• General Linux Chat and Small Questions v. Install Arch
    4,946 replies, posted
[QUOTE=Generic.Monk;38613400]is there any GUI method I can use to switch between my laptop's normal speaker/headphone output and the HDMI audio output? I like to use headphones but I have a monitor plugged in via HDMI which disables the normal outputs for some non-existent speakers - while I can fix it it requires a bit of config fiddling and replugging every time I start my laptop up and I'd prefer to have a better solution - the normal volume control doesn't seem to help since the HDMI audio seems to be a separate device on the same card which means I can't switch between them using it - I know asking for a painless desktop experience with linux is like asking israel to stop being cunts but there's got to be an easier way[/QUOTE] xfce4-mixer? [QUOTE=BlueYoshi;38614962]Is there a way to like register for the Steam beta? I got the "installer" and shit but it doesn't cooperate.[/QUOTE] It's a closed beta right now, but if you run "steam steam://open/games" in a terminal you can get past the restriction (after it's installed).
[QUOTE=awh;38615128]xfce4-mixer? It's a closed beta right now, but if you run "steam steam://open/games" in a terminal you can get past the restriction (after it's installed).[/QUOTE] I made it so it starts with the session, so it is less of a pain. For NVidia drivers I reccomend unmarking OpenGL Settings > Sync to VBlank on nvidia control panel.
[QUOTE=nikomo;38607413]I just remembered I have a 1-year license to Crossover, might as well give it a try, now that I'm pretty much always in Linux on my laptop.[/QUOTE] CrossOver is awful. POL or just using wine do the exact same thing for free
[QUOTE=FlubberNugget;38626742]CrossOver is awful. POL or just using wine do the exact same thing for free[/QUOTE] Haven't tried POL, but getting TF2 running under crossover was completely painless compared with starting from vanillla wine. I'm not saying crossover isn't rubbish, I really don't know, but it was a nice stop-gap before steam came out with the Linux beta. (Now I have no reason to use it at all... or wine for that matter)
I almost just tasted games in Linux. Sure, I had to disable my second screen, and sure I had to install beta drivers, but it was there, I was in TF2. And then AMD happened. Fuck you, AMD, fix your drivers.
I can't even run TF2 as the linux intel drivers don't support the same opengl version as the windows intel drivers I used before linux.
I was looking into why youtube-viewer doesn't show all the new videos from my subscriptions and apparently youtube's API has a known problem where it doesn't always return the same data you would get from the website...
Yes, a known "problem"
I installed steam (beta) on my laptop (arch). It was trying to update itself and didn't work. Turns out /usr/bin/steam is immutable. Why in the fuck would it be immutable? I don't quite see the advantage here...
Wine devs agreed to call WINE Wine in 2008, and nobody told me? What the fuck? One would think I would have gotten linked to the damn thing in their FAQ somewhere between 2008 and now.
[QUOTE=nikomo;38653248]Wine devs agreed to call WINE Wine in 2008, and nobody told me? What the fuck? One would think I would have gotten linked to the damn thing in their FAQ somewhere between 2008 and now.[/QUOTE] I still call it "Winnie" in my head, is that weird? Wine sounds so odd; it doesn't match "Windows" at all
I just call it Wine and I imagine myself sitting beside a nice fireplace enjoying a nice wine while reading a book about the philosophy and structure of Linux. Classy.
i just call it "fuck this I'll just use a real Windows install" [editline]30th November 2012[/editline] it never works so why bother
I call it: "hold on, let me start my windows VM*" [sub]*No time and love for games[/sub]
Does anyone have issues with freezes in Arch? I know this is a pretty broad question, but I will get complete lockups from time to time: screen freezes, keyboard will not respond (I can't change status of caps lock, num lock, etc.) and I am forced to hard reboot after every attemt to recover fails. It seems to happen while watching flash (big surprise) or while playing games. It is almost identical to freezes I had when first trying to get sleep/suspend to work, and which I still get if I try to suspend the computer while in a virtual terminal. I might try disabling suspend on lid shut and see if I have similar issues, but I wanted to check if anyone here has similar issues. Also WINE is a great tool, especially for older and more trivial windows applications. Does anyone here use it for anything mission-critical on a regular basis?
[QUOTE=Rayjingstorm;38655903]Does anyone have issues with freezes in Arch? I know this is a pretty broad question, but I will get complete lockups from time to time: screen freezes, keyboard will not respond (I can't change status of caps lock, num lock, etc.) and I am forced to hard reboot after every attemt to recover fails. It seems to happen while watching flash (big surprise) or while playing games. It is almost identical to freezes I had when first trying to get sleep/suspend to work, and which I still get if I try to suspend the computer while in a virtual terminal. I might try disabling suspend on lid shut and see if I have similar issues, but I wanted to check if anyone here has similar issues. Also WINE is a great tool, especially for older and more trivial windows applications. Does anyone here use it for anything mission-critical on a regular basis?[/QUOTE] I had this issue with an SSD that would lock up from time to time. Probably not related to your issue though.
[QUOTE=FlamingSpaz;38657506]I had this issue with an SSD that would lock up from time to time. Probably not related to your issue though.[/QUOTE] Probably not; did it cause any issues with other peripherals or was it just the SDD? Also, nice avatar :v: (that thing is mesmerizing)
[QUOTE=Rayjingstorm;38655903]Does anyone have issues with freezes in Arch? I know this is a pretty broad question, but I will get complete lockups from time to time: screen freezes, keyboard will not respond (I can't change status of caps lock, num lock, etc.) and I am forced to hard reboot after every attemt to recover fails. It seems to happen while watching flash (big surprise) or while playing games. It is almost identical to freezes I had when first trying to get sleep/suspend to work, and which I still get if I try to suspend the computer while in a virtual terminal. I might try disabling suspend on lid shut and see if I have similar issues, but I wanted to check if anyone here has similar issues. Also WINE is a great tool, especially for older and more trivial windows applications. Does anyone here use it for anything mission-critical on a regular basis?[/QUOTE] Check dmesg.
[QUOTE=IpHa;38658648]Check dmesg.[/QUOTE] I can't believe I hadn't considered that yet... ( :downs: ) The ring buffer no longer has messages from that far back, but systemd journal logged events leading up to the crash, and it isn't giving me any clues. In my frustration I had run my fingers across all of the media controls in an attempt to get a response but didn't get anything; the log shows them all and then an abrupt shutdown, but nothing indicating a problem.
[QUOTE=Rayjingstorm;38655903]Does anyone have issues with freezes in Arch? I know this is a pretty broad question, but I will get complete lockups from time to time: screen freezes, keyboard will not respond (I can't change status of caps lock, num lock, etc.) and I am forced to hard reboot after every attemt to recover fails. It seems to happen while watching flash (big surprise) or while playing games. It is almost identical to freezes I had when first trying to get sleep/suspend to work, and which I still get if I try to suspend the computer while in a virtual terminal. I might try disabling suspend on lid shut and see if I have similar issues, but I wanted to check if anyone here has similar issues. Also WINE is a great tool, especially for older and more trivial windows applications. Does anyone here use it for anything mission-critical on a regular basis?[/QUOTE] This is caused by hardware acceleration in flash; flash is terrible and you should either uninstall it or its hardware acceleration capabilities (it's in some libvsomethingsomething library). [editline]asf[/editline] In other news I bought a UEFI-capable motherboard and proceeded to make both my operating systems use UEFI to boot. I hit a clusterfuck of problems due to me making dumb decisions, but I might as well post my woes and solutions here so perhaps other people will see it someday and appreciate my information. My motherboard is a [B]ASUS Sabertooth Z77[/B], which boasts being UEFI capable-- [B]NOTE:[/B] For this motherboard, I had to disable boot compatibility options (CMS?) and windows 8 secure boot in order for it to properly detect and boot into UEFI loaders. [B]NOTE:[/B] Many of the filepaths and error messages below might be incorrect; I'm paraphrasing due to only having them in memory. They should be pretty accurate, but feel free to point out something wrong. [B]Problem:[/B] [I]How do I reformat my Linux MBR drive into GPT without losing any data?[/I] [B]Solution:[/B] You don't! However the only drive that needs to be GPT is your boot drive; if you have your home parition on a separate drive you can safely reformat your root/boot drive without much repercussions. [B]IMPORTANT:[/B] If you have a separate var partition, ensure to DELETE it! The pacman cache inside of it can confuse pacstrap and pacman into thinking your system is fine! How you should set up your boot drive in GPT is like this: [code] size type filesystem flags mountpoint --------------------------------- 2mb primary partition (no filesystem) with flag grub_bios (no mountpoint) 512mb primary partition fat32 with flag boot (/boot/efi) 100mb primary partition (/boot) Xmb primary partition ext4 (/) <You can have up to 128 primary partitions, so add whatever else you want!>[/code] [B]IMPORTANT:[/B]The reason for the 2mb space at the beginning is to allow for grub backwards compatibility, it lets you install normal grub-bios so you can have bios and uefi capabilities. Handy when you're having trouble getting your UEFI set up. [B]Problem:[/B] [I]I can't boot the arch linux disk in UEFI mode! (No loader found. Configuration files in /loader/entries/*.conf are needed, or simply boots straight into BIOS mode.)[/I] [B]Solution:[/B] Get a usb drive formatted in [B]FAT32[/B] and a [B]UEFI 2.0 x86_64 shell[/B] download from [url]https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Unified_Extensible_Firmware_Interface#UEFI_Shell_download_links[/url] . Place the downloaded shell file into [I]/efi/boot/bootx64.efi[/I] and [I]/boot/efi/bootx64.efi[/I], the motherboard should now detect the usb as bootable through UEFI. Boot into the USB's uefi shell and use it to launch either your disk's efi files or if you already have refind ([I]/efi/refind/refindx64.efi[/I]) somewhere; boot that instead. [B]Problem:[/B] [I]I'm in a UEFI shell but optical disks aren't showing up! So I can't boot arch linux or windows through the disk![/I] [B]Solution:[/B] Unfortunately UEFI doesn't support cdfs, you'll have to move the disk's contents to a thumbdrive or a fat32 partition. [B]Problem:[/B] [I]I'm trying to boot a Windows 7 CD in UEFI mode, but it says Unsupported![/I] [B]Solution:[/B] I had to move the contents of the Windows 7 CD onto a thumb drive, boot up a UEFI shell through refind, then run the [I]/efi/boot/microsoft/bootcd_prompt.efi[/I]. It'll ask you to press a key and then the install should begin in UEFI mode. ([B]IMPORTANT:[/B] ensure to install on a completely "Unallocated" drive (bonus for already being in GPT), otherwise it'll use Bios/mbr anyway!) [B]Problem:[/B] [I]Linux works fine in BIOS mode but not through rEFInd! (nvidia drivers not working, incapable of mounting certain filesystems, etc)[/I] [B]Solution:[/B] You need to update your initramfs images for refind, just redo this tutorial: [url]https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Beginners'_Guide#For_UEFI_motherboards[/url] . Take careful note of copying the initramfs images. It's also a good idea to set up the systemd hook that regenerates them when required. [B]Problem:[/B] [I]I'm unaware of the benefits of using UEFI over BIOS![/I] [B]Solution:[/B] Some immediate benefits I'm aware of is that you can have 128 primary partitions on the GPT drives and they support storage sizes larger than 2TB. Your boot manager will be graphical, have pretty icons, have features like scanning for UEFI devices for bootable files (and assigning appropriate icons depending on where they came from and what they are), have the ability to fall back to the bootmanager if the boot failed, have nifty EFI based tools to manage the system even without a functional OS, and the most interesting benefit of all to me: You know when you install official nvidia drivers and all of your virtual consoles' resolutions go to shit? This is mainly due to nvidia not supporting KMS, but also because it's using BIOS/VBE to display the terminals! UEFI doesn't have such graphical limitations, so you can have your official nvidia drivers AND some fancy virtual console resolutions AT THE SAME TIME. All and all I'm happy I spent some time getting UEFI to work as the results are quite pretty and my system feels more flexible. If you have a UEFI capable motherboard, perhaps you should give it a try! I just jotted down some of the problems I had; my knowledge of UEFI now is quite palpable from this endeavor. Message me on steam if you want some help.
[QUOTE=Naelstrom;38662135]This is caused by hardware acceleration in flash; flash is terrible and you should either uninstall it or its hardware acceleration capabilities (it's in some libvsomethingsomething library). -snip-[/QUOTE] Sound advice considering how often flash crashes my browser. Also, I get the blue overlay only when I'm not using HW decode, which seems bass ackwards. I will turn HW decode off and try to use html5 as often as I can, thanks for the advice. I wish I had a UEFI capable board so I could have a hi-res VT because the free drivers don't even recognize my card :suicide:
PCManFM is so much better than nautilus ohg od, now I don't have to worry about my FM taking control of my background also conky owns
Dolphin > everything else
I really wish smaller browsers like dwb and vimprobable were faster and more reliable. The speed picked up by their focus on the keyboard is offset by their slow page load times. Using firefox/chrome with a mouse becomes faster than any alternatives with just the keyboard, plus both big browsers have adequate plugins to run them soley with the keyboard. Does anyone know of a keyboard-centric browser as fast and up to date as firefox/chrome? I've used dwb for a while now but I'm fed up with intermitent crashing and sluggish performance and I've moved on to firefox+vimperator.
[QUOTE=ShaunOfTheLive;38653364]I still call it "Winnie" in my head, is that weird? Wine sounds so odd; it doesn't match "Windows" at all[/QUOTE] I thought I was the only one!
glorious thunar masterrace.
Regarding File Managers, I've really come to love Pantheon-files. I'm not sure if it's based on something specific, but it's part of the Pantheon desktop environment, as seen on elementaryOS Luna.
I haven't bothered to make Tint2 always stay at the bottom layer, but I actually don't mind it like this... [img]http://horobox.co.uk/u/flubbernugget-_1354650428.png[/img]
[QUOTE=FlubberNugget;38693733]I haven't bothered to make Tint2 always stay at the bottom layer, but I actually don't mind it like this... [img]http://horobox.co.uk/u/flubbernugget-_1354650428.png[/img][/QUOTE] I have i3-bar hidden with windows(tm) key bound to bring it up over everything, same idea but its really nice to have the status bar just a click away.
I do like the looks of those WMs, but i'm kinda scared of testing them out. Are they easy to configure? [editline]4th December 2012[/editline] I installed Awesome, and it's kinda simple, but I don't know how to configure it.
Sorry, you need to Log In to post a reply to this thread.