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noodlejetski, in Linux gamers, what distro are you currently on?

EndeavourOS with Plasma. migrated from Manjaro after one too many questionable decision on their side.

nlm,
@nlm@beehaw.org avatar

What bugged you about Manjaro?

noodlejetski,

basically every thing on https://manjarno.snorlax.sh/, one by one. I just reached the point when I decided to hop to another distro at the next reformat.

nlm,
@nlm@beehaw.org avatar

Sure, there are some bad mistakes in there but that site feels like a personal vendetta though.

regulatorg, in Linux gamers, what distro are you currently on?

PopOS is best for out the box gaming, its similar to Ubuntu so you'll be familiar with it

nlm,
@nlm@beehaw.org avatar

What’s their biggest advantages against Ubuntu?

averyfalken,

Truthfully it comes with nvidoa drivers pre installed.

Personally I run mint and its just a couple of clicks to get it installed in mint. I tried pop is didn’t like it that much and gave me less stability with some of my use cases

nlm,
@nlm@beehaw.org avatar

Yeah, that’s basically what I figured. Plus some bells and whistles in the design department. Might just as well go with *buntu and install drivers then.

averyfalken,

Don’t know how different it is with buntu I know mint does extra things. I’d you like the cinnamon desktop mints the best bet

simonced, in Linux gamers, what distro are you currently on?

In my case, I use Fedora exclusively (no dual boot).

I tried PopOS, but I had problems with each update.

nlm,
@nlm@beehaw.org avatar

Any particular reason for Fedora or is that just what you are comfortable with?

simonced,

No real reason I think.

I had problems with PopOS, but I could have gone Mint since it’s the one I knew the most.

But since I was reinstalling, I gave Fedora a try, and I liked it so I kept it.

nlm,
@nlm@beehaw.org avatar

Feels like that’s pretty common these days. Most of the big distros are polished enough to get the work done without jumping through too many hoops really.

Lx32, in What's the best Linux alternative to Windows for gaming
@Lx32@feddit.it avatar

ATM I use PopOS on my rtx3050m laptop. Once you understand how to setup all the command for using the discrete graphics it runs flawless.

skookumasfrig,

I use PopOS too. With Lutris, most games run out of the box.

Lx32,
@Lx32@feddit.it avatar

The problem are only native linux games runned trought Steam. In hybrid mode they will not use the discrete graphic card. For the rest I have no problem

skookumasfrig,

I run my entire steam library that way. You need to enable steam play for all games.

Lx32,
@Lx32@feddit.it avatar

I know. I try to explain better. My laptop has the intel integrated graphics and the nvidia dedicated. From PopOs I usw the hybrid mode, zo both the card are running. From lutris and heroic I have no problem. I switch the toggle andthe game will run with the nvidia card. From steam all the games that will use proton use the nvidia card as default. While all native linux games not, they will use the intel ones if not specified.

DEADBEEF, in Going to try Debian 12 when it releases is there anything i should know about Debian in general beforehand?
@DEADBEEF@beehaw.org avatar

Debian-specific advice

Debian is a stable distro, so software versions will remain pretty much the same over the life cycle. This is good if stability (software not changing out from under you) is desired, but if you want to take advantage of new features as they are added to whatever software you’re running, it’s less beneficial. So, if you’re going to run debian as a desktop os, I would recommend switching your apt sources to point to the unstable branch: sid switching your apt sources to point to testing (see below).

You’ll probably see a lot of older tutorials and stackoverflow posts that use apt-get, which predates apt, instead of apt as the package manager. apt is the recommended frontend; apt-get will work, but apt will have a nicer user experience.

Also, on the topic of apt, there are three ways to run updates that you’ll probably see online; this stackexchange post provides a pretty good explanation of the differences between them.

General linux advice that I think is worth sharing

Man pages are pretty helpful once you know how to navigate them. Some tips regarding that:

  • You mentioned that you tried manjaro, so I think you probably already know what man is, but just in case: man is the command that you use to pull up manual pages for basically everything.
  • You can search through the man database for a keyword with the apropos or man -k commands. For example, apropos video pulls up a list of all the man pages that have the word video in their names or descriptions.
  • You might notice when running the above command that there are numbers in parentheses after the manual names. This is because the manuals are broken out into 9 sections based on the types of pages they contain. You can put the section number before the name to specify which section to pull up the manual from. So, if you had two manuals named foo in sections 1 and 3, to pull up the one for section 3 you would use the command: man 3 foo. If you want to read more, man has it’s own manual page, which you can pull up with man man.
  • You can search for text in man with / and ?. / performs a forward search and ? performs a backwards search. You can jump forward to the next result in the search with n or back to the previous result with p.
  • The bottom of man pages will have a ‘see also’ section, which lists related commands. Some man pages will also have an examples section.

Another good place to look for documentation is the arch wiki. A lot of the information on there translates to other distros fairly well, and it’s got huge amounts of well written information. If you use duckduckgo, the bang for it is !aw.

The shell is pretty intimidating for a lot of new users. While it’s not strictly necessary for most things, I do think that you’ll have a smoother linux experience if you become at least a little bit comfortable using it. Here is a bash guide aimed at beginners.

Finishing Thoughts

Looking back at what I’ve written, I realize that I have dumped a lot of information on you. So I think the best piece of advice that I can offer is this: Becoming comfortable with linux (or any new operating system) takes time and can feel overwhelming. Don’t feel pressured to understand everything immediately and don’t be afraid to go slow; Rome wasn’t built in a day.

I’ve been running linux as a daily driver for 6 or 7 years now, and I run debian on my servers, so if you have any questions now or in the future, I am happy to try to answer them.

Hirom,

I would recommend switching your apt sources to point to the unstable branch: sid.

Strongly disagree with this. Most users should use Debian stable, or if you needs new versions of specific software, then maybe testing or backports.

Unstable is intented for Debian maintainers, and people who do QC and debug Debian. Unstable means more frequent bugs and breakages, which only makes sense if you’re working on detecting bugs and fixing them before new packages arrive in testing/stable.

Using unstable without being an advanced Debian users is asking for trouble, because you risk more frequent breakages that requires manual intervention and in-depth Debian/Linux knowledge to fix thing. Veteran Linux users may be comfortable with this, but it’s the wrong choice for most new users.

DEADBEEF,
@DEADBEEF@beehaw.org avatar

Good point. Testing would probably be a better choice; I’ll edit the parent comment to reflect that

Hirom,

Thanks

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