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Linux is good now

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Re: Linux is good now

#661

Post by OJFord »

eru wrote: post #420
argsnd wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find that Fedora hits the right balance of stability while being up to date for anything desktop and specifically gaming focused, Debian has different priorities and packages can be a bit too old. And it’s less of a faff than Arch.

Archlinux can be a pretty good choice for gaming. Not necessarily because of anything Archlinux does: most distros can do anything, if you configure them. No, just because the Steamdeck's distro is built on Arch, and so you can piggyback on what they are doing.

Arch is really in a sense the absence of a distro, but keeping a package manager with up to date packages. No bloat bundled, just install exactly what you want.

I don't see why 'piggyback on what [Steam deck is] doing' wouldn't work just as well on any distro, you'd just have a load of extra stuff you're not using too.

That's nothing against Arch, it's what I use, I'm just saying really the only magic is in doing less.

Re: Linux is good now

#662

Post by luke5441 »

joe200 wrote: post #639
argsnd wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find that Fedora hits the right balance of stability while being up to date for anything desktop and specifically gaming focused, Debian has different priorities and packages can be a bit too old. And it’s less of a faff than Arch.

You are comparing Fedora with Debian stable. Everyone who wants to have Debian stability (and ecosystem) with the most new upstream software should go for Debian Testing (and don't be fooled by the name "testing" !). Debian Stable is for servers, Debian Testing is for desktops. Just try Debian Testing (and I used Slack, Red Hat, Ubuntu, Debian)

Debian testing is pretty much the worst option to choose. It can be as "unstable" as unstable, while being nearly as out-dated as a stable at points.

If you want to help Debian test the next release and actually report issues choose Debian testing.

Re: Linux is good now

#663

Post by phkahler »

Couple of nit picks with all these articles about trying Linux. They should explain words like "distro" before throwing them around. This one also uses "Debian" without explanation. If the audience really is Windows users these are going to be rather cryptic.

Re: Linux is good now

#664

Post by heresie-dabord »

SonnyTark wrote: post #249

A long time ago when I was in University, I was a volunteer in the Ubuntu group. In addition to evangelizing Linux/OSS, We were trying to convince our University to switch to opensource software for at least some engineering education with only a little bit of success. After a particularly busy OSS event a non-programmer friend of mine asked me, why is it that the Linux people seem to be so needy for everyone to make…

> Why are we so needy for ALL users and use-cases to be Linux-based and Linux-centric once we make that choice ourselves? What is it about Linux?

Software freedom is A Good Thing.

And if you want my help, don't ask me to support the garbage that $OSCORP is foisting on you.

Re: Linux is good now

#665

Post by energy123 »

Cort3z wrote: post #572
shadowdev1 wrote: post #287

(cue arrogance) People on HackerNews complaining about Linux Desktop is pretty disappointing. You guys are supposed to be the real enthusiasts... you can make it work. (cue superiority complex) I've been using Linux Desktop for over 10 years. It's great for literally everything. Gaming admittedly is like 8/10 for compatibility, but I just use a VM with PCIe passthrough to pass in a gpu and to load up a game for windo…

I have been working professionally on Linux for many years. But about once a year I have to reinstall the os because it craps out for various reasons. The same story goes for most of my team, but for some reason they seem ok with this. My issue with Linux is this: I don’t feel like a consumer, but a janitor. I don’t want this. Yes you can do whatever you want, but I don’t want to do those things. I want to write code…

LLMs have made it so much easier thankfully. The janitorial overhead was a nightmare pre-2024.

Re: Linux is good now

#666

Post by crabmusket »

varun_ch wrote: post #272
kentonv wrote: post #242

I switched all the machines at https://lanparty.house over to Linux a couple months ago. So far, we've experienced noticeably fewer problems on Linux compared to Windows. Stability and performance are better. I can't think of one game we tried that didn't work. And wow is it nice not to have all the ads and crapware in our faces anymore. (I'm aware that Battlefield series and League of Legends won't work due to draco…

As an aside.. I went down a mini-rabbit hole learning about the LAN Party House, read your website and about Sandstorm[0] and how that ended up with you at Cloudflare leading Workers. That’s a really cool and honestly inspirational path. Would love to learn more if you’ve written elsewhere…! [0] https://sandstorm.io/news/

I've been down this rabbit hole too. I quite enjoyed Kenton's two episodes on SE Daily:

https://softwareengineeringdaily.com/2017/12/18/protocol-buf...

https://softwareengineeringdaily.com/2018/02/06/serverless-a...

Re: Linux is good now

#667

Post by kstenerud »

curt15 wrote: post #415
abrookewood wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, I've been gaming exclusively on Ubuntu (mainly because I want my desktop to match my servers) for several years. If you aren't playing the latest AAA FPS, then everything pretty much works.

How much work is it to get snaps out of your way? Canonical seems to be going all in on them as their business strategy.

I just did this yesterday after my Kubuntu system got buggered up by snaps:

https://gitlab.com/scripts94/kubuntu-get-rid-of-snap

Up until now I didn't care how my software was installed, but snaps REALLY don't play nice, so it's time to retire them. Canonical has lost this battle, and the sooner they accept it and move on, the sooner they can recover their reputation and put this madness behind them.

Re: Linux is good now

#668

Post by heresie-dabord »

notorandit wrote: post #623

Let me put gaming aside for a minute. Linux is not good. Some hardware support is still reverse-engineering-based, or based on a few individuals best effort activity. Linux needs manufacturers' first hand commitment to quality opensource to be truly good. Linux is not good. Some software is not on feature-parity among operating systems. With Linux being the software kingdom poor Cinderella. Linux needs software featu…

> I am a happy user of Linux on my primary PC since 20+ years now. But I still have to fight for my freedom every now and again

And this is a problem with Linux ?

Re: Linux is good now

#669

Post by anttiharju »

rounce wrote: post #601
anttiharju wrote: post #580

Earlier quoted context omitted.

re: on feeling like a janitor I tried running various Linux distros on my desktop some years ago and definitely agree on the crap-out experience and having to reinstall. Eventually settled on macOS and it's been okay. The game changer for me has been Nix. It works on macOS. I have had coworkers use it on Ubuntu. I am soon planning to switch to NixOS. People complain about the syntax but honestly AI gets you around th…

{ nix.gc = { automatic = true; dates = "weekly"; options = "--delete-older-than 30d"; }; }

that is neat indeed. With "only once" I mean figuring out the desired config

Re: Linux is good now

#670

Post by [deleted] »

curt15 wrote: post #415
abrookewood wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, I've been gaming exclusively on Ubuntu (mainly because I want my desktop to match my servers) for several years. If you aren't playing the latest AAA FPS, then everything pretty much works.

How much work is it to get snaps out of your way? Canonical seems to be going all in on them as their business strategy.

[deleted]
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