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zcd ,

No question here, just wanted to highlight that I use arch btw

turnipjs ,

You should try NixOS, it’s pretty cool.

comma_egomaniac ,
@comma_egomaniac@midwest.social avatar

Don’t listen to this guy, use GNU Guix.

zaphodb2002 ,

Real talk, I want to try Guix but I have not successfully installed it on any hardware, including VMs. This includes with nonguix for proprietary drivers and stuff. I can never get past install, it always just craps out on some substitution thing. Am I just stupid?

cyclohexane OP ,

I use gentoo btw

icerunner_origin ,

If you’re not using GNU/Hurd are you even trying?

wildbus8979 ,

I’m always too afraid to ask… Is this year finally the year of Desktop Linux? Is next year the year of Mobile Linux?

trolololo.jpg

I kid, this year has been the year of Desktop Linux for well over two decades for me. Obviously! And I think this megathread is great idea :)

turnipjs ,

Year of mobile linux

[ astronauts meme ]

Always has been

Cattypat ,
@Cattypat@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

Alright, absolute noob here, I’m not particularly interested in computer science or an OS I have to obsessively research. First, how is gaming on Linux nowadays? I play a lot of games, most of which are not triple-A, so I wonder how accessible this is. Second, what distributions are accessible and still customizable? I have all kinds of peripherals I’d like to be able to use, speaker systems, midi controllers, etc.

DesolateMood ,

Fellow Linux noob, just started using it earlier this year so if someone with more experience wants to weigh in, please do.

That said, gaming on Linux is pretty good. Steam’s proton makes most games playable out of the box, although it’s still a good idea to check Proton DB to see if any particular game you want to play is playable.

As for your other question, I’m not totally sure what you mean by accessible and customizable, but I don’t think any of your peripherals are going to be distro locked. The Arch Wiki is a pretty good resource for, well, everything, but most relevant to you for your peripherals (it also usually gives good information for any distro, not just arch)

comma_egomaniac , (edited )
@comma_egomaniac@midwest.social avatar

Q1: Pretty good! Use ProtonDB to check what games work, and if you need to apply any fixes.

Q2: Linux Mint is the most popular choice for beginners, and it’s extremely easy to use. Other people choose Pop!_OS because it’s apparently better for gaming (I haven’t tried it). However, I think the best distro for gaming, while still being extremely stable, is Nobara (a distro based on Fedora Linux).

Also, practically all Linux distros are customizable, don’t worry about which one’s the best.

P.S: You can browse through the most popular distros here: DistroWatch

(Background: I’ve been obsessively using Linux for four years.)

LucidBoi ,

I can also recommend Zorin OS for a semi-familiar look with a very polished design. Switched to it as my first distro after ditching Windows for good.

Auster ,

About gaming, from my personal experience, it’s overall pretty straight forward. When issues happen, you just got to have patience to read through logs and search up on Google or similar any suspicious parts of the log. Worst part is usually DRM/anticheat, but from what I can gather, usually pretty isolated cases are problematic due to compatibility, usually requiring the devs to go out of their ways to make the DRM incompatible.

As for the distros question, perhaps Linux Mint? It trades off bleeding edge updates for the sake of stability. Just avoid the Debian-based variant of Mint for now as it’s still in beta.

ClanOfTheOcho ,

I have an old (2017) Windows 10 box that is ineligible for Windows 11. Originally purchased to run my Oculus Rift, it now just streams YouTube and Twitch and plays some old Steam games and occasionally school related stuff (Lexia, Scratch, stuff like that).

I started thinking that, rather than worrying about an unsupported Windows OS on my network, I might upgrade to Mint or Ubuntu.

So, my question(s) is/are, how much of a hassle will such an upgrade be? Will I need to wipe the drive, or can I keep my files without having to back them up first? Can I run Windows games on Steam with Wine? Are there good 3D card drivers nowadays?

I’m reasonably versed in using Linux as a user, less so as an admin, in case that affects the way you answer.

MangoPenguin ,
@MangoPenguin@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

To install at minimum you’ll need to likely shrink existing partitions and create new ones for linux if you don’t want to wipe the drive, that would be a dual-boot setup with Windows still installed along side. Or you can just wipe the drive entirely and have only Linux.

Regarding the files you should already have backups of anything important, if you don’t, set it up ASAP.

Messing with partitions can easily cause data loss if something goes wrong.

You also never know when hardware failure, malware, power surges, lightning strikes, or whatever other disaster will happen and cause data loss. 1 copy of files might as well be 0 copies.

ClanOfTheOcho ,

I’m pretty sure anything of value is already backed up to my NAS. I’m just paranoid that my kids might freak out that I destroyed their state fair winning Scratch project or something.

MangoPenguin ,
@MangoPenguin@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

I just do full system images for that reason, easier than trying to pick and choose what should be backed up. Used to use Veeam, currently using Synology Active Backup.

For online backups I don’t due to size, but for local backups it’s just way easier.

ClanOfTheOcho ,

Truth. Full system would be easier.

Blisterexe ,

Games work fine, if you install linux as a dual boot, you can move the files over (windows files appear as if the windows install was a usb key). Also drivers are fine

zcd ,

There would be no hassle in wiping the drive, you can do it as part of the super easy installation process for any Linux distro. Ideally you would back up any important files and drop them into your fancy new file system once the install is finished. And you can pretty much launch almost any game directly out of steam and it will run. There are a few exceptions for some of those games with anti cheats that rootkit your system, but the majority just work out of the box. Drivers included, but Nvidia might be ever so slightly annoying

RobotZap10000 ,
  1. Depends on how much crap you’re willing to put up with. It’ll all be worth it in the end! (Pro tip: disable secure boot in BIOS)
  2. I wrote a whole guide on the two options, but then accidentally deleted my comment. You can either install Linux on another drive, or shrink your NTFS partition and install Linux alongside it. You can always access NTFS from Linux, but not the other way around (by default). If you don’t understand what I’m talking about, you should really look it all up. I would personally just backup and wipe, you can always reinstall Windows if you want to.
  3. Have you heard of Valve’s Steam Deck? It’s a handheld gaming device that can play nearly every PC game, and it runs Linux! Valve made gaming on Linux an absolute breeze thanks to Proton. There are some popular games that don’t work, either because Tim Sweeney hates Linux (yes, really) or because the anti-cheat won’t accept Linux, but I only know about Destiny 2 and Rust that have that problem. Easy Anticheat works just fine, I play Apex Legends and Deep Rock Galactic with no issues!
  4. If you have AMD, you don’t even have to think about it. Their drivers are part of the Linux kernel. Nvidia is not impossible to use, but you might have some issues. I experience random desktop environment crashes that I can only attribute to their drivers, but it only happens on startup sometimes, which is the least annoying it could be. If you choose a distro that doesn’t mind automatically installing non-free software, you probably won’t need to think about it either. The open source driver, Nouveau, works fine but performs awfully in games (or at least it did a year ago).

If you just want some clear instructions: backup your files, wipe your disk and install Linux Mint Cinnamon Edition. It’s easy peasy to use and getting the proprietary graphics drivers is only a few clicks away. Just configure your Steam games to run through Proton and you might not even tell the difference.

ClanOfTheOcho ,

Thanks for the detailed explanation!

Fecundpossum ,

Everything people are saying here checks out, but you might struggle with VR. I haven’t tried VR on Linux yet, but I’ve heard some things about support being pretty janky. Maybe others with experience can weigh in.

ClanOfTheOcho ,

I’d be interested to see what people have to say regarding VR setup, but the Oculus gets little use anymore. I have a few games that were never ported to the newer, self-contained systems (I have a Quest 3), and we’ve downloaded a bunch of custom Beat Saber levels that I might feel bad about, but the sensors are a big enough pain to set up that I don’t know that I’d feel that bad.

Fecundpossum ,

Yeah, I’ve considered VR for a long while, but between the already existing headaches, and the Linux related headaches I’ve heard of, I’ll just wait until I’m retired for VR space games, VR racing, and VR porn. Hopefully it’ll get better before I’m dead.

otter ,

What is something Linux related that you’ve learned recently?

As a meta question, could this work as an additional (or alternate) recurring discussion question? It felt similar in intent, to encourage people to keep learning / asking questions and chances are that if someone learned something then others will benefit from the information (or correct them)

SeikoAlpinist ,

After 26 years of using Linux, I did my first baremetal “immutable” distro install last week.

My youngest son is starting school and instead of the Chromebooks that they recommend, I took a chance and installed Fedora Silverblue on a $200 Lenovo “student-rugged” class laptop. Everything works and he hasn’t had any issues so far. He gets access to the same student platform as the other students through Chrome, but then I can install Minetest and Tux Paint and GCompris as well.

The older kids run Debian stable for years now, but if this works out, I might transition them over next semester.

TimeSquirrel , (edited )
@TimeSquirrel@kbin.melroy.org avatar

I learned how a kernel actually loads a program and switches between them by using timer interrupts and interrupt vectors that point to specific locations in memory to resume execution from. Not specifically Linux related, but I'm trying to learn more computer science, and it just clicked for me two weeks ago. I've been programming microcontrollers for ten years, but those are monolithic programs, and while I knew what interrupts were and have used them, I never understood how an OS actually runs multiple things while staying in control. Now I do. About time I understood a core concept of these machines that have been here all 42 years of my life.

It's one of those "aha!" moments like when I realized classes and structs are just data types like any other in C++ when I was starting off programming and can be used like them. OOP became fun after that.

teawrecks ,

I remember when the mapping of virtual memory segments clicked for me. I think i said out loud, “that’s so clever!”. Now it just seems so fundamental to managing memory for user space applications, but I hadn’t thought about how it was done before.

bloodfart ,

I got one!

What constrains access to an rpc port in the file system? Is it just the permissions of the port or is there more to the whole process?

PatrickYaa ,

Howdy. I have a “homeserver” that I’d like to actually start using. What’s currently keeping me from it are… Permissions.
I have TrueNas Scale running on top of Proxmox, and I can’t for the life of me not access NFS Shares from other VMs (specifically a Debian VM that I use as Docker Host) that I host in Proxmox. Plox hlp.

kylian0087 ,

You can try to see which mounts get exposed with

showmount -e IP

To see if the actual shares are working.

WeebLife ,

I’m on Linux mint 22 and my audio outputs don’t change automatically. When I plug in USB headphones, audio won’t output to them unless I manually change it in settings.

Also, why can’t I interact with the panel applets (on the right side) while I’m in game? For example: I’m playing a game, I plug in my headphones, I have to manually change the audio output so I hit the “windows” key to bring up the panel, but I can’t interact with any of the applets on the right side of the panel (I can’t select the audio icon and change settings from there). I have to search audio settings in the panel then alt tab to it. It’s really cumbersome

Sanctus ,
@Sanctus@lemmy.world avatar

Is it that much better to have a Desktoo Environment, on my desktop computer? I’m still halving it with Windows trying to get my games to run on arch lol

potentiallynotfelix ,

Can you elaborate on the issue you are having? Having a desktop environment is usually necessary to run games.

Sanctus ,
@Sanctus@lemmy.world avatar

I tried running i3, using the arch wiki for the nvidia package. It suggested just the ‘nvidia’ package for a 2080 TI. Launched steam with proton (forget the newest version at the time it was like last month). Nothing would happen when launching any game. Probably doing a lot wrong or something, sorry if this isn’t enough info. I did no logging.

Wav_function ,

Will it blend?

ClanOfTheOcho ,

Depends on the hardware, but generally, yeah.

(It’s a joke)

savvywolf ,
@savvywolf@pawb.social avatar

I have a server that has multiple services running under multiple users that each store data. I want to be able to bundle all this data up and send it to another server for backups.

At a high level, how do I manage permissions for this? Currently I run the backup as root, then chown it to a special backups user which can log in through ssh. But this all feels clunky to me.

cyclohexane OP ,

There are many ways to do this, but the next up from users is using groups!

For each file or data directory, create a group that owns it. This group should have the service’s user as member. Then create a user for running the backups, and add it to all these groups.

The benefit of this is you don’t have to use root, and you have an association of directory to group that you can always change. You can for example grant a user access to a data directory by just adding it to its group.

GlenRambo ,

Is plasma big screen really an option? Id like to install it on a desktop to act as a android tv. Launch Stremio, YT and maybe one or two other apps/websites. Easy big tile navigation with remote (flirc).

It’s in dev since 2020. The images hosted on the site are bit for any of my hardware. It says theres a Debian package. Installed that though LMDE but it was horrible. Somone mentioned Kububtu can install it with apt, but its not listed. Think I’ll give up.

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