can we just appreciate
And the cat computer the tiger has.
looks like they’ve already found one mouse!
The big smol
This isn’t limited to Linux. There’s a ton of “why would you want to do that?” Type unhelpful comments everywhere.
When I wanted to write my own game engine in 2015, people just directed me to Unity. Some people even said that unless I want to work for some company that actually develops the engines, I don’t need to learn API or anything like that. It took a while to people to point me in the direction of SDL for input and displaying a framebuffer (back then I used CPU rendering, as almost no one cared about pixel alignment, hence why my engine is called PixelPerfectEngine).
have you considered this weird breed of mice which has wings and really sharp teeth
Linux Mint with sway.
you throw the holy hand grenade on it, obviously…
Did you know that 20% of mammal species are bats?
Do you want rabies? 'Cause that’s how you get rabies.
This is pretty accurate; there are quite a number of furries in FOSS.
I’m glad I often see people recommending Linux Mint for newcomers. Maybe I didn’t understand the OP.
Yah, like, it’s not perfect, but no average user is going to brick their machine trying to use Linux mint, and they’ll be able to figure out how to do everything most people will want to do.
It is really good for that, a sort of ‘just works’ variant of Linux. I honestly sometimes consider replacing my main box Kubuntu with that, I have a few older boxes with Mint.
Install Gentoo, it’s easy and updates are simple
I’ve had more bad experiences trying to enjoy new things in new communities than good experiences. I think that is more to just how shit my luck is, but it still sucks when I’m just trying to enjoy something with others online. :-/
I don’t think it’s just you. That seems like how most people are online these days. Aggressive gatekeeping vs. first timers asking “did I do basic thing right? :3” for pretend internet points.
Thank you. It seems so hard to find like-minded people on the internet for me. I’ve tried and tried and tried over the years and just never felt welcome anywhere online with others who might share my interests.
Couple this with IRL issues finding those people, and it can be lonely at times.
Thank you for your comment, it’s hard to not feel like a “me” issue, but comments like yours help to alleviate that feeling. :'-]
No worries! It’s not just you suffering from that kind of thing. Always happy to chat if you need it
Definitely not a universal experience. I hope you have a better one here!
Are you just new to lemmy or Linux or something else?
Thank you!
I have been here on Lemmy since Reddit killed Apollo (3rd party API fiasco), and for Linux I have been using it mainly for gaming since 2024 I believe?
I moved over to Linux when I saw how good the Steam Deck was running emulators and thought “Why the hell not try it out on my desktop?”.
I started with openSUSE, but learned last year near Christmas that maybe it was a little too bleeding edge for a newbie like me who just wants to game as their only real use case for the gaming desktop.
I’m on Fedora now almost a year in, and am enjoying it more that it isn’t as bleeding edge as SUSE, but still more updated than Debian for my more modern games that I like to try out.
How about you? If that’s okay to ask? I realize a comment section on a meme page may not be the ideal place, but conversations are always welcome. :-]
Oh I’ve been self-hosting since 2009, switched to Linux in 2011, finally ditched Windows as a daily driver last year when I picked up a Legion Go and got it loaded up with steam OS.
I’ve distro-hopped quite a lot between then and now, but funny enough I ended up landing where I started when recommending a newbie friendly distro: mint with kde plasma. That’s my desktop daily driver now. I’ve tried bleeding edge in many different flavors and always end up finding I can start from a stable baseline and customize the kernel and modules as needed. Now I’ve got all my favorite emulators and recompiled games working flawlessly, and I’ve started working on a decomp of my own for an old Windows 98 game. I’ve already successfully ported it and fixed a few runtime bugs, trying to get it fully stable before I start remastering it in godot.
Server-side, I tend to stick with either Debian or Rocky and build on top of those.
How was Linux back in 2011? I first tried Linux in about 2012 or so with Manjaro (LOL) and then moved over to ElementaryOS as the laptop I was trying Linux on was old and thought it would run better. It still borked eventually as did Manjaro, but that was probably more to do with me definitely not understanding anything I was doing!
I think Mint will be my next distro if anything goes wrong with Fedora, which again, would probably be due to my newb skills with Linux more than the software itself. If I wanted to game on Mint, and play games such as the new Witcher 3 remaster or say the upcoming Fable game, how would I make sure it is capable of playing those games with the kernel and modules you mentioned? Just for future reference!
I’m intrigued by the Win98 game! What game is it? I think it is VERY cool that you are decomping and then remastering on the Godot engine. :-]
It was definitely a steeper learning curve than it is today, especially wrangling drivers for audio and Wi-Fi.
Depending on your hardware steam OS might actually be a better fit if you’re willing to do a little tweaking, because of the gaming mode. I find I really enjoy having the ability to switch to a desktop experience when I want it, but dedicate all the system resources when I’m gaming. Really makes a huge difference in performance.
I’ve also been reliably informed that CachyOS is also reliably good as a gaming distro.
All that being said and to your question specifically: there’s a few resources online like the wine community and gamingonlinux that compile compatibility lists and instructions on how to get things working, but lutris is probably the easiest to use and check.
This is the game I’m decompiling
And the repo: https://git.circuitforge.tech/pyr0ball/havoc-remaster/src/branch/main/dev
Chat, I need help. Since a couple updates ago, CaxhyOS isn’t focusing on Proton applications properly. If I click on a Proton window, it doesn’t actually focus it unless I first minimise all applications, or then minimise another application. It’s super annoying for alt-tabbing fullscteen games, since I have to go to the desktop before going into a game.
Curiously, I don’t think it happens with Bitburner, which lately I’ve had running all the time. So maybe it’s only happening with the second game I launch at a time? Not sure.
What WM/DE are you using?
(i have no idea if I can help you but this is probably a helpful question for someone who can)
KDE Plasma with Kwin
Didn’t KDE just start accepting vibecode?Try running the applications inside Gamescope. It uses a separate toplevel window that shouldn’t be affected by whatever Proton is doing.
You could also try either enabling or disabling Wayland in Proton: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Wine#Wayland
It could also be a quirk of whatever Proton version you’re using. Try GE-Proton, Proton-EM, or an older version.
Damn. It didn’t work.
Long shot, but Steam games, including Proton games, will typically have the Steam overlay up. I don’t know how they implement the overlay, but if it’s via some kind of floating transparent window, maybe it could interact oddly with focus in Kwin. Maybe try toggling the Steam overlay off, see if that does it?
Alas, that was not the answer
Is this all proton applications or have you only been playing one or a few games lately?
It’s happened with Skyrim, Starcraft I, Omnibus, and Big Walk.
Only newbs use Ubuntu. You should really be compiling everything from source with Gentoo.
yep, you got to love all the, Arch BTW or Linux Mint FYI.
This isn’t entirely wrong, but sometimes you should just do the thing you want to do in the first place. For example, MOST distros are “new user friendly” these days. Mint is cool, but you don’t need to go to Mint first if you want to use, say, CachyOS. Rolling distros I’ve found to be actually EASIER to deal with. Literally just update regularly and you’re good. Don’t have to reinstall for an upgrade, or have outdated software with bugs that were patched 2 years ago. Obviously yeah, there are distro where you have to do or customize everything like Arch, Gentoo, or LFS, but most people don’t ever want to build up to that in the first place. If it has the featured you want, just try it. Nix is maybe one of the exceptions, but at the same time it’s so different so you’re not going to get a ton of transferrable skills from an easier distro anyway.
at least with llm one can always get some help. not necessarily good help and maybe even be misdirected by ones own misconceptions that the llm could reinforce. But with little things like what some obscure thing that is obvious to experienced users is, or how to do something not too complicated.
But i wouldnt rely on it to troubleshoot arcane problems, did that myself and later it turned out the problem was somewhere completely different i thought and it “suggested”. I think it proposed at some point the problem could be where it actually was but i was convinced it couldnt be that and i thought i had ruled it out myself earlier. Then i noticed much later that i missed something when i tested things to rule out that particular source of problem. I guess one could still use it to get information on how to gather information yourself, that might be relevant to someone who actually knows something. And it could do some analyzing on logs and other system information files to find patterns human couldnt find without a lot of expertise.
stop slop btw
I hunt buffalo, btw
Goddam that almost killed me. 🤣
but are you also a buff anthro lion?
Sorry to be that guy, but arch = deer.
Buffalo = nixos / gentoo / hannahmontanaOS
ExOS is the most dangerous game.
Buffalo = GNU
Here, have your downvoted. We both know you wanted it.
You don’t hunt buff, buff hunts YOU! (Gentoo almost made me cry back in the day).
Sorry to break it to you, but Gentoo is a penguin.
You fucker, we’re all pingus
A quick search did not yield me a Hannah Montana penguin, I’m severely disappointed in this community.
This is more accurate anyway.
Ehh, having used all 3 Arch and Nix are about the same level of difficulty, Nix just doesn’t have documentation (or at least didn’t when I was using it). Flakes make it more complicated, but those are 100% optional, and I didn’t use them
Gentoo is a notable step up. Shit actually breaks there, horrendously. Still love it tho.
HMLinux does, in fact, scare me. I’m debating doing LFS, but I don’t think I could handle the difficulty that HML would offer
LFS is actually a pretty good learning experience. But that depends on whether you’re interested in topics like kernel configuration, filesystem organization, the boot components and boot sequence, init system, common app resources, compiling apps, and generally how a Linux system comes together. It gives you a solid grounding that’s applicable to any Linux distro (not super-specific like Arch/Gentoo/Nix tend to be). But it’s pretty dry stuff and you have to be really fascinated by Linux to dig into it.
On the cool side once you get through LFS you should be able to put together your own mini Linux distro and see how small you can make it and still boot and do something useful.
Yeah, I’m very interested in the user side of Linux, less so what’s under the hood. There’s some degree of it there, I do use Gentoo, which is more manual than any other distro I’ve come across, but that’s about as deep as I want to go for a daily driver. I am a little tempted to do LFS on a VM once I have a computer that can handle it again
Really? i get handheld terminal command lines with embedded copy functions when i search for solutions to my Mint problems. It’s a pretty kind and helpful community.
Mint is great for that. Fedora also offers up cookbook style instructions that can show both GUI and terminal commands. It’s a great way for newbies to get used to both methods.
Mint community’s first solution is always “have you tried just not doing that?”.
Never got that one before, I always get multiple solutions and workarounds until a problem is solved.
I imagine most Linux communities have half a dozen or so online users, at any given time, just refreshing the New Posts section waiting to fix someone’s problem and blow their mind.
There’s a misguided imagination cloud about Linux, then in reality the incredible wealth of help and support Linux users invest and receive.
It’s the FOSS “lone-wolf” thing. If you feel like you’re on the outside, each Linux user sounds like a crazed wasteland wanderer.
Meanwhile, we’re using comfortably customized environments curated and supported by our community, updating in the background, and enjoying stable 20-second boots.
!It’s really fun when they start arguing and blowing each others minds.
And I bet they’d introduce the kitty to the power of sudo pretty quickly… though giving the new murder hobo the power of sudo seems less wise than teaching Microsoft support peeps the power of grep.
I mean, look at that little guy. He’s totally gonna take over the world.
(Fuck it. Can’t be worse than the current assholes)
You can indeed use sudo in kitty: https://sw.kovidgoyal.net/kitty/
Gotta teach em bad habits early. That way they break things before it matters to much and they can learn!
I did, for a while, subscribe to the RSS feed of a Linux forum to help people xD
That gets a lot of people in trouble and I really advise against giving people terminal commands when it can be avoided. Unless the person already is familiar with the terminal, they’re just typing magic words into a black box and it reinforces the stereotype that Linux is this complicated and arcane thing.
Just tell them it’s a very basic AI chat and so you need to be precise in instruction
And that’s OK. It does get them to open the term and see it and use it a little - copy/pasta is how we all started out. (Truth is, I still copy/pasta after more than 20 years should perhaps need) But that does not negate the GUI experience. I like and use the GUI every time I can.
But I understand the need for the Cli too. I can often use it to better see where a problem is. Something my GUI lovin’ lazy butt doesn’t always do.
It’s more complicated to describe how to do something in a gui and it will only work for one environment if it’s set up the same way.
Yeah, the terminal is much more universal on Linux distros.
People will have wildly different GUI environments. I have no idea how to do thing X in all of KDE Plasma or GNOME or Xfce or Cinnamon or whatever. But outside of package management and some systemwide config, most Linux distros work pretty much the same way at a bash prompt.
And GUI feels like black magic too if the person doesn’t know what’s going on.
Yes, but at least they will understand the solution.
You can also just compile a script that they just have to execute, but they will understand even less and are way more likely to install malware.
Is it? I usually chain names of buttons or something like that:
File - Create - From templates
One simple command vs:
Go to your start menu
Search for program name
Click on it
Scroll down about half way
Click the <Button>
Enter <Some text>
Click the <Button>
Click the <Button> in the popup
And if that’s done in Gnome, does it help a KDE user, Xfce, Mate? I think not. And that’s if the gui handles the problem at all.
Of course, the command comes with an explanation of what it does.
One “simple” command that could do anything including killing their entire PC vs detailed instructions of something they can follow and understand, especially if you include pictures.
If you want people in your community, treat them with respect.
Trolls, who like to corrupt people’s data, exist. A GUI procedure is almost always safer.
Tell me how to gather this information from the GUI. Plasma for preference please.
>>> inxi -exzz ±[●][master] System: Kernel: 7.2.8-200.fc44.x86_64 arch: x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc v: 16.2.1 Desktop: KDE Plasma v: 6.7.5 Distro: Fedora Linux 44 (KDE Plasma Desktop Edition) Machine: Type: Desktop System: Intel Client Systems product: NUC8i7BEH v: J72992-303 serial: <superuser required> Mobo: Intel model: NUC8BEB v: J72688-303 serial: <superuser required> Firmware: UEFI vendor: Intel v: BECFL357.86A.0056.2018.1128.1717 date: 11/28/2018 Battery: Device-1: hidpp_battery_1 model: Logitech Wireless Mouse MX Master 2S charge: 100% (should be ignored) status: discharging CPU: Info: quad core model: Intel Core i7-8559U bits: 64 type: MT MCP arch: Coffee Lake rev: A cache: L1: 256 KiB L2: 1024 KiB L3: 8 MiB Speed (MHz): avg: 1132 min/max: 400/2700 cores: 1: 1132 2: 1132 3: 1132 4: 1132 5: 1132 6: 1132 7: 1132 8: 1132 bogomips: 43198 Flags-basic: avx avx2 ht lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 ssse3 vmx Graphics: Device-1: Intel CoffeeLake-U GT3e [Iris Plus Graphics 655] driver: i915 v: kernel arch: Gen-9.5 bus-ID: 00:02.0 Display: wayland server: Xwayland v: 24.1.13 compositor: kwin_wayland driver: X: loaded: nvidia unloaded: modesetting gpu: i915 resolution: 1: 2560x1440~60Hz 2: 2560x1440~60Hz API: EGL v: 1.5 drivers: iris,swrast platforms: active: gbm,wayland,x11,surfaceless,device inactive: N/A API: OpenGL v: 4.6 compat-v: 4.5 vendor: intel mesa v: 26.0.3 glx-v: 1.4 direct-render: yes renderer: Mesa Intel Iris Plus Graphics 655 (CFL GT3) API: Vulkan v: 1.4.341 drivers: intel,llvmpipe surfaces: N/A devices: 2 Info: Tools: api: clinfo, eglinfo, glxinfo, vulkaninfo de: kscreen-console,kscreen-doctor wl: wayland-info x11: xdriinfo, xdpyinfo, xprop, xrandr Audio: Device-1: Intel Cannon Point-LP High Definition Audio driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel bus-ID: 00:1f.3 API: ALSA v: k7.2.8-200.fc44.x86_64 status: kernel-api Server-1: PipeWire v: 1.6.9 status: active Network: Device-1: Intel Cannon Point-LP CNVi [Wireless-AC] driver: iwlwifi v: kernel bus-ID: 00:14.3 IF: wlp0s20f3 state: down mac: <filter> Device-2: Intel Ethernet I219-V driver: e1000e v: kernel port: N/A bus-ID: 00:1f.6 IF: eno1 state: up speed: 1000 Mbps duplex: full mac: <filter> Bluetooth: Device-1: Intel Bluetooth 9460/9560 Jefferson Peak (JfP) driver: btusb v: 0.8 type: USB bus-ID: 1-10:3 Report: btmgmt ID: hci0 rfk-id: 0 state: up address: <filter> bt-v: 5.1 lmp-v: 10 Drives: Local Storage: total: 2.81 TiB used: 920.76 GiB (32.0%) ID-1: /dev/sda vendor: A-Data model: SU800NS38 size: 119.24 GiB ID-2: /dev/sdb vendor: Toshiba model: Q300 size: 894.25 GiB ID-3: /dev/sdc vendor: Samsung model: ST2000LM003 HN-M201RAD size: 1.82 TiB type: USB Partition: ID-1: / size: 116.66 GiB used: 18.42 GiB (15.8%) fs: btrfs dev: /dev/sda3 ID-2: /boot size: 1.9 GiB used: 442.1 MiB (22.7%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sda2 ID-3: /boot/efi size: 598.8 MiB used: 20.1 MiB (3.4%) fs: vfat dev: /dev/sda1 ID-4: /home size: 893.82 GiB used: 246.53 GiB (27.6%) fs: xfs dev: /dev/sdb1 Swap: ID-1: swap-1 type: zram size: 8 GiB used: 827.8 MiB (10.1%) dev: /dev/zram0 Sensors: System Temperatures: cpu: 43.0 C pch: 49.0 C mobo: N/A Fan Speeds (rpm): N/A Info: Memory: total: 32 GiB available: 31.2 GiB used: 9.3 GiB (29.8%) Processes: 357 Uptime: 1d 3h 26m Init: systemd Packages: 7 note: see --rpm Compilers: clang: 22.1.8 gcc: 16.2.1 Shell: Zsh v: 5.9 inxi: 3.3.41I don’t use Plasma, but in Mint Xfce, you click:
- the whisker menu (aka Start),
- System Information,
- Copy,
which includes all this and USB and Repos sections.
If your mouse/touchpad is broken, then doing it with a keyboard only may be a bit tricky for a newbie, because you have the Shift+Tab to get to the Copy button:
- Super (aka the Windows key),
- arrow down to System Information,
- Enter,
- Shift+Tab 4 times,
- Enter.
While CLI is superior in many ways, sometimes even for newbies, I’ve found that for them GUIs are usually much easier and safer. I recently struggled to get someone to type spaces in the correct places in a terminal, over the phone.
Not that I particularly want to get involved—I do also like
inxi—but you can launch Info Center (kinfocenter) fromkrunner, the application menu, or under About this System in System Settings to get a good amount of this information and more.
I don’t know, it isn’t that hard for me to help others with UI. 🤷
What if the person you’re helping has a different UI language? Or when buttons get hidden based on available screen space? Or when you need to get an older person to use a dropdown menu with hover and click options?
Sure it’s doable, but it’s so much easier to just copy and paste a command. Of course, whenever I tell someone to do something like this, it comes with a lot of warnings about the shell. If they’re close enough I just tell them to never run a random command without consulting me first.
Very often you want the other person to learn (memorize) the way to do something.
And most of the time that person (in my experience) is an elder being or something, so they prefer UI and I don’t want to die on a hill of making them relearn their ways.
That’s nice, right until you have to troubleshoot why the other person is having difficulty following the instructions. My not-entirely-but-still-mostly-strawman scenario (specifically with the RPi Imager) where that approach fails:
Run the application. If it asks for a password and then nothing happens, then you’ll need to use
pkexecto launch it with root privileges, runpkexec env $(env) DISPLAY=:1 /path/to/application. The main window will look like a wizard utility with the steps on the left and input fields on the right. Follow the instructions until step 4. Then complete step 4, but DO NOT click “next”. A gear icon should appear.No, not the gear icon on the top, the large gear icon on the bottom right. It didn’t appear? Okay, go back to step 2 and make sure the “full” option is selected. Now go to step 4 and reenter everything. Still nothing? Send me a screenshot. Okay, the “hostname” field must not contain a hyphen, replace it with an underscore. Wait, which version of the app are you running? Go to the small gear menu, click on “About”, and send me the version number… okay, nevermind, that version doesn’t support this specific feature, you’ll have to update.
I had to have this conversation with myself. Conducting it over an internet forum with a stranger of questionable technical skills is my definition of hell.
Command line is easier for the person giving it but it teaches nothing to the person using it and I agree with the previous poster, just reinforces the idea that Linux is this mysterious non-understandable os. Many knowledgeable people in the community love to gatekeep so it works out in their favor and no one else’s.
Does this one have a soul?
Nope.
After all, what use are detailed instructions and explanations?
