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

[QUOTE=ecapsbuS;50554580]Do newer laptops have better Linux drivers or is it hit-and-miss thing? Is there any good laptop out there with gaming GPU that will works seamlessly with most distros and also is not made by some underground company but something like Asus, HP, Lenovo, etc.? Is there any list out there of "Linux laptops"?[/QUOTE] It's hit or miss, when looking at laptops pre-loaded with windows it's best to look up specific models, or you can look up their specific wifi and/or bluetooth chipsets, that's usually where the drivers fail. For "big" companies dell offers laptops in both their business and XPS line preloaded with Linux, and often Lenovo thinkpads are pretty great with their Linux support. Though for smaller companies I would also recommend taking a gander at system76, they're pretty highly regarded afaik

[QUOTE=ecapsbuS;50554580]Do newer laptops have better Linux drivers or is it hit-and-miss thing? Is there any good laptop out there with gaming GPU that will works seamlessly with most distros and also is not made by some underground company but something like Asus, HP, Lenovo, etc.? Is there any list out there of "Linux laptops"?[/QUOTE] You're not going to get all that and "seamless". You're going to wind up dealing with a bump in the road here and there. Like if you get something with an nVidia GPU, you're probably going to have to change over to the proprietary drivers, because Linux comes with nouveau and nouveau is horrible. The good news is most of these bumps won't be hard to deal with. The proprietary drivers, to continue my previous example, are in the package repositories of a lot of major distros.

Usually the biggest hurdles are getting the proprietary graphics drivers installed if you have a dedicated GPU, and sometimes (but not often) the wifi card might need additional configuration. That's not really any different from Windows, though. The process of installing or configuring is just different. It's about as hit and miss as installing Windows 10 on a machine made for Windows 7. 90% of the time everything will go just fine, but every so often you might need to put a little work into configuring things. Keep in mind when you say "most people seem to have a problem", it's a bit of a confirmation bias - only people who have issues are gonna make a forum post about how their Linux install went :v:

[QUOTE=lavacano;50555746]You're not going to get all that and "seamless". You're going to wind up dealing with a bump in the road here and there. Like if you get something with an nVidia GPU, you're probably going to have to change over to the proprietary drivers, because Linux comes with nouveau and nouveau is horrible. The good news is most of these bumps won't be hard to deal with. The proprietary drivers, to continue my previous example, are in the package repositories of a lot of major distros.[/QUOTE] I don't think Nouveau works properly on Maxwell cards yet even :v:

So I got a nice 1440p, 144hz, gsync monitor and was hyped to enjoy linux with it and installed kde4 instead of plasma on gentoo, but hey, it worked great with gsync. I turned on wobbly windows (please don't hurt me), swung some windows around and trust me 144hz is legit. But then I upgrade to KDE5/Plasma and no more gsync. Something to do with nvidia blacklisting kwin due to them not playing well together. Oh well, I'll have to do xfce or openbox I suppose, since KDE4 afaik is past its end of life. And certain newer KDE programs don't work with it.

Should I install Steam using apt from the official Ubuntu repositories or using the official deb file? Is one choice better than the other or is there no difference? I am currently on Ubuntu MATE 16.04 LTS. Thank you. :smile:

[QUOTE=~Kiwi~v2;50564737]If the repo has it. Use the repo always.[/QUOTE]Thanks for your help! :smile: I always prefer installing software from official repos, as well. However, I was wondering if the one from the repo is an outdated version, when compared to the one from the deb file. Well, I won't know till I try.

[QUOTE=Reflex F.N.;50566497]Thanks for your help! :smile: I always prefer installing software from official repos, as well. However, I was wondering if the one from the repo is an outdated version, when compared to the one from the deb file. Well, I won't know till I try.[/QUOTE] I believe the .deb is mostly available for offline installations when you're not able to access the repo for some reason. a good rule of thumb is that if you have internet and it's on the repo, always use the repo. even if the repo is slightly outdated then I'd still pick the repo as it'll eventually update unlike that manually installed .deb package. by the way, can I put a fully fledged and configured distro on a USB pen? install linux onto that? I like the idea of being able to bring a pen around so I can boot into my own environment instead of whatevers on the computer I'm using. might need to think about the performance of the pen as well? maybe there are pens that are high speed that are kinda made for specifically this?

[QUOTE=PredGD;50567358]I believe the .deb is mostly available for offline installations when you're not able to access the repo for some reason. a good rule of thumb is that if you have internet and it's on the repo, always use the repo. even if the repo is slightly outdated then I'd still pick the repo as it'll eventually update unlike that manually installed .deb package. by the way, can I put a fully fledged and configured distro on a USB pen? install linux onto that? I like the idea of being able to bring a pen around so I can boot into my own environment instead of whatevers on the computer I'm using. might need to think about the performance of the pen as well? maybe there are pens that are high speed that are kinda made for specifically this?[/QUOTE] Steam might be the closest thing to an exception tbh. The .deb is basically an installer that downloads the actual parts of steam. On arch linux for example, you have to do some fiddling even if installing steam through your repos because steam just does its own thing. Buuuuut, it's just a bad habit that one shouldn't develop at all. So yeah, repos all the way. Also yep, there's porteus and puppy linux for two that are geared specifically towards that. I'd recommend porteus of the two because it allows some customization while creating the ISO and doesn't look as dated as puppy. If you really wanna do your own thing you can try suse studio which lets you create a suse and determine every package that goes on it beforehand. There's also tails if you're scared of people tracking what you're doing, but you can just add tor/VPN scripts to the others if you need to do things privately I suppose. As for USB speed I think it depends, puppy linux for example loads itself entirely into your RAM meaning that the USB doesn't really matter except for booting up. Typically USBs aren't great for this kind of storage due to reliability though, so do keep backups.

Just installed xubuntu and i'm very confused about the taskbar icons. Here's what I've currently got: [t]http://i.imgur.com/NKJ4uBr.png[/t] Notice how some applications go in notification area and others in the indicator, is there no way to get everything into notification area? If I remove the indicator plugin they'll all go into notification but I won't have the volume mixer. If I have everything in indicator plugin, the steam icon breaks, the sizes can't be adjusted/are completely wrong. How can I get everything into Notification Area, including volume mixer. EDIT: Here's what I mean with only the notification area, it's perfectly fine just lacking a sound icon for some reason? [t]https://i.imgur.com/jbusnC6.jpg?1[/t] EDIT2: Seems I needed to install: xfce4-pulseaudio-plugin and add it via the panel

Every time I start KDE my task bar picks a random monitor to appear on. Is there any way to keep it on one monitor or always stay on the rightmost monitor?

[QUOTE=Adzter;50568862]Just installed xubuntu and i'm very confused about the taskbar icons. Here's what I've currently got: [t]http://i.imgur.com/NKJ4uBr.png[/t] Notice how some applications go in notification area and others in the indicator, is there no way to get everything into notification area? If I remove the indicator plugin they'll all go into notification but I won't have the volume mixer. If I have everything in indicator plugin, the steam icon breaks, the sizes can't be adjusted/are completely wrong. How can I get everything into Notification Area, including volume mixer. EDIT: Here's what I mean with only the notification area, it's perfectly fine just lacking a sound icon for some reason? [t]https://i.imgur.com/jbusnC6.jpg?1[/t] EDIT2: Seems I needed to install: xfce4-pulseaudio-plugin and add it via the panel[/QUOTE] You can't. The indicator menu is the one that interfaces with the sort of notifications and icons you might get at the top of your unity menu or your gnome menu, instead of XFCE. The other stuff is XFCE-specific

deleted Arch last night in favor of another distro. was interested in trying out Void but I'm not able to make a UEFI bootable USB using their image, it says it doesn't support it? the wiki has UEFI installation covered but how I'm supposed to get that far when the .iso they provide can't be applied to my USB with UEFI support?

Generally this is not a very small question but I figure it's worth asking here. Is there a terminal server out there that allows you to boot a client computer from the network, and log in automatically? I've tried UbuntuLTSP, but it simply refuses to work on a server I use (I don't know on what port it even defaults to), and the autologin requires me to bind IP addresses to each user which I don't know.

Is it possible that Xubuntu will play better with my dual monitor setup than Ubuntu did? Is only difference there desktop environment? Does it/can it make such difference?

[QUOTE=PredGD;50572679]deleted Arch last night in favor of another distro. was interested in trying out Void but I'm not able to make a UEFI bootable USB using their image, it says it doesn't support it? the wiki has UEFI installation covered but how I'm supposed to get that far when the .iso they provide can't be applied to my USB with UEFI support?[/QUOTE] You've gotta do a manual install, which isn't too bad fortunately. [URL]https://wiki.voidlinux.eu/Installation_on_UEFI,_via_chroot[/URL] Also fun miscellaneous fact, just like how arch linux has an erect nipple in its logo that you can't unsee, void linux's logo is a pokeball. [QUOTE=ecapsbuS;50573657]Is it possible that Xubuntu will play better with my dual monitor setup than Ubuntu did? Is only difference there desktop environment? Does it/can it make such difference?[/QUOTE] As long as it's already working, then yeah, different desktop environments/window managers handle multi-monitor setups different. What's wrong with unity/what behaviour are you looking for?

[QUOTE=thelurker1234;50573990]just like how arch linux has an erect nipple in its logo that you can't unsee[/QUOTE] Dear god...

[QUOTE=thelurker1234;50573990]You've gotta do a manual install, which isn't too bad fortunately. [URL]https://wiki.voidlinux.eu/Installation_on_UEFI,_via_chroot[/URL] Also fun miscellaneous fact, just like how arch linux has an erect nipple in its logo that you can't unsee, void linux's logo is a pokeball. As long as it's already working, then yeah, different desktop environments/window managers handle multi-monitor setups different. What's wrong with unity/what behaviour are you looking for?[/QUOTE] so I have to make a legacy bootable USB pen, do the chroot jail thing and then configure it for UEFI? this sounds complicated, but the wiki will probably guide me through it. weird that they don't have a UEFI compatible image available from get go what file system does everyone use? I've never looked into this, I've always just used ext4 but perhaps there is something else that, I don't know, could work better?

I'm on Btrfs, snapshots are nice to have

Is it worth compiling the popular distros from source yourself or do you just trust the official ISO mirrors? Is there any good way of checking for backdoors and things of such nature after the installation from official iso, other than traffic intercepting?

[QUOTE=PredGD;50574103]so I have to make a legacy bootable USB pen, do the chroot jail thing and then configure it for UEFI? this sounds complicated, but the wiki will probably guide me through it. weird that they don't have a UEFI compatible image available from get go what file system does everyone use? I've never looked into this, I've always just used ext4 but perhaps there is something else that, I don't know, could work better?[/QUOTE] I've wondered that myself actually. Same thing with gentoo, my first gentoo install fucked me over because I wasn't aware that the default ISOs on their website lack UEFI. I might ask the IRC sometime. Ext4 is fine to keep using, but I use btrfs, it's pretty stable now for personal use, even in 2012 on the btrfs wiki they said: [quote]Pragmatic answer: (2012-12-19) Many of the developers and testers run btrfs as their primary filesystem for day-to-day usage, or with various forms of real data. With reliable hardware and up-to-date kernels, we see very few unrecoverable problems showing up. As always, keep backups, test them, and be prepared to use them. [/quote] One of the features I really like about it is the transparent compression. You can compress the entire hard drive with an algorithm like lzo that makes most tasks faster and the real effect + placebo makes the desktop feel so good. There's also snapshots, COW, etc. it's pretty neat.

Guys is distrowatch rankings reliable? It ranks Mint as the most popular distro but Google Trends tell me that Ubuntu is so much more popular. Ubuntu subreddit has 6x more subscribers than Mint subreddit as well. Is there any other distro popularity ranking out there?

[QUOTE=ecapsbuS;50574246]Guys is distrowatch rankings reliable? It ranks Mint as the most popular distro but Google Trends tell me that Ubuntu is so much more popular. Ubuntu subreddit has 6x more subscribers than Mint subreddit as well. Is there any other distro popularity ranking out there?[/QUOTE] There's no reliable ranking available, because there's no reliable data available, and it likely can't be properly produced. It's sort of in the same boat as what browser is the most popular. There's some services that provide a sort of reliable guesstimate, but nothing 100% certain. When it comes to guesstimation, you might as well use distrowatch and just find something you like.

got Void running, woo. rebooted because of nvidia drivers and now the system is unbootable. mount complains that btrfs is an unknown filesystem and I'm thrown into the recovery shell. do I need to enable btrfs support somehow? weird that I was able to boot once but not more

[QUOTE=PredGD;50574614]got Void running, woo. rebooted because of nvidia drivers and now the system is unbootable. mount complains that btrfs is an unknown filesystem and I'm thrown into the recovery shell. do I need to enable btrfs support somehow? weird that I was able to boot once but not more[/QUOTE] you probably need btrfs-progs. It'll give you the daemons, commands and such and will pull in the other stuff you need for btrfs.

[QUOTE=thelurker1234;50574725]you probably need btrfs-progs. It'll give you the daemons, commands and such and will pull in the other stuff you need for btrfs.[/QUOTE] already installed, weird. [editline]23rd June 2016[/editline] [code]mount: unknown filesystem type 'btrfs' dracut Warning: Failed to mount -t btrfs -o rw,relatime,ssd,discard,space_cache,subvolid=5,subvol=/,,ro,ro /dev/disk/by-uuid/insertuuidhere /sysroot dracut Warning: *** An error occurred during the file system check. dracut Warning: *** Dropping you to shell; the system will try dracut Warning: *** to mount the filesystem(s), when you leave the shell.[/code]

[QUOTE=PredGD;50574872]already installed, weird. [editline]23rd June 2016[/editline] [code]mount: unknown filesystem type 'btrfs' dracut Warning: Failed to mount -t btrfs -o rw,relatime,ssd,discard,space_cache,subvolid=5,subvol=/,,ro,ro /dev/disk/by-uuid/insertuuidhere /sysroot dracut Warning: *** An error occurred during the file system check. dracut Warning: *** Dropping you to shell; the system will try dracut Warning: *** to mount the filesystem(s), when you leave the shell.[/code][/QUOTE] [quote] /dev/disk/by-uuid/insertuuidhere [/quote] if you didn't hide this, then something is pretty wrong around there. I've been running Void for a long time, so this must've been something recently messed up. Maybe hop into the #xbps channel on freenode, and see if anything is up?

I'm using OpenSUSE Tumbleweed. An update broke Steam, and I'm trying to run Steam in native mode to get around it. It almost work, but it kept throwing an error that I needed libxtst.so.6 to have it work. How do I get libxtst.so.6?

[QUOTE=SGTNAPALM;50579275]I'm using OpenSUSE Tumbleweed. An update broke Steam, and I'm trying to run Steam in native mode to get around it. It almost work, but it kept throwing an error that I needed libxtst.so.6 to have it work. How do I get libxtst.so.6?[/QUOTE] Try [code]sudo zypper install libxtst.so.6[/code]

It was [code]sudo zypper install libXtst6-32bit[/code] [editline]23rd June 2016[/editline] Not that it mattered; it still crashed on launching anyway.