General Linux Chat and Small Questions v. I broke my Arch Install - Hardware & Software

I've decided to replace Windows 7 on my dual-boot PC (win 7 + Arch) with Windows 8.1. First of all it did the expected, which was to neutralize GRUB. I kept trying to fix GRUB to make it load properly. Here's what I did. I used the Arch LiveCD to change the boot flag to the partition which housed GRUB. Afterwards, I had to use my USB pen with Arch to somehow boot the Arch installation I have on my PC. Then, with my Arch booted up, I did grub-install normally, and then grub-mkconfig normally. I'll give the exact commands used on the bottom of my post. After those commands I simply rebooted and huzzah, it worked perfectly. Note that I also have os-prober installed on my rig. Windows boots itself from the System Reserved partition it creates, so make sure that GRUB points that way and that you don't remove that partition. The commands used were as so: [CODE]# grub-install --target=i386-pc --recheck /dev/SDA # grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg[/CODE] Root access is obligatory, as usual with these kinds of operations. I wrote this post for those who need it. I know I would have liked such a post when I was working on this thing.

[QUOTE=Smashman;45015959]I joined the Linux people last night. So far I'm liking it a lot. I'm running Ubuntu 14.04. Is there anything that you folks recommend I install or change or whatnot for an optimal experience? :smile:[/QUOTE] we use kubuntu stable at work and it is really solid for newbies, and doesnt get down your throat with the stuff i have seen in ubuntu (the cinnamon and amazon stuff) or just install manjaro for a different but pleasant experience (aur is pretty awesome for building stuff without hassle)

Having uh... "impulse" bought an i5 4690, really hoping vga passthrough works out. [CODE]processor : 0 vendor_id : GenuineIntel cpu family : 6 model : 60 model name : Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-4690 CPU @ 3.50GHz stepping : 3 microcode : 0x17 cpu MHz : 3917.812 cache size : 6144 KB physical id : 0 siblings : 4 core id : 0 cpu cores : 4 apicid : 0 initial apicid : 0 fpu : yes fpu_exception : yes cpuid level : 13 wp : yes flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe syscall nx pdpe1gb rdtscp lm constant_tsc arch_perfmon pebs bts rep_good nopl xtopology nonstop_tsc aperfmperf eagerfpu pni pclmulqdq dtes64 monitor ds_cpl vmx smx est tm2 ssse3 fma cx16 xtpr pdcm pcid sse4_1 sse4_2 x2apic movbe popcnt tsc_deadline_timer aes xsave avx f16c rdrand lahf_lm abm ida arat xsaveopt pln pts dtherm tpr_shadow vnmi flexpriority ept vpid fsgsbase tsc_adjust bmi1 hle avx2 smep bmi2 erms invpcid rtm bogomips : 7002.51 clflush size : 64 cache_alignment : 64 address sizes : 39 bits physical, 48 bits virtual power management: [/CODE] Even if it doesn't, it's damn well cooler than my 4670k was, and since I don't plan to overclock I'm hardly missing out, extra .1GHz, hell yeah.

How much of a difference does AVX2 make on x264?

I'm having some issues with sound on Arch, not sure what the issue could be. all sounds pop a lot for some reason. listening to music is impossible due to crackling and popping. when I hit pause, the music lags behind and won't stop before seconds later. no matter what I use, Spotify, Tomahawk or Youtube, it's still too distorted to listen to. local music isn't working either, so it can't be streaming it struggles with. out of all of the above, Youtube performs the best. it actually outputs sound that isn't 100% distorted, but everything else I wouldn't be able to even tell what song it is. that said, Youtube's sound is still waay too distorted to use for listening. I have a MSI Z97 MPower motherboard and a i5 4670k. If I'm not wrong, the motherboard uses intel HDA for sound. any clues what this is? it's unbearable

[QUOTE=PredGD;45071016]I'm having some issues with sound on Arch, not sure what the issue could be. all sounds pop a lot for some reason. listening to music is impossible due to crackling and popping. when I hit pause, the music lags behind and won't stop before seconds later. no matter what I use, Spotify, Tomahawk or Youtube, it's still too distorted to listen to. local music isn't working either, so it can't be streaming it struggles with. out of all of the above, Youtube performs the best. it actually outputs sound that isn't 100% distorted, but everything else I wouldn't be able to even tell what song it is. that said, Youtube's sound is still waay too distorted to use for listening. I have a MSI Z97 MPower motherboard and a i5 4670k. If I'm not wrong, the motherboard uses intel HDA for sound. any clues what this is? it's unbearable[/QUOTE] Does this happen on other distros as well?

[QUOTE=mastersrp;45071694]Does this happen on other distros as well?[/QUOTE] eventually I found the issue, and of course it's Pulseaudio. last time I booted up Arch, I installed GDM for my login manager which brought the abonomation into my configuration. I disabled "timer based scheduling" and changed the sample rate which fixed the issue, hooray!

[QUOTE=PredGD;45071718]eventually I found the issue, and of course it's Pulseaudio.[/QUOTE] Has pulseaudio ever brought anyone anything other than heartache? Recently sound stopped working in all steam games for me and I "fixed" it by uninstalling pulse.

[QUOTE=Larikang;45072552]Has pulseaudio ever brought anyone anything other than heartache? Recently sound stopped working in all steam games for me and I "fixed" it by uninstalling pulse.[/QUOTE] don't think it has ever worked for me without fixing a few problems here and there.

[QUOTE=Larikang;45072552]Has pulseaudio ever brought anyone anything other than heartache? Recently sound stopped working in all steam games for me and I "fixed" it by uninstalling pulse.[/QUOTE] I've never had issues with it. Ever. ALSA I've had tons of trouble with (and still do (HDMI)), but no issues with pulse.

[QUOTE=Larikang;45072552]Has pulseaudio ever brought anyone anything other than heartache? Recently sound stopped working in all steam games for me and I "fixed" it by uninstalling pulse.[/QUOTE] It's been pretty "set-and-forget" for me, which is good because per-app volume control gives me a fucking nerdboner and plain ALSA doesn't have that feature

ALSA for whatever reason detects my microphone only 1 in every 20 boots.

The thing with ALSA is, it's so much older that even when it throws a hissy fit at least you often can find some way to [I]fix[/I] it - even if it involves esoteric tricks like creating additional sound input devices just to do something simple. Pulse, on the other hand, has always felt like it just either works or doesn't work for me.

i wish normal programs just straight up supported jack it is great for fucking with people on teamspeak

I'm booting up a Ubuntu machine I used to run as my main until I bought my current rig six years ago. Oh my god it's like a time machine. I'm making this edit on the machine. Oh my god I don't know how I lived with this.

those old ubuntu feels man it's like when i found my old pentium 3 laptop with ubuntu 5.10 on it man why the fuck did i ever install ubuntu over suse enterprise

The machine has now been decommissioned. I remember running 5.10 on a pentium 266 and a 4mb video card.

Civ 5 got ported to Linux, but seems unoptimized [QUOTE]Operating System: SteamOS CPU Processor: Intel Core i3, AMD A10 CPU Speed: 2.4GHz Memory: 4 GB RAM Hard Disk Space: 10 GB Video Card (ATI): Radeon HD 6450 Video Card (NVidia): Geforce 640M Video Card (Intel): Iris Pro Video Memory (VRam): 1GB [/QUOTE]

[QUOTE=esalaka;45074632]it's so much older than even when it throws[/QUOTE] [code]segmentation fault (core dumped) ./parse_english[/code]

[QUOTE=Original User;45078446]Civ 5 got ported to Linux, but seems unoptimized[/QUOTE] Works great on my system, Arch Linux.

[QUOTE=Naelstrom;45078654]Works great on my system, Arch Linux.[/QUOTE] Huh, does it run better than Windows?

[QUOTE=Original User;45078828]Huh, does it run better than Windows?[/QUOTE] Nah. There's some bugs that keep you from selecting certain UI elements or mouse-edge scrolling occasionally, but it's certainly playable.

[QUOTE=Original User;45078446]Civ 5 got ported to Linux, but seems unoptimized[/QUOTE] It's a pure linux port from a windows game without any (wine) wrappers. This is really uncommon. Ofcourse it's not going to be optimized the first try. The developers are requesting feedback so future linux games can be made better. I sadly don't have the money for civ5 right now I'd love to try it though.

[QUOTE=Mega1mpact;45080039]It's a pure linux port from a windows game without any (wine) wrappers. This is really uncommon. Ofcourse it's not going to be optimized the first try. The developers are requesting feedback so future linux games can be made better. I sadly don't have the money for civ5 right now I'd love to try it though.[/QUOTE] how do you tell if its running natively or if it's using a wrapper? decided to try out some games yesterday too. played some Metro: Last Light and Natural Selection 2, and it's surreal to see it being playable at a decent FPS with all settings maxed. of course the performance isn't the same as Windows, but it's definitely playable. too bad I don't know of a program that gives me the FPS on an overlay.

[QUOTE=PredGD;45080433]how do you tell if its running natively or if it's using a wrapper?[/QUOTE] Most often you can spot it by just searching for mono/wine binaries in the game directory. Sometimes stuff like translation wrappers from directx to opengl are used but these tend to be custom made and you won't get the same performance as translating the rendering to pure opengl. I love the fact that more and more developers are adding linux support. This is great because it will eventually force videocard manufacturers to produce better linux drivers. Most of the time these drivers are pure shit and only work on specific linux kernel versions. An ideal situation would be them developing these drivers directly into the linux kernel source and contributing to the kernel etc. Linus has expressed the fact that they don't tend to do this or to a limited extent. This is really stupid because nvidia for example is trying to sell their GPU chips to phone companies even though they are not providing any linux support at all. AMD is kinda contributing but their properitary drivers are terrible and require a lot of 3rd party patches to even compile.

[QUOTE=IpHa;45078515][code]segmentation fault (core dumped) ./parse_english[/code][/QUOTE] Har har. Typographic errors aren't that difficult to read through.

[QUOTE=Mega1mpact;45080513]Most often you can spot it by just searching for mono/wine binaries in the game directory. Sometimes stuff like translation wrappers from directx to opengl are used but these tend to be custom made and you won't get the same performance as translating the rendering to pure opengl. I love the fact that more and more developers are adding linux support. This is great because it will eventually force videocard manufacturers to produce better linux drivers. Most of the time these drivers are pure shit and only work on specific linux kernel versions. An ideal situation would be them developing these drivers directly into the linux kernel source and contributing to the kernel etc. Linus has expressed the fact that they don't tend to do this or to a limited extent. This is really stupid because nvidia for example is trying to sell their GPU chips to phone companies even though they are not providing any linux support at all. AMD is kinda contributing but their properitary drivers are terrible and require a lot of 3rd party patches to even compile.[/QUOTE] I wouldn't really say Mono is a wrapper, it's an implementation of .NET, no different to .NET on Windows really... [editline]12th June 2014[/editline] [QUOTE=Original User;45078446]Civ 5 got ported to Linux, but seems unoptimized[/QUOTE] They said the specs were what they knew could run the game flawlessly, people have gotten by with far far less, hell, strategic view is playable with LLVMPipe.

[QUOTE=esalaka;45081150]Har har. Typographic errors aren't that difficult to read through.[/QUOTE] Usually yes, but there's something about that sentence. I know what it should be, I know what the mistake is, but every time I read it my brains auto correct just gives up.

Pulseaudio is drunk as shit, lemme tell you why: I connected both my speakers and headphones to the same sound card via different ports (Front for headphones, Surround for my speakers). Now, the problems: 1. When I attempt to mute the headphones, every single audio channel gets muted. 2. When I lower the volume of the headphones to 0%, it automatically mutes, muting everything along with it. 3. The volume slider of the Front channel modifies the Master channel as well, it's like they're locked together. I kinda fixed it slightly by doing the following routine: I lower the volume for my headphones all the way down. Then I issue the following command: [code]pacmd set-sink-mute alsa_output.pci-0000_00_1b.0.analog-surround-40 0[/code] It unmutes every channel, but the Front channel is still at 0%. pavucontrol reports that the Master channel is at 9% volume, but it feels like it's at the value it was at before modifying the Front volume (100%). Now, the problem. As soon as any other program starts making sound, pulseaudio suddenly goes like "oh shit, master is at 9% - better set it now" and the volume changes. Pulseaudio isn't a program, it's a fucking virus. A psychological one.

I know I'm 100% alone on this but I like PulseAudio and have never had any major issues with it.