Users of all levels are welcome to ask questions about GNU/Linux and share their experiences.
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If you would like to try out GNU/Linux you can do one of the following: 0) Install a GNU/Linux distribution of your choice in a Virtual Machine. 1) Use a live image and to boot directly into the GNU/Linux distribution without installing anything. 2) Dual boot the GNU/Linux distribution of your choice along with Windows or macOS. 3) Go balls deep and replace everything with GNU/Linux.
Resources: Please spend at least a minute to check a web search engine with your question. *Search: qwant, searx, ixquick or startpage. *Many free software projects have active mailing lists. *Many free software projects have an active bugzilla where you can check and report errors.
$ man %command% $ info %command% $ help %command% $ %command% -h $ %command% --help
Don't know what to look for? $ apropos %something%
Should I get Wifi usb for netinstall? I don't have immediate access to ethernet.
Benjamin Barnes
Netinstall implies getting things from the net. If just want a minimal install you can use the normal media, deselect what you don't want at install time and still use it later as a limited local repo.
Pic related, my internet was very slow back then. All software in the Debian repos can be downloaded as CDs or DVDs. You can use this discs during the installation or after as a local repo.
.Xresources file isn't in ~/ where the hell do i find it?
Jackson Russell
I think it's called .xinitrc now. If not you can create it.
Adam Evans
yeah, but I want functional wifi, and it's not really a minimal install.
Luis Adams
It is probably better to use a full CD or DVD and install the wifi stuff afterwards. Or you can boot a live installation media of debian, get the wifi working and save all the packages you had to install in another media in case they don't get copied to your new system. Another option is installing Debian on a VM, pass the WiFi adapter to it, get it working and then again save the packages for use in your new system.
Liam Brown
What's the best lightweight browser? Only have 2gbs of RAM and you know how firefox is.
John Sullivan
if it's not in the home directory just create it yourself.
also locate .Xresources
Camden Reyes
First of all use zram. Palemoon, Midori and Links2 in order of memory usage. There is also QupZilla but I never tested it.
Landon Rodriguez
Is GearVR -> SteamVR possible on Linux? If yes, what are some implementations
Gavin Foster
What the appeal of MX Linux ? This distro grows more and more on Distrowatch.
Colton Diaz
It has a good default experience with Xfce, which is basically the last sane DE.
Jace Gonzalez
xinitrc is the xinit startup configuration Xresources is resources settings Xdefaults deprecated by Xresources
Jeremiah Price
Never seen someone using it. Only posts about it.
Isaac White
I () also have never seen many people using it.
Joseph Powell
whats the best day of the week/month to upgrade packages sunday?
Ethan Smith
friendly debian with fewer ancient packages
Kayden Reyes
done that, tried to XTerm.vt100.reverseVideo: true didn't work
the real file is somewhere else, creating it myself doesn't work
Dominic Fisher
tl;dr: Best filesystem for storage in a HDD?
I have a dual boot computer, but lately I been having less and less excuses to boot to windows, namely pure gaming on games that won't be ported. I have a NTFS HDD but it keeps shitting the bed when during outages or such and will bring the system down. So I'm thinking of moving all my data to a new hard drive and just leave the NTFS untouched and unmounted. So which filesytem to use?
Jose Cruz
Depends on your distro. For Debian and CentOS any day is good. For Gentoo Monday so you have your system up to date before the weekend. For Arch Friday because you will need the entire weekend to fix it and your mom won't let you miss school.
Sebastian Collins
What kind of data? In advance, the response will probably be XFS or ext4.
Nolan Rivera
Torrents (aka videos and music), data dumps, pictures, that kind of data. Maybe some games... Do any support compression?
Caleb Hill
Linux is a kernel.
Daniel Evans
hey thats not friendly
Jacob Foster
Btrfs and ZFS support compression. Btrfs but it's not yet ready for production despite whit Arch users will tell you. ZFS also does but Linux support is not as good as in Solaris and BSDs. If you really want compression ZFS is the way to go.
Note: Afaik the compression is per file and not filesystem wide, for that you will want deduplication.
I think XFS has or will have deduplication. ZFS already supports it but stores the dedup table in RAM, which can grow quite large - 1GB per 1TB, what makes people mistakenly think it's only for big datacenters.
Final answer: ZFS if you really want compression. Otherwise XFS or ext4. In the case of ext4 remember to disable the system reserved space.
David Price
srry
Xavier Gomez
i'd rather use btrfs than zfs on linux. btrfs also can do snapshots, which lets you copy a snapshot for external backup, which you would need LVM to do with another filesystem, and LVM has significant performance drawbacks when copying a snapshot
btrfs is not stable for some raid levels, but otherwise I've never had a problem with it
David Bailey
>Final answer: ZFS if you really want compression. Otherwise XFS or ext4. In the case of ext4 remember to disable the system reserved space. I'll need to check if the space gain is worth the RAM given I have 16
1. That's only when the FS is mounted. 2. Not all data goes up to this ratio. I suggest you create a ZFS filesystem with 10% to 20% the size of all your data and copy stuff there to see how much ram it uses and if the saved space is worth it.
I have a personal mirror of libgen, it's all in ext4 and I never had a problem.I think that in this situations it's always better to be in the safe side.
Also the algorithm that will give the best compression results will probably be gzip. Gzip allows you to decompress to a stream so you can use the file while it is being decompressed. Multimedia will not gain anything from compression and might even get bigger.
James Cook
I'm tired and that's why the text is shit.
Grayson Richardson
Thinking of switching from arch to fedora but the only thing I'm concerned about is my AUR (zotero, xmind, etc). I like having them up to date so use packer. I understand that fedora doesn't have an AUR so I would need to download the program upstream?
Using Zotero as an example, install and update? make install in a folder seems pretty annoying since I'll have to locate the folder, download the update then make install again, not to mention if it doesn't support make uninstall. I hear I can make an rpm, which is like a deb, which I think is like an installer. Will this update it for me?
Gavin Barnes
>I hear I can make an rpm, which is like a deb, which I think is like an installer. Will this update it for me? No, you will have to create a new rpm every time. Use GNU Stow to keep manually installed software easy to administer. Always install this kind of software under /usr/local
Xavier Scott
and """GNU""" is a bunch of utilites, your point?
Austin Roberts
Does anyone here know a way to call machinectl shell command for a systemd-nspawn container without root access? I need that for my patched dmenu that's supposed to be able to run application inside containers.
Carter Perez
Operating System*
Noah Rivera
*Mammal
Henry Adams
The Linux kernel*
Carter Myers
I think I'll go with ext4 since it's true and tested while it seems data deduplication isn't ready on a good FS yet. And you make a good point on multimedia not gaining much from compression which will be the bulk of the data. Thanks for the support
Gavin Turner
Oh yeah, forgot to tell you. There are windows drivers that allow read only access to ext* filesystems.
Carson Moore
>windows drivers that allow read only access to ext* filesystems. Kinda defeats the point since I wanted to use the disk seamlessly between OSes. The NTFS drive will mostly sit there holding games for whenever I feel like playing them. Like once a month or so
Jeremiah Roberts
Wait, what? You were expecting to just use GNU/Linux filesystems on windows?
Cameron Smith
Nope, the other way around, but there are no chkdsk /f for NTFS on Linux to fix the drive after an unexpected shutdown (and with the current storms in the are, shit goes down a few times a week).
Camden Anderson
lol
Eli Sanchez
That's not me. I didn't understand but whatever.
Daniel Mitchell
Are you from reddit?
Matthew Jenkins
No , iam from India the greatest country there is my friend no offense .
Jaxon Wilson
Please, point me to this ""GNU Operating System"" I want to test it out.
Linux distributions can function without GNU bloat and shitware. >ibn4 b-but you can't compile the linux kernel without GCC! And? That doesn't make it any more GNU than my fucking applications compiled with it.
Asher James
assist me with my shitbox, what can I do with my current OS/hardware to make things run faster
change to Openbox or xfce. get off *buntu shit for arch or debian.
Tyler Scott
Use Xfce or LXDE. Gnome is a shit bag tied to your leg. Also use zram.
Cooper James
Can someone recommend a good music player that uses qt, since i'm using plasma and didn't like amarok, so i'm looking to replace it.
Levi Morales
just use foobar, desu.
Camden Howard
My thinkpad x220 has uefi and legacy mode. Does this mean I can install gentoo with the bios method if I boot in legacy mode?
Luis Clark
use uefi only. there's literally no reason not to.
Jeremiah Edwards
Thank you for your reply. The reason I ask is that I've successfuly installed gentoo with the bios instructions but I failed to reboot to grub the one time I tried on uefi
Eli Johnson
try to boot a live CD in UEFI. you probably just messed something up.
Alexander Perry
the only way to install gentoo with UEFI is to use an outdated piece of shit live CD.
Joshua Gonzalez
>all my "knowledge" comes from memes and is as shallow as my intelligence Never post again.
Aiden Myers
t. buntu brainlet
Andrew Bailey
dank memes bro
Samuel Brown
why don't you use a native player
Adam Martinez
nothing really compares to foobar that i've tried.
Dominic Phillips
This was awhile ago I'm using the systemrescue cd. Which is nice because I can boot it to a graphical environment and copy and paste from the handbook
Sebastian Roberts
he right you know
Colton Jackson
>i possess no real knowledge, all i can do is post memes and opinions i picked up from others to pretend i fit in on this technology related forum You don't know what makes a distribution. You don't know how environments or software works. Consider euthanasia.
Jacob Anderson
No, he isn't you fucking retard. Running the same software on different distributions won't make your computer faster. Nor will changing to a different environment make your usage, like web browsing, a better experience, because you are still running the same software, retard.
Robert Moore
nice samefag m8. And i'm sorry you developed stockholm to a GNUL distro and fail to realize there's better options.
Easton Sullivan
You found nothing that plays music?
Gavin Evans
>i don't know what "samefag" is: the post Why are you still posting? Stop wasting bandwidth. You don't even know what distribution I'm using you fucking retard.
Liam Smith
>Running the same software on different distributions won't make your computer faster. oh the irony from the top of Mt. Stupid
Henry Perry
nothing that is a good as foobar or better. I really don't understand this allergy you people have to wine.
Hudson Brown
Do you run more Windows programs in Wine or is foobar the only one?
Adam Rogers
foobars the only one minus games.
Tyler Peterson
what are some features you need in foobar?
Cameron Scott
Stability. It's based on the rock-solid Debian stable.
Alexander Hughes
>visiting distrowatch Stop.
Easton Thompson
>firefox using tons of CPU resources at 50-70% CPU load >about:performance shows nothing amiss, all process and tabs at 2-0% CPU usage each >losing my shit trying to find out what is happening >about to go full tinfoil believing a bitcoin miner has infiltrated my system >eventually realise I installed an addon that opens things directly in mpv, when it does the process is still owned by firefox instead of the mpv instance and watching very high quality media on my shitty computer uses a ton of resources
I am my own worst enemy with computers. I was getting pretty close to a full system paranoia wipe.
Really all it needs is the same ricablity as foobar with ease of use in managing playlists and searching. While retaining a very minimal UI that's free of anything and everything i don't want. I don't care to learn yet another CLI interface so MPD doesn't interest me because it's a hindrance.
Adam Flores
deadbeef. it's just a clone of foobar to the point where you are told to read foobar docs for help. it's not exactly foobar though and not quite as good but good enough. It's still surprises me how much better foobar is than literally every other player available. I don't understand why the creator of foobar won't just open source the damn thing so we can have a native linux version, it's like he is withholding it from linux on purpose.
Lucas Morris
It's tied too heavily to VS shit for starters so i can assume he probably doesn't bother with linux at all. But yeah I don't understand why so many people miss the point of why Foobar is so great.
Leo Flores
It's not like it's being sold for money, I don't see why doesn't he just release the code and let random faggots do the job for him. It's the one software that is truly irreplaceable from Windows.
Levi Wilson
The codes most likely shit, or he just doens't want to deal with the public. Which i get. But yeah it'd be nice if he just threw it up someplace with an MIT license so the public could atleast maintain a fork if he doesn't want to. oh well.
Samuel Brooks
The one feature I like about foobar more than any is how it handles large libraries. it's loads and handles them so much faster than anything else I've tried. Also bulk tagging operations are lightning fast. I've happy with the functionality that deadbeef provides and use it as my standard player. But I keep foobar around just for when I need to either bulk tag, or do something like replaygain scan a large collection of new music. The customisation and plugins of foobar are fantastic, but those things aren't unique to foobar.
James Clark
>really like i3's hotkeys >need bspwm
how hard would it be to change the hotkeys?
Jackson Taylor
Does anyone have reliable or up to date GNU/Linux PDF documentation? I'd like to teach myself the intricacies of GNU/Linux, and the best medium for me as a student tends to be PDFs.
So I've worked out how to change my brightness in the commandline, by sending "echo number > /sys/class/backlight/intel_backlight/brigtness" However, I want to know if this is a dangerous way to do this, and how can I tell what the minimum and maximum values I can put in this file? Because people were saying that a value of 7 was pretty good, but here I am unable to see the screen on anything lower than 200, and 2000 is pretty good. How high does this value go and what happens if I go over?
Carson Garcia
most hardware these days are pretty good about handling bad values. It will most likely reject it and not change or reject it and go to the highest/lowest it can. wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/backlight
Sorry if this is a dumb question, but is it possible to dual boot some linux distro and windows and have them display on their own respective monitor?
Austin Bennett
is tux racer still maintained?
Benjamin Murphy
you'd need to VM and a screen that supports splitting.
Cooper Fisher
How could it be dangerous? To vid that problem just have the changes in brightness to be % based increments, rather than absolute values. FO rinstacne my i3 config for those keys is
# INCREASE screen birghtness bindsym $mod+F6 exec brightnessctl set +2%
# REDUCE screen birghtness bindsym $mod+F5 exec brightnessctl set 2%-
but you can do something very similar for other programs that handle the brightness changes