5d ago

Linux is fucking awesome

I should've used it sooner rather than last year when they announced AI integration to Windows. Every peripheral I tried is just worked without needing to install drivers, and it works better and faster than on Windows, just like today when I tried to use my brother's 3D printer expecting disappointment, but no, it just connected and was ready to print right away (I use Ultimaker Cura), whereas on my brother's Windows computer I have to wait like 20 seconds; sometimes I have to disconnect and reconnect it again for it to see and ready to use. Lastly, for those who are wondering, I use Vanilla Arch (btw), and sorry for bad English.

145 comments

Every time I see someone write "sorry for my bad english" their writing is several times better than many of the native speakers I interact with on a daily basis.
- my ukrainian coworker always apologizes for her bad english. meanwhile she can, and does, write poetry in all four languages she speaks
  
  Probably a habit from when they really did have bad English, but they learned, and surpassed the average american at this point.
- "I proffer my contrition for any infelicities in my English articulation, as my proclivity for linguistic precision may yet be inchoate."
  
  what was that about felix and anchovies ?
- When I TA-ed, I swear 75% of the non-Americans students wrote almost perfect papers whereas less than 25% of Americans couldn’t even write and less than 5% had comparably good essays. Honestly depressing.
  
  American culture is one of the few I've found to be actively "anti-knowledge". It's not just their educational system being bad, it's a genuine cultural tendency of not just dismissing experts, but straight out refusing to learn and snobbing those who do.
  
  When I worked at a bank we had a loan officer who wrote in such broken English that the email filter actually started flagging and blocking his outbound emails as a suspected compromise. Worst part is he was handling multimillion dollar agribusiness loans. Second worst part is he's as white American as they come, having had family farming not 20 miles away for generations, so it's not even like he can claim a non-local dialect or second language challenges
  
  I feel attacked
- Haha thanks, My English is self thought, so maybe that's why I'm still afraid of making mistakes (also relied on keyboard auto correct)
  
  *taught :⁠-⁠) No worries, your intent is coming across clearly.

Linux is awesome
& so are you ^{🥁 1, 2, 3, 4… 🎸}
- Aww, thank you

You went straight from windows to vanilla arch ?
Quite impressive
- Haha thanks but it's not actually my first distro, I'm distro hopping on my first week of switching to Linux, my first ever distro is EndeavourOS>Nobara>Fedora>OpenSUSE>Vanilla Arch
  
  That's a lot of different distros in one week. How do you give each one enough time to evaluate it before you choose to move to another?
  
  That's a good distrohop pipeline
- I remember the USAF handing me an M16 at 18 years old where all I've ever handled before that was even close was the NES zapper.
- Vanilla arch is nothing like the manually installed arch of old. It's as easy to install and use as any other distro. I started with arch too, and my now permanent distro is arch based
- tbh vanilla arch is not that tough now that archinstall exists, and archwiki is an incredible resource

My personal experience has been frustrating each time. I've tried to switch over at least 3 times over the years, but I always gave up. This time, I installed Ubuntu and immediately had to spend 3 hours trying to get my Xbox controler dongle to work, but just couldn't do it. Found a driver online that people said would work, it didn't because it wasn't properly signed, tried to sign it but the signing app just didn't create the certificates needed. Gave up, I have Bluetooth so I'd live, though I'd rather use the dongle if I can.
I then immediately encounter another problem that couldn't be fixed (for the life of me I can't remember what it was exactly) and just gave up.
The previous time I tried it I remember that among other things, one of my main problems was the lack of clipboard history (which I use extremely often). I tried installing an app for it but all of them either didn't work or didn't work the way I want them to or I just didn't like their look and feel.
I also hate the font rendering on Linux, it always looks blurry compared to Windows, and the double titlebars most apps have (e.g. Discord, at least on Ubuntu), I like my screen real-estate.

I use Vanilla Arch (btw), and sorry for bad English.
Sure buddy.... Is the "bad English" in this thread with us right now?
- I laughed when I saw this. Like, it was a guy excited that his computer is working better, including with his printer. Maybe a teensy bit of punctuation I'd do differently, but whatever. It's the Internet. Then suddenly "oh yeah sorry English isn't my first language and I'm sure you can all see that"
  
  Yeah, I assumed they just had a typo or two like we all do from tiem to time.
  Your English is great, OP
- Is the "bad English" in this thread
  It's in every thread right now.

Most of my library just works under Linux.

Plus it is a pleasure to code under Linux.

You would be suprised how cool Linux can get when you go deep down the rabbit hole, if you really want to go deep into Arch I reccomend trying a tiling window manager like Sway or Hyprland :3
(Btw these are the dotfiles I use: https://github.com/koeqaife/hyprland-material-you)
- The Hyprland dev is enough to make sure I never use Hyprland
  
  Ive yet to find a tiling Window manager that looks as good
- Without having read through your codebase, are you using someone else's top bar, or did you write it yourself in ags?
  I wasn't satisfied with the performance of any bars I tried for X11 so I wrote my own custom one using the eww widget system. I've tried ags for a bit but I couldn't even make an empty bar window that attaches itself to the top of the screen and spans the entire width of my single monitor. 😅 That part worked flawlessly in eww.

Welcome!
For a while now Linux has been better at most personal computing things except gaming. And for server uses an even longer time.
There are some specific hardware/software situations where you'll need Windows but it's unlikely to happen at home. Unless you have very peculiar hobbies.
- Unless you have very peculiar hobbies.
  Or you take your photography a bit too seriously! Good noise reduction software is next to impossible to do on Linux. It's the only reason I have a windows box in my house
  
  Just a thought… Don’t use AI noise reduction! I’ve seen the “magic” they produce and am not impressed. I take pride in capturing the image, not relying on software to recreate it the way I wish it had been shot (I recognize this is a bit hypocritical given that I do use noise reduction in Darktable).
  Additionally, I stopped caring about (luminance) noise a long while ago, now, and am perfectly happy with the results I get out of Darktable. In fact, much like film grain, I find modern luminance noise quite pleasing, especially on smaller sensors, and it can add texture and feeling to your image. Still, my default style includes the fantastic, camera model specific, noise reduction profiles by default, which effectively removes color noise and brings luminance noise down to appropriate levels.
  The rise in clinical photography and “AI” tools has only given me a stronger drive to be creative and embrace the flaws of my camera and my tools. Call me a romantic, but I want people to know my photos were taken and created by a human, not a machine.
  Ok, getting off the soapbox, now xD
  
  What noice reduction software do you use on windows? Very interesting find, do you know what methods your software uses for noice reduction? I wonder if this is something you could open an issue for in the image manipulation softwares that do exist on linux, i.e darktable et.al. :)
  
  a bit too seriously!
  This means you can’t be a professional and use Linux lol which is a big bummer! I hate Adobe but nobody is even remotely trying to keep up with Photoshop at this point and it’s very disappointing
- Gaming is my struggle, right now. On x11, I get stable framerates, but even though my benchmarks show 60+ fps, it sure looks lower to my eye. On Wayland, gameplay is smooth, but I keep getting this weird thing where after 20-30 minutes of gameplay I’ll get this weird input lag, where my mouse movement stops and then “catches up” every second or so, resulting in choppy gameplay despite the smooth framerate.
  If I can figure that out, I’d happily drop my Windows partition.
  
  mouse movement stops and then “catches up” every second or so
  I had that issue with a wired G502 mouse. It was caused by an excessive polling rate, and setting it to 125 Hz fixed it.
- Yeah it's quite nice and more fun to use than Windows, I admit it's pretty hectic on my first week of switching, but after learning a few commonly used terminal commands and open source softwares, I can do pretty much almost anything some time without needing to use DE I can just use tty instead
- There's plenty of good reasons to keep a windows device updated and available for use.
  Honestly, I prefer that to spinning up a windows VM, especially if your needs include Windows software that interfaces directly with external hardware.
  I realize that's not an option for everyone, but for those who have an extra device available, or can afford a used laptop to keep in a closet, it's well worth it IMO.
- At work the only issue I ever found is the requirement to use Power Point for presentations and Word for filing patents. LibreOffice just did not translate well enough. Have not tried OnlyOffice.
  Edit: Complex Excel sheets especially with macros would be a problem too. These are not always cross version Excel compatible for that matter. One reason I shifted that stuff to Python long ago and voided that issue.
  
  The sad thing is I've encountered funky compatibility issues just between current versions of word. Going from Office 2022 (I think. I honestly can't remember their LTSC office releases off the top of my head at all) to M365 triggered some minor formatting changes, and going from local word document to one that's shared on SharePoint completely fucked up all of the images in the document and required many hours of rearranging the images because word still sucks for desktop publishing

Yeah. I've been trying to get the word out.
I've been screwing with Linux for decades, but somewhere along the line, Linux got easier and more reliable than Windows. I was as surprised as anyone. My last couple Linux installs were a cake walk.
I also like Linux more than Mac, but I'm a tinkerer at heart, and Mac's (relative) lack of fiddly bits (customization options) has kept me from staying on it long.
- Same here.
  Daily driver is a mac but I always use a desktop Linux machine at home.

And if something doesn’t work, it’s all your fault somehow. Which is both a blessing and a curse.
- That's fine, I can look up the Arch Wiki for solutions, which is also a learning process for me and if it still doesn't work, I can just duct tape the workaround myself XD
  
  Tip from long-time arch user (btw). Avoid installing or making changes to system installation without going through pacman. I.e., don't use install scripts or make install invocations requiring sudo. More often than not that will cause headaches long-term. PKGBUILDs are actually reasonably simple to create if you need to install something not in the AUR, and it will keep you from overwriting files and leaving files behind after uninstalling.

Welcome to the brotherhood.

These kind of posts make me a little happy. I don't know exactly why but it does.
Having used Linux on for 25 years or so and now hearing about people who switch from Windows and really enjoying the experience warms my heart a little
- Me too, I've only used it for a year but every time I see a Linux appreciation post, it makes me happy and makes my day better
- I switched last year and brought two computers and four servers along. Very well worth it :)

I've been using Linux for almost 9 years now. Shit is never so smooth for me but I still love it.
The only device it has been smooth on has been my Thinkpad T530. Every other install I have has some annoying issue, usually small
- Not surprising considering how well Linux support on Thinkpad laptop are.
  
  I've had good luck with several Lenovo laptops. ThinkPads and IdeaPads. Everything but the fingerprint readers just works.
- xx30 ones are the best :)

Yes. Yes it is.

I came.
- I saw.
  
  I conquered.
  
  makes eye contact
  shuts the curtains

Hell yes it's awesome.
It's awesome like physics. It just works.
I use Debian.

I recently made the switch to linux as well and I have it on my laptop and gaming PC. I do keep a portable install of windows on an external drive for more niche cases, such as music production which I had terrible luck with on Linux. When I booted up my laptop with the windows drive, I noticed that my keyboard backlight wasn't working. And it took me a second to realize that Windows doesn't come with basic drivers... In Linux mint, my keyboard backlight worked right away. I also wish I made the jump to Linux much earlier.
- For music prod on Linux, have you tried Reaper?
  
  Yes. I've made posts about my problems before. But I use an E drum kit to trigger vsts in a daw. It's just easier for me to use windows.

Can anybody comment on their experience using Arduino and ESP with Linux? Especially does Linux handle COM ports better than Windows? There's a seemingly immortal problem of COM ports becoming unusable until you go into Device Manager and uninstall them (again and again) - and if that doesn't work, reboot Windows. I experience this less often now than say 5 or 6 years ago, and sometimes it's my fault, but jeez.
- Yes, com ports work way better than in windows. I've done a lot of embedded development on linux and it's way more pleasant than in windows. One thing you do have to keep in mind is that access to com ports (USB and real) requires root access by default, but once you've set the udev rule up, it becomes accesible to normal users and/or group of users. After that, it works flawlessly. Android dev also works great and imo better than on win. Proprietary jtags may be an issue, but I've never actually had an unsolvable situation.
  
  Thank you, that's massively helpful! Pasting your comment into my ESP32 project notes so when I soon move to Linux I can remember to figure out the udev rule and jtags.
- I regularily program Arduinos in Arduino IDE v2 (https://flathub.org/apps/cc.arduino.IDE2) and ESPs via the ESPHome web flasher and the esphome CLI tool.
  Works flawlessly once you added yourself to the dialout group as mentioned by @StorageB@lemmy.one.
- COM ports as handled by Windows is misery anyways. Linux definitely does it better
- You might have issues with permissions for serial ports on some distros, but there are loads of easy to follow guides for that. Linux definitely handles them better than windows though. I never had issues where they just stop working like on Windows.
- It's mostly a breeze. The only misery I can recall is I remember I had a wonky knockoff Arduino board that kept jumping serial ports, but that was a hardware issue.

Awesome!
and your english is perfect, dude. no worries. the only suggestion I have for you in that regard is to watch out for run on sentences :)
- Thanks, I'm still learning, grammar is my weakest point right now

I wish I could experience this pain free Linux I keep hearing about on this website. Programs constantly stutter and glitch out, and if the computer goes to sleep while running my Linux partition it absolutely will not wake up again. I know this is a skill issue, but I've already spent many hours troubleshooting this... I've tried several distros as well. Even the steam compatibility everyone raves about only seems to work for me if I don't use wayland. I can say with certainty that the average person would be completely unwilling to deal with the experience I have had.
- I think this "it just works" experience depends much on the hardware and software you use. But no matter what, in the long term, if you're not willing to put in time and learn how stuff works, how to troubleshoot, how to check logs, use the terminal, etc. I think you're going to have a bad time and be disappointed.
  I've used Linux exclusively for the past 10 years, both at home and at work, and I wouldn't advise anyone who wants a care-free "it just works" experience. Linux is not good at that, and I think anyone who claims it is does more harm than good.
  Linux is good for tinkering, self-hosting stuff, connectivity and flexibility. Most people want their games to work, not this. For me, I love it and I use it for everything including sim racing and VR games.
  
  I am more willing to learn things than the average user I'd say - I work in IT and answer incredibly stupid questions more or less daily. Also, im not a shell expert, but I definitely know my way around bash/zsh/cmd/PS, given the system. I have also been using Linux on and off for around 15 years as well - I had things work well in the past.
  I'm guessing my custom built PC might be making things harder. The Nvidia card probably doesn't help, but I feel like my MOBO is probably responsible for my sleep issues. Maybe I just need to try Pop again, I'm currently running NixOS which is my favourite OS in theory, but in practice configuration is a brute force guessing game.
- I'm guessing you're on Nvidia system?, I never had a program glitching or crashing on me ever since I make the switch (I exclusively use Wayland and never touch X11 once), maybe a laptop specific issue just like I can't get my fingerprint sensor to work on my machine, but luckily it's not a deal breaker for me
  
  Correct. But I've heard tons of people say Nvidia support is fine now, and that amd is still problematic. I have also tried Pop OS
- I have a few computers, and some (like my old thinkpads) work very reliably, while my modern desktop has some issues sometimes (e.g. i literally cannot get waking from sleep working, at all)
  
  I'm going to copy paste what I replied to someone else in here, just on the wild chance that this is your issue too and this might help:
  I also experienced issues with my system completely freezing after waking up from sleep - for me the issue turned out to be due to bluetooth/wifi drivers, and with this workaround things work fine again: https://github.com/alimert-t/suspend-freeze-fix-for-mt7921e/tree/main My card is mt7922 (found that out with lshw -C network) but I guess it’s having the same issue, because after applying that fix it all works now.
- Which distros have you tried? My experience was rough at first when I finally cut Windows out of my life a year ago. I'm on a ASRock B450M with a Ryzen 3600 and a 2070 Super. Started with Ubuntu > Mint > Debian > and finally settled on Pop_OS, and things have been rock solid. Most recently installed Cosmic desktop on another drive and even the 5th Alpha is playing Steam and Heroic games with few issues.
  
  I started with Ubuntu back in the day, and used that (and its variants) as my only distro up until ~2017, when i used Mint and Fedora in university. I started messing around with Arch maybe 3 or 4 years ago, then tried Pop!_OS, then went back to Arch, then tried NixOS and have stuck there since.
- Use local LLM model, it will turbo charge your learning curve.
  Tells you commands and will explain the errors. This is prime LLM domains IMHO since everytbing Linux is well documented online.
  
  I have tried with many models online, presumably all of which are more robust than local. Will give it another shot soon

How do you have Cura installed?
- You can get it on their official website
  
  So you just used the AppImage. I seem to recall having issues with it, but that's been awhile. I'll have to give it another try. Are you using Wayland?

I agree. Which distro?
- Plain Arch

I've been using it on and off since 1994. I still have a slackware dist on CD with the 1.1 kernel. I think Linux is great although I still prefer to use Windows, and Linux via WSL which is my optimal set up these days.

Only problem I ever had with Linux was having too many different versions of the Nvidia driver installed, so it would take lots of storage. It was easy to fix.

That's good to hear about the 3d printer as I have yet to connect mine to try the same thing. I just have to learn freecad though, as i used to use fusion 360 which is not packaged for Linux.
- I used SketchUp web for my modeling (it's free), for the life of me I can't figured out Freecad, it's a few open source softwares I can't warp my head around
  
  Yea, I have heard about SketchUp as well, but if I can learn the full FOSS alternative instead then I'd like to use it. I guess I could use Blender or something too, but I really liked the engineering oriented parametric modeling that Fusion360 was doing with the timeline.

Lucky. I couldn't get HDR working properly, and most of my GPU features were missing because Nvidia refuses to support Linux (and AMD GPUs can't keep up). So I had to go back to Windows.
Been trying to switch to Linux since 2004. I'll try again in 5 years.
- Try Nobara or Bazzite. Plasma supports HDR fairly well, and those distros includes a pile of tweaks for Nvidia devices. It might get you sorted.
  
  Tweaks and preconfigured distros aren’t solution here. The driver is still lacking certain features and that can only be fixed by NVIDIA
- Nvidia has an open driver now I believe? I install nvidia-open.
  Curious to know what you mean by:
  AMD GPUs can't keep up
  And,
  I had to go back to Windows
  you had to, because of HDR? I have an Nvidia RTX 2080 Super, and I don't know of any features that are missing. Games can do DLSS and ray tracing and whatever else they need. For me, support seems to be absolutely beast on Linux. 🤷‍♂️
  
  Does that driver support SDR to HDR conversation, AI upacaling, and most importantly: the 3D Settings page? I can live without the first two features, but I can't believe that there is no 3D Settings page in Linux. It has so many graphics settings that aren't available in most games.
  And yes, AMD GPUs can't keep up. Especially if you like Ray Tracing. I'm not an AMD hater; I have a 7700X

145 comments