Mastodawn

Kroc Camen Jan 23

Welcome one and all to the big #Linux BS thread! I get that it's necessary to switch to Linux, I'm imploring you to do so, and I don't want to discourage anyone but I need to document the ways in which Linux is just not ready for 600 Million more users and I don't think it's any technical limitation so much as a lack of design self-awareness.

Case study 1: A basic 1GHz Intel netbook with 4GB RAM. I installed #Manjaro. Keys, touchpad, wifi and screen brightness work, very impressive. I also really like that Manjaro is not dumbed down and I was able to get plenty of information about the hardware.

But hibernate doesn't work. Clicking the button does nothing -- already a design flaw in that it can't even tell me *why* it isn't working. A quick Internet search lets me know that `systemctl hibernate` is the console command for invoking hibernate and should give me an error message. The swapfile size is not big enough, just 512MB for a machine with 4GB of RAM.

Can I resize the swapfile, using `dd` and a number of other `systemctl` commands? Yes! Should I have to? No! If I enable hibernation and it can't hibernate because the swapfile is too small then it should TELL ME and provide a GUI to fix it, and that's without considering that it should have set the swapfile size big enough during installation anyway!

But still, that's not enough. Despite having a hibernate feature, the installation didn't modify `initramfs` & GRUB to handle hibernation! Can I do this manually? Yes! Do / Should I have / want to? Absolutely not!

Now downloading #Kubuntu in hopes that its own features actually work out-of-the-box :|

#KDE #LinuxIsNotReadyYet

Kroc Camen Jan 23

There is a special place in hell for error messages that give a list of instructions to follow, rather than a button to actually just do the thing.

Why is this message appearing? What does any of this mean to someone who doesn't know what these things are? Wayland? KWin? Fctix? (I know what these are, but there's 600 million soon-to-be-deprecated Windows users who don't)

#Linux #KDE #Kubutnu #LinuxIsNotReadyYet

Kroc Camen Jan 23

#Kubuntu hibernate doesn't work out of the box, so this is likely more to do with #KDE in general. That said, I did find a "solution", or rather an install option that makes hibernate work as advertised. #Manjaro does give an option for "swap with hibernate" during partitioning. Why was this not exposed in Kubutnu?

Again, my complaint is not that hibernate doesn't work because I didn't RTFM and do the leet hax in the terminal, but that under default options, the hibernate feature is present but does not work when initiated and worse still, does not communicate why nor provide a graphical means of resolving. Even Windows has a GUI for managing the swap file.

If you've had a machine running #Linux for a while and you decide to utilise hibernate at that crucial moment and it doesn't work unless you reinstall your OS or re-partition your drive and rebuild the intramfs / grub, likely requiring a reboot anyway -- why is the feature even presented as available!??

#LinuxIsNotReadyYet

Kroc Camen Jan 23

Problem #2: I use #CloudFlare WARP (https://1.1.1.1) to avoid traffic blocking on public wifi spots as I move around a lot with a laptop. On Windows, I just download and install it.

CloudFlare provide APT or YUM packages for #Linux. You're on #Arch (#Manjaro)? Well, I hope you like the terminal!

I am more resourceful than most, for I suspect the majority of current Windows 10 users would be stumped at that point. I happen to know that I can enable the AUR repository for some more software and there is a build script provided there: https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/cloudflare-warp-bin Note how in the first comment that it won't work until you use the terminal to enable the service.

Regardless, something is amiss, as even when I enable the service and reboot, it's not the same UI as on Windows and doesn't even seem to be the same program. It wants me to sign in to some corporate web interface and not just enable secure DNS tunneling via a simple toggle. Here, I am at a loss.

I have installed Linux 5 times now, but now I need to change to another distro that uses APT or YUM, but *also* has working hibernate!

Now, the current state of obtaining third-party software in #Linux is much like the warring states of feudal Japan with no clear Nobunaga (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oda_Nobunaga) yet to unite the Linux software ecosystem. I don't really have a recommendation here for Manjaro, or #KDE; this is a fundamental problem with the lack of binary stability in Linux software but a lot more consideration should be given to end users who just want to run software and less attention to warring factions trying to be the one true standard (Flatpack etc)

#LinuxIsNotReadyYet

AUR (en) - cloudflare-warp-bin

Kroc Camen Jan 23

Sometimes you can't make this stuff up

Kroc Camen Jan 24

Installed #Debian (#KDE), hibernate works by default. Uses Kernel 6.1 and older software like Firefox ESR. I would recommend Debian if you want a super-stable KDE-based desktop, but I need something more up-to-date (but not bleeding-edge!) because as a developer I invariably end up needing to install a more recent version of a program over the LTS versions.

Now installing #Fedora 41 (KDE) because I read that it uses Kernel 6.11. This is the 7th time I've installed #Linux but I'm starting to narrow things down.

— edit: Fedora 41 does not support hibernate, lol 🙃

#LinuxIsNotReadyYet

Kroc Camen Jan 24

Time for #OpenSuSE Tumbleweed! https://get.opensuse.org/tumbleweed/ The installer is quite involved but it does at least have an option to set the swap size to the RAM size! Does "for suspend" mean hibernate? I'm not sure, but we'll find out.

#linux #LinuxIsNotReadyYet

openSUSE Tumbleweed

Learn about the openSUSE distributions and download them for free

Get openSUSE

Kroc Camen Jan 27

Going to try #Debian testing; instructions say install stable and then switch to the testing branch...
WHY ISN'T THIS JUST A DROP-DOWN TO SELECT THE BRANCH YOU INSANE PEOPLE!?

#linux #LinuxIsNotReadyYet

Kroc Camen Jan 31

Following these instructions nuked the OS. No problem, installed #Debian Trixie from ISO instead (this makes the 12th time I've installed #Linux). I have KDE, hibernate, a recent enough kernel + software, and .deb compatibility -- hopefully I can stay here. #OpenSuSE Tumbleweed was excellent and I would have stuck with that but I couldn't install some 3rd party software because .deb is often the only choice.

#LinuxIsNotReadyYet

Kroc Camen Feb 3

There are lots of different #Linux package managers. This, in of itself, is fine but how do I communicate to users how to install software/?

Let's imagine there was a shared set of basic commands that would invoke the relevant package manager on the system, e.g. `software update`, `software install llvm`. Now a shell script doesn't have to check which package manger is used.

Is this too much to ask of linux distros/? Am I simply too naive to think this sort of beneficial cooperation is obvious/? I don't mind that package managers are different and do different things, I'm only concerned with how an end-user does the thing they want to do with the minimum of fuss. To most people, the specifics of package managers isn't their hobby.

P.S. I'm inventing "/?" to mean a rhetorical question because I can see questioning the Linux mainstay invites contentiousness

#LinuxIsNotReadyYet

Kroc Camen May 3

It would probably be wise to check the size of the EFI partition before writing to it but Linux is not that smart. Can you resize the EFI partition in Linux? No. No, you can’t. (I tried GParted and KDE Partition Manager!)

I had to return to Windows via the BIOS’ own boot manager and install Partition Wizard Free 9.1, a decade old version that was the last one that actually did anything at all in their free edition.

Now try imagine explaining this process to a Boomer or iPad-kid.

Kroc Camen May 14

Sure, I have a 1TB drive, but just cancel that multi-gigabyte download at 85% because the /tmp directory is arbitrarily capped at 9GB #linux

Kroc Camen May 25

Kroc Camen Jun 2

Currently stuck between a rock (a broken #Linux install that requires changing distro, thanks #KDE Wallet, or just not using Linux until the fix arrives) and a hard place (#Windows software I can’t move to Linux because I can’t get Xen to work and I probably need the native Windows drivers to work; OpenCL, Vulkan etc). Going to try #CachyOS, I hear good things about it

Kroc Camen Jun 3

Gotta love when they rewrite software in *shiny new thing* and leave out the most basic functionality from the previous way things were done. How large are these downloads? What's the download speed? How long will this take? It could be 6 minutes or 6 hours, who knows but it's "friendlier"!

@kde #linux #kde #ui #ux

Linux: "You should use Linux, it'll do everything Windows does!!"

Windows: "Great! Can I import my iTunes library with everything preserved?"

Linux: "Yes, just download this hand-written script someone wrote a decade ago, open a terminal, ..."

Windows: "That only works for RhythmBox or Amarok, what if I want to use Clementine or Strawberry?"

Linux: "Ok, so just edit the script code and adapt the SQL schema to..."

There are TENS OF MILLIONS of people using #iTunes and #Linux is obsessing over rewriting the same apps over and over again so that they can have less functionality and users can't theme them any more.

Kroc Camen Jun 15

Can I have separate a column layout for each playlist / view in #RhythmBox like #iTunes? No, of course not, this is a #GNOME app, we don't do that here!

I genuinely don't think Linux developers have a clue why iTunes was so popular and how it still beats everything else available on #Windows or #Linux. Like, I have a collection of podcasts for which the RSS feeds are either dead or the early episodes are no longer present in the feed. In iTunes I can take any file, change its media-type to a podcast to make it appear in the podcasts page, and attach it to any existing podcast feed as a historical item allowing me to preserve the feed as it was originally.

Kroc Camen Jun 15

OMG this is hilarious (read: terrible); in the @gnome #RhythmBox import window, if you click on any song, then there's NO WAY to deselect it, meaning you can no longer import all songs at once! And Ctrl+A doesn't work. #linux #ui #ux

Kroc Camen Jun 15

Did you even know that in the file info window in #iTunes you can use Ctrl+V to paste album art from the clipboard or from the filesystem? Did you know that you can have multiple pieces of art for a file?? @gnome #RhythmBox and @kde #Elisa can't even edit album art.

You can pseudo-trim songs in iTunes by setting custom start and end times; it doesn't alter the file, but start/end will be skipped when played, as well as on iPod. Per-file volume and equalizer adjustments? Separate per-file strings just for sorting Title / Artist / Album?

Also #podcast and audiobooks are managed with all the same above features. Did you know that Microsoft added podcasts to #Zune Player, but not Windows Media Player?

Each playlist can have its own columns and ordering. Album art can be inlined and scaled within.

Look at this, Linux developers. Linux has *nothing* to compete with this.

#linux #ui #ux #kde

Kroc Camen Jun 15

And the thing is that even though this is so maddening, it doesn’t make me want to go file some bugs because this isn’t a matter of buggy code, it’s total developer blindness of the blindingly obvious.

Any individual feature request bug I could file will be dismissed as unimportant; there is no bug you can file for a failure in the direction of an entire platform. What would I title the bug report, "Hire a UX person aware of reality"? If I tell them there are 10, maybe 100 million iTunes users and @kde should import from it out-of-the-box with feature parity, some fucking Bugzilla Nazi will say “That’s Windows, we’re not Windows and it’s not our problem.”

Kroc Camen Jun 16

Feature parity with commercial software should be the *bare minimum* that #Linux apps should be aiming for; that's the checklist that the project should be working through, not letting basic features languish in bug reports for 20 years

Kroc Camen Jul 7

#Windows auto-installs stuff you didn't ask for? Just this week #OpenSuSE has installed Jupyter(?), Java, Myrlyn(?) and bloody *Chromium* and if I remove them, they just install again at the next rolling release, and that's on top of #Firefox being the no.1 offender of reinstalling itself. Yes, I can block them from installing via the package manager or arcane incantation on the command line, but someone somewhere keeps adding dependencies to software I DONT WANT.

I'm tired of fighting my #Linux install. I've used Windows all week because it's actually less of a fight.

karlggest Jul 7

@Kroc
Use Leap.

Natasha Nox 🇺🇦🇵🇸Jul 7

@Kroc It did what? 🤨 I never, ever heard something like that. Like, Myrlyn makes sense since it's a replacement of system tooling you most likely already had as it's part of YaST. But the other stuff only ever happens if it's either a dependency of something else, or you manually chose to install metapackages and those things just got added to them.

@Natanox @Kroc my money is on a metapackage too

Kroc Camen Jul 7

@drV @Natanox Indeed, this would explain it. Which one, I don't know. I installed Tumbleweed from ISO, nothing special. I just wish I didn't have to deal with this, I'm tired. I want to be creating, not spending my time trying to get the system under control. Win11 with AtlasOS to clean it up is a million times less work.

@Kroc Oh, no. That sucks!

Eliot Lash Jun 16

@Kroc Good thread. I've been using Linux off and on for 25 years. I've gotten used to the many UX stumbling blocks but it doesn't mean I like them.

Latest rage-inducing event has been on my steam deck which I use as a secondary PC. There's a program called distrobox which allows you to install and run programs in a tenant OS, which is very necessary due to the immutable rootfs, it's the only way to install some software outside flatpaks...

Kroc Camen Jun 16

@Eliot_L The insanity is that there are multiple checkpoint, COW and transaction capable filesystems available -- there is zero need to use two partitions like it's 1998 and you're installing RedHat

Eliot Lash Jun 16

@Kroc yeah SteamOS is based on arch, but I think valve wants to ensure that updates always work so they just re-image the rootfs every system update. Also I think they envision SteamOS desktop mode as being used mostly for gaming and light desktop applications that can be installed from flatpak.

Bazzite solves this more elegantly using an overlay filesystem. If I was starting from scratch I might try installing bazzite on my deck but at this point, customizing my SteamOS install is a sunk cost.

Eliot Lash Jun 16

@Kroc So valve has decided to include it in their base image, which is helpful for new users but broke existing installs. The project documents the new install process but no instructions on how to upgrade. I asked for help on their official matrix server and the only "help" I got was someone telling me I should have used some other meta-management command when I was setting up my container in the first place. I spent countless hours configuring a dev env there and now it may be trashed. FFS 😡

@Kroc having recently tried to move back to owning my media I spent some time trying out a bunch of different music players for Linux. I've gone with Amarok.

lecroix74 Jun 15

@Kroc as far as I am aware Rhythmbox development has kind of stalled (read: the app is not well maintained)

lecroix74 Jun 15

@Kroc the question about iTunes availability should really be aimed at Apple developing team

kellenoffdagrid 🌱🌧🌻Jun 15

@Kroc granted, I think the desktop apps available for local music playback aren't great in general, it's been a neglected sector for nearly a decade now. I'm with you though, I'd like to see more going on with RhythmBox, it's barely maintained these days. I'd contribute but I don't know enough C/C++ or whatever they use.

Kroc Camen Jun 16

@kellenoffdagrid People's music collections didn't magically evaporate after 2015, so the lack of music app development is a failure of leadership, not technology.

kellenoffdagrid 🌱🌧🌻Jun 16

@Kroc oh I agree it's not a technology issue, it's a matter of developer priorities, but I don't blame the hobbyist devs and volunteer workers for shifting their priorities in that era. Lots has changed since then though, and I've seen a lot of new local music players pop up written for the modern Linux desktop environments. I've seen something of a resurgence in interest for local library management, so I've got hope it's gonna get better soon.