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

Would any of recommend using a Linux distro over Windows? I have a laptop I use for school, every day actually. It has Windows 8 on it, but I'm getting fed up with how slow it can be at times.

[QUOTE=Concrete Pillow;42454488]Would any of recommend using a Linux distro over Windows? I have a laptop I use for school, every day actually. It has Windows 8 on it, but I'm getting fed up with how slow it can be at times.[/QUOTE] Without pointing out the sampling bias you'll encounter by posting that in this thread, yes.

So when I put "acpi_backlight=vendor" manually into Grub it says fuck you, but when add it to the default options under /etc/default/grub and run an update-grub it works. Well, fuck you too. At least I have working backlight finally.

[QUOTE=Concrete Pillow;42454488]Would any of recommend using a Linux distro over Windows? I have a laptop I use for school, every day actually. It has Windows 8 on it, but I'm getting fed up with how slow it can be at times.[/QUOTE] If you do any level of gaming on that laptop, I wouldn't recommend it just yet. While yeah, there are a quickly growing number of games for Linux, there are still a lot of holes to be filled. Maybe in a year or so, but not now. If you do basic word processing, presentation stuff, and web surfing, you'll be fine. Netflix is a no-go since it for some reason still uses silverlight, last I checked anyway. In other words, if [I]all[/I] you do is school stuff on it, go for it. If you use it for heavy gaming, netflix, etc, hold off. [editline]8th October 2013[/editline] [QUOTE=Protocol7;42454607]So when I put "acpi_backlight=vendor" manually into Grub it says fuck you, but when add it to the default options under /etc/default/grub and run an update-grub it works. Well, fuck you too. At least I have working backlight finally.[/QUOTE] I remember trying Unity before it was standard. When I went to uninstall it it said it'd take the whole desktop with it. So I tried to kill [I]just[/I] the Unity package itself. It told me "Fuck you, permission denied" [I]Sudo[/I] apt-get remove unity Fuck you, permission denied. Aww[B] hell [/B]naw, you did not just do that. I ended up having to drop down a runlevel, and find all the individual Unity-only dependencies and remove them one at a time from the shell-version of synaptic, purging all dependencies and links as I went. Then, once they were all gone, I was able to remove Unity without it bitching and claiming it was holier than Sudo. Assfuck. Ever since then I've purged Unity every chance I got.

[QUOTE=Concrete Pillow;42454488]Would any of recommend using a Linux distro over Windows? I have a laptop I use for school, every day actually. It has Windows 8 on it, but I'm getting fed up with how slow it can be at times.[/QUOTE] If you don't mind the loss of battery life it isn't that bad. I'd really like to run linux on my laptop, but I can't deal with shaving ~45 minutes off the already paltry 2 and a half hours I get with W8.

[QUOTE=Bonzai11;42455159]If you don't mind the loss of battery life it isn't that bad. I'd really like to run linux on my laptop, but I can't deal with shaving ~45 minutes off the already paltry 2 and a half hours I get with W8.[/QUOTE] Just a week ago I put Ubuntu on my school laptop, and I actually have ~10 minutes more battery life than I did on Windows 8.

[QUOTE=deadeye536;42455225]Just a week ago I put Ubuntu on my school laptop, and I actually have ~10 minutes more battery life than I did on Windows 8.[/QUOTE] It is most likely related to my laptop. It is a Sager Np9150 with Optimus. I honestly have not tried out the more recent kernels and newest drivers so it may have changed in the past 3 months.

[QUOTE=Concrete Pillow;42454488]Would any of recommend using a Linux distro over Windows? I have a laptop I use for school, every day actually. It has Windows 8 on it, but I'm getting fed up with how slow it can be at times.[/QUOTE] I would recommend Ubuntu, Elementary OS, or Manjaro. If you're looking for something specific though I would look through distrowatch and see what you can find that sounds best to you.

[QUOTE=XxThreedogxX;42455433]I would recommend Ubuntu, Elementary OS, or Manjaro. If your looking for something specific though I would look through distrowatch and see what you can find that sounds best to you.[/QUOTE] Fedora is also nice :3

I still have my old-ish fedora install somewhere, I think... on a pair of harddrives stashed away somewhere. Also, another thing I like about Linux, it doesn't shit itself and cry home about pirates if I completely change the machine it originally ran in.

[QUOTE=S31-Syntax;42454672]I remember trying Unity before it was standard. When I went to uninstall it it said it'd take the whole desktop with it. So I tried to kill [I]just[/I] the Unity package itself. It told me "Fuck you, permission denied" [I]Sudo[/I] apt-get remove unity Fuck you, permission denied. Aww[B] hell [/B]naw, you did not just do that. I ended up having to drop down a runlevel, and find all the individual Unity-only dependencies and remove them one at a time from the shell-version of synaptic, purging all dependencies and links as I went. Then, once they were all gone, I was able to remove Unity without it bitching and claiming it was holier than Sudo. Assfuck. Ever since then I've purged Unity every chance I got.[/QUOTE] I'm using Elementary OS :v:

[QUOTE=Bonzai11;42455159]If you don't mind the loss of battery life it isn't that bad. I'd really like to run linux on my laptop, but I can't deal with shaving ~45 minutes off the already paltry 2 and a half hours I get with W8.[/QUOTE] Is battery life usually different for everyone? My laptop would have an hour of battery on Windows and reports four times that on Ubuntu. [editline]edits[/editline] One last question for now. Let's say I want to install an Ubuntu over Ubuntu. How does this get done? I heard there's the thing to select the partition Ubuntu's on and select something along the lines of "format and mount as /" but wanted a second opinion.

My Ubuntu did Microsoft time on the battery life all the time. It was only accurate with charge times.

I remember you used to be able to run "apt-get distupgrade" (or similar) to go up a version, but I also remember that it apparently was buggy as hell. Did they ever fix that?

[QUOTE=lavacano;42455913]I remember you used to be able to run "apt-get distupgrade" (or similar) to go up a version, but I also remember that it apparently was buggy as hell. Did they ever fix that?[/QUOTE] It worked the last time I used it, but that was 11.04 to 11.10 [editline]8th October 2013[/editline] And a server

[QUOTE=lavacano;42455913]I remember you used to be able to run "apt-get distupgrade" (or similar) to go up a version, but I also remember that it apparently was buggy as hell. Did they ever fix that?[/QUOTE] If you're talking about Ubuntu, their website recommends using "[URL="https://help.ubuntu.com/lts/serverguide/installing-upgrading.html"]do-release-upgrade[/URL]".

Does anyone know how to properly disable two finger vertical scrolling within Xorg (i.e. not DE settings)? I tried Horiz/Vert delta and VertTwoFingerScroll set to 0. It stops the scrolling, but freezes the mouse in position whenever there's even a hint of a second finger on the touchpad, as if it was trying to scroll. Is there a way to disable this entierly?

I wanna get into Linux but I feel like I'm too retarded to actually get into it, and it does suck how I lose out of on some of my games, unless I use Wine but I don't think thats reliable that much is it?

[QUOTE=itzpanda;42461462]I wanna get into Linux but I feel like I'm too retarded to actually get into it, and it does suck how I lose out of on some of my games, unless I use Wine but I don't think thats reliable that much is it?[/QUOTE] It can be, there's a rather large database of which programs do and don't work well in wine on the [url=http://appdb.winehq.org/]AppDB[/url]. [editline]9th October 2013[/editline] [QUOTE=itzpanda;42461462]I wanna get into Linux but I feel like I'm too retarded to actually get into it, and it does suck how I lose out of on some of my games, unless I use Wine but I don't think thats reliable that much is it?[/QUOTE] And it's generally not difficult, most distributions have straightforward installation processes. If you managed to install Windows then it shouldn't be a problem.

[QUOTE=itzpanda;42461462]I wanna get into Linux but I feel like I'm too retarded to actually get into it, and it does suck how I lose out of on some of my games, unless I use Wine but I don't think thats reliable that much is it?[/QUOTE] If your really worried about games, dual boot. GRUB (what many Linux distros use as a bootloader) will ask you which OS you want to use every time you boot. Then just boot into Windows when you feel like gaming. As for "getting into" Linux. Many Linux distros are stupid easy to use nowadays. Unless you go with Arch or something, they pretty much set themselves up.

[QUOTE=itzpanda;42461462]I wanna get into Linux but I feel like I'm too retarded to actually get into it, and it does suck how I lose out of on some of my games, unless I use Wine but I don't think thats reliable that much is it?[/QUOTE] If you haven't already, I'd recommend starting out with virtualization with VirtualBox or VMWare Player. You can get a feel on how linux works without worrying about seriously messing something up.

[QUOTE=Doritos_Man;42461855]If you haven't already, I'd recommend starting out with virtualization with VirtualBox or VMWare Player. You can get a feel on how linux works without worrying about seriously messing something up.[/QUOTE] That feel when I didn't know about virtual box until after I had installed my first distro.

[QUOTE=XxThreedogxX;42462075]That feel when I didn't know about virtual box until after I had installed my first distro.[/QUOTE] I didn't know about VMs with my first foray into Linux. Of course, that was in 2007 and I installed Ubuntu 7.04 (Fiesty Faun).

[QUOTE=Demache;42462116]I didn't know about VMs with my first foray into Linux. Of course, that was in 2007 and I installed Ubuntu 7.04 (Fiesty Faun).[/QUOTE] My first was 10.04. I enjoyed it but. At the time I was all about "muh freedums" so I soon moved on. Still recommend it for beginners though.

Ran into this comment on Reddit: [url]http://www.reddit.com/r/LinuxActionShow/comments/1o0m3p/flash_now_used_on_less_than_17_of_web_pages/ccnrzd1[/url] I set it up, it works amazing on my laptop. Flash always sucked monkeydicks, and being able to watch Youtube without Flash is amazing.

[QUOTE=Protocol7;42455659]I'm using Elementary OS :v:[/QUOTE] But you're on a Mac [editline]9th October 2013[/editline] Oh. Never mind

For those of you who use Gnome 3, does anyone have a solution to the dark version of the Adwaita theme not working for GTK2.0 applications? I finally decided I wanted to fix it, but I found out that Gnome 3 was just updated so all the themes have changed; so any "articles" or "fixes" I've found are completely outdated. I've also attempted to edit the color values myself in the gtk2.0 gtkrc, with little success. Anyone familiar with getting chrome, vlc, and firefox to use the same GTK3.0 theme my other applications use?

[QUOTE=nikomo;42462354]Ran into this comment on Reddit: [url]http://www.reddit.com/r/LinuxActionShow/comments/1o0m3p/flash_now_used_on_less_than_17_of_web_pages/ccnrzd1[/url] I set it up, it works amazing on my laptop. Flash always sucked monkeydicks, and being able to watch Youtube without Flash is amazing.[/QUOTE] Is there anything like this for Chrome? It always keeps switching betweeb HTML5 and flash for different videos despite me being in the HTML5 beta.

[QUOTE=Naelstrom;42463181]For those of you who use Gnome 3, does anyone have a solution to the dark version of the Adwaita theme not working for GTK2.0 applications? I finally decided I wanted to fix it, but I found out that Gnome 3 was just updated so all the themes have changed; so any "articles" or "fixes" I've found are completely outdated. I've also attempted to edit the color values myself in the gtk2.0 gtkrc, with little success. Anyone familiar with getting chrome, vlc, and firefox to use the same GTK3.0 theme my other applications use?[/QUOTE] Firefox always used the same GTK theme I specify (Zukitwo w/ Adwaita border). Window borders never change save for one or two themes in GNOME 3. [url=http://gnome-look.org/content/show.php/Adwaita+Dark--Modified?content=147515]This[/url] custom theme might be what you could be needing.

[QUOTE=MasterFen006;42463203]Is there anything like this for Chrome? It always keeps switching betweeb HTML5 and flash for different videos despite me being in the HTML5 beta.[/QUOTE] Its probably because the HTML5 player in Chrome is broken as fuck and doesnt work on half the videos youtube has