Do (You) like GNU+Linux?

I’ve been seeing some people on here say that Fedora is bad or something. What’s up with that? I was thinking about trying it out because I heard it was better for gaming than Mint.

I need to spin up a new Linux VM for pihole and wireguard server. Currently I'm running the x86 build of the raspberry pi OS and I really like it. But they have no plans to release an updated version and it's still Debian 11.
I was going to set up a new VM on vanilla Debian 13. What DE is the closest to the raspberry pi, cinnamon?

I'm tired of Windows and want to switch to Linux completely. I don't want to dual boot, I'm going to delete Windows altogether and go full Linux. I'm torn between Ultramarine and CachyOS for my distro, I can't decide which one to choose.

>>108418357
Raspbian/Raspberry Pi OS uses a modified LXDE, you may want to look at Lxqt as well

How's btrfs nowadays? Does it Just Works™ or are there still cases of data loss?
>>108417446
Not him but shill me on openRC, I'm browsing for a new init system.

>>108418354
No idea, it's awesome. It's like Ubuntu but without the shit (snapd), but sadly stuck with systemd. But better than Arch and so on because your audio will actually work

>>108418408
Yeah they were talking about systemd, what even is that? Why is it bad?

>>108418195
I want to fuck the Krita squirrel.

>>108418431
They are just boomers who built their identity around the hacky workarounds systemd was designed to fix. No one has cared about their schizo init wars for over 10 years.

>>108418399
NTA but OpenRC tastes and smells like the old sysV.
>>108418431
Systemd is a feature hog and the systemd suite of programs is kinda large. So there's philosophical reasons to hate it.

>>108418449
I wasn't around for the sysV. OpenRC seemed nice because it has actual commands for making and managing daemons instead of manually using symlinks like runit does. Or maybe that isn't that big a deal at all, I don't really understand other init systems, I'm trying to filter some so I don't have to learn every single one before making a decision.

>>108418399
>How's btrfs nowadays? Does it Just Works™ or are there still cases of data loss?
There was an edge case a few months ago that required manual intervention aka run one command, just a few were affected but there was no data loss, to my knowledge. Personally I'm using it, me like compression.

>>108418562
I'm looking to jump ship on arch, probably to artix, so i get to shop for file systems too.
The compression is what draws me to it the most, as I don't have much disk space. How effective is it? Does it work well will small files or only does large files? Do you use it on both /root and /home partitions (if you do separate partitions at all)?

>>108418399
btrfs hasn't had and high profile data loss cases in probably 10 years. Internal fragmentation is the eternal edge case though. btrfsmaintenace mostly handles it, but the format inherently doesn't like low free space.

>>108418761
Right now I have 40% disk usage on /home partition (about 20G). Sometimes I have less (maybe 10G free), when I'm working on stuff and pull them locally before sending them back to the cloud). Would that cause issues?
This is all on ext4.

>>108418812
No I'm taking 90% full, possibly aggravated by deep snapshot backlog. Most people with sense never let any filesystem stay like that for long, but the median g poster is insanely broke.

I'm using ztsd 3 on /home and ztsd 1 on /. Cant run compsize on / because it fails hard if it finds a permission error

compsize ~/
Type       Perc     Disk Usage   Uncompressed Referenced  
TOTAL       88%      293G         330G         345G       
none       100%      268G         268G         273G       
zstd        30%       16G          53G          63G       
prealloc   100%      8.5G         8.5G         8.6G

compsize /usr
Type       Perc     Disk Usage   Uncompressed Referenced  
TOTAL       71%       56G          79G          79G       
none       100%       47G          47G          47G       
zstd        28%      8.9G          31G          32G       

compsize /var/lib/flatpak
Type       Perc     Disk Usage   Uncompressed Referenced  
TOTAL       55%      8.6G          15G          30G       
none       100%      5.0G         5.0G         8.9G       
zstd        34%      3.6G          10G          21G

User data is mostly compressed to begin with on my end so the difference isnt what you'd call huge but i'll take it over literally nothing. Its "free" as far as my usual usage goes.

>>108418981
Meant for >>108418620

>>108418853
I'm most interested in btrfs for the compression but speaking of snapshots, how do those work? How can the fs backup everything and be able to restore it without that snapshot taking huge amounts of space? How large are they even? Like, this drive is 128G, a snapshot of that has to be at least some many G, no?
>>108418981
That's quite a lot of disk savings. Can you notice a performance hit?
Also do you perchance know if artix plays nice with btrfs?

>>108419089
Snapshots prevent the existing data from being overwritten via copy-on-write. They're not backups. The snapshot is only as big as the part you overwrite in the live version.

>>108419089
>How can the fs backup everything and be able to restore it without that snapshot taking huge amounts of space?
Metadata. It stores diffs. If a file is 96% similar to its previous iteration then you pay for that 4% roughly speaking. Keeping long chains of diffs where they radically diverge obviously has a price though.
>Can you notice a performance hit?
Can't tell, I didn't test this pc with ext4. I don't think it's gonna make much of a difference. Maybe some loading screen is gonna be a bit longer because btrfs isn't comparatively as fast but personally I don't care about that. The extra space is worth it.
As for Artix, I've got no clue.

Can btrfs save me from doing mv f bad and `bad` being a file I did not want to overwrite?

You guys ever want to install a meme distro but you don't really want to mess with it so you just go with a tried and true distro?

>>108418620
>Do you use it on both /root and /home partitions (if you do separate partitions at all)?
You don't need separate partitions with btrfs, you can make subvolumes for /root and /home. These share storage so you don't need to precommit to how big each one should be. This is probably the biggest advantage for someone with low disk space.
btrfs doesn't like to have really low space though as the other anon said

>>108419484
btrfs snapshots will save you from anything except for deleting the snapshots or volumes themselves. assuming the disk itself works correctly of course, which is an if. you still need backups

>>108419513
Sometimes I feel like checking void and alpine, but the latter seems like a bad idea because of busybox and musl

Do I need to get /boot encrypted?

>>108419669
A better question is, do you need Secure Boot

>>108419678
Like personally? No.

>>108419669
Why? just get a maid that isn't evil

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>have laptop (lenoo ideapad yoga)
>laptop has 8gb ram (soldered)
>free, htop, etc only report 5.48GiB
I know some is going to the iGPU but 32% (2.5GiB) seems a bit much. I don't even seem to be able to set this in my bios

Is there really ever a "good time" to learn a tiling window manager? Or do you just need to go in balls deep?

>>108420448
It's not really that hard to learn them. Just look into how their config files work and you should be all good, at least with easy to edit ones like i3/Sway/Hyprland.

What's with TWM's and config files? Shouldn't they just work out of the box?

>>108418443
Get in line

>>108418195
... with konqi

>>108419669
Not really, there's nothing sensitive there. Even if you want to be a bit paranoid, you're looking for verification, not encryption. Secure boot with locked down UEFI and only a machine owner cert is the way to go. You just want to make sure nobody slips things they shouldn't into there.

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>>108420297
so I'm pretty sure it's the gpu (pic rel). but windows (via fastfetch) shows 5.69gb available instead of the 5.48 in lignux

seems to me it might be something i can change on the os level since my bios is locked down. any idea on how to do that?

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>>108420588
>>108420297
nevermind, was able to find a key combo that actually worked to get me in the advanced settings of bios.

set my UMA frame buffer size to 512mib and freed up 1.5gib of ram

>>108420650
>freed up 1.5gib of ram
>now videos and games don't work anymore
don't fuck with defaults

>>108420588
>5.69gb available instead of the 5.48 in lignux
Linux won't put some kernel reserved memory in that Total you can read from free an other tools. Dunno about Windows.

>>108418981
>Cant run compsize on / because it fails hard if it finds a permission error
use

compsize -x /

, this'll measure just / and not anything mounted under root (which it won't be able to do because things like /proc, /sys, etc are not btrfs volumes

>>108419089
>speaking of snapshots, how do those work? How can the fs backup everything and be able to restore it without that snapshot taking huge amounts of space? How large are they even?
making a snapshot is instant and uses no space.
how they work is that when you make changes after making a snapshot, only the changes take up space, this includes deletions.
so like if i have 100G of stuff, and make a snapshot, now i'm using 100G of space. if i then delete 5G of data, i'm still using 100G of space, as the deleted files aren't deleted in the snapshot. if i then add 5G of files, now i'm using 105G of space, as i'm still storing all i had to begin with, +5G that i didn't have before.
deleting a snapshot only deletes data which has since become unique to that snapshot, in the above example the 5G of files i deleted will actually be deleted, as they're only referenced by that snapshot, so you could say that snapshot is "5G in size" at that point

>>108420683
I don't play games on this laptop and videos work fine. Worth it to have almost 30% more RAM. Hopefully it'll also solve a problem where the laptop was becoming deadlocked (I suspect OOM)

>>108420752
there's plenty of shit that uses hardware acceleration these days, i'm not doing anything right now and my gpu has 2gb vram allocated.

How do I achieve this formatting for functions, specifically the newlines foreach argument using clang-format? I haven't been able to find a solution.

static
int
func_sig(
        void param1,
        void param2,
        void param3
)
{
        // function body with 8-space indentation
}

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>>108420752
>>108420794
1gb with just the browser open, bottom line is your 500mb are not enough.

I want the title on the titlebar to be on the left instead of in the centre as it is now. I'm using mint. There are setting for the titlebar buttons but not for the title itself.

Arch already shoved the new pozzled version of systemd to their repos. Anyone tried updating without it? Did it break anything?

>>108420837
you can easily patch it out if you like, the problem is gonna be when DEs and applications start querying the information that doesn't exist.

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>>108420822
>just the browser
your browser isn't even your heaviest vram user

>>108420853
What will happen to other init systems then?

>>108420865
>>108420822
it's a minimum not a maximum

>>108420822
>>108420865
what program?

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>>108420883
this is already heaps. i can run the same things my laptop with less vram than this is using /with/ a game running
these are let loose because there's lots of free vram

>>108420910
i didn't know either but his shows "amdgpu_top" which gives it away

>>108420910
amdgpu_top

>>108420910
He's using amdgpu_top like the other anon said but Nvtop is another good program you can also try (despite the name it supports AMD as well as NVIDIA)

>various daemons can send mail
>linux supports local mail by default in /var/spool
Cool idea, you can get notifications from daemons like say if smartctl detects a health issue
>this requires a mail transfer agent installed and configured
>pretty much all MTAs in existence mostly care about SMTP networked mail
>pretty much all clients solely care about remote networked mail accounts
Fuck's sake. Ok seriously, what's the best way to conveniently get notifications from your system without having to set up a massive SMTP server just to be able to route mail from sendmail into /var/spool? "Mail" seems like the perfect concept for this but the tooling around local mail seems nonexistent.
I know I could libnotify or whatever but these notifications are ephemeral, the benefit of something like a mailbox is that it's actually persistent and I can check it whenever I want, check old messages, and act on them whenever convenient. Rather than getting a popup saying "smart test reported errors" in the middle of the day and then having to remember it later.

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>>108420914
>>108420915
>>108420926
thanks. I tried radeontop but it has very limited info
>>108420914
if I'm understanding correctly
>512mb is the minimum reserved for "vram"
>if the system doesn't need more, that ram is available for other use
>if the system does need more, it'll take it
>if a program is using system ram for vram, it'll free that when it's closed and unneeded
>as opposed to if it was permanently reserved

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>>108420982
with firefox (4chan and youtube video tab open)

>>108420982
yea, pretty sure it's more of a reservation, it'll spill over to GTT which is ram-based but that's ok for integrated graphics since it's ram-based either way
there's probably an advantage to setting vram higher if you need more, i'm not entirely sure how it works since i rarely use integrated graphics, like if it works more like swap then you wouldn't want to use more than 512M /at a time/, as in like run one program that uses more than that by itself

>>108420992
>>108421014
-- like you're using 885M total there, which if that's basically the least you'd typically run then maybe you are better off setting it to 1G.
someone with a better understanding might be able to confirm or correct this

after hours i finally managed to make a windows virtual machine to make a bootable windows drive using rufus.
fuck, yesterday was one of the worst days of my life, stuck on linux, not knowing how to make it work and without windows to fall back on

>>108420992
>>108421025
well i found some info and apparently no, there's no performance difference between vram and gtt (with integrated graphics) in most cases. the vram is just what's mapped initially, and gtt is what's dynamically mapped to add to it, either way it's just mapped memory

Just made my switch to Fedora (from Win10).
>Is there a checklist of commands to run, like codecs or alternative repos? I ran some, for example rpm-fusion already.
>What is the go to way to install shit? I installed my browser by downloading a rpm file directly. But it has no icon.
>Why are there no buttons to minimize a window?
>How do I make the desktop look pretty like in those r/unixporn screenshots?
>Fonts look off and so is mouse sensitivity (I think because I was used to mouse acceleration?)
>How to efficiently navigate the system in general? How do I know what programs I have installed right now?

>>108421051
that's what i thought. thanks

unfortunately the ram is soldered so i cant easily upgrade it

>>108421089
>Is there a checklist of commands to run, like codecs or alternative repos? I ran some, for example rpm-fusion already.
I don't know if they ship with video codecs. If you use VLC it will install those alongside itself. Maybe MPV does as well.
>What is the go to way to install shit? I installed my browser by downloading a rpm file directly. But it has no icon.
Fedora uses dnf. I don't use it so check their manual for the commands. There may be a GUI front-end too.
>Why are there no buttons to minimize a window?
Depends on the desktop environment.
>How do I make the desktop look pretty like in those r/unixporn screenshots?
Depends on the desktop environment.
>Fonts look off and so is mouse sensitivity (I think because I was used to mouse acceleration?)
Did you install the right fonts? Also what do you mean by "off"?
Depends on whatever is managing the mouse.
>How to efficiently navigate the system in general? How do I know what programs I have installed right now?
Check the manual for dnf commands. There may be a GUI front-end.

Is there any way to stop slack and zoom slowing the laptop to a crawl when a screen is being shared?

>>108421174
x11 or wayland?

>>108421251
Wayland. KDE on X11 behaves weirdly on my work laptop. I might add it has a 155H, so Arc graphics.

should I use .deb from github repos or flatpak if what I need isn't packaged? I'm sort of leaning towards flatpak since it manages updates for me too.

>>108421089
Some of these are Fedora-specific so I don't know, but:
>What is the go to way to install shit?
On any Linux distro you should first try using your package manager. On Fedora that's dnf like the other anon said. Sometimes very small or niche programs aren't in the repository, but for most stuff that's rare, and most browsers should definitely be packaged.
>Why are there no buttons to minimize a window?
You're almost certainly on the GNOME desktop environment. It has by far the most corporate funding and is used as default by a lot of corporate-y distros, including Fedora, but it is also well known for being very idiosyncratic. Basically Apple-style "you have to use it MY way, if not then you're using it wrong", except its not even as polished as macOS's UI.
You either get used to it or install a different DE. KDE is the main competitor and is a lot more windows-like plus a lot more configurable and less stuck up inside its own arse.
>How do I make the desktop look pretty like in those r/unixporn screenshots?
Configure your desktop environment for it. Hard to do in GNOME afaik.
Also a lot of those screenshots are people not using an all-included desktop environment but rather assembling it themselves from a barebones window manager plus all the other components and utilities selected by hand, which is a lot more effort. You can still usually get fancy screenshots just by ricing a DE though.
>acceleration
I think Fedora uses Wayland by default, so you'll need to look up how to configure this on Wayland. On X11 you'd use xinput to set the acceleration parameters.
Fonts and font rendering are different yes. If you have a specific problem you can try articulating it, if it's just that it's different from Windows then you'll have to get used to it as every OS has its own font rendering.

>>108421089
>How to efficiently navigate the system
There should be a GUI file manager installed.
>what programs I have installed right now
Your package manager will tell you all the packages you have installed, but that includes a lot of system utilities and libraries you may not care about. All DEs should come with some sort of application launcher, basically an equivalent to windows's start menu, where you'd be able to see all your actual desktop programs. I don't know where/how that is in GNOME (like I said they love being obtuse for no reason).

>>108421089
>a checklist of commands to run
be careful with these and read what they do before you paste lines of them to your terminal, GNOME and KDE both have a big button to enable all necessary 3rd-party repos now and openh264 is easily turn on for Firefox in about:addons too, and that's pretty much all you need to do on fresh fedora besides dnf update

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Wanted to hop from Win10 to Fedora, but this systemd shenanigan made me confused (i know its nothing burger now, but w/e).
So what now? Should i wait for fog of war to settle or just hop into devuan/artix or maybe pop_os (which going full zealot against this shit, probably will ditch it later).

>>108421265
If you mean a deb which doesn't update then I would prefer a flatpak, but only if the flatpak is official. Personally I don't install unofficial flatpaks because I don't know who is packaging them or whether I can trust such people. One example is Dolphin, the emulator. Lots of people install Dolphin from Flathub even though that package is unofficial. There is instead an official flatpak which comes from Dolphin's own flatpak repo - they have instructions on their website. That official flatpak is the one I use.

I installed Arch, using archinstall, and it doesn't make me feel anything. I think I just want to go to where I wanted to go.

>>108421391
Pop will 100% bend the knee soon enough. System76 has no choice.

>>108421089
>Why are there no buttons to minimize a window?
because you don't minimize windows in GNOME, you move them in a different workspace and use the overview to switch between windows.
if you want the buttons can reenabled very easily.

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>>108418195
KDE fixing app thumbnail rendering: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=360457

>>108421796
When will they fix thumbnail loading in the file picker? Sometimes some thumbnails don't load and I have to F5 until they do

>>108421862
did you reproduce the bug and open an issue?

>>108421585
migrate from ubuntu to devuan isnt an option? Or too much hassle?

>>108421872
I've had it for years on multiple machines. I remember finding a bug report for it ages ago

>>108421391
>fog of war
Nigger they literally added an age column to a database. Stop paying attention to Lunduke.

>>108421910
NTA but I have been using Devuan for months now, It's exactly the same as Debian but without systemctl (you use 'service' and 'rc-update.d' commands instead), that's literally the only difference an average user will notice, otherwise it's indistinguishable from Debian (and that's a good thing).
If you can Install Debian then you can definitely install Devuan.

>>108421911
>>108421872
For reference
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=510147
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=495020
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=452974

>>108421910
Might be viable, the problem is what's gonna happen in the near future once they require every application on your system to interact with the spyware. On systemd they have something to query, on anything else they don't.
Systemd will throw you under the bus, but is likely to work if you give up your soul. Other init systems might respect you but what good is that if the entire internet and/or all major software is required to query the spyware database to make sure you're a good goy?

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>>108421939
Fucking hell

>>108421939
If they're going to require proprietary software act as spyware, your init system isn't going to stop it. userdb having an age field doesn't impact your privacy in any way. You're allowed to change it as often as you want. If your psychopath government is going to lock people up for that, you need to move or start doing terrorism. That's not a systemd problem.

>>108421995
>you need to move
always easy to say but hard to do

>>108421934
then i guess nobody cares enough to fix it. feel free to pitch in or pay someone to fix it.

>>108421995
>just move somewhere
>oh, that new country you spent all you savings moving to is implementing the same draconian laws? just move somewhere else
>oh, that new country you sold your first born daughter in order to move to is implementing the same draconian laws? just move somewhere else
>repeat

guys how do i power limit my amd gpu down to 50% 6.13

>>108422006
>>108422038
>waaaah life is hard and jews do mean things
Not a Linux problem.

>>108418331
I don't like Gnu+Linux. I LOVE Gnu+Linux!

>>108422110
try LACT. there's probably a leaner way to do it like with a udev rule or something but i've only tried lact

has anyone tried out hurd? I'm thinking about playing around with it in a virtual machine.

Newbie here, I need a better understanding of the security aspect of Linux. So for example, I've installed yt-dlp using PPA, so I added that repository to the software sources. Now whenever there's an update to yt-dlp, it shows up in the update manager. So theoretically, if whoever makes yt-dlp decides to fuck everyone over and make it malware, I could accidentally just mindlessly click update and then install malware onto my pc, even if the chances of that happening are realistically pretty slim?

>>108422371
>I could accidentally just mindlessly click update and then install malware onto my pc
Yes. That's exactly how it works. Hence why you should exclusively stick with your distribution's repositories and anything that's not available there should only be installed through flatpak or in a distrobox container. Always assume 3rd party software is potential malware even if it's open source.
>inb4 but why trust your distro's repositories
Because you're trusting them with your entire OS anyway.

>>108422371
So what are you asking?
> You installed a python script by adding a some PPA
> You will mindlessly accept all updates
> In your "slim" idea could they replace it with malware

>>108422371
by installing/updating software from a ppa, you're inherently trusting the operator of said ppa, yes, as they're in controls of what is publishes on said ppa

it's effectively no different to installing software on windows that has it's own updater. it's third party software in the sense that it's not part of the operating system distribution, so it requires separate trust to the operating system

Can't update clutter, clutter-gtk and cogl. exit status 4. what should I do? I'm on arch

>>108422436
lol flatpak bots using closed garden for propaganda

>>108422371
you got it, however, you have similar risk without ppas as well. You also have a risk with your distro repos. You also have a risk if you get everything from upstream. You also have a risk if you compile everything yourself. Auditing every single line of code you use is impossible, and even then, there's still a risk that the compiler you used to bootstrap your system was borked and everything you compiled with it is comprimated.

>>108422538
this is why you should stop caring and just buy a mac

>>108422651
macs have even worse security.
the good part about linux is that because we're so fagmented, it's very hard to make malware that hits everyone.

>>108422651
which has no less risk. Maybe even more.

>>108422669
>macs have even worse security.
>t. don't know anything about security

>>108422686
why do you think every server runs linux? [spoiler]it's not for the penguin plushies.[/spoiler]

>>108422707
why do you think a manually configured lightweight server running a handful of services is comparable to a desktop with 2000-3000 packages which run arbitrary 3rd party code?

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Could someone help me findout a way to setup "Eye finity" setup on linux on wayland? I can get euro truck sim 2 to span across all three monitors by setting the resolution in config file, but this is very ETS2 specific and other games don't even might have such option. Is there a way to make wayland combine monitors into one big monitor?

>>108422769
wayland is a protocol

>>108422769
maybe? I'm glad this is no longer the default case as it was on X11

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>>108422776
Yes, I'm specifying wayland because apparently under x11 you could create one big virtual output.
>>108422788
For some cases I can take the window, and manually span it across all monitors, such as shattered pixel dungeon. I also thought I could just use gamescope to create one big window but though luck apparently.

>>108422816
Never tried it as I have no need for it. but if some games can do it it should be possible somehow.

>>108422816
>because apparently under x11 you could create one big virtual output
And under Wayland it's a compositor feature. So pick a compositor with single large surface support.

>>108422832
I'm starting to think that this is my best bet as of now. https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Gaming#Starting_games_in_a_separate_X_server
I think I could just spawn one big monitor from X.
>>108422846
Oh yeah... Kwin does have video wall script but it seemingly doesnt work at all under wayland. Any suggestions?

How good is lxqt on wayland? I'm using xfce, but I need muh gayland on a desktop environment that is lightweight.

>>108422861
>Kwin does have video wall script but it seemingly doesnt work at all under wayland. Any suggestions?
Stop using nVidia, or try a different build if not nVidia.

>>108422897
Can't you just use kwin on Xfce?

>>108422926
I'm on AMD (6800 XT), I suppose it's entirely possible that I dont even understand how video wall works. I practically just tried to add gamescope to videowall, and launching the game with gamescope -f

>>108422934
Kwin is bloat.