Mastodawn

Victor Henriques Feb 23

My son bought a second-hand Windows 11 PC for games, and has been having BSOD issues with the graphics card since he got it. Out of desperation he tried installing Bazzite on it, which I encouraged, but was also trying not to get his hopes up, telling him that the some things might not work. But he reports that "absolutely everything works better than Windows".
I suggested he use KDE for the desktop, and he is blown away about how good everything looks, and how easy the user experience is. He has used Linux for a bit probably 7 or 8 years ago when he used a salvaged laptop at uni that had Ubuntu on it, and he remembers that being a bit janky and frustrating, but now he's decided that he'll wipe the Windows partition and stay with Linux.
So keep it up, clever people that are making Linux distros and software, you're winning.
#Linux #Bazzite #KDE #Steam

GabeMoralesVR Feb 23

@stib I have an arcade machine that runs a PC inside. For some reason, I absolutely could not install windows 10 on it years ago. Any time I would try, it would crash and bluescreen constantly. It'd even crash during the install. Then Valve realsed Steam Proton and I decided to give Ubuntu a try on it. Worked flawlessly. It's still running ubuntu to this day. I played VF5 on it just this evening. If you want to really blow his mind, get him a steam deck and show him the sleep mode on it.

@stib It's worth noting too that Ubuntu is GNOME-based and he probably just didn't like that.

Though I won't deny that things have very definitely improved pretty quickly in the Linux world. I too recently finally tossed out Windows even as a long time gamer. I've been with MS since MS-DOS 6.22 and some Windows 3.1 for gaming, so for them to make me finally declare that Windows is completely beyond redemption and that I will never ever install it on my machine again kind of says something I think. I didn't stick with it because it was great. I put up with all their crap to a point. But Windows 10 was already pushing past what I would tolerate and then they made 11. I hope Microsoft goes bankrupt.

@nazokiyoubinbou @stib gnome ui is actively hostile to most users. I genuinely don't understand why anyone uses it these days.

@nechesh @stib It's made to resemble Apple systems, so I suppose that those trying to escape Apple's grip probably find it more comfortable.

On the one hand, I'm ok with easing Apple users over. On the other hand, does it have to be so bloated and the default on so many things?

Sometimes it feels to me like GNOME has actually taken Apple's whole way of thinking. "We'll decide for you what's best so don't do any thinking for yourself anymore."

@nazokiyoubinbou @nechesh Can confirm. As a rcovered MacOS fanboy I like the look of Gnome, when the look works and doesn't randomly chuck some light-themed windows in my fastidiously dark themed world because it seems impossible to consistently theme GTK apps without it being a full time job. KDE was always too windows-ish for me. I have begun to overcome my allergy to Qt though.
But these days I prefer ultra-minimalist tiling WMs like Sway. If I need widgets or control panels I'm happier using the terminal or a TUI app.

@stib @nechesh Sadly the theming stuff seems to be hard on everything I guess. I think it's this sort of issue: https://xkcd.com/927/

They all do it a bunch of different ways and since no one seems to be able to agree on it it's just resulting in any attempts to fix it just adding to the problem instead.

Well, it's weird you're fine with QT since it's sort of the same system KDE is built on, just much more minimal. I've given LXQT a shot a few times and it's not bad though! It doesn't have much configuration, but it still gives the user more control over some basics than XFCE4 does. (I definitely can't get behind Sway though. Too minimal for me!)

But in the end, yeah, if I'm introducing an Apple user to Linux I'd tell them GNOME and if a Windows user I'd tell them KDE.

Standards

xkcd

@nazokiyoubinbou @nechesh I think that's why I like Sway. All the configuration is more or less left up to you, and the whole ecosystem is designed to be tweaked by the user so the process is generally straightforward and well-documented.
Of course the downside it that all the configuration is more or less left up to you, so if you have more in your life than making your user interface on your lappietappie just perfect then you need to re-prioritise. But if I wasn't fiddling with dotfiles I'd probably be out doing crimes and making a ruckus so there's that …

@nechesh @nazokiyoubinbou @stib to be fair. If your needs align with gnome. It's fine. I daily drive gnome I can customize the few things I want. And everything else just works out of the box.

I want to like kde but I'm always frustrated by it.

@codemonkeymike @nechesh @nazokiyoubinbou Gnome seems to have copied the Apple philosphy of "we'll make everything really nice, but you won't be able to customise it because we know best", which works, until it doesn't. I'm a tweak-freak so eventually something about the desktop environment will enough me until I end up breaking things trying to fix it (for Gnome it was the way all the corners are getting rounder and rounder until the whole thing looks like it was designed by Fisher Price so that toddlers don't cut themselves on any sharp edges).
I mean I used to run Litestep on my XP machine. I modified the shell so much that I managed to completely remove explorer.exe. It was great, but not, in hindsight, the best use of my time.

@stib @nechesh @nazokiyoubinbou meanwhile KDE (the most customizable DE ever) can't handle Alt + Tab properly.

You should be able to Alt + Tab. (keep holding alt) see all your icons... then hover over the icon you want to switch to.. and when you let go of alt, it switches to it.

Gnome, cinnamon, MacOS, Windows, etc all work like that.. yet somehow Plasma.. its not possible.

So yes.. even they seem to be silly opinionated

@codemonkeymike
Wait, I'm pretty sure KDE has a task switcher, and it's invoked with alt+tab by default ...?
https://userbase.kde.org/System_Settings/Task_Switcher

@nechesh @nazokiyoubinbou

System Settings/Task Switcher - KDE UserBase Wiki

@stib @[email protected] @nechesh It does indeed do that with alt-tab and you can configure a lot about the alt-tab behavior. I guess they want very very specific functionality (namely specific handling of mouse hovering,) but I think it can do all that in fact.

EDIT: They can't see my message though I guess. I see they're on fosstodon which I have blocked.

@nazokiyoubinbou @stib @nechesh trust me.. i've been throuhg it a million times..

Alt tab can be configured to look ok.. but you mouse hover won't switch the app.. only click, tab or mouse wheel.

I know its a silly thing but workflow thing that other major DE's have and it's a big flow thing for me. I'm always shocked there is no way to make Plasma do it..

@codemonkeymike
Ah, OK. Gotcha.
@nazokiyoubinbou @nechesh

@nazokiyoubinbou It was probably also the hardware, it was a pretty underpowered old laptop he'd had at high school.
I've been on Windows since XP, since I switched from Mac when I had to start paying for my own computers when I went freelance, and Windows gave you far more bang for your buck with 3D animation and editing. Never really *liked* it, but it got the job done, and the software I used meant that the choice was really only Mac or Windows.
Then got employed again in a studio where we all used Macs, so went Mac again for a few years. Then when hardware upgrading time rolled around I did the maths and went back to a PC.
In the meantime the software I used changed from Lightwave and Adobe Premiere / After Effects to Blender and Resolve / Fusion, both of which can run, and indeed run much more snappily on Linux. So I bunged in an SSD and added a cheeky Arch partition to it and basically never used Windows again unless there was a legacy project I had to work on in an Adobe app.
That computer got worked to death and while I'm waiting for the wheels to turn I'm back on a Mac, and not liking the experience. In the years since I last used it MacOS has gone from being a great OS, albeit only on expensive gear, to being just meh, albeit only on expensive gear.

there is beauty in simplicity Feb 23

@stib I have had a similar experience, and love the KDE

Carlos Solís Feb 23

Does he typically play single-player or multiplayer? If the latter, he'll probably be stuck with Windows regardless for a long time.

Martijn Vos Feb 23

Plenty of multiplayer games work fine on linux. Only the ones with rootkit-level anticheat don't.

②Ϣƛ_m②×H‹Ꮬ: nOHƛ2Þ0}“4Ϣ„41»ʀnƛkP$c[n|'.)“W∑}”Feb 23

That's patently false. There's basically a handful of games that use kernel-level anticheat that willingly break linux compat, but most of the popular multiplayer titles are compatible.

Carlos Solís Feb 23

The "handful" that don't work are unfortunately the most popular of the bunch: LOL, GTA5, COD, Valorant, Fortnite, Apex, Destiny 2, even FIFA/EAFC.

Bernie the Wordsmith Feb 23

@stib How's #Bazzite for a normal desktop usage aside from Gaming?

Chris 🦑Feb 23

@berniethewordsmith

great. #writtenfrommybazzite

It's not a "gaming os". it's an atomic fedora with strong gaming support.

@sturmsucht @berniethewordsmith After looking around for a distro that played nicely with Davinci Resolve (they suggest Rocky, but I did Not Like) I ended up using Garuda, which is a similar gamer focused distro, but Arch-based. It provided easy installation and tweaks to get everything working without too much fuss. Apart from the lurid colour scheme (think 17 year old boy's idea of cool desktop theme) it was a rock-solid desktop for $dayjob. My later installs have all been Arch from scratch but it was a good way to get into the distro.
#GarudaLinux #Arch

@berniethewordsmith @stib I'm using the Gnome version, it's a normal desktop as long as you don't set it up to boot into Steam. The only part that may feel strange to a Linux veteran is that it is atomic/immutable, for a new user I don't think it's normally an issue. Universal Blue also produce Aurora and Bluefin, which aren't gaming focussed, and they're all built on Fedora Silverblue/Kinoite.

@Halaana @berniethewordsmith have never got my head around the immutable distro thing. For someone like my son whose idea of fun is not doing sysadmin tasks on the command line (weird I know), it sounds like it might be a good thing … ?

Bernie the Wordsmith Feb 23

@stib @Halaana Was thinking about that. Immutability may appease certain groups of people that so not transition to Linix because something may break during the install-a-lot phase. Reversal is just a click away

@berniethewordsmith
A distro that you don't have to troubleshoot—where's the fun in that?
@Halaana

Bernie the Wordsmith Feb 23

@stib @Halaana You mean I would not spend hours in forums? What is this, a pirate ship?

@stib @berniethewordsmith It's OSTree based in this case. Basically the system files are read only, and updates can be reverted if something goes wrong (basically swap an image). The downside is that if you do need to change something in OS it can be more difficult, but a lot of us are out of our depth at that point anyway. Distros like Bazzite come with most necessary customisation done anyway, whereas base Fedora you have to hunt codecs and nvidia drivers.

@Halaana @berniethewordsmith Ah, so that must be why you had to be very specific about hardware when you downloaded the installer.

@stib @berniethewordsmith
For Nvidia cards and laptop etc. models, yes. Either proprietary drivers or, at least for old Nvidia, ones that aren't in the kernel.(I think part of installing those drivers is also disabling the ones on the kernel, so they can't just add them to the base image). For AMD/Intel GPUs and most laptops everything is in the kernel, with the result that you can use it on a different computer from what it was installed on.

@stib @Halaana @berniethewordsmith I've been enjoying Aurora a good bit. For the few items I didn't want to (or couldn't) install as flatpak, it has been a rewarding learning experience in how to set up containers in distrobox, install apps the "old fashioned" way, and export to the host.

Piranhallama Feb 23

@berniethewordsmith mostly good with the rare annoyance. I've been using Linux for fifteen years or so. On laptops I'll try a new-to-me distro every few months.

Desktop-wise on my gaming machine Bazzite on the whole just works. I think the only issue I see on a semi regular basis is being unable to interact with an in focus application until it's selected through the running applications picker or whatever it's actually called. Out of the box some Steam launches would take forever to load initially due to something like rendering shaders only it wasn't quite that. I had to add a few lines to a config file to resolve.

"Musty Bits" McGee Feb 23

@berniethewordsmith @stib there's a couple other spins that are less gaming focused - aurora and bluefin.

Don Hawkins - W7DAH Feb 23

@stib
Yee-Haa! Glad it worked and glad there is one less Windoz box out there!

leberschnitzel Feb 23

@stib pretty much how I felt when I made the switch to Nobara 2 years ago. I was worried that it would be a worse gaming experience and that many things wouldn't work, but since even on Windows I didn't want to support Kernel Level Anti Cheat Games, the switch was pretty painless.
There's still some tinkering from time to time, but the daily use experience is really really good. Much better than Windows these days.

transfem_verify

@stib but what about the invasive kernel level anti-cheats which takes just one hacker or rogue employee to ruin your entire system !!!!!!

@inaba For him not a problem, just plug in a thumb-drive and re-install.

Ela - TechnicalOtter Feb 23

@stib Bazzite saved my old Ryzen 1600/GTX 1060 machine.

They’re doing some amazing work at Bazzite and their other images are also great. I deployed Aroura for my parent’s machine. Never have had a tech support call for anything OS based since. It’s all stupid stuff like websites doing strange things.

@stib What's the graphics card out of curiosity?

@boggo A radeon of some sort (I just had a look through the case, I'd have to turn it on and try to remember his password for more details).

@stib I'm glad your son is enjoying his Linux experience these days more than 7 years ago, the software really has progressed a lot since!

Re: the random BSODs, it *is* possible that they are due to flaky/failing GPU and/or PSU, so beware that this may be just because Linux is not hitting those spots and/or being more efficient, so it's possible random crashes will start happening under Linux too. Might be a good idea to try some stress test of the CPU, RAM and GPU, and check the PSU.

Benedikt Ritter (he/him)Feb 23

@stib parenting goals 😊

@britter Yep, must admit I'm pretty proud.

Solemarc Feb 23

@stib I had a similar experience. My 2070 super was on he way out (it was only a year old!) but it would idle at 100% GPU until, it couldn't run any games on windows. I installed popos 22.04 and squeezed another couple months out of the GPU just fine. I've never understood why this happened but my work laptop (windows) is now idling on 80% RAM usage so I guess it was just a prelude of what was to come.

régis calustris Feb 23

@stib My PC which formerly ran Windows 10 would also BSOD all the time after I changed the PSU (still no idea how that can be a thing). Then I installed Mint XFCE and it is probably the most stable computer I ever used and I am a complete newbie when it comes to Linux.

Renke Meuwese Feb 23

@stib yes! Gaming on Linux is just ludicrously easy now. I don't even know why it took me so long to make the switch myself.

@meuwese it seems to be getting exponentially better. I don't do much gaming, but it's not that long since the choices were tuxcart or … well tuxcart really.

Renke Meuwese Feb 23

@stib lol, right. I now got even very un-fossy titles like Sonic Racing: Crossworlds and Hogwarts Legacy to work with minimal tweaking. Well, Hogwarts required a little because for some reason my GPU wasn't properly detected and the game tried to render with CPU only! But apart from that it's been almost stupidly smooth.

Not a fan of Warzone 2100, TTD or Battle for Wesnoth? heh, those were the days.

CounterPillow Feb 23

@stib this has been my experience with my non-techy friends as well. They have problems with Windows and ask me about Linux, I warn them they should temper their expectations, and then they're blown away by how much better things work than either of us expected.

@CounterPillow I feel like a tipping point has been, or is soon to be reached (though this is a n=1 study, so … ).
I was Linux curious for years, I really wanted to use it it, but would install it, then not have any use for it because none of the software I needed was available, or was so broken it wasn'tfeasible. Now that's not the case. I can do my $DayJob (animation, motion graphics and video editing) on Linux, increasingly on FOSS software, and be *more* productive. My current experience is that Windows and MacOS are now less stable, slower and harder to use the way I want.
And the flip side is people who have no real pre-existing motivation to use Linux, but who are finding that the experience of using it is good enough that it's worth jumping off the mainstream platforms. I can't see them going back unless the old OSes pull a real rabbit out of a hat.

Negative Kelvin Feb 23

@stib A coworker, who does desktop support for Windows users and isn't a Linux person at all, installed Bazite out of the blue and is raving about it.

I was able to install a AAA title to play with some friends and it literally just worked. Zero issues.

I'm so used to occasionally booting into Windows over the past couple of decades -- now I'm just confused. I wasn't prepared at all for gaming and CAD to be fully functional.

Martijn Vos Feb 24

@NegativeK @stib

Gaming on Linux is fantastic now. I've tried linux many times in the past, but it was always gaming that brought me back. I've played Morrowind on Wine back in the Ubuntu 6 days, but lots of games didn't really work. Now, largely thanks to the excellent work at Valve l, almost everything just works, and works perfectly.

I will never go back.

@stib this is the reason I stopped dual booting windows 10 in like 2016. Windows would crash with my gpu but not Ubuntu

Aside from being forced windows at work, haven't touch a non Linux machine since

Miha Markič Feb 23

@stib he could do Windows restore first, just out of curiosity. Windows are bad but probably not like that

Eric Lawton Feb 24

I picked KDE just for the tagging file system.

Hierarchies are inadequate.

@RaymondPierreL3

@EricLawton
Interesting. What's a tagging file system?
@RaymondPierreL3

Eric Lawton Feb 24

You can add tags to files and find them by tag, as well as the traditional hierarchy.

I find that it makes it much easier to find things.

Most photo management apps support this, because people have so many pictures and it's hard to remember if you filed the picture of Fred in Newtown under Fred or Newtown.

This extends it to all files

@RaymondPierreL3