General Linux Chat and Small Questions v. Year of the Linux Desktop! - Hardware & Software

[t]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/7333627/pics/Screenshot%20from%202016-10-25%2012-35-45.png[/t] I miss when this shit worked.

[QUOTE=Reflex F.N.;51250163]Oh, I'll add them. Thanks for the help! :smile: By the way, is it a bad idea to have outbound rules on my main machine? I'm just trying it out in a VM, at the moment. I plan on experimenting directly with iptables next; rather than UFW.[/QUOTE] Default outbound policy is to just let it happen, but if you need to block a port or address outbound, it should be fine. Also, I would recommend not dealing with iptables directly, unless you're absolutely 100% sure that what you're trying to do can't be accomplished with ufw rules (and it probably can).

[QUOTE=Levelog;51258581]Then what's the point of even having a dGPU? (For anything made this decade)[/QUOTE] Because it came with your computer or perhaps you use it when you boot into windows for muh gamz. Two I could come up with. If you don't particularly need the proprietary driver's performance, a lot of people will just say "kay, I'll grab the free driver." And big DEs like KDE and GNOME like to push effects that can cause a little iGPU to choke, especially an old one (like sandybridge.)

From my recalled hearsay, nVidia has better support than AMD on the driver front, am I correct? I've been thinking of running Linux (mint, still playing with distros via virtualbox) as the primary OS on my next computer.

I've been running lubuntu on my old Asus eee netbook for a few months after running peppermint. Glad I've switched from 7, I could barely edit a text document on it. I'm really comfortable with lubuntu as well. My question is: is there any better lightweight distro for what I have? I'm using 2gb of ram right now on 1.66 ghz, and I want to give this thing some more time before I have to upgrade. I have a little bit of experience installing arch on a vm, so some legwork is fine.

[QUOTE=Shaun555;51265083]From my recalled hearsay, nVidia has better support than AMD on the driver front, am I correct? I've been thinking of running Linux (mint, still playing with distros via virtualbox) as the primary OS on my next computer.[/QUOTE] Generally. Though the latest amdgpu-pro drivers are apparently pretty damn good. Don't listen to people who tell you to get AMD their drivers are free btw, they aren't. [QUOTE=PhantomBrew;51265095]I've been running lubuntu on my old Asus eee netbook for a few months after running peppermint. Glad I've switched from 7, I could barely edit a text document on it. I'm really comfortable with lubuntu as well. My question is: is there any better lightweight distro for what I have? I'm using 2gb of ram right now on 1.66 ghz, and I want to give this thing some more time before I have to upgrade. I have a little bit of experience installing arch on a vm, so some legwork is fine.[/QUOTE] My first recommendation would be to try a custom kernel. Either linux zen or linux ck. The tweaks these kernels make can be quite nice on low-end systems. I've only done custom kernels in gentoo-land so I dunno how you do it on other distros so I'll leave it to you to google that. Also Lubuntu is light because of the desktop environment, LXDE, and you can get pretty much any desktop environment on any distro. There are window managers lighter than LXDE, but it's pretty much as light as you'll get unless you're willing to dive into config files. Arch won't really magically be lighter/faster. Gentoo and void linux are two that I think might wind up lighter since you compile your own programs, use a different init system, and a different C library (optionally,) but no promises, and they may be more effort than you're interested in. You might have some stuff automatically running that you could turn off to free up RAM, and also if your neckbeard is big enough, you can make your custom kernel even more custom by removing support for things (like hardware) that you don't use, and that'll free up some more RAM. There's also just general software too. Midori is lighter than firefox. Abiword lighter than libreoffice...etc..

The biggest key to a light system is just to do it from the ground up. Don't install Lubuntu and remove shit, install Arch and only add what you need.

[QUOTE=Levelog;51265456]The biggest key to a light system is just to do it from the ground up. Don't install Lubuntu and remove shit, install Arch and only add what you need.[/QUOTE] You can also just install Ubuntu minimal and build it up that way too, if you're used to and enjoy apt. Which will actually technically be lighter I'm pretty sure. Ubuntu doesn't leave in development headers and doesn't just enable every conceivable option for the goal of simplicity for the devs. The reasons to use Arch is the AUR and wiki imo

Fedora gives you pretty much the same but you get yum/dnf if you prefer that. Also Kickstart is really nice for creating a custom install [editline]27th October 2016[/editline] [QUOTE=thelurker1234;51265500]The reasons to use Arch is the AUR and wiki imo[/QUOTE] To be fair, the Arch wiki is useful for a lot more than just Arch, and the AUR's have helped me to compile packages when the developers hadn't provided documentation

I've never manually done full disk encryption, but since this is my laptop I want it and I'm installing gentoo again. I've got an encryption setup already from Fedora's automatic installer. Can I reuse it and if so how? Fedoras installer is pretty damn good at giving you whatever partition layout you want so the setup I've got is pretty perfect. edit: Though I guess I may as well format the drive and do it over to learn LUKS and dm-crypt.

[QUOTE=thelurker1234;51265214]Generally. Though the latest amdgpu-pro drivers are apparently pretty damn good. Don't listen to people who tell you to get AMD their drivers are free btw, they aren't. [/QUOTE] Are you saying that you have to purchase drivers for certain cards? What would be a good resource to read up on all this?

[QUOTE=Shaun555;51266743]Are you saying that you have to purchase drivers for certain cards? What would be a good resource to read up on all this?[/QUOTE] Nah, free as in freedom, not cost. The source code of the drivers is not available, and it's not under a free software license. I prolly should have said libre.

[QUOTE=thelurker1234;51266860]Nah, free as in freedom, not cost. The source code of the drivers is not available, and it's not under a free software license. I prolly should have said libre.[/QUOTE] I want to make a sticker that says something like "Libre is Linux for free!" in the style of those annoying touristy things.

[QUOTE=Shaun555;51265083]From my recalled hearsay, nVidia has better support than AMD on the driver front, am I correct? I've been thinking of running Linux (mint, still playing with distros via virtualbox) as the primary OS on my next computer.[/QUOTE] This was correct up until recently, but AMD is getting better.

[QUOTE=lavacano;51267148]This was correct up until recently, but AMD is getting better.[/QUOTE] It's still true though, for both nVidia and AMD. Even if you look at the open source drivers, they don't work at all without the proprietary firmware blobs.

[QUOTE=mastersrp;51267256]It's still true though, for both nVidia and AMD. Even if you look at the open source drivers, they don't work at all without the proprietary firmware blobs.[/QUOTE] Well, you can run NVIDIA with fully free drivers. AMD depends on a proprietary blob, even the ~free~ driver. So if your goal is muh freedumz, you have to buy from the company that hasn't even really pretended to care about free drivers. But in contrast to the drivers, historically NVIDIA has supported open things like OpenGL better, they just want it on their own terms. So yeah, one shouldn't really buy from either AMD or NVIDIA based on any moral principal. Just get whatever is best at the time.

[QUOTE=lavacano;51258744]Default outbound policy is to just let it happen, but if you need to block a port or address outbound, it should be fine. Also, I would recommend not dealing with iptables directly, unless you're absolutely 100% sure that what you're trying to do can't be accomplished with ufw rules (and it probably can).[/QUOTE]I am doing all of this on a VM, not on my main machine, just to learn. I know that there is in most cases no reason to use iptables when UFW is available, but I really want to learn how to use iptables. I am doing all of this in a live-session of Linux Mint in a VM, so I can always shut it down if something bad happens.

Well the worst that could really happen is you could have bizarre connection issues incoming and/or outgoing, and you can just delete all your iptables rules to fix that

:snip:

Tried out Mint via VM, got introduced to Cinnamon and noped out because I preferred Gnome. So now I have installed Gnome-Ubuntu to my VM, and tried to install the Arc theme [URL="http://www.devpy.me/10-of-the-best-linux-themes-compared/"]from here[/URL], only to have the terminal respond with, [code]E: The repository 'http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/Horst3180/xUbuntu_16.04 Release' is not signed. N: Updating from such a repository can't be done securely, and is therefore disabled by default.[/code] to which the solution I found online was to add [code]--allow-unauthenticated[/code]but I am not sure where to put that. I'm going to start reading [URL="https://linuxjourney.com/"]https://linuxjourney.com/[/URL] tomorrow so I don't ask a bunch of simple questions in the thread.

[code]sudo apt install package --allow-unauthenticated[/code]

[QUOTE=Shaun555;51281480]Tried out Mint via VM, got introduced to Cinnamon and noped out because I preferred Gnome. So now I have installed Gnome-Ubuntu to my VM, and tried to install the Arc theme [URL="http://www.devpy.me/10-of-the-best-linux-themes-compared/"]from here[/URL], only to have the terminal respond with, [code]E: The repository 'http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/Horst3180/xUbuntu_16.04 Release' is not signed. N: Updating from such a repository can't be done securely, and is therefore disabled by default.[/code] to which the solution I found online was to add [code]--allow-unauthenticated[/code]but I am not sure where to put that. I'm going to start reading [URL="https://linuxjourney.com/"]https://linuxjourney.com/[/URL] tomorrow so I don't ask a bunch of simple questions in the thread.[/QUOTE] You should add the signing key to the package manager so it is signed & the installation is secure, not tampered with. I think it'd be done like this: [code]wget http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/Horst3180/xUbuntu_16.04/Release.key apt-key add - < Release.key apt-get update[/code] which will then add the signing key to apt, verify the packages you download so it is safe. you should never install unsigned packages.

Is there any way to add/or any distros that include a notification center?

[QUOTE=Shaun555;51289446]Is there any way to add/or any distros that include a notification center?[/QUOTE] KDE does iirc

So does GNOME, you can add it for other DEs/WMs. They use something called libnotify

[QUOTE=thelurker1234;51289676]So does GNOME, you can add it for other DEs/WMs. They use something called libnotify[/QUOTE] [URL=http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/xenial/en/man1/notify-send.1.html][B]notify-send[/B](1)[/URL] is nice every once in a while.

Budgie has a vaguely mobile style notification center.

I haven't tested wayland in awhile, so I thought I'd give the GNOME wayland a try now that I'm on 3.2.2 and I was already using it by default it seems guise the future is now my libreoffice is fucked tho edit: if anyone wants to see if they're using it. Easiest way is to just press alt-f2 and type r. If you're running xorg GNOME will restart, if you're on wayland it'll say "nope, not on wayland." You can also type lg into alt-f2 and get a little program you can use to examine windows so you can see what's running in wayland, and what's running in xwayland.

Is there anything similar to Ninite for Linux?

The package manager? You can input multiple package names as install targets, in every package manager I've used so far.