I should’ve used it sooner rather than last year when they announced AI integration to Windows. Every peripheral I tried is just worked without needing to install drivers, and it works better and faster than on Windows, just like today when I tried to use my brother’s 3D printer expecting disappointment, but no, it just connected and was ready to print right away (I use Ultimaker Cura), whereas on my brother’s Windows computer I have to wait like 20 seconds; sometimes I have to disconnect and reconnect it again for it to see and ready to use. Lastly, for those who are wondering, I use Vanilla Arch (btw), and sorry for bad English.
I’ve been using it on and off since 1994. I still have a slackware dist on CD with the 1.1 kernel. I think Linux is great although I still prefer to use Windows, and Linux via WSL which is my optimal set up these days.
I’ve been using Linux for almost 9 years now. Shit is never so smooth for me but I still love it.
The only device it has been smooth on has been my Thinkpad T530. Every other install I have has some annoying issue, usually small
xx30 ones are the best :)
Not surprising considering how well Linux support on Thinkpad laptop are.
I’ve had good luck with several Lenovo laptops. ThinkPads and IdeaPads. Everything but the fingerprint readers just works.
Yep as an IdeaPad user, I can confirm that this is very true
Everything but the fingerprint readers just works.
Good to know the struggle for the fingerprint reader wasn’t just me. I did “get it working” but it was extremely hacky and it wasn’t what I was after; I only wanted fingerprint for login, not additionally for sudo, but that’s not how it set up and I didn’t want to spend even more countless hours trying to fix that
Awesome!
and your english is perfect, dude. no worries. the only suggestion I have for you in that regard is to watch out for run on sentences :)
Thanks, I’m still learning, grammar is my weakest point right now
Most of my library just works under Linux.
Plus it is a pleasure to code under Linux.
These kind of posts make me a little happy. I don’t know exactly why but it does.
Having used Linux on for 25 years or so and now hearing about people who switch from Windows and really enjoying the experience warms my heart a little
I switched last year and brought two computers and four servers along. Very well worth it :)
Me too, I’ve only used it for a year but every time I see a Linux appreciation post, it makes me happy and makes my day better
Linux is awesome
& so are you ^🥁 1, 2, 3, 4… 🎸^
Aww, thank you
Lucky. I couldn’t get HDR working properly, and most of my GPU features were missing because Nvidia refuses to support Linux (and AMD GPUs can’t keep up). So I had to go back to Windows.
Been trying to switch to Linux since 2004. I’ll try again in 5 years.
Nvidia has an open driver now I believe? I install
nvidia-open.Curious to know what you mean by:
AMD GPUs can’t keep up
And,
I had to go back to Windows
you had to, because of HDR? I have an Nvidia RTX 2080 Super, and I don’t know of any features that are missing. Games can do DLSS and ray tracing and whatever else they need. For me, support seems to be absolutely beast on Linux. 🤷♂️
Does that driver support SDR to HDR conversation, AI upacaling, and most importantly: the 3D Settings page? I can live without the first two features, but I can’t believe that there is no 3D Settings page in Linux. It has so many graphics settings that aren’t available in most games.
And yes, AMD GPUs can’t keep up. Especially if you like Ray Tracing. I’m not an AMD hater; I have a 7700X
Does that driver support SDR to HDR conversation, AI upacaling,
Assuming you mean conversion and upscaling. DLSS is AI upscaling, right? I don’t think X11 has much support for HDR. But I’m not well versed in display servers at all to make that claim firmly.
and most importantly: the 3D Settings page? I can live without the first two features, but I can’t believe that there is no 3D Settings page in Linux. It has so many graphics settings that aren’t available in most games.
Ah, you mean that custom program where you set a bunch of settings externally and specifically for each game? I think the program
nvidia-settingshas that? Try it out!And yes, AMD GPUs can’t keep up. Especially if you like Ray Tracing. I’m not an AMD hater; I have a 7700X
Ah that’s a shame. Newer AMD cards are surely better than my old 2080 Super though eh. 🙃
DLSS is AI upscaling, right?
No, not DLSS. RTX Video Enhancement. Makes YouTube look so much better.
I think the program
nvidia-settingshas that? Try it out!It does not. I’m talking about this page. Almost every game in existence is missing several settings that are on this page, especially GPU Power Management Mode, Negative LOD Bias, Max Framerate in the Background, and Max VR Prerendered Frames.
Try Nobara or Bazzite. Plasma supports HDR fairly well, and those distros includes a pile of tweaks for Nvidia devices. It might get you sorted.
Tweaks and preconfigured distros aren’t solution here. The driver is still lacking certain features and that can only be fixed by NVIDIA
Only problem I ever had with Linux was having too many different versions of the Nvidia driver installed, so it would take lots of storage. It was easy to fix.
You would be suprised how cool Linux can get when you go deep down the rabbit hole, if you really want to go deep into Arch I reccomend trying a tiling window manager like Sway or Hyprland :3
(Btw these are the dotfiles I use: https://github.com/koeqaife/hyprland-material-you)
The Hyprland dev is enough to make sure I never use Hyprland
Ive yet to find a tiling Window manager that looks as good
Yeah, it does look great.
But in terms of tiling WMs, I have high hopes for Cosmic! It’s coming along really well (though not as pretty as Hyprland)
Without having read through your codebase, are you using someone else’s top bar, or did you write it yourself in ags?
I wasn’t satisfied with the performance of any bars I tried for X11 so I wrote my own custom one using the eww widget system. I’ve tried ags for a bit but I couldn’t even make an empty bar window that attaches itself to the top of the screen and spans the entire width of my single monitor. 😅 That part worked flawlessly in eww.
My personal experience has been frustrating each time. I’ve tried to switch over at least 3 times over the years, but I always gave up. This time, I installed Ubuntu and immediately had to spend 3 hours trying to get my Xbox controler dongle to work, but just couldn’t do it. Found a driver online that people said would work, it didn’t because it wasn’t properly signed, tried to sign it but the signing app just didn’t create the certificates needed. Gave up, I have Bluetooth so I’d live, though I’d rather use the dongle if I can.
I then immediately encounter another problem that couldn’t be fixed (for the life of me I can’t remember what it was exactly) and just gave up.
The previous time I tried it I remember that among other things, one of my main problems was the lack of clipboard history (which I use extremely often). I tried installing an app for it but all of them either didn’t work or didn’t work the way I want them to or I just didn’t like their look and feel.
I also hate the font rendering on Linux, it always looks blurry compared to Windows, and the double titlebars most apps have (e.g. Discord, at least on Ubuntu), I like my screen real-estate.
Yes. Yes it is.
And if something doesn’t work, it’s all your fault somehow. Which is both a blessing and a curse.
That’s fine, I can look up the Arch Wiki for solutions, which is also a learning process for me and if it still doesn’t work, I can just duct tape the workaround myself XD
Tip from long-time arch user (btw). Avoid installing or making changes to system installation without going through pacman. I.e., don’t use install scripts or make install invocations requiring sudo. More often than not that will cause headaches long-term. PKGBUILDs are actually reasonably simple to create if you need to install something not in the AUR, and it will keep you from overwriting files and leaving files behind after uninstalling.
I make a promise to myself that I never install anything outside of the AUR, luckily everything I ever need already available there
You went straight from windows to vanilla arch ?
Quite impressive
I remember the USAF handing me an M16 at 18 years old where all I’ve ever handled before that was even close was the NES zapper.
Haha thanks but it’s not actually my first distro, I’m distro hopping on my first week of switching to Linux, my first ever distro is EndeavourOS>Nobara>Fedora>OpenSUSE>Vanilla Arch
That’s a lot of different distros in one week. How do you give each one enough time to evaluate it before you choose to move to another?
At the time my main goal is to have to all of my games working, while I can make it run on every distro I tried, I found Vanilla Arch is the better one in terms of performance and ease of use (yeah call me weird for saying Arch is easier to use than other distros XD), so I keep using it ever since.
Vanilla Arch is the better one in terms of performance and ease of use (yeah call me weird for saying Arch is easier to use than other distros XD)
Not weird at all, I use Arch on my main system exactly because I’m lazy and it’s easier to use. It’s harder to install, but a lot easier to use.
That’s a good distrohop pipeline
tbh vanilla arch is not that tough now that archinstall exists, and archwiki is an incredible resource
Vanilla arch is nothing like the manually installed arch of old. It’s as easy to install and use as any other distro. I started with arch too, and my now permanent distro is arch based
Can anybody comment on their experience using Arduino and ESP with Linux? Especially does Linux handle COM ports better than Windows? There’s a seemingly immortal problem of COM ports becoming unusable until you go into Device Manager and uninstall them (again and again) - and if that doesn’t work, reboot Windows. I experience this less often now than say 5 or 6 years ago, and sometimes it’s my fault, but jeez.
COM ports as handled by Windows is misery anyways. Linux definitely does it better
You might have issues with permissions for serial ports on some distros, but there are loads of easy to follow guides for that. Linux definitely handles them better than windows though. I never had issues where they just stop working like on Windows.
I regularily program Arduinos in Arduino IDE v2 (https://flathub.org/apps/cc.arduino.IDE2) and ESPs via the ESPHome web flasher and the esphome CLI tool.
Works flawlessly once you added yourself to the dialout group as mentioned by @[email protected].
Yes, com ports work way better than in windows. I’ve done a lot of embedded development on linux and it’s way more pleasant than in windows. One thing you do have to keep in mind is that access to com ports (USB and real) requires root access by default, but once you’ve set the udev rule up, it becomes accesible to normal users and/or group of users. After that, it works flawlessly. Android dev also works great and imo better than on win. Proprietary jtags may be an issue, but I’ve never actually had an unsolvable situation.
Thank you, that’s massively helpful! Pasting your comment into my ESP32 project notes so when I soon move to Linux I can remember to figure out the udev rule and jtags.
Running this command was the literally the only thing required for me to get access to the com ports. After that, everything worked perfectly.
sudo usermod -a -G dialout $USER(note that $USER is part of the command - do not replace that with your actual username)
Pasting this right into my project doc. Thanks so much!
update: after a month of Mint I’ve had no problems at all uploading code to ESP32, and it seems about 50% faster than on Windows. Uploads just work - it’s like a breath of fresh air.
Same, programmed an arduino last week, that was all I had to do too
I’ve had wemos d1 boards from AliExpress show up as a brltty and the braille teletype driver grabs the device. Just something to look out for on some distros
That’s a bizarre glitch I never would have known to look for - thanks!
Yeah I’d rather deal with this than a blind persons gear not work
Yeah. I’ve been trying to get the word out.
I’ve been screwing with Linux for decades, but somewhere along the line, Linux got easier and more reliable than Windows. I was as surprised as anyone. My last couple Linux installs were a cake walk.
I also like Linux more than Mac, but I’m a tinkerer at heart, and Mac’s lack of fiddly bits (customization options) has kept me from staying on it long.
Same here.
Daily driver is a mac but I always use a desktop Linux machine at home.
