132 replies
7h55m
Geez, the more I read about it the more I think about migrating my gaming machine to something like Pop_OS. I heard people are having great experience, and Steam through Steam Deck has considerably improved gaming on Linux experience.
I think I get it - there are plenty of people using Windows as their primary OS and they want bells and whistles while not caring about telemetry. But just.. let people disable things.
IMO fact, that Microsoft is pushing spyware on their users and make it harder and harder to disable it is much more important topic than EU focusing on Apple (which is monopoly inside their ecosystem, but not a provider of "default" software used in offices etc.)
I made the switch. It’s fantastic. Pop with the pre-packaged Nvidia drivers.
Other than Warzone and Tarkov (for which I keep a separate drive with Win10), the only things I haven’t quite managed to get sorted yet are (i) a convenient system-wide replacement for the frame limiter in RTSS, and (ii) relatedly, proper frame-pacing when streaming using Sunshine.
Also, Steam seems to have a weird and widespread bug where if you use Big Screen, exit to the desktop mode, then launch BS again, you get like 5fps in the BS front-end itself (after launching a game, it’s fine). The workaround is to just kill the client when you exit Big Screen (usually when your gaming is done anyway).
Really happy I made the switch and fully expect those niggles to get sorted (or my aptitude to improve) in due course. Windows has been shit for a while but recently it’s really crossed over into unbelievably shit.
sounds awesome, honestly. maybe consider retiring “niggle” from the lexicon
If anyone else was curious
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/niggle
""" Etymology
First attested in 1599. Origin uncertain, but likely borrowed from dialectal Norwegian nigla (“to be stingy, to busy oneself with trifles”), ultimately from Old Norse hnøggr (“stingy; miserly”), related to Old English hnēaw (“stingy; niggardly”). More at niggard. """
Niggard is unrelated to the racial slur we're thinking of but in fairness I can understand how it would raise eyebrows.
Would it be fair to say that a history of raising eyebrows establishes some relationship between otherwise previously unrelated words?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversies_about_the_word_n...
I was also curious. If you really wanna go down the rabbit hole:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1557349
History certainly loves to rhyme.
There is nothing wrong with that word. Seriously.
That is what I assumed at first, but reading the thread @ctoth linked to and the Wikipedia article with many examples, changed my mind. It’s a good reminder that history has often come to a different conclusion than logic.
Don't stop there. Any word starting with an "n" can be eliminated.
So this sentence would not be able to exist... "Nice neighbors nurture nature, noting notable nuances nightly".
Maybe consider punctuation? You have yourself a great night, mate.
I recently bought a Lenovo Legion with RTX4070 I still haven't managed to get Nvidia it working under Linux (the moment I open a browser or anything that uses the GPU extensively things go bad)
Disclaimer I am not very familiar with Linux for Desktop - but to me this is an indication that we are not yet in the "just works" state for desktop linux.
Yeah choice of distro and your particular hardware combo are still a factor, unfortunately. Not super difficult to boot it up and have a poke around though, see if it sticks. Maybe try another distro?
I tried Ubuntu and then Pop_OS which seemed more promising but ended up not working either. I'm open to any other suggestions, prefer Debian based distros which I have more experience with from server side.
Yeah I came from an Ubuntu background too. Mint, perhaps? Honestly though if I were going to try anything else at this point it would be Fedora I think. So many good reports. But I’m far from knowledgeable on this stuff - I’m sure others will have better answers, or advice on how to debug your current install.
Pop!_OS should definitely work. Just check the NVIDIA drivers, that you are on 550 version
It's really strange that it didn't work for you, especially with pop OS which really should just work. I think we're in this strange sort of limbo where for like 80% of people it just works, and then there's 20% of people where it simply breaks in bizarre completely unpredictable and incomprehensible ways that aren't even reproducible for anyone else. That's better than it not just working for anyone I guess, but it's still not ideal and honestly I'd be interested to hear a discussion about why this is.
Or it does just mean that while the Windows recurrent problems (how to create local accounts, disable telemetry, install 3rd party programs, etc.) are just seen as life as normal while Linux problems are seen as such.
I would open another TTY to run the nvidia-bug-report.sh when you experience the GPU intensive issues. I recently had a very minute hard to spot problem on why I couldn't get my GPU working and the Generix on the Nvidia Forums help me (and so many others) solve their issues almost immediately. Could be worth a shot.
MangoHUD should solve your frame limiting needs, and you can even set multiple limits and switch between them!
Yes I use MangoHUD and it’s pretty good! It’s not quite as seamless as RTSS, though. MH is a bit fussy about which graphics API you’re using, and can’t be applied system-wide (afaik) without going through that 3rd party (open-source) UI. Plus, even when it’s applied and working, it doesn’t seem to solve my Sunshine frame-pacing issues, which for me is the main use case (the physically attached monitor is VRR so I don’t need limiting locally). Great project though!
I think I’m also a bit spoiled by the Steam Deck, where it’s so easy to set and change custom limits. I kind of just want that, for Pop, ha.
I've applied it system wide by setting `MANGOHUD=1` inside `/etc/environment`, which might be a little bit excessive but it works for me. You can also set hotkeys to toggle the Hud and the frame rate limits within ~/.config/MangoHud/MangoHud.conf, but I think there is a GUI tool that does it for you.
As for the frame pacing, try with the beta NVidia drivers (v555) and Wayland, though I don't use Sunshine so I'm not sure if it'll help.
Thanks for the tips! I’ve had one eye on Wayland, but with all the reports of trouble with Nvidia, and the upcoming (imminent?) transition to Cosmic for Pop, I figured I’d hold off - especially since I’m streaming less than I used to and playing more 90hz indies on the Steam Deck OLED.
The latest driver makes Wayland usable on NVidia, as long as you use an up to date shell and the latest xwayland version, I've been using it since it came out and it's been great, games are much more smooth and the constant microstutter I'd been having with X is gone.
Check out if these updates are all available on Pop, if they are give them a try!
That’s excellent - thanks! I will check that out this weekend for sure. I might even spend some time getting to the bottom of when and how Cosmic is going to be rolled out, and whether it matters if you’re coming from X or Wayland. If it looks like it’s going to be pretty seamless, I’ll give Wayland a try in the interim too!
Huh, I didn't even realize MangoHUD can do frame limiting. I've always just used gamescope[0] for that. The latter is probably overkill if all you want to do is limit framerate though.
[0] https://github.com/ValveSoftware/gamescope
Gamescope is great but the fact that you can set multiple limits and switch between them makes me prefer MangoHUD, even though I also sometimes use gamescope (with Nvidia my experience with it has been a little bit hit or miss).
This is what I have in my MangoHud.conf:
fps_limit_method=late
toggle_fps_limit=Shift_R+slash
show_fps_limit
fps_limit=0,45,60,90,120,240
My budget gaming PC is still on Windows and RTSS is a lifesaver: I couldn't stream or record some games with my Intel Arc A580 otherwise, since titles that use DX11 or older rendering technologies typically have worse performance than the more recent ones, ergo I have to stream/record at 30 and cap the framerate anywhere between 30-60 depending on the title, otherwise things get unstable.
Of course, it's not ideal, but is at least workable. A bit odd that the card struggles with games like Ghost Recon Wildlands (DX11, 2017), but not Ghost Recon Breakpoint (Vulkan, 2019) or ones that use DX12 etc. Either that, or when there's a title that's badly coded and doesn't lock framerate properly to the screen refresh rate.
Aside from that, around 90% of the 500ish Steam games I have would actually run on Linux (various indie titles, mostly), at least according to ProtonDB: https://www.protondb.com which is pretty nice to see, except for the fact that last I checked something like GOG doesn't run on Linux natively, though thankfully something like Lutris exists.
GOG absolutely does offer native Linux games.
Their own launcher doesn’t seem to have a Linux version, only Windows and Mac: https://www.gog.com/galaxy
That’s why people seem to recommend Lutris or some other alternatives to access the actual library.
They have a launcher?? I've been buying games from them for years and didn't know that..
you have FOSS minigalaxy client as well as HeroicLauncher that support GOG too.
Yeah, I think I’d describe it as “workable” too. Occasionally you will have a game that’s rated “platinum” still have bugs like a non-working controller.
And both Nvidia and AMD have native control software (GeForce Experience and Adrenalin) that bundles a bunch of nice stuff like underclocking, recording, noise suppression, per-game profiles, frame limiter, etc;
On Linux you have GreenWithEnvy and CoreCTRL, but neither are as nice or have even half the features.
Yeah it’s so good isn’t it. Just painless and seamless. Some people seem to use the limiter in NVCP as an alternative, but that option isn’t exposed in the Pop Nvidia control panel, which is pretty basic.
I’ve had a really mixed experience with GoG on Lutris and Heroic - both on Pop and the Steam Deck. I often struggle to get things running. It requires just that little bit more knowledge of what’s happening under the hood than Steam/Proton does, and I often just give up. My library is mostly in Steam anyway. Honestly, EmuDeck has been easier for me to get uo and running than either Heroic or Lutris.
I’ve never had a good experience with Steam Bigscreen, Linux or Windows. Even on my TV pc I just use the old client.
Every time I’ve tried it, it has just seemed slow, even on reasonably powerful PCs.
Similarly, my Windows 10 install on my primary PC is basically a Destiny 2 launcher at this point
I've been a Windows user since 3.1. I'm a professional Microsoft stack developer (.NET, SQL Server, Power Platform, M365). I first tried Linux in the late 90s, never stuck with me.
But 2 weeks ago I installed Linux on my home setup to run 24/7.
There's some seriously dumb issues with it: Ubuntu snaps are terrible with no local fonts in FF and other snap-based software has surprising bugs and crashes you don't realise are the fault of snaps until you waste hours researching it, everybody pushes AppImages but you can't get launcher shortcuts without doing it all manually in a friggin .desktop file* (you could do this 30 years ago in Win3.1 without having to search around for an icon!!!), you can't consistently pin stuff to a taskbar, etc.
But I think I'll be sticking with it all the same. Microsoft could ban my Microsoft account and then what, I can't use my PC anymore?!
* Yes I know there's some software you can download to do it but seriously it's not been updated for ages and this should be core OS GUI functionality. I switched to Debian and KDE which at least has more flexibility.
It's unfortunate, and I mean this genuinely here, in a sympathetic way, that you felt afoul of the common error that people who checked in with Linux 6 or more years ago make: assuming that Ubuntu is still the best and easiest to use distribution. Unfortunately, it really isn't anymore — the way they are pushing snaps (including forcing you to install snaps instead of regular packages even if you use the regular package manager) is really unfortunate because of how fucked snaps are to use, not to mention the fact that snaps are hardcoded to only be able to install from the proprietary closed source snap repository Canonical runs, and that store is full of crypto scams. Plus, in general, desktop PC Ubuntu has been getting buggier and more unreliable over time as Canonical switches their focus to the server. Honestly, if there was one misconception about Linux that I could erase with a snap of my fingers from all potential users minds, it would be that they should start with Ubuntu.
IMO Debian is a pretty good choice if you have hardware that's about 2 to 4 years old or more and don't really care about getting the latest driver updates or advances in the Linux ecosystem, so you should have a better experience there, but if it starts to frustrate you that it takes years for huge fixes and advancements to make their way to you, I really enjoy Fedora. :-)
Also, you mentioned two of the major alternative application packaging formats, snap and appimage, but have you heard of our Lord and savior Flatpak? :p It has all of the benefits of snaps (namely sandboxing, consistent environments and packaging dependencies along with applications, updates directly from upstream, distribution agnostic packaging, and automatic integration with your desktop environment) but none of the downsides (namely far better desktop environment integration thanks to portals and much much faster startup times and no perf impact during runtime unlike snaps). A lot of people talk down about them but I think that's mostly FUD.
Strongly agree about Debian. I'm a longtime Arch user, but it causes headaches when you let a machine get too far out of date, and I wanted something I could put on the stack of old laptops in my closet. One by one, I'm migrating those to Debian Stable. It doesn't matter that everything is a major version behind; these laptops are now single-purpose machines that I rarely boot. They will always be behind regardless, and they might as well be behind on Debian Stable. It works flawlessly, and it's quite simple to set up at this point.
(Also, having ancient single-purpose laptops is fantastic. I have one for recreational programming, and that's all I use it for. I have another for curating my music collection, and one for games. They don't need to be fast, or up to date, or power efficient, because I don't use them all the time. But when I do use them, it's nice to have them set up just so for the thing I want to use them for.)
You can also use Docker or Podman for containerized apps under Debian Stable that run libraries and versions ahead of your OS. I'm definitely a big fan of containerized apps.
I prefer to run something the software developer provides: e.g. Obsidian only has a community supported flatpak, so I ruled it out...
Fair enough, but most community supported Flatpaks are built directly from upstream packages for other distros in a transparent way, fyi
There used to need to be more of a delay on hardware and drivers with Debian but not so much anymore. I've been very happy over the last year with Debian 12.x on my Gen 10 Carbon X1 and leveraging
https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/firmware/lin...
Been great.
It's so upsetting that Ubuntu went so hard in on Snaps. I just end up with issues caused by their sandboxing with hardware and config access and you end up having to fight to find a normal .deb install for FF instead of that damn default Snap.
I hope the journey isn't too rough for you though - best of luck!
I understand your frustration with snaps, but I consider it a very good distribution channel for commercial applications on Linux systems. Something that Appimage or Flatpak could not easily provide without a commercial entity backing it like Canonical.
Snap is a dead-end; but as usual, it takes some time until Canonical realizes that.
If you want to easily distribute commercial applications, use flatpak. You could even have your own flatpak repo for your own products, if you wanted (it is really just static http).
Snap apparently has a few advantages, like supporting non-gui apps (for servers) which isn't a good fit for AppImage or Flatpak. That said, I generally stick to Docker for server apps.
I agree that the flatpak/appimage/snap options for apps, and in particular commercial apps is a decent idea. I think integration and permissions should probably move to something similar to the UX for phone apps though... it feels weird having to try to configure permissions that should be in the box.
I am also not a fan of the pivot to Snap. However, it is worth mentioning, that it has only been two years (I think, at least 22.04 LTS was the first release I had to wrestle with them on my machine), and the experience has become a lot better during this time.
It took them 7 years to figure out that nobody needed Unity. Hopefully Snap will get sorted faster.
I recommend Debian + Cinnamon right now over KDE for people who want that Windows + searchable start menu now get out of my way. Right now for me KDE is a bit much.
This is where I am landing as well after a long time with XFCE on Debian. You have to take some time to set panels and applets up and get some Spice applets and you are all set.
Yeah, I was a LXDE user for the longest time but with hidpi displays it started falling apart. Cinnamon ended up being the right amount of utility as a baseline and it has felt like a stable place to be since I swapped.
I've been a pretty big fan of Pop myself. Looking forward to Cosmos going into release.
There's your problem ;)
Mint has been much more user friendly for a long time. I've been on Manjaro for some time now, and I'm quite happy with it.
Agreed, Mint is the better Ubuntu. And if you squint hard enough, you can find people like me who'll claim NixOS is more beginner-friendly than any other distro.
The amount of background Linux know how you need for nixos is insane.
Basically nothing you’ll want to do is googleable.
I’d recommend arch to a newbie before nix.
Once you get a handle on things, nix is pretty nice.
Be careful. This is how distros start.
https://xkcd.com/2116/
Yeah, snaps are really shitty.
And in general, desktop Linux is just as buggy and maybe even more half-baked than it was when I started using it in 2007.
But, I own my machines. I don't need to ask permission from a company to be able to log in to my machine. I can install or uninstall whatever the hell I want.
Agreed with the sibling posts. Ubuntu isn't a great experience - it feels seamless until it breaks, and then it's just a world of pain.
Debian/Mint/etc. are all good distros, but if you're willing to step up the learning curve just a bit, I'd definitely suggest Gentoo. I've been using it as my daily driver for several years now and it's made me feel like I'm actually in control of my machine (compiling all your code with debug flags so you can attach gdb when it's behaving weird so you can write a patch?! And then submit it to get sucked into upstream!? Yes please!). There's definitely a little work up front, but it's without a doubt the best experience I've had with Linux and I'd recommend it if you're up for it.
It's not your computer anymore, it's this computer.
There is AppImageLauncher [0] that can make it easier to get launcher shortcuts.
[0] https://github.com/TheAssassin/AppImageLauncher
This is what I did. No regrets, the only one is my usual one for Linux. I want a "nearly bleeding edge" distro. AppImages and Flatpacks are nearly what I want, and do use them, but for development I want to be able to install development tier packages with the confidence that it wont break. I guess I want Debian, bleeding edge but assurances on how reasonably stable it should be. VanillaOS 2 looks promising to me.
I am NEVER going back to Windows unless I get a modern version:
* Targeted for professionals / gamers (why call it pro if its just Home without dumb restrictions?) * Offline-first accounts only * Zero ads for Microsoft products (I'll literally pay $50 a year to stop them, and stop the update nagware). * Stop pestering me to update * And this is more important, decouple your OS so you can update while I use it, requiring a restart only under kernel tier changes.
If you want a combination of a base operating system that is rock solid stable and reliable, and a development environment that is bleeding edge, I really highly recommend checking out Fedora Atomic combined with Distrobox[2]. I think it's honestly basically the ideal setup:
1. with Fedora Atomic you get an operating system with the reliability and resistance to entropy and ability to power wash of Chrome OS, but also the ability to be changed via building your own custom image (its easy, check out BlueBuild) or with easily reversable overlays, plus an update cadence that offers an excellent middle ground between rolling release and point release — you get all non major version updates to your image's software basically immediately, but major versions wait for every 6 months so they can be integration tested and stuff.
2. And then with Distrobox you get the ability to trivially create a containerized environment with your Linux distribution of choice inside (can be different from the host), that nevertheless integrates almost seamlessly with the host (including having access to all of your hardware devices and your home directory and being able to trivially export applications, as well as easily open a shell inside the container with a simple terminal command), so you can have your cake and eat it too: a fully bleeding edge rolling release distro like Fedora Rawhide or Arch Linux inside your distro box to get the most up to date developer tools, but a more stable system as your host. And if something goes wrong in the container you can easily just blow it away and regenerate it since Distrobox has a declarative container spec (distrobox assemble). For GUI management of Distroboxes check out Pytaxis and BoxBuddy-rs.
There are some things you should know if you go this route though that will save you a lot of pain and frustration:
1. Fedora Atomic is really barebones by default, and since layering is kind of painful it can be really annoying to do the system administration necessary to get it set up; especially if you have an Nvidia card and you have to do all the typical annoying shit you have to do on Linux to set that up. So instead of using vanilla Fedora Atomic, I highly recommend checking out Universal Blue[0], which offers pre-built Fedora Atomic images with all of that annoying setup and system administration done for you already. Their headline images (Bazzite and Bluefin) are really opinionated, but don't worry about that, their base images[1] are perfectly usable too! That's what I use :)
2. Layering packages via rpm-ostree should not be used for just random system utilities or applications. That's not how it is intended to be used, and that way lies only pain. The whole point is that the applications you use as a user, including terminal ones, should be separate from the core system, and not dependent on it, so they can be updated separately and not break each other. Layers, since they are updated by the system package manager, must be versioned in lockstep with the rest of the system, and the system image will fail to build if it can't update the layers you have, so really only use it for things you consider part of your essential OS. People who forget this tend to come away really hating Atomic distros. For your development environment or any build environments you need, create distroboxes and install applications inside them; for GUI applications, just use Flatpak, or install the application inside a distrobox and use distrobox-export to integrate the app into the host. If distrobox feels too heavyweight, or you just want various sundry utilities installed on your host system, then I recommend using something like Homebrew or Nix or Guix or Pkgsrc, that is, any package manager that installs things to your home directory in a way that is cleanly separated from your host system and independently updated. Universal Blue images come with a script to get Homebrew all set up for you. Wouldn't have been my first choice, but its very convenient.
For more on the benefits of this, see this pastebin article I made: https://rentry.co/mm2qcwzh
If you're wondering what the advantage of this is over Nix, the most important to advantages for me are that:
1. Nix's directory structure is basically completely unreadable and unusable for human beings in a way that is far worse than the default posix directory structure
2. Nix requires absolutely every program and package that runs on it to be custom patched to deal with its alternate directory structure, and while sure yes it's package repository is gigantic so a lot of that work is done for you, it can still cause weird problems and make things much more unreliable and good luck if there's a package that isn't there or hasn't been updated for a while. I'm on an emacs Discord and apparently installing it on Nix is very difficult. It's just another layer of possible incompatibility and failure and annoyance on top of the stack of those layers that compose linux.
Meanwhile, you got most of the same benefits on an atomic distro, except:
1. it's all completely human readable
2. uses standardized technology so it's already compatible with everything without having to do any work
3. you can get fully different distros inside distro boxes, unlike with and Nix's equivalent.
The other thing is that with nix, you configure your entire system at a layer of abstraction above what's actually happening on the system — it's not like that declarative config is actually directly deciding how the system operates, no, it's just layered on top of all of the existing crap Linux has going on, and you're just hoping that it can automatically, imperatively perform the actions necessary to keep your system in line with the config.
That, and to get the same level of resistance to entropy and reversibility and ability to power wash and rebase and cherry-pick changes and stuff that you get with an atomic distro on nix, you would have to Version Control your Nix config and then also be very very careful with manually committing with informative commit names at regular intervals every time you make a change and stuff, instead of it being handled automatically for you and not requiring an extra version control tool slapped on top.
Plus, Nix doesn't benefit from the minor, but still meaningful in my opinion, security benefits of an immutable image-based distro.
[0]: https://universal-blue.org/ [1]: https://github.com/orgs/ublue-os/packages [2]: https://distrobox.it/
great answer, thanks
I'm glad you found it helpful instead of overwhelming! :D
Maybe because I used nix, gentoo, exherbo, slackware etc.
Also drawbacks for me when using nix:
- I needed to greatly increase boot partiton, because nix stores there linux kernels. Whith dual-booting Windows, I created 2GB partiton at the end of disk. Thankfulluly Windows reused it.
- vscode was having strange laggines on nix.
- nix language is quite strange but also imo taught poorly. This was my attempt to demistify it https://github.com/rofrol/nix-for-javascript-developers.
btw. nice remark about nix beeing declarative but beneath is Linux not-declarative. It is like functional programming, but you still have some internal state of components that can clash with your functional top-down approach.
Yeah. That's what always made me loathe to try it out. I'm glad there's someone else that feels that way.
I am actually considering Fedora, so this is a good suggestion! I havent tried distrobox. Seems interesting. I really need to get more comfortable with Docker and related solutions.
I recommend NixOS, if you want both a bleeding edge and stable (as in, your system doesn't break) distribution. These two are the reasons this guy chose NixOS[1]:
Why does NixOS work for me?
I got attracted to Nix because of the possibility of being on the bleeding edge. According to repology Nix related package repositories are far up and to the right, their own cluster. In fact, only Arch is getting close by, but not being as good in terms of freshness, as can be seen from the position of AUR below [2].
1: https://mihai.page/nixos-and-me/
2: https://repology.org/graph/map_repo_size_fresh.svg - even nixpkgs 24.05 stable is so far ahead of every other repo it's not funny.
My main questions with NixOS are the following:
1. How friendly is the installer? I can get a second hand machine in which I can afford to nuke the disk and let Nix take it all but what if I need to install it side-by-side with my existing Windows install on my main laptop where I have a custom partitioning scheme? Ubuntu's installer provides sufficient flexibility to able to re-use partitions without overwriting them, allocate whatever mount point I want, resize things etc. I have been using Linux for close to 20 years but fdisk still spooks me.
2. How easy is multi-monitor setup and switching between setups? I have a main monitor that I usually use but occasionally I also use the laptop screen as a second display and sometimes I just use the laptop screen.
3. The 1st link alludes to be able to rollback changes from grub? How? What are my recovery options if I mess up the system?
I needed to create bigger efi partition for nix, because nix stores there kernels.
1. It uses Calamares, which is the GUI used by many distros. It was no different from installing any other distro with a GUI, including partitioning.
2. I'm using a laptop with AMD/NVIDIA on Wayland with KDE, this is no problem. This question is in the domain of your display server and compositor, not the base distro.
I choose the previous build from grub, and then rollback my config files from git and rebuild. Every build creates an entry on the boot menu so I can go back to any previous iteration of my setup (I do have it set to only keep the last 15 builds)
This is funny. I am at the very moment side-by-side installing NixOS with Windows. And I am using two monitors.
1. The installer is Calamares. It's fantastic and fully user-friendly, no need to worry about it.
2. I'll speak for KDE6 which I personally find superior to GNOME. You can have either with NixOS. I don't think there's anything specific to NixOS on multi-monitor functionality. There's a menu accessed either through a keyboard shortcut or system tray that allows any of the 5 permutations laptop/monitor. And it pops up as an OSD menu whenever you connect a monitor. I'd say the functionality is 'done'.
3. I suggest you read up on how Nix works, once you understand it you can understand NixOS better. To summarize, all programs in your system are stored in /nix/store and accessed through symlinks. You don't access /bin/bash, you access the bash executable stored in /nix/store through its symlink in your PATH. And all the symlinks are stored in a single directory. This directory is called a profile. There are multiple profiles. With NixOS, not only just executables but the system configuration data (users, passwords, mounted disks, desktop environment settings, traditionally in /etc) is also stored in profiles. This way you can have multiple 'whole system configuration's all containing different system configurations, arbitrary versions of arbitrary programs, and they don't conflict. During the boot, you can choose between different profiles. It's not limited to grub, systemd-boot also works.
endeavour OS is a rolling-release Arch-based distro with a convenient installer and full desktop. i installed endeavour when my AMD GPU was still brand-new because i needed to be at the bleeding edge for driver support. i figured i'd switch to a more stable distro eventually but i never made the switch because i'm pretty happy with endeavour.
I'm currently undecided between endeavour and Fedora. Fedora updates every 6 months, which is recent enough for me, vs years old major versions of things on Debian / Ubuntu.
Fedora is what you want in my experience. The atomic versions like Kinoite may be a change in that you install via Flatpak or Toolbox/Distrobox, but once you try those it's a really neat change. And Fedora Workstation is still there as the normal install.
Actually! This might be what I move to next, I am otherwise able to play any games on Steam on POP_OS! through proton, but someone did recommend Fedora since it updates every 6 months, which is actually really decent, and not too far behind.
Edit:
I did not know about Kinoite. I am definitely checking it out, sounds similar to what made me interested in Vanilla OS 2
Manjaro is nice for nearly bleeding edge, imo.
Everybody cries about Microsoft but Android's level of spying is unmatched and MS is just catching up. Yet for some reason Google is a darling of folks here. Just try to turn off WiFi on your Android phone and see how much longer your battery lasts... All of that power goes to spying on you.
Got any actual proof? About stuff that can't just be toggled off that is
So literally just now I opened the Google photos app and it came up with a nag screen to turn on auto-backup which I had already explicitly turned off. The message was worded to make it sound like they were doing me a favour and it was difficult to close the banner (I just exited the app because what I needed to do was possible with a less invasive version).
I would not go so far as GP as to say that this dark pattern is better or worse than what Microsoft is doing, but I think it is a fair point that a Google/Microsoft account is needed on the biggest mobile/desktop platforms respectively and their attitude to privacy and user agency is somewhere between laissez-faire and contemptuous.
With Android there does at least feel like with F-Droid, different OEMs, alternative apps, the web and even Other android spins that these aren't quite the lockdown that Windows is, although it's fair to say that in either case you shouldn't really be constantly on your guard for the next way that your operating system is going to try to trick you into giving away more of your stuff to them.
Google is naggy, which is annying, I agree. But as far as I know they let you turn everything off.
Can you download apps and use the app store without a Google account? That's probably the biggest analogue to TFA here.
You can use Fdroid and sideload apps, but Google makes it impossible to run most apps without Google Play Services running in the background.
It's actually the developers of the app doing that. I make sure to minimize such dependencies.
Sure, it's not convenient for normies but you can just download the apk from somewhere and then install it, just like you can do with an .exe or installer on windows.
I agree, the dialogs are getting increasingly frequent and harder to "click" away. I'm open for suggestions for an open-source Android image gallery app.
Having WiFi turned on will drain your battery faster by virtue of connecting to WiFi. Even worse, if it's on but not connected, it will periodically look for networks to connect to. The same is true for cellular service.
iPhone lasts much longer than Android while connected to WiFi so it's unlikely that.
I don't care about the spying stuff, but Windows is just so god damned ANNOYING all the time. It always wants me to drop everything and update Windows right then and there or get the latest 0.0.1 version of Office when I'm trying to make a presentation, or sync all my Google Docs to Onedrive, or make me see a dozen ads just to open the start menu, or have three different control panels and two registry strings and four group policies for the same one setting.
It's just an incredibly user hostile operating system that only a broken bureaucracy like Microsoft's feudal dynasties can build.
In contrast, I love Android, even more than any desktop Linux, macos, ios, etc. It just works and the notifications are super customizable and Pixel blocks 90% of my spam and texts and the adblock is system wide (via VPN) and it auto updates overnight and just never gets in my way. For every Windows annoyance I've had, there are entire months or years where Android just keeps on working, even across new phones and new major versions.
Google may be the spiest of them all, but at least they can deliver a great user experience and operating system. It's not perfect (I still miss my old style notification shade system controls), but it's a lot less noisy than Windows. A good operating system should stay out of the way, not make itself the center of attention at every possible opportunity.
We must be browsing different HNs!
I see a lot of negative comments about Google here. They are just more competent than MS.
Google is also an ad company, the bar for their behavior is lower. MS used to be an OS company. Many of the users here remember the time when there was a supplier/customer relationship with MS.
It is probably hard to imagine if you are, like, under 25, but MS actually used to be this kind of interesting company that enabled people doing new, fun things on their computers. Of course they are just another garbage factory now, but it’s hard to update your priors sometimes.
Turning off the WiFi doesn't do anything, Android phones stockpile location-based telemetry while in airplane mode and upload it once you reconnect to the internet[1].
I can't speak for everyone here, but not all of us use stock ROMs and Google Play Services. I personally use GrapheneOS, which let's you significantly neuter Google's spyware capabilities.
[1] https://digitalcontentnext.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/DC...
The main issue with Linux as a desktop OS is hardware support (still, sadly). If you get a gaming rig with newer equipment stuff is likely not to work, or require a LOT of hacking to make functional, to the point that it's easier just to install windows and use WSL for everything. I say this as someone who got his start with Linux using Slackware 96.
I just built a rig with new, top of the line, hardware and installed fedora on it without an issue. What components are you talking about specifically?
I have an Asus ROG Strix mobo with integrated networking and audio, and both of them were extremely problematic.
I had the opposite experience actually. Windows didn't include network drivers for my custom PC mobo+chipset, while linux had them included. Actually had to download the windows drivers on linux then boot into windows and install them...
I've a new AMD 7800X3D build with an ASUS ROG Strix board, had Network Manager issues (100% CPU) on Ubuntu but everything works great under Fedora 40.
This is outdated, with the exception of perhaps webcams I've had hardly any issues with hardware on Linux in years, and that includes a couple of Intel MBPs. Just got a latest model laptop with a RTX 4080 and everything worked out of the box. I had to install Windows recently for someone and I had way more issues there.
It's still quite true at times for stuff integrated into the motherboard, sadly. You really should do due diligence on your hardware before you buy it if you intend to use Linux. You can still buy laptops that will not work well with Linux, and as of about a year and a half ago at least there were still new motherboards being released with components that have spotty Linux support.
Things have changed a lot here. I now regularly buy windows laptops, toss windows and they just work. When there is a hardware problem, it usually takes a few minutes to resolve.
The hard part is realizing that you have to do the EFEI setup and not just try to boot in insecure mode.
Yeah I’m looking at building a new machine because mine is getting very long in the tooth (although I don’t play very demanding games anyway), I’ve been waffling about using linux and proton for it even though my gaming PC has been windows since forever, I think at this point it’s petty much a done deal.
You can also dual boot and/or swap out hard drives. It took me a goodly while to get immersed and comfortable with Linux, so I'd definitely plan a discovery and/or transition phase before hard switching over.
My dayjob is on linux and my personal dev machine is a mac so I don’t foresee an unfathomable amount of issues, unless I get into driver hell.
Dual booting would rather defeat the point / message of leaving windows behind for Microsoft’s shenanigans.
There is GPU passthrough these days, where you can have a Windows VM with dedicated graphics and native performance running under Linux. No dual boot required. It does take a bit of work to get it right but I consider my current setup near perfect.
I'm going to build an all AMD system, install Linux Mint, then slowly migrate everything over and completely switch. It was bad enough when they started the spyware / bloatware train with Windows 8 / 10 but this is the final nail in the coffin.
I have been running an AMD system on Linux Mint for several years, and it has been fantastic. The only things that don't work in general are games with invasive anti cheat.
That sounds like a feature, I’ve got plenty enough games to play that I don’t need to have my machine rootkitted. I swore off of all EA-published games on those grounds 15 years ago so having the information upfront would be a strict improvement.
Also, Pop OS (and linux in general) will soon get a new desktop environment called Cosmic. Clearly, it will take one or two years to get it to a level where it's stable, but it's fantastic. It's the first desktop environment that combines the best of KDE, Gnome and i3.
I just hope they thoroughly test Cosmic with Orca, people usually don't think about accessibility (a11y) until they need it and that's a shame.
I'm not closely informed here, especially about Orca, but my understanding is that Cosmic uses or will use AccessKit by way of using the iced crate, and that some of the same developers are contributing to both projects. So it's not totally off their radar.
https://blog.system76.com/post/may-flowers-spring-cosmic-sho...
I've done that. I kept a windows install on the side for the few games that don't have a permissive enough anticheat, but I basically never use it anymore since The Finals has allowed Proton. It's going great.
Same. I have a dedicated gaming machine with windows 10 where I do nothing except games.
Still trying to delay the upgrade to 11 as long as I can though.
It is getting to the point where I am really considering giving up games that require anti-cheats that only support windows.
They were already getting to be too much but this is getting crazy.
Yep, I think I'm okay with not being able to play some games and I'll probably just keep a dedicated machine if I really feel the need to play those games.
The EU is not a single threaded application. They can, and should, be focusing on multiple areas where there is wrongdoing. Both are being egregious and abusive, and need attention. And the EU has shown that it can!
A good phrase to use here would be 'platform abuse'. Focusing on the 'default' is an attempt to justify what they are doing, and I notice it gets used to defend Apple rather than call them out. In the sense that "Oh well, it's their platform, they can do what they want"
If the EU started using and funding LibreOffice that would be great.
it's better and easier than ever
I do all my gaming using linux. I haven't used Microsoft's shit since windows 7
Windows had gotten so bad that even as a lifelong PC gamer who grew up on MS DOS and built my own machines for decades, I gave up a couple years ago and switched to Mac.
Now I do my gaming on GeForce Now as much as possible (soooo much nicer than fighting Windows updates, UAC, game bar, drivers, etc. all the time). And Crossover/Whisky sometimes, Parallels almost never. I wish Proton worked on macos :(
Together this means I can only play maybe 50% of the games I used to be able to (specifically anti cheat can be a problem, if the game doesn't support GFN). But otherwise the small performance penalties are totally worth not having to deal with Windows anymore.
+1 to recently making the switch and to PopOS. There are still small experience pains coming from 2 decades of almost exclusively using Windows, but gaming has been pretty smooth, especially for recent titles. Valve has done an exceptional job with the SteamDeck. I hate monopoly like companies as much as the next person, but honestly it is hard to fault their platform. I still get games on GoG and Itch.io occasionally, but man is Steam miles ahead of the rest of the options, especially for Linux gaming.
Before switching to Linux for gaming, I recommend checking compatibility of your favorite games using https://www.protondb.com/, an unofficial site for Proton compatibility.
I have a gaming PC running arch, and the experience has improved immensely since I last tried it 4 years ago. Legitimately incredible what valve has done for the platform, and my suspicion is that AI/ML investment will continue to have secondary effects that make gaming on Linux even better.
Can you use Steam or play your Steam Deck without logging in?
My mind went here too. I know a lot of people questioned the first iteration of "Steam Machine" PCs. Created by independent hardware vendors, with a Steam-flavored Linux distro, a lot of people asked what was the point.
But increasingly, every month that goes by Windows seems to add a new task bar thing you need to disable, something new on the login screen, and now, apparently, changes to something as fundamental as user management. It seems inconceivable that Valve would want to willingly tie their fate to the unpredictable twists and turns that Windows may have in store.
I have been gaming in Pop_OS, the only issue I had was in RDR2, then, when I switched to Proton Experimental it solved.
I am right now using the Xbox Wireless Dongle with a custom driver (xone), that driver says that it supports audio through audio jack. No audio though. Probally because I am not very experienced in Linux on Desktop.
I also think about that quite often recently. Сleaner, more controlled...
Why would you need to migrate a gaming machine? I would imagine that said gaming machine also relies on cloud gaming services even if the games run local. Just keep it exclusively a gaming machine.
I have separate machines for separate purposes.
Do it. I recently built a beefy machine, the first time in years that I have something I can play on, it's Linux only and it's great. Deepening on the games you play, check protondb first.
I went with Pop Os, had a little stability and audio issues, and went with Arch. Everything works really well now. YMMV. I took the opposite extreme; the only things running are the things that I enabled. It took a little more work, and it was worth the afternoon it took.
No wonder Sony goes after Windows people. Half of them soon need a new device.
The reason I hate Linux is that every time there is a problem I need to Google third-party tutorials that tell me to run arcane programs I don't understand and just trust random sources of software.
And nowadays that's the same thing you need to do in order to de-bloat Windows.
Don't want to create Microsoft account? Google how to do it, read about pressing a random keyboard shortcut during install, and running a random command in the terminal. This is literally the Linux experience. It's the same thing, now on Windows!
Your tablet doesn't work on Linux? Install OpenTabletDriver from who knows who to fix it! Your Windows doesn't work? Install power tools from who knows who to fix it! Want to bring back the old context menu? Install this. Want to bring back "my" computer? Install that. Want to get rid of OneDrive? Run this .bat file!
If things continue like this one day Microsoft will get rid of backwards compatibility altogether and people will migrate to Linux to run old Windows programs in WINE.
I’ve done this around 4 year ago and I’ve literally never felt compelled to move back.