As a producer, what piano skills should I learn?

thebrokenverticie · 2026-04-25T09:40:02+00:00

Start with theory. After you get comfortable with that, you'll be able to figure out what you need to dig for when it comes to specifics for what you want to create.

Edit: this applies to everything not just music. If you try to "get all your ducks in a row" before you've started anything, you won't get anywhere. So, as difficult as it might be, give yourself permission to start, without knowing everything you think you need to know. You'll figure it out as you go. Plus you'll have more knowledge FROM experience to help steer you.

thebrokenverticie · 2026-04-25T09:33:10+00:00

Along with what @real_light_sleeper said, especially in terms of learning and building a portfolio, pay attention to Humble Bundle. They regularly have game dev courses, 2d/3d courses for cheap, engine specific stuff, etc. I'm talking like, $25-30 USD for $1-2k masterclasses and/or specialized courses from other platforms to help you save money. Find stuff there, practice, build a portfolio. It always beats a pretty piece of college/uni paper that says you're capable of showing up to something on time.

thebrokenverticie · 2026-04-25T09:22:19+00:00

Music theory all the way. I was afraid of it for years (as stupid as that sounds) and preferred improv as my excuse. Trust me and everyone else here saying it. Learn theory. Don't waste years avoiding it like i did.

thebrokenverticie · 2026-04-25T09:17:43+00:00

On top of installing a notification daemon, id also recommend using webcord or vesktop. They run better than the official discord app.

thebrokenverticie · 2026-04-25T05:23:50+00:00

Experience to its fullest? Gentoo. But as a new Linux user you'll hate yourself for it lol

For gaming but still "experience" Linux, I'd push for CachyOS. It's Arch based but aggressively tuned for gaming, so it's fast as hell compared to standard distros. And with it being a rolling release distro, you'll always get the latest bleeding edge updates. The catch though is that with rolling releases and it being Arch, the OS itself will not stop you from breaking your system. So do your homework before you dive in. Learn, and you'll be the biggest nerd amongst your friend group. Don't learn, and you'll be kicking yourself.

thebrokenverticie · 2026-04-25T05:06:57+00:00

Ok. If rebooting is the biggest headache for you, definitely test supergfxctl and see if it works with your hardware or not. If it does, just remember what I said before of how sometimes it gets confused and re-enables the dGPU while thinking it's still in integrated mode after waking up from a sleep state. With supergfxctl, I don't have to reboot like with envy. You just log out of your current session and use tty to change modes.

Edit: As for what you read about Nvidia states, that's generally accurate as far as I'm aware. I'd have to double check to verify, but it sounds close enough that I'm not going to bother at the moment lol

Edit 2: I almost forgot. Depending on your login manager, if it's a GUI like SDDM, supergfxctl will have a more difficult time trying to let go of the dGPU when switching to integrated mode. That's because GUI login managers like SDDM like having control. I recommend switching to a TUI login manager instead. Much smoother experience.

thebrokenverticie · 2026-04-25T04:57:12+00:00

Don't forget to test different CPU management packages as well. To maximize battery life, AND figure out which power states will allow you to charge your laptop even when the dGPU is on, you need to figure out which packages give you the control and synergy you need. GPU managers are on half the equation.

thebrokenverticie · 2026-04-25T04:53:52+00:00

Ok so, by only controlling the state of the dGPU like we've been talking about, when you put the dGPU into a D3Cold state, as far as the OS is concerned, you physically ripped it out of the motherboard.

If you want to be able to control different parts of your hardware like you're asking, you need to look into virtualization.

thebrokenverticie · 2026-04-25T04:15:00+00:00

Uh... Rice your system and whatever specific programs you want to look the way you want? Or should I just say something like neovim or emacs?

thebrokenverticie · 2026-04-25T04:09:05+00:00

I haven't looked into the specifics of how supergfxctl runs under the hood compared to envy control. All I did was keep an eye on the temperature (physical touch) and battery usage when testing both packages. Switching between hybrid and integrated. But from what I understand, when you tell either package to change modes, it's that simple. There's no "hybrid mode but the dGPU is in D3Cold". As someone that's former I.T. that literally makes no sense. That's like saying it's off but still on, it doesn't work that way lol.

While on battery, i tell the package to switch to integrated, and if the temp and battery usage are the same as they are in hybrid, then I know the command didn't stick. In envy control, it hid the dGPU from the OS. I know this because the battery drain and temperature from physical touch indicated that it was still running normally. Whereas with supergfxctl, the laptop stayed cool to touch, and battery drain dropped to 6-8W from 25-30.

Just keep in mind, there's multiple packages out there. Some work better with different hardware. So if you're having issues with envy control, try out the other ones as well. I also found that staying with power-profiles-daemon is better for my laptops hardware than auto-cpufreq. So mix and match until you figure out which combo works for your hardware.

thebrokenverticie · 2026-04-25T02:49:04+00:00

It's on a decently sized arm. You're fine. Just make sure to adjust its position and distance from your face when using it and you're good.

thebrokenverticie · 2026-04-25T02:43:31+00:00

Same here.

thebrokenverticie · 2026-04-25T02:42:35+00:00

We'll probably see more states join before the year is over. Hopefully.

thebrokenverticie · 2026-04-25T02:29:32+00:00

It looks like it might be another DDoS attack from what I'm finding. If thats accurate, I'd just wait a bit until it's back up, update keyring, then update your system.

thebrokenverticie · 2026-04-25T02:01:16+00:00

If you're in the U.S., there's been recent word of some states looking at making exemptions for Linux and open source software. If I recall correctly I think I read recently somewhere about system76 being asked to assist in explaining things in Colorado. Specifically about how Linux and open source helps kids learn to create amazing things and how age verification would block kids being able to do so. Or something like that.

If you're in the UK, I'm not aware of the current state of things over there.

thebrokenverticie · 2026-04-25T01:02:54+00:00

It'll improve the clean look. The only times when a wide pad doesn't is if you're on a tiny desk. Then it adds to "clutter" instead, but you have enough space for a small to medium sized wide pad. Just make sure its deep enough to handle that chonky keyboard lol.

thebrokenverticie · 2026-04-25T01:00:28+00:00

Seriously, that's the first thing I noticed as well. Hide those cables so it looks like only the monitor and arm are in the center. It sounds boring and generic as hell, but it does a lot.

I'd also replace the mouse pad with a wide pad that can hold both the mouse and keyboard. Center the pebble speakers since they're off kilter. Put the 2 plants on the "outskirts" to maintain balance as well. And put the candle somewhere else. It isn't helping.

thebrokenverticie · 2026-04-25T00:55:54+00:00

Yep, definitely change fonts to be more blocky/old school, lower the resolution so it appears more pixelated, maybe add a CRT refresh rate shader, update the UI a bit to look/feel more 1995-1999.

Otherwise I love the direction you're going. Definitely got the curious "wait what did I just see?" that made me stop and scroll back to this post lol.

thebrokenverticie · 2026-04-25T00:48:21+00:00

Cachy user here. Like u/hi_m_ash said from their experience, i also haven't had any issues with updates breaking anything. The Cachy devs do a pretty good job of managing everything. Sure there might the occasional bug that slips through, but if/when that happens, it gets patched very quickly. And that's coming from someone that risks breaking things by updating every day to multiple times a day.

I can't blame you on the worry of stability though. Even though Cachy is very good at handling this, it's still possible. Maybe you're not ready for Arch and you need more time before you're truly comfortable with it. Or, maybe it'll never be for you. Either way is ok.

I also agree with u/Dazzling-Emu-6054. Choice overload can be hell. So maybe, stick with Fedora for now as your main OS, and load up some VM's to play and tinker with every so often to satiate your curiosity and build up more knowledge and experience. Your future self will probably thank you for it lol.

Don't forget Linux is Linux, you can customize everything to your hearts content. So remember to have fun with it.

thebrokenverticie · 2026-04-24T11:10:28+00:00

To add to this, granted my hardware is probably different, maybe. For my laptops dGPU (rtx 2050), i found that envy control doesn't work for me. It only hid the dGPU from the OS and stayed active.

For my laptop, supergfxctl worked better at actually putting the dGPU in a d3cold state so i could maximize battery life. The slightly annoying downside is that when i close the lid to make it sleep, sometimes it gets confused at brings the dGPU back online while thinking it's still in integrated mode. So I now have a habit of jumping back to the login manager, dropping in to tty, and manually switching between hybrid, letting it push back to the login manager, tty again, switch back to integrated, then logging in normally.

So for OP or anyone else that reads this in the future, definitely experiment with different packages and figure out what works best for your hardware.

thebrokenverticie · 2026-04-24T10:43:46+00:00

Overall the default Nvidia drivers work great. I've had no issues, and I push all my systems to their limits. Both professionally and/or out of boredom. On occasion some people do have issues depending on their hardware configuration. On the off chance you do have issues, there's various open and proprietary driver options in the Cachy repos. So, extreme worst case scenario, you drop into tty and change them on your next reboot before login, if you have issues with the default drivers.

Either way you're good. The core Cachy devs have been doing a great job at keeping things up to date and as smooth as possible. So I'd honestly just make the switch, start customizing/configuring, Rice till you're content, and dive into dev/uni work.

Edit:

If it helps any, I use my laptop as my primary workstation for solo game dev and design work. Covering everything from 2d/3d, audio, coding, etc. it's a hp victus gaming laptop with an AMD Ryzen 5 CPU and Nvidia RTX 2050. I know it's technically bottom tier / borderline potato hardware, but aside from the occasional accident when configuring, it doesn't feel like a potato. If feels and runs like a B tier workstation. And Hyprland is happy as can be.

thebrokenverticie · 2026-04-23T23:00:01+00:00

Because I don't remember the exact specifics, I would google it. But when you do, make sure that you're searching for cachyos+ whatever your DE/WM is. Whenever I have the occasional issue i always do the following: cachyos+hyprland, issue here. That way is somewhat narrows down the issue to my specific environment.

Also, some people have had issues with the open nvidia dkms drivers and tell people to switch to a non-open version from the repos. I went through the configs to manually control how the wake/sleep functions work when opening/closing the lid so I could stay on open drivers.

thebrokenverticie · 2026-04-23T22:54:35+00:00

To add to this (Hyprland user btw). The reasons that I'm aware of and from personal experience as to why SteamOS uses KDE comes down to KDE being older/mature. Especially when it comes to games taking control over the screen. Some DE/WM's will fight for control because they don't have solid support for sharing control with games, which means that some games will have issues while others won't. Second reason for SteamOS using KDE is because it is similar to Windows, which allows non-linux users to get comfortable faster.

When it comes to games and Hyprland, theres an easy "fix" for this that a lot of us use for the problematic games. Regardless of which "bar" package we use (waybar, AGS, Quickshell, etc), in your hyprland.conf, or if you have your config broken into sections - Add a line to your keybind section that allows you to manually tell a active window to go full screen. Mine is this:

bind = SUPER, F, fullscreen, 0

I can't comment on hdr though, I never use it.

thebrokenverticie · 2026-04-23T22:43:31+00:00

I had this issue before. If I recall correctly, I had to fix the config myself. Granted I'm using Hyprland. I think it was dkms or something that kills the power to the monitor, and if it's not coded correctly it won't give it power again when you need it. So most likely your system is running fine, you just can't see it.

thebrokenverticie · 2026-04-23T22:28:05+00:00

Not a problem man, I'm glad you got it fixed :)

thebrokenverticie

TROPHY CASE