bigmclargehuge @ bigmclargehuge @lemmy.world

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6

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333

Joined

2 yr. ago

I struggle daily between wanting exactly what you describe, while also wanting to have my grubby little fingerprints on every square millimeter of my system. I think I've found the middleground now with a portable, "lazy" Debian system, which will mostly handle lighter use, and my dedicated Arch desktop where I go full nerd mode, experimenting and fiddling to my hearts content.

Pine64, the company that has made such excellent projects as the PinePhone, PineBook, and PineTime(open source hardware and software smartphone, laptop and smart watch), has stated that one of their dream projects would be an open source, hackable printer. There's obviously a ton of logistics though and it will likely never materialize unless they really start making big bucks.

I can't say I've ever had this experience with installing drivers on Windows. Is it as smooth and centralized as Linux? No, but it's generally just go to manufacturers website, find product, find support page, locate drivers, download/install, rinse and repeat. Never had to go watch videos that led me to a partial install of drivers for an outdated Windows version. If WiFi doesn't work, use USB tethering from your phone. The laptop will act like it's connected to Ethernet (this at least lets you go to the Acer website to find the right WiFi drivers for your laptop).

Also never had Cortana bother me during setup. You can always skip all that extra crap. Last time I installed Win10 was to update my NVidia GPU firmware and it took 10 minutes.

I use ALVR with Steam VR and a Quest 2 on Arch. Not as smooth as native but it works pretty well. Had Blade and Sorcery running at comparable performance to Win10

Everybody donate to Pine64 so they can get that open source printer off the ground someday.

I enjoy a challenge. I did briefly look at Fedora but picked Debian because of the history mainly (plus I at least had cursory experience with apt).

I mean, a portion of my experience is switching to Gnome, yes. I also touch on multiple other aspects that are different from my regular system on a deeper level (package manager, release system, package version, etc).

I can see why. Really liking how everything feels so far. I might also use this laptop to try a flavour of BSD at some point

Welp, I've only been at it a few days, plus I'm kind of treating this system as plug and play. Meaning, on my desktop I'm happy to get my fingers into all types of config files and such, while on this laptop I intend to leave as many things default as possible. Bottom line is I haven't looked too deep under the hood, so I can't give too much insight on how the inner workings compare. I fully recommend giving Arch a try though. Just take things slowly and read the ArchWiki carefully.

Definitely didn't mean better. I actually do prefer pacman because of how versatile it is. Apt is more readable to me when doing simple things, but I do find it somewhat clunky in comparison if I'm doing anything complex.

I may look into some of that stuff down the road but tbh I won't be doing anything too intense with it. Web browsing, music, video streaming, word processing and maybe some light C/C++ development. If my needs were more specialized I might consider changing over to testing or unstable.

Yknow I really thought I would want to look into that at first, but I find I really like the default config once I took an hour to get used to it. It's different compared to what I'm used to, but it's really smooth and fast.

Yes thats definitely something worth noting. I was just bringing up the point that in the end, all settings are just little parameters in some file or registry, and that there's no practical difference between flipping a switch in a GUI to the off position vs adding a '#' in a config file to comment out a line or option. One just looks intimidating if you aren't used to it, but in reality it gives you much more control and teaches you more about your system.

This seems to imply that other operating systems don't have issues and don't require editing files.

Compared to Windows, I've had fewer frustrating issues on Linux. I think the reason you hear about these issues is because the Linux community naturally encourages sharing these issues. If I have a niche problem, I can share it, then the community will work together to solve it so it isn't an issue anymore. On Windows, you might run a troubleshooting wizard that might solve the problem, and if it doesn't you'll probably take it to MS support who'll walk you through it. If that doesn't fix it, you'll likely just wait for a bug fix in the next update. Point being, they get talked about less because the system doesn't encourage problem solving on the users end (as much as Linux does).

As for editing files, sure, you do a lot of that on Linux. On Windows, you use a settings menu to fiddle with things, but all that settings menu does is give you a button to press. Pressing that button is just a fancy visual way of editing a file somewhere. Linux just often forgoes the graphical interface and encourages you to get used to editing those files directly.

MacOS is very user friendly (in my use-case. Everyone has different needs). I like they layout of the top bar, the dock front and center, the fullscreen "launchpad" as opposed to a start menu, etc. To each their own.

If no drivers or windows update could fix it, are you sure it's not a hardware issue? What you describe sounds similar to bad VRAM symptoms.

I agree that Manjaro isn't the best choice but I have nothing bad to say about EndeavourOS. The way I see it is just as Arch with a graphical installer and a few minor QOL changes. The only thing that annoys me was that they consider bluetooth a security risk, so you have to install and enable it yourself, but that takes 5 minutes.

Here's my perspective as a PC player. Even back in the early 2000s, discs were mostly just a form of DRM. When you install the game from a disc, 99% of the time, the installer copies the contents of the disk to your hard drive, then the disk just acts as a key in order to "unlock" your installed copy. No-cd patches just make the game think the disc is inserted when it's not.

Today, the only difference is the delivery method, and it's where things can get a little hazy. Steam is where I own most of my games, and I do like Steam and Valve, and consider them pretty trustworthy in terms of large tech companies. But, even so, because the only way I'm really able to get games from Steam is through their servers, there are situations that are out of my control where a game that was once available to me, no longer is.

This is why I'm starting to prefer GOG. They have a zero DRM policy, and offer offline installers for most of their games. Meaning, if I purchase a game, I download that installer, load it onto a thumb drive, and I effectively have that game forever, no matter what happens to GOG, the developer, the publisher, etc. I have a couple of games that have been lost to time officially, that I can install as easy as the day they came out because I have that offline installer. It's as good as having any CD game.

So, bottom line is, CD, no CD, I really don't care. Give me the installer, and guarantee I don't be locked out of my game because of something I can't control, and I'm happy.

Interesting, maybe just a preference thing? I'll give it a shot either way to see what happens.

Kind of what I was thinking. She's seen it all so she just loves life to the fullest.