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24 votes
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Layman's escapades with Linux for personal use
tl;dr After 2 grueling days of mucking about I finally have KDE + Wayland + Nvidia working on Debian 13 (Trixie). I started with Ubuntu 24. It just works, right? To its credit, it does. I didn't...
tl;dr After 2 grueling days of mucking about I finally have KDE + Wayland + Nvidia working on Debian 13 (Trixie).
I started with Ubuntu 24. It just works, right? To its credit, it does. I didn't need to do anything to have it work out of the box. Nvidia was magically installed (even with secure boot enabled).
Gnome woes
But then Gnome would rename and re-encode images I dragged/dropped to "Dropped Image.png" from Firefox. Wouldn't even do that in Chromium. Can't tell if it's a bug, or "what's the use-case" scenario, but this behavior is a deal-breaker.
Not Kubuntu
Why not Kubuntu then? It doesn't do the same magic that Ubuntu does when it comes to Nvidia.
OpenSUSE almost
Latest and greatest whilst being supposedly stable. It took a while to get used to YaST and "patterns", but it was easy to install Nvidia drivers (
zypper inr
). But, naturally, there was an issue. I was able to boot, but into a very tiny resolution (on Wayland). After some thinking, I came to the conclusion that I was booting into my "integrated" GPU (on the CPU). Don't know why. Eventually I ran into prime-select boot nvidia and it worked. But then Steam (flatpak) wouldn't launch a game (loaded for a sec, then stopped). I was tired.
Debian & Nvidia driver woes
I always liked Debian. I use 12 at work for development and as a container base image. Seeing that 13 (Trixie) is on the horizon, I decided to give it a go for personal use. Surely the packages it ships with have been written in the last decade.
I followed their docs for Nvidia drivers. But I couldn't boot (no login screen) after installing. Apparently there's a bug with the driver and my GPU (3080) that Nvidia isn't going to fix. So I went and used Nvidia's installer instead to get the latest version. It worked without a hitch. The next kernel update will be interesting I imagine.
Final thoughts
Honestly, Linux feels like it's always a decade away for things to be stable enough to not require any tinkering for your average layman. I'm not the kind of person to muck with custom configs/etc.
I want things as vanilla as possible because I know it's a matter of when it breaks, not if.
Ubuntu feels the closest to the "it just works" experience IMO. I would've stuck with it if not for Gnome.
23 votes -
How Red Hat just quietly, radically transformed enterprise server Linux
40 votes -
The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source
47 votes -
Firefox/Tweaks - Arch Linux Wiki
39 votes -
Audio is the weakest link of the linux desktop experience
In the spirit of all the recent Linux posts, I feel like sharing my thoughts too. I've been using Fedora on my laptop for about ~1.5 years, and I've just began using Arch about 5 days ago. I moved...
In the spirit of all the recent Linux posts, I feel like sharing my thoughts too. I've been using Fedora on my laptop for about ~1.5 years, and I've just began using Arch about 5 days ago. I moved to Arch because of all the Windows 11 shenanigans, and I really enjoyed the workflow of i3 on my laptop - the only thing I was unsure of was gaming. But I decided to take the dive anyway.
I installed Arch using the wiki, and it truly felt awesome being able to choose what exactly you want in your system and what you don't. After following the guide, I installed a tiling manger (hyprland), waybar, and a launcher (wofi). It was much easier than I expected (granted I had experience with Linux), after hearing all the Arch boogeyman stories. Though I did accidentally break my system by foolishly doing a `sudo pacman -Rcns ....'. But my configs were still all there and I just had to install everything back, which did not take long at all.
Everything just worked after installing, except for audio. My audio experience was bad, it was crackling and popping all the time. The Arch wiki didn't really have info on this problem, so I took to other avenues. I found a guide that said to change the 'quantums' for pipewire, to some values that I didn't really understand (nor want to tbh). But that fixed it for the most part!
My next problem was discord not picking up on audio for certain applications at all - I narrowed it down to apps that were using ALSA as the backend. So, some apps like Plexamp and Firefox wouldn't get picked up by discord. I changed the backend of Firefox to ALSA due to a longstanding bug which resets the per-app volume level of Firefox every now and then. Setting the backend to ALSA is a workaround, but I didn't know it'd prevent discord from picking up audio. I can't find a solution except to revert to the normal backend - if anyone knows a fix the tech support would be welcome haha
Also the different backends for audio (pipewire/pulseaudio/alsa) make it confusing at times. To me, this is a big hurdle to overcome before the "year of the linux desktop" ever becomes reality - I've had so many issues, even on my laptop. Other than that, the experience is really quite fantastic, the modularity and customization is nuts. I've had quite a bunch of fun tailoring my experience and creating scripts to make the system do exactly what I want.
39 votes -
Linux Kernel ends i486 support - 18 years after its discontinuation, 36 years after its initial release
25 votes -
Anyone on Tildes tried Bazzite or similar Fedora Atomic distros?
I have been planning to make the switch to Linux as a daily driver for a while and have researched many different distros. I have seen a lot of discussion online about Bazzite and other similar...
I have been planning to make the switch to Linux as a daily driver for a while and have researched many different distros. I have seen a lot of discussion online about Bazzite and other similar distros based on Fedora Atomic. It sounds like it would be more stable, and less likely for you to accidentally break something, but installing software other than Flatpaks requires running it in some kind of container such as Distrobox. Some people say it's annoying, others say it's good since you mess up the container rather than your system.
I have used SteamOS on Steam Deck, and notice that things have "just worked" more than what I have personally seen with "normal" distros on laptops or desktops. For example, I've never really had any issues installing things and running software on SteamOS, but someone I know using Mint has seen seemingly minor things cause massive glitches on their system, or they've run into strange difficulty just installing certain programs like Steam. Would one of these types of distros, especially Bazzite which specifically is trying to be like SteamOS, be closer to that Steam Deck experience?
Has anyone here tried one of these distros and had any thoughts? Anything you loved, or was anything a deal breaker?
13 votes -
You can now officially run Arch Linux inside Windows
20 votes -
Arch Linux to switch from Redis to Valkey
21 votes -
Bash-it: a collection of community Bash commands and scripts (and a shameless ripoff of oh-my-zsh)
11 votes -
Bats: Bash automated testing system for verifying that the UNIX programs you write behave as expected
8 votes -
Writing a Bash builtin in C to parse INI configs
8 votes -
kalua: an OpenWrt extension for building large mesh-networks
8 votes -
bashdb: a gdb-like debugger for Bash
10 votes -
How to write idempotent Bash scripts
7 votes -
Post Apocalyptic Computing: Or, the hundred year computer
15 votes -
Pure Bash bible: a collection of pure Bash alternatives to external processes
13 votes -
ShellCheck: a static analysis tool for shell scripts
25 votes -
Shellharden: a tool to semi-automate the rewriting of scripts to ShellCheck conformance
7 votes -
x86 assembler in Bash
15 votes -
FireHOL: an iptables stateful packet filtering firewall for humans
4 votes -
The future is Niri
53 votes -
EasyBashGUI: a library of Bash functions to simplify adding GUIs to scripts
17 votes -
Amber: a high-level programming language that compiles to Bash
11 votes -
shite: the little hot-reloadin' static site generator from shell (assumes Bash 4.4+)
22 votes -
pass: the standard u̴n̴i̴x̴ Bash password manager
17 votes -
xz/liblzma: Bash-stage obfuscation explained
9 votes -
Bashible: an Ansible-like deployment and automation tool written in Bash
7 votes -
Steam Tinker Launch: a GUI Bash script for configuring custom launch options and companion programs for Steam games
9 votes -
pseudo3d: a raycaster in Bash
12 votes -
The history of S.u.S.E.
7 votes -
Bash Line Editor: a line editor written in pure Bash with syntax highlighting, auto suggestions, vim modes, etc
11 votes -
Yoda: a compiler that translates Forth code into Bash functions
12 votes -
HTTP.sh: a web framework written entirely in Bash
20 votes -
ctypes.sh: a Bash plugin that provides a foreign function interface directly in your shell
10 votes -
Ba-Bash-ka: a native Clojure interpreter for scripting, designed to leverage Clojure in place of Bash
10 votes -
A Slack clone in 5 lines of Bash
20 votes -
My thoughts on writing a Minecraft server from scratch (in Bash)
25 votes -
Some surprising code execution sources in Bash
11 votes -
Today I learned that Bash has hashmaps
23 votes -
nb: a command-line and local web note-taking, bookmarking, archiving, and knowledge base application, written in 119,172 lines of Bash
16 votes -
OpenGL bindings for Bash
21 votes -
Bashly: A command-line application (written in Ruby) that declaratively generates feature-rich Bash scripts
20 votes -
Bash++: Bash with classes
13 votes -
Linus Torvalds weighs in on the Rust for Linux controversy
51 votes -
Seeking suggestions for Windows virtual desktop (for Photoshop schoolwork)
Hi Tildes community, I'm seeking your suggestions for spinning up Windows virtual desktop. Allow me to set the context... My offspring is in second semester of their first year of university, and...
Hi Tildes community,
I'm seeking your suggestions for spinning up Windows virtual desktop.
Allow me to set the context...
My offspring is in second semester of their first year of university, and needs to use Adobe Photoshop for one of their classes this semester. They don't use a regular laptop, and have been doing quite well at uni. with their beefy Ipad. While they have used photoshop so far on their ipad, there are some growing pains. Of course, they have access to super beefy desktop Apple Macs at their school's computer lab, but its a pain to get usage of them for a few reasons. At home, all my machines are linux except for my partner's which is an old clunker Windows laptop - which i am in progress of migrating themn away from that Windows machine towards linux laptop...Hence, I don't really have a solid, modern enough machine for my offspring to load Photoshop onto.Then, I thought, hey, maybe i can spin up some Windows virtual desktop somewhere for my offspring to use photoshop on...Its only needed for about 10 or 12 weeks remaining this semester...and they only need to use it once per week for each week's assignments. I feel like as long as the virtual windows machine is beefy enough to suppoort photoshop workloads, it can get them through the semester...and then in summer i can decide if I need to buy them an actual laptop (like an Apple laptop, etc.).
So, may i ask of you dear Tildes community members...Does my approach make sense (of trying to use a windows virt. desktop)? And, if so, are there any recommendations for which provider to use, and how to spin these up? Like, should i try something via AWS or Google Cloud or Azure? Or, should i not even consider this virtual windows approach? I'm open to hearing any/a ll recommendations. If you have links to share for me to research, or if you actually wrote your own blog post on similar topic for example, i'd love to hear it! Thanks in advance!!
Edit: 2025-02-24 UPDATE: Wanted to update folks on where i am on this...After reviewing these comments, researching some more both online and offline, etc...I arrived at the decision of biting the bullet and just buying my kid an Apple Macbook laptop. I want to thank you all for all your greet feedback and suggestions! Thanks so much Tildes community!!!
15 votes -
Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead
38 votes -
Fish 4.0: The Fish of Theseus
24 votes -
Crashing a server by charging a vape battery
While I consider this resolved at time of posting, this is one of my weirder, more unexpected tech issues I've run into and I thought y'all might enjoy it. I'd been having issues with my (Ubuntu)...
While I consider this resolved at time of posting, this is one of my weirder, more unexpected tech issues I've run into and I thought y'all might enjoy it.
I'd been having issues with my (Ubuntu) server where its services were unavailable, I couldn't SSH in, and USB devices plugged in after the issues started weren't connecting (mouse LED would light up, couldn't toggle keyboard locks or interface computer with the devices). These issues were becoming a near daily occurrence.
So after the most recent incident I decided to watch it boot. After grub, it would just hang at a black screen. So I opted for the recovery mode and after waiting some minutes for services to time out, I was given a terminal and used that to check my devices, sensors, etc and all were reading fine.
Frustrated, I started reviewing what else could have possibly changed with my setup, and I found that change in my hand. I use my server's front USBs as a low current charger and had recently got a new vape battery that was charging at that moment.
I unplugged the battery, rebooted, everything was fine. Plugged the battery in, everything locked up again immediately.
I had been using a spare cable, it had data wired. Swapping for the included power only cable, and no issues.
While I'm curious as to what exactly is happening and why, I'm satisfied enough concluding it is a cheap vape (I mean, I'm having to charge the sucker near daily after all) that is transmitting junk over data and the OS doesn't handle it appropriately. I'll pull logs or do another couple tests if other folks are curious as well though.
Oh, and the battery is a Bear Rootz Sol. Come to think of it, my other worst battery at holding a charge was also a Bear Rootz.
7 votes