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I Miss BSD/Linux

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Re: I Miss BSD/Linux

#191

Post by sedatk »

cess11 wrote: post #32
sedatk wrote: post #9

(The page isn’t accessible from Turkey. I had to enable VPN to read the article) As I understand, the author’s main motive to try alternative operating systems is his frustration with mainstream operating systems, a lack of control and understanding so the speak. The fallacy of that is that instead of encountering a few significant problems with a mainstream OS, now the author has to experience a death by thousand cu…

I refuse to do work under Windows due to the bugs, inconsistencies, driver problems and shitty default UI. For years I've just pushed in Debian with the unfree packages and let it do its hardware sensing stuff and it works, except at one job, where they had a lot of security installation and configuration in pre-made bash scripts for initial setup that were tested on Ubuntu so I used that. It was worse, mainly due to…

I’d been trying to install Ubuntu or Mint on my desktop and miserably failed. In my case, nothing worked properly: OS picked the wrong monitor as main display, secure boot issues with unhelpful messages, no default HiDPI configuration. Basically, nothing worked out of the box while everything had been working fine with Windows. Here are my adventures:

Ubuntu: https://bsky.app/profile/ssg.dev/post/3knjwn2bsls2u

Mint: https://bsky.app/profile/ssg.dev/post/3knp2yv3tqc22

Re: I Miss BSD/Linux

#192

Post by cess11 »

sedatk wrote: post #191
cess11 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I refuse to do work under Windows due to the bugs, inconsistencies, driver problems and shitty default UI. For years I've just pushed in Debian with the unfree packages and let it do its hardware sensing stuff and it works, except at one job, where they had a lot of security installation and configuration in pre-made bash scripts for initial setup that were tested on Ubuntu so I used that. It was worse, mainly due to…

I’d been trying to install Ubuntu or Mint on my desktop and miserably failed. In my case, nothing worked properly: OS picked the wrong monitor as main display, secure boot issues with unhelpful messages, no default HiDPI configuration. Basically, nothing worked out of the box while everything had been working fine with Windows. Here are my adventures: Ubuntu: https://bsky.app/profile/ssg.dev/post/3knjwn2bsls2u Mint:…

It's just some inscrutable screenshots. You don't even describe the hardware involved. I can't tell if you caused these issues yourself.

Re: I Miss BSD/Linux

#193

Post by Shadowmist »

entropicdrifter wrote: post #142
wormius wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I've got friends who are open to the idea (even though they still think the driver situation is the same as 20 years ago - I won't promise there aren't problems, but I think overall it's much better than it used to be). The main complaint is: I need my Adobe. I need my Ableton. I need my Office. Some people actually need the official Office products, but I think for most users it's not necessary, though they ge…

As far as Ableton goes, have you tried Reaper? Reaper has a native Linux version and generally works quite well IMO. One of the better DAWs and certainly one of the cheapest to purchase a license for.

Bitwig

Re: I Miss BSD/Linux

#194

Post by hnlmorg »

TheRoque wrote: post #59
worthless-trash wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Turns out you buy hardware that works for your OS. You do it for OSX, why not for Linux ?

Yes, this is a good point, however when it comes to GPUs, you might not have an optimal choice at all, since some stuff come only on NVidia GPUs. However, after the GTX 1080 they released open source drivers and things should be better for more recent versions.

Unless you’re doing CUDA, almost nothing requires Nvidia GPUs specifically. And in the case of CUDA, that’s already really well supported on Linux.

Re: I Miss BSD/Linux

#195

Post by umbra07 »

int_19h wrote: post #68
thrownawayjests wrote: post #53

After running Linux (plain, crappy boring Ubuntu) as my daily driver for the last few years, I'm convinced that we're at the point where the only real barrier to wider adoption is software, and this is less and less of an issue the more we work in the browser. For your basic user, it's performant, simple, stable, and does everything a computer needs. Every time I boot up Windows it takes forever, I find that a new up…

Hardware support can be a problem as well. There are many combinations that "just work" - definitely more so than 20 or even 10 years ago - but you still need to be careful with network cards, for example. And graphics is still kind of a mess, enough so that all major browsers are still either using whitelists to enable hardware acceleration on supported hardware (like Firefox), or straight up disable it by default o…

> Running on the same exact hardware - Thinkpad T14s AMD gen4 - the battery life was reduced by 30% on Linux with default settings (= no hardware acceleration in either browser). Manually enabling it means that test cannot complete at all because both browsers randomly crash.

Were you comparing this to Windows 11?

> Linux

What DE was this done on? Were you using any power-saving daemons (PPD, TLP, Powerdevil)? If not, I strongly recommend installing something like PPD (power-profiles-daemon) which requires 0 configuration out of the box, and retesting.

Re: I Miss BSD/Linux

#196

Post by somat »

It was just a throw away joke in the article, but every once in a while I think "boy I wish I could have the linux kernel with the openbsd userland" (not often, usually when I want to play a game). Not that the obsd userland is all that great but it is a lot simpler than the linux equivalent. There was a project to do the opposite, the freebsd kernel with a gnu userland(shudders, yuk, what an abomination). But that is not what I want at all. And deep in my heart I know even if you put the hard work to make the obsd userland work with a linux kernel, it would probably be a bit of a shitshow, just too many assumptions broken, the subtle cohesion that I enjoy would be gone.

Re: I Miss BSD/Linux

#197

Post by umbra07 »

jwells89 wrote: post #94
mattpallissard wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> reduced by 30% on Linux with default settings With the default settings being the key there. I had the exact same laptop and was able to get idle power down under 3W. But to your point, that's a fair amount of friction for someone that understands all the moving points. It's insurmountable for the average user.

Power/battery tuning differing between manufacturers, models, and even specific SKUs within models is perhaps the greatest hurdle to be overcome. It makes baking those settings into distros by default impractical and means there isn’t an easy string of commands that anybody can run to improve battery life on their Linux laptop.

this isn't true. you can install something like power-profiles-daemon and immediately see a large gain to battery life, without any additional configuration needed.

Re: I Miss BSD/Linux

#198

Post by baq »

WorldMaker wrote: post #113
Philpax wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Apple Silicon MacBooks are very, very good. They're efficient, fast, well-built, have great peripherals, don't power themselves back on when you close the lid, and are generally the best laptops I have ever used. The worst part of them is macOS, and I hope that either Asahi Linux can get all of the hardware working correctly or the other laptop manufacturers can get their act together. Unfortunately, I suspect th…

> or the other laptop manufacturers can get their act together Microsoft is willing to sell you an ARM-based PC if you like. Qualcomm's efforts aren't quite up to Apple Silicon's par, but they aren't terrible either. Of course, if you are looking to put Linux on a PC I can definitely understand why Microsoft wouldn't be your first thought for your hardware vendor. It's a weird time we live in, if you remember (or are…

Being arm-based is not important. They could still be Motorola for all I care. It’s how the final product works as a whole. macOS does a disservice to the hardware package, which is too bad, because the hardware is really unmatched.

Re: I Miss BSD/Linux

#199

Post by umbra07 »

hnlmorg wrote: post #66
TheRoque wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, but this is still true IMO. For example no good driver is available for the GTX 1080 which will result in a buggy experience. Not even talking about software availability and functionalities. I have had other issues, but anyways I don't want to list them all. I also find it misleading to claim that Arch Linux is "rock solid", just look at the news to see the amount of "manual intervention needed" listed. I lov…

“Manual intervention” in ArchLinux is just where you need to do something in a specific order during a system update. It takes all of about 30 seconds to do and is still a hell of a lot easier than having to install software on Windows and macOS. Yeah homebrew exists on macOSbut it’s not part of the base install, let alone official Apple product. The App Store on both Mac and Windows sucks. Not just in the availabili…

I will also be much happier while troubleshooting any Linux system than any Windows or MacOS system.

Re: I Miss BSD/Linux

#200

Post by baq »

tmtvl wrote: post #111
int_19h wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MacBook Air (ARM) is fanless even.

I had an ASUS laptop die to overheating, so fanless sounds terrible. Does that thing just shut down when it starts getting hot or something?

It throttles itself. You can install a thermal conductor on the package which makes the whole chassis into a radiator and the thing gets too hot to touch under load, but you get more performance.
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