming.dev avatar

    This is apparently very unusual since a lot of games completely break with it but two monitors with the main monitor on the right

    This is unusual? I use the same monitor configuration, and I didn’t notice any problems with it. Or at least I didn’t figure out they could have been caused by monitor setup. Could you give me an example of what problems have you encountered?

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

    Either games spawning on the wrong monitor and not reacting well to you moving the fullscreen window to the other monitor, or mouse input issues. Latest I’ve had was L.A. Noire, which locks the mouse to a portion of the screen and doesn’t allow you to freely turn the camera. (I just tested it again and now it seems to work fine though! I hope that persists.) Quake II doesn’t allow you to move the mouse at all, or rather only in what seems in like a 2 pixel wide boundary in the middle of the screen. No such issues if the other monitor is turned off or configured to be on the right side. I’ve encountered more games that had issues with this in the past but these two are the recent ones I’ve had trouble with since setting it up like this again.

    LiveLM ,

    If you’re on Wayland, try gamescope. It’s basically built to handle issue like this.

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

    With L.A. Noire, that actually made it worse. It spawned on the wrong monitor, and every time I moved the mouse, the camera would spin to the right no matter what (even with only one monitor, I think). I need to get around to making bug reports for these.

    agressivelyPassive ,

    What’s the deal with / as tmpfs about? I’m so trying to understand nixos.

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

    NixOS can boot from a file system that only has /nix, since essentially the kernel command line has init=/nix/store/…/init. Everything else will be created during boot by that if it isn’t already there. So technically you could only mount /nix and you would get a blank system every time you boot (but that wouldn’t be very useful in most cases). Mounting these is done in the initrd.

    A lot of people have a setup where only select files are mounted from a persistent partition, such as /var/lib/postgresql, basically anything they want to keep across reboots, so that the rest is discarded when they reboot. This prevents the system from accumulating junk over time, from services you once used to have but no longer have running, and so on. Personally I found it too much of a hassle to keep track of what files I want to keep, so I save the entire /etc and /var. I still keep the tmpfs though because it’s pretty cool.

    LiveLM ,

    Question: are you using Flakes?

    I’ve been kinda dipping my toes on NixOS but the flakes are really throwing a wrench my way… Yet they are apparently NixOS’ future so I’m just kinda stuck

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

    Yeah. Flakes are essentially three things (or four if you count the new CLI):

    1. Lock files for inputs (like NPM)
    2. A defined output layout (so, every flake has its packages at packages.<system> for example)
    3. Pure mode (don’t worry about it unless you read from arbitrary locations in the file system or try to download files without a hash)

    That’s it, essentially nothing else changes. It’s just a different entry point to Nix code including NixOS configurations.

    Here’s a great article (apparently, I have only skimmed it myself) explaining flakes more in detail: jade.fyi/blog/flakes-arent-real/

    redshift ,

    I felt the same, but I’m reading through this book and so far it’s been helpful for understanding and setting up system flakes: nixos-and-flakes.thiscute.world

    pr06lefs ,

    Flakes on the system level aren’t too bad. You can pretty much just keep your configuration.nix, but now you call that from a flake.nix. The difference is you remove all your nix-channels and you specify your nixpkgs in your flake.nix. So its really using a flake instead of nix-channels.

    The cool part is when you nixos-rebuild the first time, it will save your nixpkgs version in a flake.lock. Then it will stay that way until you choose to upgrade with nix flake update. Nice and stable.

    NuclearDolphin ,

    use flakes

    qaz ,

    A fellow en_DK user, I thought I was the only one.

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