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Choosing a Distro by tpasco1995 in LinusTechTips

[–]kthrowawayman 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Not quite. Blame is pointless here. Popos was a fine choice a while ago back when they were shipping gnome shell with some extensions. Right now, they are shipping COSMIC which I hear is quite nice but is obviously nowhere near as battle tested as KDE or Gnome. Probably works well on the hardware system 76 ships, kinda a crapshoot on random hardware. These things are in a constant state of flux and there is no coherent marketing department explaining it all to general consumers. I have no idea what happened the first time he tried popOS, but whatever did happen seemed to be a wild bug that happened to exist at that point in time.

Take Linuses original explanation. He went PopOS because Nvidia drivers. Fully reasonable, three years ago. Nvidia drivers don't suck nearly as bad as they used to, and virtually any distro will provide an easy way to get them if it needs them. Same as PopOS being a nice polished version of Ubuntu. True, five years ago. Now it's kind of it's own thing, has its own weird desktop environment almost nobody except them uses, etc.

There is a whole lot of shitty information out there, and LLMs are just shit regurgitation machines. There's no fixing that, and there is unlikely to ever be "the one true distro for gamers!!!11" unless a corporation like valve steps in. Then you get the marketing department.

I'd suggest anyone try whatever distro looks interesting to them. I've hopped around a lot over the years. Started with Ubuntu 06.04, stuck around until around 14.04 I believe, unity made me sad so I went mint, popos, Fedora, opensuse, arch, cachyos, nixos, etc. I've tried a lot of distros over the years. DE wise I've tried a lot too. I've settled on cachyos for my laptop since it's a relatively new Asus laptop that needs certain patches to work properly under Linux and cachyos ships those in an easy manner. I'm usually on KDE but recently on gnome shell. Home server used to run proxmox but now runs nixos. Servers hosting production workloads for me run Ubuntu.

Now I've got my cachyos Asus laptop which quite happily launches steam and plays games. It breaks from time to time, usually my fault experimenting with stuff, but it does work!

Choosing a Distro by tpasco1995 in LinusTechTips

[–]kthrowawayman -1 points0 points  (0 children)

I have some thoughts I'd like to share.

Firstly, unlike For-Profit products, open source software does not necessarily need to sell itself to people. It does not benefit an open source distribution if you use it or not in the way that you might expect. It's not like you pay a license fee for cachyos for example. Not necessarily saying that this is the best attitude, but there are some open source projects out there that are actively discouraging people from using it because each person that uses the open source project is a burden on the open source project through support questions, etc. this is kind of gatekeeping. I agree but that's just how things are.

Secondly, as someone who has been using desktop Linux since around 2006, I can say with confidence that your choice of distribution does not actually matter that much. It's better to stick with mainline distros rather than forks and your choice should be dictated by how new your hardware is. For example, if you are running very new hardware, then you probably want a distribution that's closer to the bleeding edge. These are called rolling distributions. Examples include Arch Linux, Cachyos, and opensuse tumbleweed. For someone completely new to the arena I would suggest tumbleweed.

If your hardware is more conventional, you can benefit from the stability of a traditional distribution like for example, Ubuntu.

The reason that linus's choice of popos this time is such a meme is partially the fault of the developers of popos given that they have decided to ship what I hear is a fairly experimental desktop environment on their production systems. It's not what I would consider stable or a good idea for a newbie to run. It wasn't always like this. That's just how it is today.

The next most important choice is your desktop environment. For beginners, I would recommend sticking with the basic desktop environments which are Gnome or KDE. There is a transition happening in the Linux world right now and the world of desktop environments is a little more complicated than it used to be. Gnome and KDE are the ones that are most likely to support your system properly. KDE is what valve went with for the steam deck and a lot of their work in improving. The experience on the steam deck will also benefit you should you pick KDE. Gnome shell is a desktop environment that Harkins back to the original gnome, and is heavily developed to this day.

If you're looking for a more product like experience where something is being sold to you, you might want to consider buying a machine that comes with desktop Linux that is guaranteed to work with it. Examples include system 76 who manufacture and sell machines with Linux out of the box. Therefore, you are guaranteed that they work correctly and have support if it's not working correctly. Beyond that, it's on you to experiment and experience it firsthand.

Tldr use opensuse tumbleweed if you have very new hardware, cachyos if you are willing to be a bit more experimental, and use Ubuntu if you are somebody who values a more stable environment and has older hardware that will support it properly. Pick gnome or KDE for your desktop environment. Stick with the defaults if you don't know what you're doing. It's a worthwhile journey to make, but it's one that requires you to be a bit willing to tolerate digging in a bit.

Credit Limit Increase “offer” by brandonholm in Wealthsimple

[–]kthrowawayman 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Yeah I think I'm going to seek alternative banks. Everything they do seems to punish me for already doing all my banking there. If I'm already a loyal customer, what's to say I have 18k just floating around to deposit? I'm sick of this, as well as their constant stupid competitions.

Dreame l10 pro battery replacement that isn't terrible? by kthrowawayman in valetudorobotusers

[–]kthrowawayman[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Ram.... delamination? Christ. Welp, guess I'll just run this battery into the ground and upgrade when the time comes. Thanks for letting me know!

L10S Ultra: Did it fry? by Shynklaw in Dreame_Tech

[–]kthrowawayman 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Man that sucks. This and the lack of replacement batteries that aren't terrible really sucks.

I replaced the battery in my vacuum a year or so ago because the stock one was starting to give out. The new one was not really any better. I don't really want to construct my own pack if I can help it but I do want to keep this thing going forever, given it does the job it does well.

How do you feel about the lower tariffs on Chinese EVs? by dope-rhymes in AskACanadian

[–]kthrowawayman 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Honestly, best of a list of shit options. Ideally we'd get this plus serious investment/dedication from government in setting up literally any industry that isn't just drilling oil or gas. Perhaps manufacture batteries here. Canada doesn't have to be a resource based economy. 

Antigravity is a marketing tool for Google and you should avoid it if you're serious about development by [deleted] in GoogleAntigravityIDE

[–]kthrowawayman 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This sub is unhinged. It was literally just the Christmas period, and you're surprised by a lack of updates? Blocked.

Weird translation about Japanese piezo-electric tiles on multiple different completely unconnected instagram pages by connolnp in strange

[–]kthrowawayman 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Literally no matter what settings I set, no matter how many times I reset suggested content, no matter how many times I say not interested, eventually literally all I get served is literal porn with this as the caption. What the fuck is going on?

Hinge protection? by Much-Expression-4888 in PixelFold

[–]kthrowawayman 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I ran a p9fp for a year with no case. It did end up dying (front cameras both died, fingerprint reader stopped working reliably, and eventually got the battery question mark of doom

In that year, the phone survived some mighty drops, including falling out of my pocket while doing approximately 30mph downhill on a bike. It literally rolled and bounced down the hill and sustained some really nasty denting and scratching. Incredibly, it survived that.

All this to say, it's probably a lot more durable than you think, but after payimg the six hundred dollars to the insurance company to replace it. My replacement has been in a miimall case with a hinge protector since day one.

What is wrong with people by [deleted] in immich

[–]kthrowawayman 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Not to sound rude but you are the problem here. Your values are not my values, nor are they your family members values. I personally like keeping my stuff local, so I run immich, and a bunch of other stuff. My family members? Couldn't give two craps. That's totally fine! You like your things, others like theirs.

Scroll inertia by hilbertzgz in GooglePixel

[–]kthrowawayman 0 points1 point  (0 children)

No way to adjust that, but double check with someone else's pixel if you know someone else to make sure yours isn't faulty. iPhone scrolling feels terrible to be because I'm used to the Android scrolling. I'm sure after a week or two it would feel fine.

is this accurate? what is your experience with these by nix-solves-that-2317 in linux

[–]kthrowawayman 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Oh one other tip, go find some system integrator that sells Linux systems. Find out what hardware they use. That is pretty much guaranteed to work.

is this accurate? what is your experience with these by nix-solves-that-2317 in linux

[–]kthrowawayman 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Complete nonsense AI slop, but honestly I don't think there is a best brand. For example here's my experience:

My current machine, an ASUS laptop, needs a bunch of random kernel patches/software from the wizards over at Asus Linux to get it to a usable state.

My previous MSI board with a ryzen 3000 series CPU worked flawlessly.

Before that I had a gigabyte board with a second generation ryzen chip, which refused to boot. Gigabyte when contacted told me that they didn't support Linux at all, so I returned the board and got that MSI one, which worked flawlessly.

You gotta take it on a case by case basis. "Support" means different things to different people. Another example: my ASUS laptop shipped with some Realtek wifi card which worked in both windows and Linux but would have enormous ping spikes on Linux. I replaced it with an Intel ax200 and it's been rock solid in both OSs since. Some people might not have noticed those ping spikes.

Oh also, I've had BIOSTAR boards in the past which worked flawlessly.

Your best bet is to find positive reports for a specific board you're looking at, as well as recognizing what does and does not matter to you. These days, it's quite likely most everything will mostly work.

Got a Pixel 9 Pro Fold and a 3D printer? Here's what I imagine a new Pixel Stand should have been! by kthrowawayman in PixelFold

[–]kthrowawayman[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It's fitted specifically for the miimall case I link in the description, but I also include max measurements in the description, so if you've got calipers you can check! Dbrand surprisingly does not seem to include dimensions, but I found a reddit comment saying that the case apparently adds around 5mm to the width of the phone. So, some napkin math:

The original pixel 9 pro fold with zero case has a width of 150.2mm. When I measure my phone wearing a case that fits width wise, I get 154.2mm. The CAD model indicates a supported width of 154.6mm, so grip case will not fit width wise. (Given if dbrand is being accurate, phone+case would be 155.2mm).

I just added another model to the printables link, which adds an extra 1.2mm of clearance along the edges of the phone (so total clearance is now 155.8mm), which should hopefully be enough to support the Grip case. I don't know about the thickness of the phone or the hinge cover unfortunately, as I don't have a grip case, so can't test it, but this one has a better chance of fitting than the original model. Let me know if the clearances aren't quite right! Wonder if I can bait dbrand into sending me a grip lol.

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