@cujo@sh.itjust.works avatar

cujo

@cujo@sh.itjust.works

Used to be aRatherDapperFox@lemmy.ml. Moved for various reasons, mainly server load.

Wannabe streamer, here for all your mediocre gaming needs.

twitch.tv/PressStartToBegin_TV

youtube.com/@press_start_to_begin

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cujo,
@cujo@sh.itjust.works avatar

I just found out about VSCodium. Its a project that packages the MIT licensed VS Code source without all the M$ telemetry and crud. Be warned, there are apparently many plugins that don’t work with Codium, so if you rely heavily on any specific plugin I’d see if it works properly before committing.

It’s still relying on Microsoft code, but at least it’s specifically the open source bits. Lol!

What are some FOSS programs that you think are a far better user experience than their counterparts? (sh.itjust.works)

I used Plex for my home media for almost a year, then it stopped playing nice for reasons I gave up on diagnosing. While looking at alternatives, I found Jellyfin which is much smaller and more responsive, IMO, and the UI is much nicer as well....

cujo,
@cujo@sh.itjust.works avatar

It does not.

cujo,
@cujo@sh.itjust.works avatar

Consistent in frying pins and fraying cables.

cujo,
@cujo@sh.itjust.works avatar

Everyone I know who uses an iPhone has had fried pins on the cable, not necessarily on their device. No one I know personally has had any issues with USB-C.

Though both experiences are anecdotal, I think we can take this away from our conversation at least: no cable design is perfect. Lol!

older laptop distro recommendarion

Recently I’ve gave up Windows for Linux and installed Ubuntu with KDE Plasma desktop on my pc and laptop from 2007. It’s an i7 Intel processor with 8gb ddr ram so I thought it would be fine, but it seems quite sluggish. What distro could I use that would be faster and still fully functional? Thanks for your help in advance.

cujo,
@cujo@sh.itjust.works avatar

If you’re married to Ubuntu, I’d suggest Xubuntu. It’s Ubuntu using the XFCE desktop environment. XFCE can be a little… hard on the eyes by default, but it’s super lightweight, very stable, and very customizable. It can be a very aesthetically pleasing DE with a little theming and an icon pack.

Outside of Ubuntu, Id suggest Linux Mint with XFCE. I know, I know, Linux Mint is based on Ubuntu so why bother? Well, it’s not Canonical. They’ve done some great things over the years, but recently… I just tend to stay away.

Personally, I use OpenSUSE Tumbleweed. Love it, I’ll never leave it. It’s amazing. But without knowing your personal preferences or use cases, and with the info in your post, I have to recommend Xubuntu or Linux Mint XFCE. Also I agree with the other commenter, you’d benefit a lot from an upgrade to an SSD.

cujo,
@cujo@sh.itjust.works avatar

You won’t go wrong no matter which you end up choosing. I am personally a huge fan of the way OpenSUSE runs their ship, and some of the tools there are incredible.

YaST, for example, is a system management tool that provides the most extensive GUI for managing your system settings I’ve seen on a Linux distro period. Yes, all the settings can be managed from a terminal, but it’s nice to have a graphical option sometimes.

Just play around with it since you’ve already got it installed, and see how you like it. There’s a strong and friendly community surrounding the distro, so reach out if you’ve got any questions! You’re also welcome to ask me. I may not have all the answers, but I’m pretty certain I can find someone who can help lol.

cujo,
@cujo@sh.itjust.works avatar

If you haven’t yet, I would run the following commands:

sudo zypper install opi

opi codecs

This will enable the Packman repositories (repos will commonly used non-free software, like multimedia codecs) and install multimedia codecs for watching videos and playing music and the like.

Anyway, I’m glad you’re enjoying OpenSUSE! It’s a delightful distro and community.

cujo,
@cujo@sh.itjust.works avatar

There is a place for graphically gorgeous distro’s

As a current KDE user but extensive user of XFCE in the past, it may not come “pretty” out-of-the-box but XFCE can be a very aesthetically pleasing desktop environment. It can be configured just about every which way, and if I had to switch back to XFCE right now I could have things just about how I want them and be 100% as happy with my desktop as I am with KDE.

It’s got defaults that just make sense, doesn’t try to reinvent the wheel or the way we interact with our desktops, it’s light and fast and reliable. It’s associated default programs (Thunar, etc.) follow the same design paradigms and are a delight to use.

I Iove XFCE, and it will always have a special place in my heart.

cujo,
@cujo@sh.itjust.works avatar

Plus one for Linux Mint Cinnamon. Easily the best beginner distro, IMO. If you’re technical enough to advance past Mint w/Cinnamon, you’re probably technical enough to not need a service like the linked website.

It’s still nice to see tools like this coming out, though, as a show of support for newcomers to the ecosystem.

cujo,
@cujo@sh.itjust.works avatar

Endeavor is fantastic. For all the time I ran it, I never had any of the issues that people say Arch is riddled with: updates irreparably mucking up your system, packages making a mess of things, the AUR being unstable and dangerous. I’ve found that most of these claims come from people who are against the way Arch does things and have never actually tried it for any extensive amount of time.

You do need to be mindful of updates being pushed to your system (read the newsletters, they will tell you if anything in the update is broken and how to fix it) and have the technical know-how of how to fix those things when they do happen… And they will happen. That’s any rolling release, though.

Personally I use OpenSUSE Tumbleweed for gaming, it was a breeze to set up and continues to be a breeze to work with. I love every second of it. But EndeavorOS is a very close second for me.

cujo,
@cujo@sh.itjust.works avatar

It will still be subpar performance, bottlenecked by the CPU resources you can allocate to the VM as well as your original hardware’s capabilities to power the VM among many other variables. Running a VM to game will always produce subpar results. Using GPU passthrough will increase performance, but it’s almost always preferable to play on real hardware.

The real answer will always be: if you want to game on Linux, utilize Wine/Proton and Steam/Lutris/Bottles/Heroic/some other launcher that lets you fine tune Wine/Proton to cater to the specific game.

cujo, (edited )
@cujo@sh.itjust.works avatar

As the other comment says, what you’re referring to is running a Windows VM (virtual machine) inside of your Linux machine. It’s a great asset for a lot of things, but gaming is not it’s strong point. A VM shares resources with it’s host machine, meaning it can only access so many of your CPU cores, utilize only so much of your RAM, and take advantage of CPU powered graphics – unless, as was pointed out in another comment, you happen to have a spare graphics card laying around. The set up for GPU passthrough is more trouble than it’s worth, IMO, especially for gaming. And you still have the other bottlenecks to contend with.

Gaming on Linux is best enjoyed by using a combination of Wine and Proton (Wine suped up for the express purpose of gaming by the fine folks behind Steam) paired with a launcher of some kind, usually Steam. For non-Steam games, Lutris is a fantastic second choice. These platforms make gaming on Linux easier than ever, and are actually the technologies powering the SteamDeck. If you decide to go this route and need any help setting up, please reach out! The community is here and (usually) quite helpful, lol.

If you decide to try the VM anyway, you should look into a software called VirtualBox. You will need to install a few packages to make your system a suitable host, and you’ll need the Windows installation ISO image to get it up and running. You can usually acquire it directly from Microsoft by running a search for “Windows XX ISO” where the XX is the version number you’re looking for. If you need help getting any of that together, I’d be glad to assist as well. ☺️

All this comes from years of running Linux and only Linux, on a PC I almost exclusively game on. I’ve had great success, especially with all the headway Valve has made into making the ecosystem viable and accessable.

However you decide to proceed, best of luck to you!

EDIT: As has been pointed out, if you want to virtualize a gaming setup, you should look into KVM, not VirtualBox! It sounds like it’s a much more performant option, I am just not very familiar with it myself.

cujo,
@cujo@sh.itjust.works avatar

Sure. I admit my experience running a VM is limited to “type 2 bullshit” like VirtualBox. But that also requires that OP have a spare GPU lying around they care enough to pop into their machine and set up passthrough for, which most people don’t. Especially with these GPU prices lately, yikes. Chances are they have a decent GPU already in their system, and buying an equivalent GPU just for passthrough is… 😬

So while baremetal-like performance is certainly possible with a VM, it’s still not an ideal solution for most people.

cujo,
@cujo@sh.itjust.works avatar

Because it’s accessable, and is also the extent of my knowledge in running a VM. I won’t speak about KVM because I am not intimately familiar with KVM, nor will I ever be. I’m certain it’s a better solution than VirtualBox, just as running games in Linux with Wine/Proton is a better solution than setting up a VM to game in.

I’d be happy to hear about the details of why KVM is so superior, if you’d care to enlighten me! I’m always looking to learn new things.

The real question is why we’re down voting people who are adding to the discussion just because we disagree with them, instead of just having a conversation?

cujo,
@cujo@sh.itjust.works avatar

Hmm that’s a neat solution. What if you do video or photo editing in your main OS, though, or any other kind of work that would benefit from discreet graphics? Is your only option then essentially two GPUs, or can you switch between passthrough neatly, or…?

cujo,
@cujo@sh.itjust.works avatar

Interesting.

My system is all AMD, I prefer not to wrestle with Nvidia’s drivers on Linux, lol.

It’s been years since I ran Windows on my machine, but I still miss my photo editing software. Nice as DarkTable is, it’s no replacement for CaptureOne. And it’s pretty much not possible to get CaptureOne running in a productive manner under Wine. I looked into doing passthrough to a VM a while back, but it just seemed a hassle and I didn’t have a spare GPU. I game on my Linux install, so iGPU isn’t sufficient for my needs there. My photography hobby just has to suffer. 😂

cujo,
@cujo@sh.itjust.works avatar

Thanks for the link! And for the info. I’ll give KVM an honest try, and maybe I’ll get motivated enough to spin up a VM for CaptureOne. A 1080 should be decent enough for light photo editing, and I was recently given one as-is. It may or may not work, neither I or the person who gave it to me had time to test it.

cujo, (edited )
@cujo@sh.itjust.works avatar

If you have to allocate resources to your host system, that’s resources your virtual machine cannot use. It is subpar. If you’re going to allocate your host the bare minimum resources, why not run the other operating system to begin with? You’re now missing out in performance in the complete opposite direction. The most straightforward solution still remains to run games on your host system. If you want to game on Linux, game on Linux. It’s easy enough nowadays, and what tinkering you may have to do will be a fantastic opportunity to get more comfortable with the DIY side of Linux.

I will be the first to admit that I am no expert on the topic of virtualization, as I have said in other comments already. However, this is a community, not an expert consultation, and I have used virtualization to varying degrees of success for various different tasks over the years, all of which has culminated in my opinion that it’s best not to use virtualization to game unless you’re really intent on running a game that cannot under any circumstances run in Linux, such as Valorant. To follow, if that is your use case I encourage picking up an extra drive (storage is incredibly cheap) and running a dual boot. You’re free to disagree and provide reasoning why I’m wrong, but calling my statement “completely uneducated” is disingenuous at best.

EDIT: I concede on my word choice, it’s not “subpar .” I’m certain you can achieve average or even above average performance in a VM with the right set up. The word I’m looking for is “suboptimal.” My apologies.

cujo,
@cujo@sh.itjust.works avatar

My single remaining use for Windows is to run the CaptureOne photo editing software. It is, in my opinion, peerless. I love using it so much that it ruined basically all other photo editing suites for me. DarkTable, PhotoTherapee, ART, none of them come close for me. Everything else has some alternative that I’ve come to term with using, or even prefer using, but not CaptureOne.

I’m only a hobbyist photographer so it’s not like my livelihood is tied up in this software… I just get tired and sour working in other softwares, no matter how long of a trial I give them. Sometimes you find a solution that’s just absolutely perfect for you and the way you work, and CaptureOne is that for me. 🤷‍♂️

In my case, I’d have my host Linux OS for 99.99% of my use case, and then Windows solely for photo editing. But I opted not to do that just because of all my previous experiences trying to use a VM for any production level work with anything that’s graphically intensive. Apparently that has changed a lot since I last looked at it, or I didn’t dig deep enough and I missed the actually worthwhile software. I’m just not sure I’m going to put in the work. I’ve got a baby now, and haven’t taken a photo on anything other than my smartphone since she was born. 😅

cujo,
@cujo@sh.itjust.works avatar

I use Tumbleweed for this exact purpose, and I love every second of it! It’s been my choice distro for a while now, and put a definitive end to my distro hopping. I can’t speak to how using Nvidia with it will work as I’ve always run AMD, but Steam runs beautifully!

cujo, (edited )
@cujo@sh.itjust.works avatar

One more point that you shouldn’t let scare you away, but just something nice to know going into OpenSUSE: by default, the distro is FOSS only, the official software repositories don’t have things like proprietary multimedia codecs or other non-free (as in free speech) software included. You have to enable these yourself if you want them (to, say, watch MP4 files perhaps).

This has gotten so dead simple recently that it can be done in a couple of terminal commands, it’s just important to mention. If you know it going in, it saves the step of “what the heck, why aren’t my media files playing??”

sudo zypper install opi

opi codecs

OPI is a package manager for installing software from a few sources, namely the openSUSE Build Service (which is where OPI gets its name, OBS Package Iinstaller), Microsoft, the Packman repositories, and a few others. Installing codecs is the only thing I have ever used it for, though.

EDIT: zipper to zypper

cujo,
@cujo@sh.itjust.works avatar

You know, I was talking about actual zippers in another thread at around the same time I was writing this, and my brain just went with it. Doesn’t help that I have aliases for all my regular zypper commands and haven’t actually typed it out in awhile. 😅

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