Linux is fucking awesome
Linux is fucking awesome
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.
Every time I see someone write "sorry for my bad english" their writing is several times better than many of the native speakers I interact with on a daily basis.
When I TA-ed, I swear 75% of the non-Americans students wrote almost perfect papers whereas less than 25% of Americans couldn’t even write and less than 5% had comparably good essays. Honestly depressing.
When I worked at a bank we had a loan officer who wrote in such broken English that the email filter actually started flagging and blocking his outbound emails as a suspected compromise. Worst part is he was handling multimillion dollar agribusiness loans. Second worst part is he's as white American as they come, having had family farming not 20 miles away for generations, so it's not even like he can claim a non-local dialect or second language challenges
I feel attacked
You went straight from windows to vanilla arch ?
Quite impressive
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
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.
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
Linux is awesome
& so are you ^🥁 1, 2, 3, 4… 🎸^
Aww, thank you
I use Vanilla Arch (btw), and sorry for bad English.
Sure buddy.... Is the "bad English" in this thread with us right now?
I laughed when I saw this. Like, it was a guy excited that his computer is working better, including with his printer. Maybe a teensy bit of punctuation I'd do differently, but whatever. It's the Internet. Then suddenly "oh yeah sorry English isn't my first language and I'm sure you can all see that"
Yeah, I assumed they just had a typo or two like we all do from tiem to time.
Your English is great, OP
Is the "bad English" in this thread
It's in every thread right now.
Welcome!
For a while now Linux has been better at most personal computing things except gaming. And for server uses an even longer time.
There are some specific hardware/software situations where you'll need Windows but it's unlikely to happen at home. Unless you have very peculiar hobbies.
Unless you have very peculiar hobbies.
Or you take your photography a bit too seriously! Good noise reduction software is next to impossible to do on Linux. It's the only reason I have a windows box in my house
Just a thought… Don’t use AI noise reduction! I’ve seen the “magic” they produce and am not impressed. I take pride in capturing the image, not relying on software to recreate it the way I wish it had been shot (I recognize this is a bit hypocritical given that I do use noise reduction in Darktable).
Additionally, I stopped caring about (luminance) noise a long while ago, now, and am perfectly happy with the results I get out of Darktable. In fact, much like film grain, I find modern luminance noise quite pleasing, especially on smaller sensors, and it can add texture and feeling to your image. Still, my default style includes the fantastic, camera model specific, noise reduction profiles by default, which effectively removes color noise and brings luminance noise down to appropriate levels.
The rise in clinical photography and “AI” tools has only given me a stronger drive to be creative and embrace the flaws of my camera and my tools. Call me a romantic, but I want people to know my photos were taken and created by a human, not a machine.
Ok, getting off the soapbox, now xD
What noice reduction software do you use on windows? Very interesting find, do you know what methods your software uses for noice reduction? I wonder if this is something you could open an issue for in the image manipulation softwares that do exist on linux, i.e darktable et.al. :)
Gaming is my struggle, right now. On x11, I get stable framerates, but even though my benchmarks show 60+ fps, it sure looks lower to my eye. On Wayland, gameplay is smooth, but I keep getting this weird thing where after 20-30 minutes of gameplay I’ll get this weird input lag, where my mouse movement stops and then “catches up” every second or so, resulting in choppy gameplay despite the smooth framerate.
If I can figure that out, I’d happily drop my Windows partition.
Yeah it's quite nice and more fun to use than Windows, I admit it's pretty hectic on my first week of switching, but after learning a few commonly used terminal commands and open source softwares, I can do pretty much almost anything some time without needing to use DE I can just use tty instead
There's plenty of good reasons to keep a windows device updated and available for use.
Honestly, I prefer that to spinning up a windows VM, especially if your needs include Windows software that interfaces directly with external hardware.
I realize that's not an option for everyone, but for those who have an extra device available, or can afford a used laptop to keep in a closet, it's well worth it IMO.
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.
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
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
I switched last year and brought two computers and four servers along. Very well worth it :)
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 (relative) 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.
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)
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.
Welcome to the brotherhood.
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.
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
Hell yes it's awesome.
It's awesome like physics. It just works.
I use Debian.
I recently made the switch to linux as well and I have it on my laptop and gaming PC. I do keep a portable install of windows on an external drive for more niche cases, such as music production which I had terrible luck with on Linux. When I booted up my laptop with the windows drive, I noticed that my keyboard backlight wasn't working. And it took me a second to realize that Windows doesn't come with basic drivers... In Linux mint, my keyboard backlight worked right away. I also wish I made the jump to Linux much earlier.
For music prod on Linux, have you tried Reaper?
Yes. I've made posts about my problems before. But I use an E drum kit to trigger vsts in a daw. It's just easier for me to use windows.
Yes. Yes it is.
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.
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.
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].
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.
It's mostly a breeze. The only misery I can recall is I remember I had a wonky knockoff Arduino board that kept jumping serial ports, but that was a hardware issue.
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
I agree. Which distro?
Plain Arch
I wish I could experience this pain free Linux I keep hearing about on this website. Programs constantly stutter and glitch out, and if the computer goes to sleep while running my Linux partition it absolutely will not wake up again. I know this is a skill issue, but I've already spent many hours troubleshooting this... I've tried several distros as well. Even the steam compatibility everyone raves about only seems to work for me if I don't use wayland. I can say with certainty that the average person would be completely unwilling to deal with the experience I have had.
I think this "it just works" experience depends much on the hardware and software you use. But no matter what, in the long term, if you're not willing to put in time and learn how stuff works, how to troubleshoot, how to check logs, use the terminal, etc. I think you're going to have a bad time and be disappointed.
I've used Linux exclusively for the past 10 years, both at home and at work, and I wouldn't advise anyone who wants a care-free "it just works" experience. Linux is not good at that, and I think anyone who claims it is does more harm than good.
Linux is good for tinkering, self-hosting stuff, connectivity and flexibility. Most people want their games to work, not this. For me, I love it and I use it for everything including sim racing and VR games.
I am more willing to learn things than the average user I'd say - I work in IT and answer incredibly stupid questions more or less daily. Also, im not a shell expert, but I definitely know my way around bash/zsh/cmd/PS, given the system. I have also been using Linux on and off for around 15 years as well - I had things work well in the past.
I'm guessing my custom built PC might be making things harder. The Nvidia card probably doesn't help, but I feel like my MOBO is probably responsible for my sleep issues. Maybe I just need to try Pop again, I'm currently running NixOS which is my favourite OS in theory, but in practice configuration is a brute force guessing game.
I'm guessing you're on Nvidia system?, I never had a program glitching or crashing on me ever since I make the switch (I exclusively use Wayland and never touch X11 once), maybe a laptop specific issue just like I can't get my fingerprint sensor to work on my machine, but luckily it's not a deal breaker for me
Correct. But I've heard tons of people say Nvidia support is fine now, and that amd is still problematic. I have also tried Pop OS
I have a few computers, and some (like my old thinkpads) work very reliably, while my modern desktop has some issues sometimes (e.g. i literally cannot get waking from sleep working, at all)
I'm going to copy paste what I replied to someone else in here, just on the wild chance that this is your issue too and this might help:
I also experienced issues with my system completely freezing after waking up from sleep - for me the issue turned out to be due to bluetooth/wifi drivers, and with this workaround things work fine again: https://github.com/alimert-t/suspend-freeze-fix-for-mt7921e/tree/main My card is mt7922 (found that out with lshw -C network) but I guess it’s having the same issue, because after applying that fix it all works now.
Which distros have you tried? My experience was rough at first when I finally cut Windows out of my life a year ago. I'm on a ASRock B450M with a Ryzen 3600 and a 2070 Super. Started with Ubuntu > Mint > Debian > and finally settled on Pop_OS, and things have been rock solid. Most recently installed Cosmic desktop on another drive and even the 5th Alpha is playing Steam and Heroic games with few issues.
I started with Ubuntu back in the day, and used that (and its variants) as my only distro up until ~2017, when i used Mint and Fedora in university. I started messing around with Arch maybe 3 or 4 years ago, then tried Pop!_OS, then went back to Arch, then tried NixOS and have stuck there since.
Use local LLM model, it will turbo charge your learning curve.
Tells you commands and will explain the errors. This is prime LLM domains IMHO since everytbing Linux is well documented online.
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.
That's good to hear about the 3d printer as I have yet to connect mine to try the same thing. I just have to learn freecad though, as i used to use fusion 360 which is not packaged for Linux.
I used SketchUp web for my modeling (it's free), for the life of me I can't figured out Freecad, it's a few open source softwares I can't warp my head around
Yea, I have heard about SketchUp as well, but if I can learn the full FOSS alternative instead then I'd like to use it. I guess I could use Blender or something too, but I really liked the engineering oriented parametric modeling that Fusion360 was doing with the timeline.
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