#Also not supported on Linux so I have to boot up Windows for that and I just don't remember to do that + dear god a fresh install of Window

[beebfreeb]

have you heard of rain world

I have the game! I just haven't played very far into it at all, because I suck bad at it. ^.^

[poipoipoi-2016]

Apropos of nothing

If you are the techiest person in the house (and for many of you, this is not techy at all), today is a good day to build a pihole thanks to Google's new TLDs.

For the record, this straight up stopped Dad from getting computer viruses when coupled with the Ublock browser extension, so I will volunteer my time to get you set up. We will find an evening and do a Zoom call. I am serious.

Prerequisities:

Before you start, this will be way way easier if your router has a magic way to:

Set static IP addresses

Set a custom DNS server

If you can't do this, I'm not saying you're stuck, but there's some non-obvious failure modes and maybe it's time to buy a better router.

Parts:

Raspberry Pi 4B. 2GB if you just want to set and forget, 8GB if you want to do more things on this than just your pihole (Coughs in a MarioKart box) -> https://www.raspberrypi.com/products/raspberry-pi-4-model-b/

Spare USB-C charger if you don't have one already. I'm a fan of https://www.amazon.com/Argon-USB-C-Power-Supply-Switch/dp/B0919CQKQ8/ myself

A microSD card at least UHS class 3 or better. 32 is fine for just a pihole, I have a 512 in some of mine that I use for more stuff. https://www.tomshardware.com/best-picks/raspberry-pi-microsd-cards

Some method of flashing the card if you don't have one (Some come with SD to micro-SD adapters, if not a USB to SD/micro-SD adapter is about $10 off Amazon)

If you really feel like going nuts, go buy yourself an Argon case and then very very carefully never ever install the software for the fan that does nothing. The value is entirely in having a big giant brick that is self-cooling. If you want to play MarioKart, I would consider this a requirement. https://www.amazon.com/Argon-Raspberry-Aluminum-Heatsink-Supports/dp/B07WP8WC3V

Setup:

Do yourself a favor and ignore all the signs telling you to go get Raspbian and instead go grab an ISO of Ubuntu 64-bit using RPi Imager. Because Raspbian cannot be upgraded across version WHY U DO THIS

Download Rpi Imager, plug the microSD card into your computer,

Other General Purpose OS -> Ubuntu -> Ubuntu 22.04 LTS

So now you have an operating system on an SD card.

Assemble the case if you bought one, plug in the SD card, power supply, ethernet cable if you have one or mouse and (mini) HDMI cable if you don't. If you bought that Argon case, you can just plug a keyboard (server OS means no mouse gang; In this house, we use the Command Line) and HDMI cable into the Pi. Turn it on.

Gaining access

The end state of this is that your pi is:

Connected to the internet by cable or wifi

You can SSH to it (Also not scary)

If you plugged in an ethernet cable, once it's done booting (1-2 minutes?), you should be able to ssh to "ubuntu@<the IP of the system>". Look it up in your router. It may make sense to give the static IP NOW to keep it stable.

If you've never used SSH before, I think the standard is Putty on Window or you can just open a terminal in Mac. (And if you know enough Linux to have a Linux computer, why are you reading this?)

If you didn't plug it in, and need to setup the wifi, there's magic incantations to attach it to the wifi and to be quite blunt, I forget what they are.

Your username is ubuntu, your password is ubuntu and then it will ask you to make a new password. If you know the meaning of the phrase "keypair-based access", it may make sense to run `ssh-copy-id` at this point in time.

Router settings (part 1)

Give your new Pi a static IP address, and reboot your pi (as simple as typing in `sudo reboot`).

Open a new SSH session to the pihole on the new address.

Installing pihole

Open up an SSH session and

curl -sSL https://install.pi-hole.net | bash

This is interactive. Answer the questions

When it's done, on your other computer, navigate to <the ip>/admin

Login with the password you just set. Router settings part 2

Give your new Pi a static IP address then point your router at that address

Set the DNS servers to the static IP

Then ensure you're blocking something. Anything.

Then do what you want to do. You'll probably need to whitelist some sites, blacklist some more, but the main thing is going to be "Adding more list of bad sites". Reddit has some lists.

And... enjoy.

/But seriously, there's some stuff to do for maintenance and things. I wasn't joking about the pair setup.

[ntrlily]

I have been considering getting into Linux but the only thing holding me back is game support really, as I'm primarily a PC gamer. How difficult would you say dual booting really is (as in, "how difficult is it to achieve" *and* "how difficult/quick is it to swap between OSes")? Does specific distro affect the difficulty? Do you think it would be worth it?

Also, what are your favorite or recommended distros? I've been told about a few mainly on fedi but haven't looked too far into many. Mint gets frequently recommended, for instance.

Thanks!

I have actually never dual booted before, so opening that up to anyone reading who has! I don't think it's more difficult with one distro compared to another, probably. It is fairly easy to set up as far as I'm aware, your install disc should have an option to set dual booting up for you, nothing too arcane. But anything past that, I don't know much about.

Personally vanilla Debian is my favorite but Ubuntu-based distros have the advantage of being the distros that Valve targets, like the build of Steam on their site is specifically built for those distros. You can get Steam running on other types of Linux though, but that is still an advantage for gaming stuff. (Among other things, it's not uncommon for "game with a Linux build" to really mean "game with an Ubuntu build")

Mint is Ubuntu-based, but the defaults for it are more user-friendly so imo it makes a good distro for gamers.

I personally consider it worth it, some of it is my personal philosophy and some of it is more basic practical stuff like Linux running faster, having better UI customization, not having all the bloat and adware that comes on a fresh install of Windows (although there are means to remove that bloat, of course)

Also not having to reboot and lock my computer to update, oh my god.

Extra notes for gaming, now that I have a Linux gaming setup to reference from:

The current thing I mainly have issues with is MMOs with client-side anti-cheat, some of them really don't want to play with Linux compatibility tools. There are people who have gone to efforts to get these running on Linux but it's a pain in the ass and I don't care enough to do that.

Proton GE can be really helpful for some games. I run most of my games through vanilla wine, but I did end up needing GE to run FF7R. If you're not already a Linux user with Existing Ways You Do Things, just running things through Steam+Proton is generally going to work out just fine for you. You can play pirated Windows games this way too, just add them as non-Steam games and run them through Steam.

If you have very recent hardware, and are going with Mint or another Ubuntu-based distro, go for the edge edition. The old kernel on the standard edition can be kinda finicky with brand new hardware.

[andmaybegayer]

So my hope, eventually, is to have my own purpose-built computer which is an expandable skeleton and will more-or-less never need to be entirely tossed out, only supplanted/upgraded Ship of Theseus style.

However, Microsoft is getting a bit too uppity for my tastes, and I hope to mainly run Linux on that eventual computer.

However, I'm also a gaming man, and I recognize that, in many cases, Linux kinda sucks for games, or, at least, that's what I've heard. Emulation is also a pain I'd rather not deal with (both of Windows and of games themselves), and so, for games that don't support Linux, I'd like to have the option of having Windows on the same machine, so that I can run Linux most of the time, but switch to Windows whenever I wanna play games.

My question is how realistic is that? I know that machines with multiple OS's exist, and you can choose which one you want at boot, but I'm hoping for this to be an extremely fancy computer, connected to a lot of extremely fancy computer peripherals. Would switching OS's without power cycling the machine screw with the other hardware? Is it even possible, or would you need to power cycle it in any case? Is there any way to build this hypothetical computer, or am I asking too much/investing too much effort? Would it be easier/better to just build a really good Windows machine and a really good Linux machine?

So the use case you're talking about is pretty popular among a certain kinds of Tech Nerd, and most of them solve it with iommu GPU Passthrough and a windows VM on Linux. I knew a few people doing this back in like 2018 and while it's a little fidgety it's fairly reliable.

You can't share GPU's the way you can share CPU and Memory. Not on consumer hardware, anyway. So if you want to run a VM with windows with a gaming GPU, it needs its own entire GPU just for that.

The basic layout is this: Build a normal high end system with a lot of extra resources, say, 32+GB of RAM, 10+ CPU cores, a couple terabytes of storage, and two separate GPU's. Run Linux on the system, as your host, and only use one of the GPU's. Create a VM on the host under qemu and hand it 16GB of RAM, 6 cores, a terabyte or two of storage, and use iommu to pass it the other GPU. Now use software like LookingGlass to capture the framebuffer directly off the Windows GPU and forward it to your Linux GPU, so that you can display your windows system inside Linux seamlessly.

Now, you do need two GPU's, so it can get expensive. A lot of people choose to run one higher end GPU for windows and a basic GPU for Linux, but that's up to your use case. You can run two identical GPU's if you wish.

The main place this kind of thing is being tinkered with is the Level1Techs forum, Wendell is a big advocate of GPU virtualization and so has aggregated a lot of information and people with relevance here. He also makes a lot of video stuff on IOMMU.

So I have to have two whole GPU's?

Kind of. There ARE ways to live-reset a running GPU which allows you to do tricks where you can swap a single GPU between the host and the VM without rebooting, but it's extremely dubious and flaky. Virtualized GPU partitioning exists but only on extremely expensive server GPU's aimed at virtualization servers for enterprise so it's well outside of our price range.

If you're interested in single-GPU, there is ongoing work getting it to run on consumer hardware on the Level1Techs forum and he's even running some kind of Hackathon on it, but even the people having success with this have pretty unreliable systems.

https://forum.level1techs.com/t/vfio-passthrough-in-2023-call-to-arms/199671

This setup works fine maybe 25% of the time. I can always start the VM just fine, my linux desktop stays active and any software launched after the VM gets the GPU will render on the iGPU without issues. However I suffer from the reset bug, and 75% of the time shutting down the VM won’t return the GPU to Linux and I have to reboot to fix that.

I'm quite satisfied with this setup.

Is this a good idea

It depends on what you need and how willing you are to switch between the host and VM. A LOT more things run smoothly on Linux these days. Wendell started tinkering with IOMMU back in like 2015, and I started gaming on Linux back in 2016. If you had native software, great! Without that, well, good luck with anything less than five years old.

I played Burnout Paradise and even Subnautica on my 750Ti laptop on plain old Wine, and then DXVK came out in 2018 and the world got flipped turned upside down and I have video of me running Warframe on Linux with that same mediocre system a few weeks before Proton hit the scene and we got flipped turned... right way up? Now with Proton I would say most things run pretty well under a mixture of automatic steam stuff and scripts off lutris and homemade WINEPREFIXes.

That said, if you want everything to Just Work, it's hard to beat a VM. I'm not sure how competitive games run, but for everything else a VM is going to be more reliable than WINE.

[vergess]

You are the mutual I know who uses linux, and I have a half-broken dinosaur of a laptop I want to see if linux would make usable again.

Its 8+ years old, cannot connect to the internet for a reason that may be software related or might not(its a mystery), and has other various issues.

My use of it would Primarily be as a on-the-go text & html editor and if I can get the internet running on it then also firefox as well. Maybe some offline emulation of some older games or a simple linux supported drawing program but that isnt essential.

The question is Thus: If I download a linux mint installer and copy to a flashdrive(presuming you can download the file without it starting to set up the OS instantly), is that all thats necessary to upload linux mint onto a laptop that has no internet capabilities?

Also which version of linux mint should I use? I see there are several. This laptop 3 years ago ran windows 10 ok enough to boot up chrome and use the internet, but now it takes like 15 mins to finish loading enough that you can open programs, as a metric.

Thanks and hope you have a nice day!

Yes, most linux distros will run on a machine that age, and with a surprising degree of vitality. Game emulation should work just fine, unless the computer was very low power even for 2015.

On a mech that old, I'd suggest just checking if the tiny wire for the wifi card has popped loose over time. They are snap-on wire heads that don't lock, so especially with laptops, disconnections like that happen.

Your wifi card should look a lot like this:

I've circled the two tiny ports, and drawn arrows to identify which cables. The whole wifi card will be about an inch across, and is the ONLY thing that uses those kind of wires, so it's very identifiable.

Linux mint is designed to install offline, and includes a wide variety of open source and generic drivers for just.... so much hardware. When you begin installation, it will ask you if you want to use, "third party, private and proprietary drivers." If you say yes, it will want an internet connection to download those drivers. If you say no, it will install entirely offline without issue.

As for which version: the only difference is the visuals. I, personally, like XFCE because it has very minimal visual noise. Everything is simple rectangles with sharp corners and clear boundaries. This lack of visual flair also means it uses the least resources to run the OS, leaving more hardware power available for actual tasks. However, it's a very intimidating desktop. If you liked Windows XP but haven't enjoyed much since, grab XFCE.

If you are a Mac/apple user, I actually recommend Kubuntu instead of Mint, because it has the most similar interface visually and will cause the least transition pains. Kubuntu has equally if not even more robust hardware support to Mint, as both of them are built on top of the Ubuntu framework.

For everyone else, I suggest starting with Mint Cinnamon. I have actually, with no reservations, had way better results teaching confused retirees to run Cinnamon than Windows or Mac. It's a very user friendly interface.

The start bar search, for example, literally just shows results for files/programs installed to your computer, none of this bs about integrated web searching.

As for installation tools:

You must burn the ISO file to the flashdrive as a bootable disk, rather than simply copying the file to it. I'm sure you know that; it's the same for installing windows. But! People often forget that detail and wonder why their computer keeps booting to windows instead of the installation media.

I personally use LiLiUSB because I'm stuck mentally in the year 2014 which is when it stopped updating. For a more sane approach, try Balena Etcher. Or whatever bootable drive software you like; it doesn't really matter. You just need to make the drive bootable before installation.

[trivalentlinks]

random unsolicited linux-related advice for other technophobes like me:

if you're getting a new laptop and planning to wipe windows and replace it with linux, try to get a laptop that has manufacturer support for linux, and failing that, try to use windows on it for at least a little bit before switching, to make sure everything works and/or try to go for a dual-boot even though that's more technical and harder to do

linux supports (has firmware for) pretty much all laptops, so if you look up 'can i use linux on X computer' as long as X is not a mac, people will say 'sure, no problem!' (and possibly even if it's a mac? i haven't really thought about apple in a long time, but 15 years ago, it was considered difficult to install linux on a mac)

but the problem is that sure, you can install and run linux, but if you have any issues that can be attributed to firmware (but are probably hardware issues) and you try to call the manufacturer (because your computer is still in warranty) they'll be like, "linux? not our problem. should've bought one of our laptops that supports linux"

(i should have! but i got this laptop as a gift from my mom, which btw, is also not a great idea; she did ask which computers i wanted, and i emailed her ones that have manufacturer linux support, but unfortunately my inability to read/follow instructions is something i probably inherited from her (or both my parents), lol, so the computer i got was not one on my list)

[miasfoxxden]

I use Arch, BTW

I made the switch from Ubuntu 23.04 to Arch Linux. I embraced the meme. After over a decade since my last failed attempt at daily driving Arch, I'm gonna put this as bluntly as I can possibly make it:

Arch is a solid Linux distribution, but some assembly is required.

But why?

Hear me out here Debian and Fedora family enjoyers. I have long had the Debian family as my go-to distros and also swallowed the RHEL pill and switched my server over to Rocky Linux from Ubuntu LTS. on another machine. More on that in a later post when I'm more acclimated with that. But for my personal primary laptop, a Dell Latitude 5580, after being continually frustrated with Canonical's decision to move commonly used applications, particularly the web browsers, exclusively to Snap packages and the additional overhead and just weird issues that came with those being containerized instead of just running on the bare metal was ultimately my reason for switching. Now I understand the reason for this move from deb repo to Snap, but the way Snap implements these kinds of things just leaves a sour taste in my mouth, especially compared to its alternative from the Fedora family, Flatpak. So for what I needed and wanted, something up to date and with good support and documentation that I didn't have to deal with 1 particular vendors bullshit, I really only had 2 options: Arch and Gentoo (Fedora is currently dealing with some H264 licensing issues and quite honestly I didn't want to bother with that for 2 machines).

Arch and Gentoo are very much the same but different. And ultimately Arch won over the 4chan /g/ shitpost that has become Gentoo Linux. So why Arch?  Quite honestly, time. Arch has massive repositories of both Arch team maintained  and community software, the majority of what I need already packaged in binary form. Gentoo is much the same way, minus the precompiled binary aspect as the Portage package manager downloads source code packages and compiles things on the fly specifically for your hardware. While yes this can make things perform better than precompiled binaries, the reality is the difference is negligible at best and placebo at worst depending on your compiler settings. I can take a weekend to install everything and do the fine tuning but if half or more of that time is just waiting for packages to compile, no thanks. That plus the massive resource that is the Arch User Repository (AUR), Arch was a no-brainer, and Vanilla arch was probably the best way to go. It's a Lego set vs 3D printer files and a list of hardware to order from McMaster-Carr to screw it together, metaphorically speaking.

So what's the Arch experience like then?

As I said in the intro, some assembly is required. To start, the installer image you typically download is incredibly barebones. All you get is a simple bash shell as the root user in the live USB/CD environment. From there we need to do 2 things, 1) get the thing online, the nmcli command came in help here as this is on a laptop and I primarily use it wirelessly, and 2) run the archinstall script. At the time I downloaded my Arch installer, archinstall was broken on the base image but you can update it with a quick pacman -S archinstall once you have it online. Arch install does pretty much all the heavy lifting for you, all the primary options you can choose: Desktop environment/window manager, boot loader, audio system, language options, the whole works. I chose Gnome, GRUB bootloader, Pipewire audio system, and EN-US for just about everything. Even then, it's a minimal installation once you do have.

Post-install experience is straightforward, albeit just repetitive. Right off the archinstall script what you get is relatively barebones, a lot more barebones than I was used to with Ubuntu and Debian Linux. I seemingly constantly was missing one thing for another, checking the wiki, checking the AUR, asking friends who had been using arch for even longer than I ever have how to address dumb issues. Going back to the Lego set analogy, archinstall is just the first bag of a larger set. It is the foundation for which you can make it your own further. Everything after that point is the second and onward parts bags, all of the additional media codecs, supporting applications, visual tweaks like a boot animation instead of text mode verbose boot, and things that most distributions such as Ubuntu or Fedora have off the rip, you have to add on yourself. This isn't entirely a bad thing though, as at the end if you're left with what you need and at most very little of what you don't. Keep going through the motions, one application at a time, pulling from the standard pacman repos, AUR, and Flatpak, and eventually you'll have a full fledged desktop with all your usual odds and ends.

And at the end of all of that,  what you're left with is any other Linux distro. I admit previously I wrote Arch off as super unstable and only for the diehard masochists after my last attempt at running Arch when I was a teenager went sideways, but daily driving it on my personal Dell Latitude for the last few months has legitimately been far better than any recent experiences I've had with Ubuntu now. I get it. I get why people use this, why people daily drive this on their work or gaming machines, why people swear off other distros in favor of Arch as their go to Linux distribution. It is only what you want it to be. That said, I will not be switching to Arch any time soon on mission critical systems or devices that will have a high run time with very specific purposes in mind, things like servers or my Raspberry Pi's will get some flavor of RHEL or Debian stable still, and since Arch is one of the most bleeding edge distros, I know my chance of breakage is non zero. But so far the seas have been smooth sailing, and I hope to daily this for many more months to come.

[tap-tap-tap-im-in]

A friend of mine asked me recently to detail my Linux setup, and after thinking about it for a bit, I realized that this is essentially a personality quiz for the Linux users I thought I would detail it here as well.

I no longer have a desktop computer at all. I have two older generation "gaming" laptops and three Raspberry Pis. I'm going to go through in the order I got them:

Laptop #1:

[Purchased New in 2016] Acer ROG 7th Gen i7, 16GB Ram, nVidia 1050Ti Mobile, Internal 1TB HDD, external 2TB HDD

This was originally a windows laptop when I got it back in 2016, but in 2021 I was tired of the long windows boot times on the the HDD and was much more familiar with Linux due to several years experience doing webserver admin work.

I use Ubuntu LTS as my base. It's easy, it's well supported, it's well documented, and the official repos have just about everything I could need. The only thing I've really had to add myself is the repo for i3, but we'll get to that in a bit. I also chose Ubuntu because I already had my first two Raspberry pis, and both were running Raspbian, so using a debian based kernal meant that it wouldn't be much of a change when ssh'ing into them.

That said, I've never really liked the default Ubuntu desktop. Gnome3 is slow and full of too many effects that don't look especially nice but are still heavy to execute. Instead I loaded up KDE plasma. You can download Kubuntu and have them to the setup for you, but I did it the hard way because I found out about Plasma after installing Ubuntu and didn't want to start from scratch.

My plasma desktop looks like this:

Of my two laptops, this one is in the best shape. It's the one that I usually take with me on trips. With the dedicated GPU it can do some light gaming (it did heavier gaming on windows, but due to emulation layers the performance is just a little worse these days, Linux gaming isn't perfect), the screen hinge has never been an issue, and it's on the lighter side of gaming laptops (which is not to say that it's light). For that reason, I often find myself actually using it on my lap, in airports, at people's houses, on my own couch typing this up.

For this reason, I started looking into ways to better keep my hands on the keyboard, rather than having to drift down to the track pad, which is my least favorite part of this laptop. During that research I discovered i3. If you're not familiar i3 is a Linux Desktop Environment that is entirely keyboard driven. https://i3wm.org/

To be fair, it's less of a desktop environment and more of a keyboard driven window manager, as it doesn't have a "desktop" per se. Instead when you log into it, you simply get a black status bar at the bottom of the screen. It doesn't even black out the login screen, so if you don't know what to look for, you might think the whole thing has hung. But, the big benefit of this is that the whole thing is lighting fast for a DE. It doesn't waste any resources on effects or really anything that you don't need. But it's really nice for window tiling and task switching without having to get the mouse involved. This is great for productivity (if you're into that), but it's also just convenient for working on a gaming laptop, which might be balanced such that if you take your hands off of it, it might topple off your lap.

This laptop is my primary project computer. It has all my git repos and scripts for doing things like renewing my website's ssl certs. I also run game servers on it for Minecraft. I'm probably going to spin up a Valheim server on it in the near future too. Especially now that the process has improved somewhat.

Raspberry Pi #1:

[Gifted New in 2016] Raspberry Pi 3b, 4GB RAM, 32GB SD card

This one is my oldest RPi. It's had a lot of roles through the years, including an early version of the vogon media server during initial development in 2020. It's run headless Raspbian for a good three or four years now. Currently it's configured as a web server/php scripted web crawler and a pi-hole DNS server. My router currently refuses to use it as a DNS server without bringing the whole network down, but I will on occasion manually switch devices to it when I'm running especially ad-ridden applications.

There's not too much to say about this one. It's stable, I almost never have problems with it. I frequently use it for things that I want running in the background because they'll take too long and I don't want them blocking up one of my other computers.

Laptop #2

[Gifted Used in 2020] Asus Predator 7th Gen i7, 16GB Ram, nVidia 1080 Mobile, 2 internal 256GB SSDs, External 2TB HDD

This one runs windows 10 still. I use this primarily for gaming. The screen hinge is an absolute joke, and replacing it involves replacing the entire screen bezel assembly, which I can absolutely do, but is such a pain that I haven't gotten around to it in the 3 years I've owned this laptop.

There's nothing really special about this one, other than that when both laptops are at my desk, I use a KVM switch to swap my external monitor, keyboard, and trackball between the two computers.

Raspberry Pi #2:

[Gifted New in 2020/21] Raspberry Pi 4b, 4GB Ram, 16GB SD card, 2 120GB USB Sticks, External 2TB HDD

This is my media server. I got it for Christmas 2020 (or 2021, I don't actually remember which because 2020 was a hard hard year). It runs Rasbian, the full OS, with the desktop environment disabled from booting via the command line. It runs PHP 8.2, MariaDB, Apache2, and MiniDLNA to serve the content via my Vogon Media Server.

If you can't tell from the above storage, I'm running the USB ports well past the power delivery they are rated for. The webserver and OS are on the internal storage, so functionally this just means that sometimes the media disappears. I need to build a migration script to put the contents of the two USB sticks on the external storage, as there is more than enough room, and if I can put the HDD in an enclosure with dedicated power, that will solve the issue. But that's at least a hundred dollars of expense, and since the server only has 1, maybe two users at a time, we've been limping along like this for a few years now.

Raspberry Pi #3:

[Purchased New in 2023] Raspberry Pi 4b, 8GB Ram, 16GB SD card

This is the newest Pi. Work gave me a gift card as a bonus for a project recently, so after weighing the pros and cons of getting a VR headset, I settled on setting up a retro gaming tv box. Currently it's running Batocero Linux and loaded up with classic game roms up through the PSX. Though, I would really like to use it as a tv client for the media server. I've upgraded the devices in the living room recently, and there's no longer a dedicated web browser we can use without hooking up one of our laptops. I've got a spare 128GB SD card in the office, so I'm strongly considering getting a wireless mouse and keyboard and setting it up to dual boot between Batocero (which is convenient because it can be navigated with just a controller), and Raspbian. I think I'd set Batocero as the default in Grub, and then if I want to use Raspbian I'd need to have the keyboard handy anyway.

Maybe I'll get one of those half-sized keyboards with the trackpad built in.

Speaking of controllers. I use an 8BitDo Pro 2 controller, and I've been super happy with it since purchase: https://www.8bitdo.com/pro2/

So that's the setup. I have entirely too many computers for any one person, but I included the dates when I got them to show that a number of these have been around for a long time, and that part of the reason I have so many now is that I've put a lot of time into ongoing maintenance and repurposing.

If you've read this far, I'd love to hear about your setups. You don't have to reblog this, but please tag me if you detail yours.

[linuxgamenews]

My Friendly Neighborhood is due to bring the horror to Linux

My Friendly Neighborhood puppet puzzle survival game has a Linux port on the radar with Windows PC. The brilliant craftsmanship of developers John and Evan Szymanski truly shines in this work. Available on Steam with 96% Very Positive reviews. A unique new puppet puzzle survival thriller, just released, a fresh out of the oven titled, My Friendly Neighborhood. Your good ol' innocent puppet buddies from childhood TV, have all gone berserk. Which is all due to evolve onto Linux.

I am happy to report that Linux support is on my radar.

The My Friendly Neighborhood developers have responded via email, revealing that they're using Unity 3D 2020.1.17f1, an innovative input system, and a post-processing stack for the game. They're eager to provide a native build once the release storm settles. And while we can confirm robust Proton support, they definitely see the value in a native port. Now then, our main hero in My Friendly Neighborhood is Gordon, your regular repair guy. He laces up his boots, not knowing he's about to dive into a pool of complete puppet madness. Gordon's task is seemingly simple at first - switch off the unexpected broadcast of an old kids’ show, 'The Friendly Neighborhood'. As a result, he's about to be in the center of a puppet revolt. My Friendly Neighborhood once filled up living rooms with laughter, lighting up little faces with its goofy puppet crew. The world loved the edu-tainment it offered, the fun-filled journey it took them on. But alas, with time, the love faded, and a result, the studio had to close shop. The puppet gang has returned for an unscripted encore. This time, they're far from friendly.

My Friendly Neighborhood Trailer

In the spirit of beloved mascot horror sagas, My Friendly Neighborhood offers a wild ride that's anything but typical. There's no splash of gore, no typical fright fest. Instead, it welcomes you to a realm of horror where scares come with sprinkles of fluff and felt. Which is also very well done. As you explore the desolate My Friendly Neighborhood studio, survival is the key. You have to keep those rabid puppets at bay, tie them down with your trusty toolkit filled with quirky, harmless weapons, and good ol' duct tape. You're in for a host of unique puzzles that are equal parts fun and fear. Oh, and remember, you're also digging for a dark secret buried in this whole puppet chaos.

Here's what you're signing up for:

Puppets: Are they buddies or bullies? It's a madhouse of crazy, colorful characters that were once friends but have now turned foes.

Choose Your Own Adventure: You're not stuck following a linear path in My Friendly Neighborhood. Your map is your guide, and you have the freedom to explore.

Wacky Weapons: Unique tools, like the Rolodexer, are your saviors. Can you recall your ABCs? That’s your ammo, and careful management is key!

Puzzling Scenarios: Put on your thinking cap to solve a variety of challenging enigmas, a tribute to the classics of survival horror.

Varying Scenes: From Ray's Workshop to the Cardboard Crayon Halls, there are tons of diverse places for you to explore.

Stay Organized: Keep track of your belongings in a grid-based real-time inventory. Trust me, it's so much more efficient!

My Friendly Neighborhood puppet puzzle survival game can be yours right now. You can grab it on Windows PC via Steam and play with Proton at a Platinum level. Or you can wait for the native Linux build of the game, no ETA yet. Priced at $26.99 USD / £22.49 / 26,09€ with the 10% discount.

[autolenaphilia]

My adventures in Linux gaming.

I switched OS from Windows 10 to Linux Mint a few days ago. And it's gone great so far. Mint is a very beginner and user-friendly distribution, and I eased into it pretty much immediately. My main problem was the shitty BIOS firmware on this computer, and that's not Linux's fault. (I had to tinker with the settings, changing the boot order, to allow the computer to boot Linux from a USB stick I had put it on.)

For most things I use a computer for, writing, surfing the internet, watching movies, linux is at least equal to Windows, if not better. You are free of the tracking and bloatware and other Microsoft fuckery. Most programs I use daily like Libreoffice, Mozilla Firefox, and VLC media player all have Linux versions equal to the Windows versions.

The thing is, I play video games on this computer. It's a weak laptop, so I mostly play older games and some indies. So I've play a lot of old point-and-click adventures (plus some modern less-demanding games in that genre), and if I play action games, they're usually from the 90s or early 00s.

I'm also a big opponent of DRM and very pro-games preservation. It's because of my opposition to things like DRM and proprietary software that I switched to an open source OS like Linux from WIndows.

And with my tastes in games and those opinions, it's no surprise I'm into GOG, a digital sales platform focused on old games and in which all the games are without drm. GOG and Itch.io are the two game storefronts which allow you to actually own the games you paid money for. There are some drm-free games on Steam, but the majority are locked-down with drm in various ways (pcgamingwiki claims "979 out of 40,764 games in total" games on steam are drm-free). And you never get drm-free installers like GOG or Itch provides.

I own almost 600 games on GOG, most of them cheap and old games I grabbed on sale. And I do recommend buying games there, overall. Great selection of older classic titles, and you actually get to own copies of the games you buy. You can easily download and back the installers up on an external hard drive. I'm pro-piracy in general, but buying a game on gog is actually an honest transaction, you pay money and you get a copy of the product you get to keep, increasingly a rarity in today's games and media market.

So, GOG is great at making me pay money for media. There is one problem though, they are not great at Linux compatibility. The problem with gaming on Linux is that most games are developed only for Windows. You need something like the compatibility layer Wine to play most games on a linux computer.

And GOG provide Linux versions of games, including installers, if the developer has made one, but they do almost nothing themselves. GOG does have a launcher, GOG galaxy, and there is only a windows version.

Valve and Steam however, is good at supporting Linux. Steam's launcher does have a Linux version, and not only that, it has the tool Proton built in to make windows games compatible with Linux. Proton relies on existing software like Wine, but is a very convenient way to use those tools. The goal is "make playing Windows games on Linux as simple as hitting the Play button within Steam." It's not quite there yet for every game, you still have to do some tinkering with many of them, but it works reasonably well.

So Valve and Steam has been good for playing games on Linux. Proton is very convenient, and that's a word that is rarer than it should be in the context of gaming on linux. And I can't argue with that. I do have a few Steam games (mostly games that are not available on GOG that I really wanted to play), and one of them, Max Payne, works better with Proton on Linux than it did on Windows 10.

Still, Valve's support for Linux is not out of some highminded support for free software. If it were, they wouldn't sell games with drm, or have their own drm with their launcher. The reason Valve has put so much money and effort into supporting Linux gaming is because they have their own distro, SteamOS, which they use to run their own hardware. They first tried it with the unsuccesful Steam machine and more success recently with the Steam Deck. Valve's support for Linux games compatibility is entirely adjunct on their desire to make money selling their own hardware. It's like all corporate decisions entirely mercenary and profit-orientated in character. They support Linux, but undermine with drm the very values Linux rest upon.

And I can't be too harsh on GOG not supporting LInux more than they do. CD Project is not a good company (the reports of crunch during the development of Cyberpunk 2077 prove that), but GOG is as honest a business you get in the gaming industry. And it's not a very profitable business, and they are not looking to break into hardware using Linux, so it's understandable you don't see a lot of investment by GOG into a small market like linux.

And they are things outside of Proton you can use for gaming on Linux. There is Lutris, which functions similarly to Proton, it's a way of making using tools like Wine more convenient, and can function as a game launcher, but it is not limited to Steam. And for the old point-and-click adventures, there is still Scummvm (my beloved), which has a linux version. My gog catalogue remains easily playable, even without windows.

I have caused myself some trouble on the gaming front to break free of Microsoft, but not as much trouble as I feared. And I don't have to rely on Steam's drmed Linux support either.

[maiosx]

my hackintosh journey

formatting usb's to a gpt partition without gibmacOS's python script (only on windows with the bat cmd launcher script) was a pain for about a day or two and I wasn't aware it existed until I found it and it's still broken write to usb command is unavailable because the download server is off so writing the OS dmg images required transmac and that's if you can even find a proper installer. I also realized I was copying the ventura mac installer incorrectly to the drive then figured I should just boot efi's in a seperate usb drive to solve partitioning or read/write issues. My config.plist file had many things inaccurate and proper tree manager and ocat auxilary tools don't come with manuals. After finding a proper coffee-lake efi without any model identifiers, I used OCAT to generate an SMBIOS of iMac 19,1 and proper tree to edit some values like securebootmodel to disabled and enablewriteunprotector to true then rebuilt it, saved and pasted some prebuilt ACPI SSDTs then rebuilt the config file again. This is all after the original high sierra install which needed a proper clover EFI so I had used the one I found from AIO Clover Boot method's img file off an abandoned blog. Once I had High Sierra running I used a script from tonymacx86 to install web drivers for the OS but it broke for some reason after many reboots of the ventura installer. So I had to then update the OS and then installed the original web driver from nvidia. After that installation, you are required to use opencore's legacy patcher to build the new OS usb or off the app store with the dd to usb terminal command but opencore's method is easier. My take is... If you want to be able to run mac OS X on a PC just buy one. KVM's on Qemu with linux using Sosumi are outdated, they don't support usb passthrough correctly if you don't have the USB Kext installed for your mobo or Qemu updated and set up with virt-manager which is some other nonsense of it's own. The whole thing is a mess all over the internet without any proper guide to complete it all in 2023. That's even after you figure you can run the legacy patcher's root patch for GPUs - says it runs on ventura but I didn't test it and without metal app support.. and you still need to know the secret boot arguments for your GPU if it's not AMD based and you'll likely get some Invalid X symbol at the second boot for not disabling system integrity protection while rooting or not copying over the EFI bc I don't even know how to safe boot to a hackintosh for turning off SIP if it doesn't boot in the first place. I will stay on Windows 10 and keep my High Sierra installation though because old software is kinda neat, less broken, and faster than whatever is out in the wild. Manjaro Linux running gnome on the other hand, or Fedora are really good for running servers without needing windows license keys and it's probably why sysadmins like linux so much tho the other software on it mostly sucks and so without maiOSX running on edge and all the web apps it's toast and the safari developer thingy on iOS doesn't work on high sierra unless you update iTunes probably which is a security update of 2gb that will break the GPU again.. it's just awful how de-constructing updates and things are on all those mac OSes are. ventura looked neat though but, too grey for me. not dark enough.

[raeuberkotzenrotz]

Last weekend I went and traveled to the other end of the country to see my good friend T. I was gonna put the finishing on the bike I built for him last year (fucked up belt length calculations so I had a new one in tow with the proper size) and also to pick up a leftover PSU of his which will go into the new PC i'll hopefully have together this month still.

T. is the very image of a Linux user, ever the tinkerer and was quite curious about my by this point very well worn MS Surface and the possibility of getting an open-source OS running on it. I was as apprehensive as ever about Linux, but hey just a quick test booting from a USB stick, what could possibly go wrong?

Turns out Windows didnt like these shenanigans and engaged the bitlocker file protection that was apparently enabled, effectively locking the drive. Recovery codes stored on my university account, which is defunct for by this point 4 or 5 years, thankfully none of the data was important. Also booting from USB didnt really work either.

The prospect of a touchscreen paperweight is not grand, not to mention the fact that I had planned on getting work done on next day's 8 hour train journey. So the only way was forward and blasting Arch Linux directly into the thing, with a somewhat guilty feeling T. working overtime to get the thing to working order so I could at least send emails.

2023, year of the Linux tablet, it works. It works really well, after ironing out the kinks with some helpful remote tech support. Arch for all it's reputation has proven itself a solid beginner distro by virtue of incredibly good documentation. Apart from one hiccup with java apps and high dpi displays prior functionality has been entirely restored and it feels zippier to boot.

Big nerd has taken me hostage and buddy I got stockholm's.

[obiternihili]

i am in Immense Pain due to Health is Shit so I'm going to recount my understanding of something pointless and boring to organize my thoughts and Distract Myself from Feeling Pain and then i'm gonna post it because deleting a lot of writing even if pointless feels bad

Original computers of course were basically one program one machine. Reprogrammability came quick, but still, basically ran one program at a time, kinda like a nes.

As they grew bigger they started to make machines that could access libraries of programs at a time, the line between program and function not being that clear yet

These were eventually developed into the first operating systems by the late 50s. The 60s saw the beginnings of things like Xerox's OS as the technology tried to focus on making OSes shareable - able to be operated by multiple users at once at different terminals. Bell created Multics around this time which introduced the idea of privilege tiers for users or something, but the project was a mess because Bell was kind of a mess and some defectors created Unics, that is Unix, with similar concepts and such. The do one thing and do it well attitude was kind of born out of the Multics thing. IBM also got involved with the OS/360 stuff

Running internal networks in offices and such was the driver for early computers. Throughout the 70s saw Bell license out UNIX, Xerox license out it's OS, IBM did its thing, and competitors emerge at that level. The first GUIs started to become things making the systems more user-friendly.

The rise of home computing upset things a bit. Not a lot, but a bit. IBM launched the PC on its 8086 architecture. Microsoft entered the picture with its UNIX system, Apple launched its Xerox-derived things, popularizing the GUI desktop concept. Linus Torvalds got frustrated with Microsoft's UNIX derivative not being able to support his machine to its full potential and created a free UNIX-like OS with some tools in part written by a crazy man and made GNU/Linux. The x windowing system was ported to Linux. Microsoft dropped its UNIX derivative to work on IBM's DOS, Gates' mother was on the board for IBM I think. That led to Windows.

Other home computers of note were things like the C64. Which didn't have a whole lot in terms of the OS but basically would drop you into a live BASIC environment which was enough for what it was.

The 90s was tough and MS gradually outcompeted other OSes in part because they had such a close relationship to IBM and the most popular flavor of DOS, in part because of dick moves. Apple managed to survive somehow, but barely, mostly by providing cheap mainframes for schools and certain businesses. Commodore went on to Amiga with its own GUI and everything, I think, but failed to win a market and the rights to Amiga OS are split between like 4 companies. UNIX systems managed to be popular as server OSes, because of features going back to the early days. MS and IBM got mad about windows and led MS to rewrite its OS and created the NT family and IBM developing OS/2 that kind of went nowhere.

Apple lost a ton of market space and let go of powerpc architecture and its Xerox-descended OS for intel's 8086 derived architecture and ended up forking BSD for darwin and then OSX which is basically what macs run now. MS dominated everything and were terrible and here we are. Linux established itself as a good thing to build cross-industry shit on and later android was derived from it.

As gaming started to adopt OSes instead of just BIOS (like boot processes) launching programs you'd see the dreamcast i think working on 86 stuff just a few steps aside from MS, which made it easy to port to xbox when the dreamcast died and why xbox is the way it is. xbox is of course windows nt derived. sony adopted a bsd derivative and licensed direct x from ms. nintendo did their own stuff for the powerpc based consoles and suffered security holes for it. ds was similarly in house with arm hardware, as was the 3ds. The switch derives from the 3ds software, with some adapted BSD and android code (but not a lot). steam os i think is just arch linux

i need to map out linux also

because of how modular linux is and because no one can tell you don't do that everything is customizable basically. a really good thing about linux is the concept of a package manager which installs or manages software on the computer in a neat, organized way

the first of these was basically slack back in the 90s. other package managers started coming with fancy things like conflict resolution or dependency management. basically what makes a linux distribution is its package manager; everything is relatively superficial, since in principle you can run any desktop manager your computer can build or whatever.

there's still something to other spins. ubuntu basically forked debian's packages and features more cutting edge software, also canonical's decisions. linux mint forked ubuntu by just adding a layer of decision makers between canonical and the user.

main distros i think are arch, debian, ubuntu, mint. memes meme gentoo and it's probably the most widely supported source based os, but, like, it's a bad idea to do this in ways you can only really learn from experience. there's sabayon which simplifies gentoo but defeats the purpose by existing. redhat was one of the biggest popularizers of linux in the enterprise and other space deserves mention, fedora being the free version, suse is also there, these are fine and cool despite the unfortunate name for fedora

there's a bunch of little spin offs of arch and other distros aiming to make them simpler or provide a preconfigured gui. largely pointless but whatever, sometimes you just want a graphical installer, manjaro's there for you

[alexa-play-despacito]

Hello! I wanted to ask if the way that you showed how to rip can also be used on Chrome book? I wanted to make bases to edit them.

I don't think so. I do it on a surface pro with Windows 10 natively installed.

I looked up how to execute Windows applications on Chromebooks real quick, and it seems that you could use Chrome's remote desktop, and that doesn't sound easy. You could also run Wine to run a support layer for Windows applications, which also doesn't sound easy, especially since the emulator itself didn't run on Windows 8. Finally, you could do a BIOS hack to allow you to install Windows onto the harddrive. I recently got a Chromebook off of ebay with coreboot that had replaced the proprietary BIOS but I can't test it because it has 4GB ram and 16GB diskspace xD it's amazing as a cheap Linux laptop but not good for Windows. Something to think about.

Those are three ways you could theoretically get the two necessary applications running on a Chromebook. It's probably too hard.

maybe the apps could run on a Linux-run virtual machine for Win 10 :thinking: I have not tried that. Like you could dual boot Linux and then use Virtualbox in setting up a ripping environment. Ooh a tutorial, I think you would want to try this. https://beebom.com/install-windows-10-chromebook/

[electrohazard]

Hi! I’m thinking of switching to Linux but I’m also not very technologically literate so I figured I’d ask you how it’s been going and if you’d recommend it! :]

Its going pretty fine for me

My hardware is supported, but this might not be the case for you. You can boot up a live linux image and see how it goes

I would recommend linux if you want freedom, speed, customisability to your computer and if you dont depend on some proprietary software (like adobe's)

Theres plenty of FOSS (free and open source) equivalents of windows/proprietary programs, so you can try them out

I would recommend messing with linux in a virtual machine first, but then when you are ready you can install it on a real computer.

For noobs i think linux mint and fedora are the best, they provide good out of the box experience and are beginner friendly

Dont jump right in with a difficult distribution like arch, gentoo because you will probably not have a good time

You can find a lot of linux information resources on youtube and google

Learning linux isnt difficult, unlearning windows is.

[geriatricfunkyman]

i mean its going to be over priced no matter what (as apple products are), the personal math you need to do is like the balance of price vs like you sanity/stability/functionality, cause most of us need computer in this world and we need to be able to use them efficiently and changing OS is a whole process that will slow it down, I think a middle ground might be get the new macbook that you need to get things done and with your old one boot linux on it so you can slowly learn that OS on your own time and that way you have more options open to you in the future (< i am a very biased linux user though) (im also assuming you already have an older macbook that is being replace because its old?, that the only way my last suggestion would work, sorry if thats not the situation)

i'm currently on windows 10 (which is dropping support relatively soon), which i like just ok but my computer is almost a decade old and is slowing down on basic stuff. a new pc would entail either getting windows 11 (strongly dislike) or linux (had mint for while but honestly it was too much work and tinkering, the idea behind it is great though and respect to you for using it), which is why i'm looking at macs but the lower specs and lack of ports for such a price are insane :(((

thank you for your advice though and for taking your time to write this up!!