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Linux is good now

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Re: Linux is good now

#712
post #639

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The "testing" name is one of the worst decision of Debian community IMHO. It misleads people.

Re: Linux is good now

#713

I'm tired of people saying Steam on Linux just works. It doesn't. Tried running Worms: instant crash, no error message. Tried running Among Us: instant crash, had to add cryptic arguments to the command line to get it to run. Tried running Parkitect: crashes after 5 minutes. These three games are extremely simple, graphically speaking. They don't use any complicated anti-cheat measure. This shouldn't be complicated,…

> And of course, as always, those for which it works will tell you you're doing-it-wrong™ . This sounds like you are rejecting help because you have made up your mind in frustration already. Because you are doing it wrong. If you want an OS that just works , you should use Ubuntu or Fedora. Why is SteamOS based on Arch then? Because Valve wants to tweak things in it and tinker with it themselves to get it how they li…

Ubuntu is based on Debian Sid which is considered as the least stable release in Debian community.

Re: Linux is good now

#714

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How much work is it to get snaps out of your way? If you don’t want what makes Ubuntu Ubuntu, why not just run vanilla Debian instead?

Ubuntu releases supported (aka "really supposed to work") versions much more frequently than Debian, or I would have switched already. As it is, I just make the appropriate changes to purge Snap and run Firefox from a Mozilla apt repo and Thunderbird from Flatpak via Flathub.

You are talking about Debian stable which is released approximately once in 2 years. People who want to have more (most ?) recent software on Debian should go for Debian Testing. Or Debian Sid, which gets upstream updates almost instantly but requires more Linux knowledge in case something gets broken.

Re: Linux is good now

#715
post #572

(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…

> I don’t feel like a consumer, but a janitor. I don’t want this.

I think it was Jorge Castro, the creator of Universal Blue, who called it the sysadmin culture. Most Linux distros are made by sysadmins for sysadmins, and you're expected to change and configure your system. I was a sysadmin myself for a long time. I used Slackware; switched from the 2.4 kernel to 2.6; tweaked CFLAGS on Gentoo; replaced SysV init with systemd; used PipeWire from the earliest versions - you name it, I did it.

Nowadays I use https://aeondesktop.github.io/ - an immutable system with Btrfs snapshots. Everything is installed from Flathub. The major roadblock is that much of the Linux world expects you to modify the system one way or another, so your mileage may vary. I replaced my printer because I did not wanted to install binary blobs from HP/Samsung.

> Perhaps I haven’t found «the right distro»

I’d look at immutable or image-based offerings, which aims at low or no maintenance: Aeon Desktop, Universal Blue, Endless OS. There are reviews on sites like LWN.net

Re: Linux is good now

#716

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…

"And wow is it nice not to have all the ads and crapware in our faces anymore." I don't understand this - and I'm not being a Windows defender here, I use Linux when I can (and promote its use). But my Windows 11 installation has zero ads and zero "crapware". And it's a Dell! Everything that I didn't want on the machine was removed when I purchased it (two years ago). I see no ads. If I did, this can be fixed easily…

The real problem is with trust and encroachment. I think a lot of people that spend a fair amount of time on their computers start to feel like their OS is their home and they go on excursions through apps. Previously, ads were limited to apps you had to go to yourself. Ads showing up as wallpaper in your house would be unsettling, and it reveals that your homeownership was illusory from the start: you never really controlled anything.

Yes, you can use cleanup software to fix the symptoms, but that's not the real issue here.

Edit: further research revealed my original first point was a false assumption.

Re: Linux is good now

#717
post #111

I think its interesting that mainstream PC gaming press is now talking about Linux. We have the benchmark Youtube channels doing some benchmarks of it as well and plenty of reports of "it just works", which is pretty promising at least for the games that aren't intentionally excluded by DRM. For me its still controllers and equipment incompatibility due to my VR headset and sim wheel/pedals setup, I use Linux everywh…

The last remaining roadblock is kernel level anti-cheat frameworks. Pretty horrible technology, and unfortunately a good majority of the gaming industry by revenue relies on it.

Isn't it a more fundamental problem? I can imagine a cheating setup where you have a separate PC with a HDMI capture stick ("analog hole") and access to the controllers.

Re: Linux is good now

#718
post #332
post #300

I'm not against Wayland, but I think Wayland is currently not good for the Linux ecosystem. I've had lots of friends try Linux, and they've had issues with Discord global keyboard shortcuts not working, and window positions not restoring at application start, and lots of other small issues, which add up in the end. But once they switched to X11, they've all been very happy.

"window positions not restoring at application start" Well you see, you are actually just silly for wanting this or asking for this, because it's actually just a security flaw...or something. I will not elaborate further.

Thats not true. You are mistaking allowing the application itself to set window position, which obviously is a security flaw.

Re: Linux is good now

#719
post #608

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was never an issue 20 years ago when we had 64 player servers, but the 64 player servers also generally had a few people online with referee access to kick/ban people at any given time. That seemed like it worked well to me.

Exactly 20 years ago I was both a competitive CS player and I also liked reverse engineering so I was somewhat interested in the cheating community and even programmed a custom injector and cheat for CS (it was surprisingly easy if you knew a bit about Windows APIs). Cheats were a problem. Not even a nascent problem, but already established. Bad enough that VAC was released in 2002, Punkbuster in 2000... In competiti…

Competitive gaming cannot possibly be huge. Like literally it is impossible for 99% of gamers to be competitive in any meaningful sense (if you play a game with 1M players and are in the top 1%, congrats, there are 10,000 people who are better than you. You are still unremarkable). It never was huge; it was just a niche you were in. There's massively more people that are just playing the game too blow off steam.

Re: Linux is good now

#720
post #696
post #572

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> janitor Perfect analogy. I'm using Debian for a few months now on my main laptop, and everything is flawed. Seriously, everything. - Hybrid graphics simply doesn't work. The exception is when it works. Don't even try Wayland with it. - Graphics card handling is still full with race conditions. It's random when everything works as intended without manual intervention. - Switching monitors is pain. Sometimes works, s…

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