-
11 votes
-
The fifteen-minute bug initiative
6 votes -
Mesa 22.0 released with Vulkan 1.3, many open source Intel & AMD driver improvements
5 votes -
The Dirty Pipe Vulnerability
5 votes -
Valve has now properly started verifying games ahead of the Steam Deck launch
22 votes -
Can someone explain the systemd controversy to a nontechnical user?
A project I'm working on requires me to cover a bit of comedy targeting Lennart Poettering as it's tangentially related, and I'd like to have more context even though it's not strictly necessary....
A project I'm working on requires me to cover a bit of comedy targeting Lennart Poettering as it's tangentially related, and I'd like to have more context even though it's not strictly necessary. I'm a nontechnical Linux user who used the OS before systemd came around, but really the only impact on my life it's had is that I occasionally use systemctl to control services.
Though I wasn't paying as much attention to the community around the time major distributions switched, I've been casually exposed to criticism of it ever since I came back, and I'd like to make sense of it all and form an opinion beyond "I like Fedora and GNOME and it seems to go hand-in-hand with those". I've read The Biggest Myths, the Wikipedia article, some stuff on freedesktop.org, and of course absorbed the venom slung back and forth over systemd in every FOSS community, but it's hard to get a full picture. And a picture from 2022, for that matter, as a lot of this information comes from its early days. Help me out?
24 votes -
Product recommendation request: low latency wireless earbuds
Alright, so I fell down a rabbit hole of trying to understand a whole bunch of techy things that I don't fully understand and could use some help: What I'm looking for: a pair of Bluetooth...
Alright, so I fell down a rabbit hole of trying to understand a whole bunch of techy things that I don't fully understand and could use some help:
What I'm looking for: a pair of Bluetooth wireless earbuds that I can pair with my computer, with low enough latency that it won't impair my enjoyment in casual gaming/video watching
What I understand so far: Almost nothing. 😔 I get that Bluetooth will always have some level of latency, but, beyond that, I've got nothing. I'm so confused.
There are lots of different versions of Bluetooth, and then there are different Bluetooth protocols within that, and then different audio codecs, and each piece of hardware seems to support completely different combinations of those, and I'm not sure if the devices have to match configurations or even how to figure out what my computer supports? It seems Bluetooth will gracefully fall back to worse codecs/protocols if better ones are incompatible, but I don't really want to buy something that's just going to fall back to its worst usecase.
I also don't know what's an "acceptable" level of latency. What's reasonable versus what's intolerable?
It also seems like the information I read online is subject to rapid decay. I read a bunch of stuff only a few years old saying I should look for aptX Low Latency capability, but then I read very recent posts saying that's dead and to go with aptX Adaptive instead. Meanwhile there are a handful of gaming-focused headsets that say they're low latency but don't really say how (e.g. Razer's Hammerhead). And some, like Samsung's buds, having a "gaming mode" but it only works on special hardware.
Also, how do I know what my computer itself will support? Is there anything I can do from the computer side to reduce latency, or is that strictly a function of what my hardware supports and which earbuds I buy?
My usecase:
My computer is a System 76 Oryx Pro (5) running Pop!_OS 21.10. I think its Bluetooth adapter is version 5.1 (though I'm not confident on that). I do not know which protocols/codecs it supports, nor how to find that out.
Audio quality isn't too important. These will be for everyday video-watching and gaming, which is what's prompting the latency requirement. I'd rather them be responsive than rich.
Active noise cancelling would be nice to have (especially if it has a toggleable transparency mode), but I don't know if ANC adds latency and is therefore incompatible with what I'm wanting.
I don't have a specific budget for it, and that's honestly the least important requirement. If the solution exists I'm fine paying for it (within reason, of course). These will end up getting used for thousands of hours, so even a big price difference upfront will even out over time.
I'd appreciate any help anyone can offer in pointing me in the right direction on this!
12 votes -
Proton vs. Native: Is there really a difference?
10 votes -
What are your favorite Linux distributions to use for gaming and as a daily driver, and why?
I'm curious what experiences people who game on linux have had, what your favorite distros are, and why. Mind sharing them in this thread? I'm in the market. My old GTX770 just bit the dust. I...
I'm curious what experiences people who game on linux have had, what your favorite distros are, and why. Mind sharing them in this thread? I'm in the market.
My old GTX770 just bit the dust. I picked up a Radeon 6600 to replace it, only to discover after installing it that while the 6600XT has Windows 7 drivers, the 6600 itself does not. The desktop works, but that's it. A little strange, but not entirely unexpected.
My ancient frankenstein Win 7 Enterprise has got to go (into a VM, already on its way) and there is simply no way in hell I will ever use any version of the spyware/bloatware mess that Windows has become today. They lost me forever the second they put a marketplace and ads into my start menu. Ain't nobody got time for that, or at least, I don't.
That means it's finally Linux time, for real - no going back. I'm rather excited. :D
Side note: My original install date for Windows 7 Enterprise was 11-12-2011, it's lasted nearly eleven years without a BSOD or the need to reinstall. They really did fix windows decay syndrome in v7. That's the longest I've ever had a desktop OS last. Can any desktop linux distro manage to go that long, I wonder?
The last time I ran a linux daily driver was Ubuntu for two years around '08, until I got sick of the pulseaudio issues. I'm not worried about that anymore, linux is ready for primetime now. That begs the question of which distro to use. I've toyed with or supported just about all of them at work (mint, redhat, suse, ubuntu, arch, deb, slack just to name a few). I'm a sysadmin by trade so I'm not phased by the learning curve, I know linux cold already.
It's more a question of which distro is going to bother me the least acting as my daily driver. I like to tinker at work, but if I have to do it all the time at home I get cranky. I prefer the 'it just works' experience. The primary requirement is linux gaming, as this is my main gaming rig. That means lots of Skyrim Special Edition, Stellaris, Rimworld, emulators, etc.
There's so many choices out there I'm not sure how to tell which one is the best and I don't particularly feel like putting a dozen of them through their paces over a month to find out - so I'm asking Tildes. ;) I don't mind trying a couple. Steam is required. Good support for WINE is a bonus. Ditto virtual desktop support - is Compiz still a thing or is there something better?
Here are the system specs. I'm sure it's all fully linux compatible.
- Asus Maximus IV Extreme-Z
- Intel i7 2600K (3.2GHz, OC'ed to 4.2GHz with a Noctua air cooler, never breaks 60'C)
- Sapphire RX6600 GPU w 8GB of DDR6
- 16GB of G.Skill DDR3 2400MHz memory
- 500GB Samsung SSD, 4x4TB WD Red NAS drives
Yeah, it's long in the tooth, and I'm glad I went for the Z/K combo so the new GPU isn't entirely gimped plugged into a much older PCIe 2.0 mainboard. I'll pick up a Ryzen sometime to replace it, but not until after the chip shortage shakes out. It was hard enough getting that 6600 in this market without getting scalped.
21 votes -
Getting rid of the need for the usecase Linux distribution
4 votes -
Nobara Project - Fedora with fixes and presets for gaming, by the Proton-GE dev
5 votes -
A bug lurking for 12 years gives attackers root on every major Linux distro
13 votes -
Floppinux - An embedded Linux on a single floppy
7 votes -
ArchLabs Linux 2022.01.18 release available for download
3 votes -
Cemu emulator plans to go open source and release Linux build in 2022
10 votes -
Help needed: slow external hard drive
I've got a 2TB Toshiba drive (formatted as NTFS) that has become very slow and I was wondering if anyone here as any ideas what the problem could be and how I could fix it. All the data I'd need...
I've got a 2TB Toshiba drive (formatted as NTFS) that has become very slow and I was wondering if anyone here as any ideas what the problem could be and how I could fix it. All the data I'd need off the drive is backed up, but I would at least like a drive to put it back on to!
In short, it became slow after I had to force power-off the system it was connected to (Pop OS installed on another external drive which I unplugged by mistake) and I haven't bothered to try to fix it in the six months since.
I've tested it on Pop and it takes about 10-20 minutes to mount, and 2 minutes to unmount and safely remove. The data itself seems fine but performance is slow, accessing a 20MB image takes several seconds and selecting the drive in GNOME Disks caused it to freeze.
The drive sounded louder than normal, especially after plugging in.
On Windows, the drive was recognised and browsable immediately, but browsing through folders was very slow - opening some folders causes Windows Explorer to freeze for a while. Some of my double-clicks were mis-recognised as click-to-rename, which took several seconds to activate and during which time Task Manager reported the average response time between 5000 and 11000 ms.
Attempting to load an audio file resulted in lots of buffering. Task Manager reports an active time of 100% (even when not loading files or folders) and the activity never exceeded 100 KB/s (and doesn't sustain it for more than a second). Ejecting the drive takes forever - after ejecting it using the tray icon, the tray icon is not removed (even though there are no other drives connected or listed) and the active time is still 100% with the indicator LED blinking non-stop. The system did not enter sleep right away after me asking it to either.
All of that to say, does anyone know what the issue could be, or how I could find and fix it? Thanks!
Edit: fixed and normal functionality restored (at least so I can check the drive a bit easier) using Scan & Repair in Windows (see my comment).
4 votes -
KeenWrite 2.5.1: Command-line arguments
10 votes -
Gaming on Linux - LTT Daily Driver Challenge Finale
17 votes -
Linux in a Pixel Shader - A RISC-V Emulator for VRChat
12 votes -
Nautilus (GNOME Files) icon view retrospective and future
5 votes -
Fixing stutters in Papers Please on Linux
8 votes -
Setting yourself up for success before trying Fedora Silverblue
14 votes -
This week in GNOME #23 - Modernized settings
4 votes -
CentOS Linux 8 is about to die. What do you do next?
19 votes -
But why that VPN? How WireGuard made it into Linux
8 votes -
Open-source Vizio lawsuit takes an ugly turn
15 votes -
Rust takes a major step forward as Linux's second official language
19 votes -
Red Hat's CentOS Stream 9 Linux arrive
2 votes -
AWS embraces Fedora Linux for its cloud-based Amazon Linux
5 votes -
Introducing River, a dynamic tiling Wayland compositor
10 votes -
Linus and Luke of LTT try to daily drive Linux
30 votes -
Three months in: Running a law firm on Linux
15 votes -
The Framework laptop is great for a Linux-friendly, upgradeable/modular laptop
10 votes -
Despite having just 5.8% sales, over 38% of bug reports for the game "ΔV: Rings of Saturn" come from the Linux community
32 votes -
Linux (In)security
10 votes -
The value of in-house expertise
8 votes -
Epic Online Services launches Anti-Cheat support for Linux, Mac, and Steam Deck
18 votes -
Debian 11 "Bullseye" released
19 votes -
Linux Privilege Escalation - Three Easy Ways to Get a Root Shell
9 votes -
Xenia, the forgotten trans Linux mascot
15 votes -
KeenWrite 2.2.0: Curl straight quotes upon export
4 votes -
Whatever happened with UMN vs. Linux Kernel Maintainers?
Even tech news moves a bit too fast for me to keep up. Did UMN ever get unbanned? I saw a half-hearted apology and then finally this [1], but never heard any update. Most recent article I've seen...
Even tech news moves a bit too fast for me to keep up. Did UMN ever get unbanned? I saw a half-hearted apology and then finally this [1], but never heard any update. Most recent article I've seen is this ZDNet article [2] from a couple of weeks ago discussing a related issue, but still mentions that UMN is still banned.
Anyone following this?
[2] https://www.zdnet.com/article/hard-work-and-poor-pay-stresses-out-open-source-maintainers/
4 votes -
Flathub, runtimes and stats
4 votes -
GNOME - Community Power Part 1: Misconceptions
4 votes -
Interview with GloriousEggroll, project maintainer of ProtonGE (a fork of Valve's Proton compatibility layer for Linux)
10 votes -
A few easy linux commands, and a real-world example on how to use them in a pinch
This below is a summary of some real-world performance investigation I recently went through. The tools I used are installed on all linux systems, but I know some people don't know them and would...
This below is a summary of some real-world performance investigation I recently went through. The tools I used are installed on all linux systems, but I know some people don't know them and would straight up jump to heavyweight log analysis services and what not, or writing their own solution.
Let's say you have request log sampling in a bunch of log files that contain lines like these:
127.0.0.1 [2021-05-27 23:28:34.460] "GET /static/images/flags/2/54@3x.webp HTTP/2" 200 1806 TLSv1.3 HIT-CLUSTER SessionID:(null) Cache:max-age=31536000
127.0.0.1 [2021-05-27 23:51:22.019] "GET /pl/player/123456/changelog/ HTTP/1.1" 200 16524 TLSv1.2 MISS-CLUSTER SessionID:(null) Cache:
You might recognize Fastly logs there (IP anonymized). Now, there's a lot you might care about in this log file, but in my case, I wanted to get a breakdown of hits vs misses by URL.
So, first step, let's concatenate all the log files with
cat *.log > all.txt
, so we can work off a single file.Then, let's split the file in two: hits and misses. There are a few different values for them, the majority are covered by either
HIT-CLUSTER
orMISS-CLUSTER
. We can do this by just grepping for them like so:grep HIT-CLUSTER all.txt > hits.txt; grep MISS-CLUSTER all.txt > misses.txt
However, we only care about url and whether it's a hit or a miss. So let's clean up those hits and misses with
cut
. The way cut works, it takes a delimiter (-d
) and cuts the input based on that; you then give it a range of "fields" (-f
) that you want.In our case, if we cut based on spaces, we end up with for example:
127.0.0.1
[2021-05-27
23:28:34.460]
"GET
/static/images/flags/2/54@3x.webp
HTTP/2"
200
1806
TLSv1.3
HIT-CLUSTER
SessionID:(null)
Cache:max-age=31536000
.We care about the 5th value only. So let's do:
cut -d" " -f5
to get that. We will alsosort
the result, because future operations will require us to work on a sorted list of values.cut -d" " -f5 hits.txt | sort > hits-sorted.txt; cut -d" " -f5 misses.txt | sort > misses-sorted.txt
Now we can start doing some neat stuff.
wc
(wordcount) is an awesome utility, it lets you count characters, words or lines very easily.wc -l
counts lines in an input, since we're operating with one value per line we can easily count our hits and misses already:$ wc -l hits-sorted.txt misses-sorted.txt 132523 hits-sorted.txt 220779 misses-sorted.txt 353302 total
220779 / 132523 is a 1:1.66 ratio of hits to misses. That's not great…
Alright, now I'm also interested in how many unique URLs are hit versus missed.
uniq
tool deduplicates immediate sequences, so the input has to be sorted in order to deduplicate our entire file. We already did that. We can now count our urls withuniq < hits-sorted.txt | wc -l; uniq < misses-sorted.txt | wc -l
. We get49778
and201178
, respectively. It's to be expected that most of our cache misses would be in "rarer" urls; this gives us a 1:4 ratio of cached to uncached URL.Let's say we want to dig down further into which URLs are most often hitting the cache, specifically. We can add
-c
touniq
in order to get a duplicate count in front of our URLs. To get the top ones at the top, we can then usesort
, in reverse sort mode (-r
), and it also needs to be numeric sort, not alphabetic (-n
).head
lets us get the top 10.$ uniq -c < hits-sorted.txt | sort -nr | head 815 /static/app/webfonts/fa-solid-900.woff2?d720146f1999 793 /static/app/images/1.png 786 /static/app/fonts/nunito-v9-latin-ext_latin-regular.woff2?d720146f1999 760 /static/CACHE/js/output.cee5c4089626.js 758 /static/images/crest/3/light/notfound.png 757 /static/CACHE/css/output.4f2b59394c83.css 756 /static/app/webfonts/fa-regular-400.woff2?d720146f1999 754 /static/app/css/images/loading.gif?d720146f1999 750 /static/app/css/images/prev.png?d720146f1999 745 /static/app/css/images/next.png?d720146f1999
And same for misses:
$ uniq -c < misses-sorted.txt | sort -nr | head 56 / 14 /player/237678/ 13 /players/ 12 /teams/ 11 /players/top/ <snip>
So far this tells us static files are most often hit, and for misses it also tells us… something, but we can't quite track it down yet (and we won't, not in this post). We're not adjusting for how often the page is hit as a whole, this is still just high-level analysis.
One last thing I want to show you! Let's take everything we learned and analyze those URLs by prefix instead. We can cut our URLs again by slash with
cut -d"/"
. If we want the first prefix, we can do-f1-2
, or-f1-3
for the first two prefixes. Let's look!cut -d'/' -f1-2 < hits-sorted.txt | uniq -c | sort -nr | head 100189 /static 5948 /es 3069 /player 2480 /fr 2476 /es-mx 2295 /pt-br 2094 /tr 1939 /it 1692 /ru 1626 /de
cut -d'/' -f1-2 < misses-sorted.txt | uniq -c | sort -nr | head 66132 /static 18578 /es 17448 /player 17064 /tr 11379 /fr 9624 /pt-br 8730 /es-mx 7993 /ru 7689 /zh-hant 7441 /it
This gives us hit-miss ratios by prefix. Neat, huh?
13 votes -
Valve has been secretly building a Switch-like portable PC designed to run a large number of games on the Steam PC platform via Linux
35 votes -
Can anyone recommend a printer? (...ahem...) a Linux printer?
Last time I owned an inkjet was well over a decade ago. I had a nice HP color laserjet that Just Workedâ„¢for almost a decade (and PS, I bought it used), and then I just lived w/o a printer for the...
Last time I owned an inkjet was well over a decade ago. I had a nice HP color laserjet that Just Workedâ„¢for almost a decade (and PS, I bought it used), and then I just lived w/o a printer for the past 3-4 years. Now, I'm window-shopping for inkjets, it sounds like the whole "use-our-ink-or-die" business model has only gotten worse.
Are there any good inkjet printers where I can just use it like a normal printer, just buy ink (cheaper than the printer was) when I need it, yada? Or should I just write off the entire industry (again), and go straight to the laser printers?
And does anyone actually have a decent (color, all-in-one) printer that works reasonably well with their (YourDistroHere) Linux machine?
Danke
ETA: Thanks for all the feedback. I'm now prioritizing a Brother laser (maybe just mono), or possibly an Epson Ecotank.
Side-note ... how cool is it that we have so many Linux-folk in our midst!?
Thanks again.
13 votes -
An interview with Linus Torvalds: Linux and Git
11 votes -
KeenWrite 2.0
12 votes