Just giggled as my last meme mentioned trouble with displays and appropriately, a large chunk of the replies were “well MY displays work just fine!” (And charmingly, many were thoughts of things to check, other distros etc. It’s a very kind community, though that may also be the fediverse.)
Yeah, it does take some malice aforeskin when choosing hardware. It doesn’t take much anymore. But you do need to consider what you are using and what features you expect to work.
It seems it’s always best to be just a bit behind the bleeding edge of technology when committing to a any distro. If you want to be on that edge, you should expect to bleed every now and then.
If you want to be on that edge, you should expect to bleed every now and then.
Exactly. And alternatively, buy bleeding edge hardware that ships with Linux pre-installed…and then bleed a little anyway, because it is still the bleeding edge, haha.
I used to be a dual monitor guy on my gaming rig, but there were a few times I had issues with display (usually playing older games like Underlord)
So I just became a single monitor guy, but its a big monitor
i will say that wayland has solved a lot of multimonitor issues, although most games where i have monitor issues in my dual monitor setup can be fixed by ensuring the monitor i want to play on is at 0,0 on the layout. sone fames are weird about that
I’m personally allergic to doing anything to my distro other than installing games and VSCodium.
Its why I barely understand the X11 v Wayland discussion. I have no idea how to customize my Linux set up, if a troubleshooting step says “May bork computer if done wrong” I just reinstall the Distro or try another one. It takes like 5-10 minutes to install Linux on most modern computers
To me this is a feature of Linux. “It works on my distro” means I’m using that distro now!
The argument about X11 and Wayland is pretty much over. All the major distros, Fedora, Open Suse, even Debian. And DEs, like Gnome and KDE, have fully committed to Wayland and the smaller DEs, like Cinnamon and Budgie, are in process to make the switch. Only a small handful smaller distros have stomped their feet and said no to the switch so far. So that’s not really an issue anymore.
And having lived through the RPM Hell, unmet dependencies, compiling drivers and custom kernels, and unsupported hardware years, if I have issues with a distro that I can’t solve in a few days of goggling and effort, then I’m either going to live with it or I’m out.
These day you can just go for wayland, anything that still requires x11 will just launch under xWayland being normal x11 session within your wayland session (like steam, for example)
These day you can just go for wayland, anything that still requires x11 will just launch under xWayland being normal x11 session within your wayland session (like steam, for example)
Yes. That describe my experience well!
I’m vaguely aware of the big transition, but I’ve felt like Mr Magoo walking blind through it all and luckily missing any headaches.
I did have one intermittent issue that I blamed on Wayland in my heart. But I recently discovered it was actually an issue with my hardware.
I feel you brother, specially if you have missmatched displays, if you mention it, it’s staright up your fault somehow.
How mismatched do they have to be though?
I have 2 monitors, 1 Benq, another MSI. 1 @ 60Hz and another @100Hz.
When I move a window with VSync to the 100Hz monitor, it starts doing 100Hz and changes back to 60Hz when I move it back to the 60Hz monitor.
It works fine when I 90° one of them.Though the resolution and screen dimensions (hence pixel pitch) are the same. So is it one of these that needs to be different?
How mismatched for it to cause problems or for it to be enough for people on the internet blaming it on that? In both cases I don’t know tho.
I haven’t visited the issue in a couple of years so hopefully that’s not a thing anymore
Currently my displays work fine too, different refresh rates and bit depth (but not really, dithered 6 bit or smth).
To cause problems that is.
If I can reproduce the problem, I might be able to think what might be causing it.Mine are old and can’t think of a concrete one, ask op, theirs are more recent
I’ve had issues with wildly mismatched display sizes: 13" netbook docked to a 72" monitor.
…while I had “mirror my display” enabled…
Even then, I’ve only seen any issue in a few niche proprietary apps.
And rest assured, my life partner already makes fun of me for enabling “mirror displays” in this setup.
It actually mostly just works though!
I’ve never heard of that being an issue before, people get upset over that? My displays are different too with 2 1080p and a 2k
I’ve seen people being shat on for crazy things, my personal favorite is when the only solution given to a problem is buy something better
The linux user community is its own worst fucking enemy
It’s not TOO bad around here, but when I was on a Linux binge on Youtube, some people in the comments there genuinely just don’t want other people to move to Linux. That’s not my words, it’s theirs. They flat out don’t want new Linux users or for Linux to grow… but they use it.
If Linux becomes common, then they won’t be a ‘special haxor’ anymore. Can’t be having any of that you know.
Over the years, I have seen less and less of the ‘RTFM noob’ attitude and Linux forums becoming more welcoming and accepting of new users. But assholes still exist and won’t ever go away. But they do make a good match with the newcomers that expect to have everything work just like it did in Windows or even Mac because they’ll be damned if they are going to learn something new and different. And yes, they exist. Why those people even try Linux is beyond me, but you do run into them if you spend time hanging out in forums.
Sorry, linux is full, go away.
I can sort of understand this instinct. I am not opposed to new people using linux but I think the obsession with “growth” is the wrong way to think about software tools.
The way most companies make adoption of their software system grow is by making it more convenient to use, then exploiting network effects to force more users on to their platform. For the vast majority of people “convenient to use” means a locked down environment where they have little or no control and don’t have to make technical decisions.
Right now to use a Linux OS you are going to have to do a little bit of learning and make some decisions. The requirement that you actually think about an OS for a few minutes acts as a significant barrier for a lot of people, but removing that barrier results in a product that does not allow the user to control their software. Which I think would be bad.
I can sort of understand this instinct. I am not opposed to new people using linux but I think the obsession with “growth” is the wrong way to think about software tools.
For me, “growth” is a means to an end, not the end itself. I want Linux saturation. Largely, I view Linux more as a project to empower good and smart people against stagnant stupidity and reactionary evil of (most of) the super wealthy. Unfortunately, this means taking on masses of fucking morons on board the linux train. If you don’t have that network effect, you are throwing away power, and our enemies will never do that.
So smart and good people (linux experts/devs) need to understand that if they want good things, they need to be willing to fight ruthless (but stupid) monsters, and that also requires ruthlessness and morally grey thinking. And it means accepting the dirty masses into their smart people club, in fact encouraging them in (maybe some of those dumb fucks will stop being dumb by way of being pulled in).
but when I was on a Linux binge on Youtube, some people in the comments there genuinely just don’t want other people to move to Linux.
Probably Microsoft bots attempt at keeping Windows alive.
Probably Microsoft bots attempt at keeping Windows alive.
Yes. I think no one really knows how much this happens, but I keep seeing evidence that it is happening much more than that average person suspects.
Look, you’re harming our effort to convince people that there are no bugs in Tux-Sing-Se. How are we gonna get people to switch unless we pretend that all is perfect and flawless? Because clearly, that’s what Windows users expect…
(sarcasm)
Of course there are no bugs in Tux-Sing-Se. When i moved there, I had an absolute bug free experience and only needed one small hour to get my Bluetooth headphones working!
There are no bugs in Tux-Sing-Se, only user error.
Indeed. I think you just have to accept a half broken system if you use Linux.
If you accept that’s the trade off for less spyware you won’t be disappointed.
Indeed. I think you just have to accept a half broken system if you use Linux.
Your experience has been wildly different than mine.
I had similar experiences a decade ago, but I don’t feel that I have accepted any trade-offs in the last five years.
If anything, I must seem naive to my peers because using the same tools on Mac or Windows is so much harder, and I forget sometimes.
Have you tried Linux recently?
But sir, I am not fucking a donkey, I am typing text with keyboard!
edit: meant to be a language pun, nothing more
YOu poking keyboard!
Oh my © 😀
I have a friend who runs arch, and recommends arch to people. His computer constantly has problems because he doesn’t fully know what he’s doing.
I respect doing it for yourself, you do you, but I feel like he’s actively discouraging my friends from giving Linux a go because of his constant issues. Recommending the hardest distro to beginners just bugs me.
I run arch on a thinkpad just so I could learn it, and it will pretty much always break the wifi and whatnot if i update, so I just haven’t updated it.
Just FYI, it doesn’t need to be like this.
Yeah but it wears me out.
I made a push to fully use Linux last year, so I installed arch on this thinkpad, fedora on a desktop, and i already had mint on a mini pc (at the time mint was all i knew). The desktop was new with an nvidia rtx 5070, and it came with Ubuntu installed (which i thought was neat that it did but I didn’t actually want to use).
I went through installing arch without the script following the wiki, and troubleshooting issues here and there, but for some reason that update issue occurred pretty often, virtually every time (the touchpad also usually stops working too). The desktop also had issues, sometimes with updates as well, because of the GPU or the Bluetooth wouldn’t work, or i would just break something trying stuff.
I have 1 usb drive, and I kept putting one of the two isos onto it so I could fix or start over on either device. I did other things too, like rolling back packages one by one until whatever issue went away, or actually just finding a real fix for things. Either way, I eventually got burned out on troubleshooting and just wanted to reliably USE the devices (like i had been doing with mint all this time). So, if i update on arch and it breaks, I just roll it back with timeshift and ignore it and I switched over to bazzite for now on the desktop so I would stop breaking things (lol).
If I was at a point where I could easily identify that “oh the touchpad and connection issue is just the dinglehopping transister setting getting changed in this update, easy fix!” I’d be fine, but I don’t know the cause and I got tired of searching. (Edit: Or if I didn’t give myself TWO projects at once)
This is Me. I had more problems on Bazzite and Debian, so I prefer Arch. It still breaks all the time and I still don’t know what I’m doing, but at least sometimes it works.
Try OpenSUSE Tumbleweed
It’s practically Arch minus elitist culture minus breaking all the time minus having to manually manage anything and everything. Also, it has properly set snapshots by default, so almost any screw-up can be reversed.
No thanks, I love the elitist culture. I want to be expected to learn and get better over time, and I have been. I even learned how to enable snapshots.
To each their own
Overall, OpenSUSE Tumbleweed has all you need to practice in a safe environment and learn all the things you do with Arch. It just doesn’t force you to do it when all you want is open a document :D
That’s actually really surprising to me, bazzite is fairly plug and play, and Debian while slow to update is still very stable. What kind of issues were you running into?
Bazzite would overtax the CPU and freeze a lot. Debian didn’t like Proton 10 when Splitgate 2 first came out, and Splitgate 2 needs Proton 10 in order to use a mouse. With CachyOS, performance is better and I can install the newest graphics drivers.
You might just have learned more about how stuff works by now. Arch is very much “you need to make every choice manually, but then you’ve seen what choices exist”
I actually thought I was having issues with Debian. I was only getting like 6 - 8 updates when I tried to do them, even after a longer period of time. I kept searching around how to update Debian properly, but found no good answer.
Then something like 2 months later there was a large number of updates at once. So it is working then, huh.
Yeah, let everyone do their own thing - there’s nothing wrong with starting with Slackware if you want to. But if we’re going to recommend a starting point to people, maybe go with something that is designed to work out of the box. There’s going to be so much else to get adjusted to that extra options aren’t necessary.
Oh, and by the way, most people don’t like tinkering. They want their car to take them from A to B and their computer to do the thing, it’s not a hobby for them and we shouldn’t expect new users to be looking for a new hobby.
we shouldn’t expect new users to be looking for a new hobby.
Infinitely this!
Yes, it’s super cool to have control over your own damned machine but for some, the computer is just the thing the lets them work, porn and game.
I run slack, alpine, freebsd, deb and mint for the gui testing on various servers personally and professionally.
I recommend kubuntu.
Thank you
I have a recommendation for your recommendations. There’s KDE Neon which is distributed by the KDE project, which is Ubuntu-based. That’s what I personally run, now that I really don’t have the time/energy to tinker.
I think a verrrrrrry very large part of the problem is that the most vocal linux proselytisers have never actually had to do a job (or have, but done it very badly) where you have to tailor to the client.
Rookie mistake.
Is it really a rookie mistake if it’s not their job though?
‘Rookie mistake’ applies colloquially in many situations that aren’t professional.
When someone asks you for advice on an OS, tech kit, or any other item you should be considering their use case, not your own.
I know I was just being difficult
OK, you explained it well to me with the car example. I am not a car person, all I know about them is they can usually move, but I am not really interested to learn more.
Hmm, when a car has problems, you go to someone who fixes that for you. People under 60 usually don’t do that for PCs.
I don’t recommend Arch to newbies, but I do prefer it because it’s more robust: other distros patch stuff to make it easier, but those patches mean things are farther from the tested upstream version. Arch doesn’t do that as much so I run into fewer bugs.
But this view might be outdated. I just remember that before 2017 (when I installed my current Arch system) I constantly had problems with dist-upgrades in Ubuntu
No you’re probably right, I’ve had my Ubuntu-based distro act up after upgrades, and I actually find it more random now than what it used to be like in the 2010s. My feeling is that Debian/Arch are better in this regard, and most newbies don’t actually need bleeding-edge patches.
I’m running arch now for gaming.
I never had any issues* which makes me worry, cause i truly dont know what the fuck am I doing. Jesus take the wheel…
*im surfing on issues actually
Fucking Donkey describes recommending Arch to noobs. It’s astounding.
Sounds like the average Arch user to me
Funny meme btw lolololo
… why are you like that?
Gentoo begs to differ
On Mint and some screen issues as well
Mint is still on X11, pretty much all other distos switched over to Wayland by now, which works much better with multi-monitor setups.
There’s a subforum in the mint forums about this, and this is the reason why I don’t recommend mint for newbies anymore.
Out of curiosity, what do you recommend instead?
I’m leaning more and more to recommending Atomic distros for newcomers now. Fedora SilverBlue or Kinonite are excellent choices. Bazzite or Aurora for gamers. It’s pretty hard for newbies to mess up their install and rolling back to a working install is easy if you do. All the while letting users install software without effort through flatpacks and appImages. Even updates can be automated easily.
You can also switch between all of the ones you named using
ostree rebaseor so, which is pretty rad
Depends on user…
If a user is ok with using terminal to install apps and is reading outputs of commands, I recommend endeavourOS, because it is very nice having yay finding any apps you need (but nvidia driver setup has to be done in terminal and you have to check, that you have the right dependencies)
If user is not happy with rolling, debian would be next choice, but still not a set and forget, and apps have different ways to be installed and often you have to add sources to ATP)
If a user want it do just work and being modern, I would point them to fedora/bazzite (damn, don’t know how to write, but the gaming first distro that is very steamOSy)
And if a user does not at all want to anything on OS level and is therefore fine with using snaps, I would lead to Ubuntu most recent version (was positive amazed on how good it became as I had to setup one at work)
Edit: Bonus for people who dislike terminal but still want rolling updates: openSuse Tumbleweed, you can install anything by gui, and there is a website with apps similar to the AUR where you can search apps and install them using a single click Package manager is full GUI as well. It updates itself every time you turn off your PC, what I very much like
Bazzite is a good option.
Had issues with screen flickering in grey while on Wayland on a laptop computer
I can’t get the monitor to stay off. Something keeps getting it to turn back on, which is annoying because I have 3 devices plugged into it. So instead of me coming back to another device and both monitors turn on and to that device, this monitor is just always showing the one device and i have to switch the input.
I can’t get the monitor to stay off…
This is just a shot in the dark, but:
I recently learned enough about the differences between HDMI and DisplayPort to boil them down in my mind to “HDMI Bad. DisplayPort Good.”
Wild oversimplification, I know.
So now, whenever I have display issues of any kind, the first thing I do is upgrade the cable to a DisplayPort cable.
I mention this specifically because I have felt like my monitor wake and sleep behavior became more predictable.
Sorry, this idea really is mostly vibes. (Informed by my perception that HDMI has a crazy amount of control signaling which itself is proprietary and inconsistently implemented.)
But for the cost of an $8 cable, I feel like swapping in a DisplayPort has led to better display outcomes for me.
Weird 👀
Yeah, I tried to look into it and never figured it out. Just for clarity as I reread my comment, by on/off I mean the monitor going to “sleep”.
Ooh, makes more sense
Screens are for Windows n00bs.
Hell yea, pros use braille
If you need feedback on your inputs, it just means your inputs are too imprecise.
I type in morse code and receive the output in braille
I’ve found the Linux community to be quite helpful. But I’ve not really used Lemmy for tech support. The Arch Wiki is damn near a Linux Wikipedia. And any active board dedicated to a particular Distro are where I’ve gotten help.
It seems really hard at first but the more problems you solve the more sense everything makes.
Ignore the gatekeepers.
I once asked on one of the Linux gaming communities on here for tips on how to optimise my Sunshine on my system because it wasn’t streaming well at all
Got a bunch of shit from several people because I didn’t formulate my post like a proper support ticket.
Haven’t asked for help on here since.
The collective Arch username has already encountered every single possible problem so of course their wiki is excellent
I’ve been running slackware as my main since the late '90s, and the arch wiki has been invaluable and often recommended by all.
But I’ve not really used Lemmy for tech support.
I would sooner ask a rabid squirrel for relaxing holiday ideas.
My experience as well.
Also the distroshaming from some jerks. Eh, whatever floats your boat and fit your needs. Nice! Advising people that a different distro would be more appropiate as usecase - cool!
I found a Lot of stuff where people actively work on a great experience and I found more good solutions to one issue, when Microsofts own knowledgebank lacks of. And besides that there is a loooooot of good content to explain how Things work with Linux If you want to deep Dive into the whole Thing.
Overall I’m satisfied With my daily experience and how cool the community actually is.
I use Arch btw. (Kidding. Mint user Here)
Eh, whatever floats your boat and fit your needs
Nah, some distros deserve to be shamed. Manjaro is on the top of that list.
closely followed by Omarchy (I’d argue it’s not a distro, but it presents itself as one, so it gets to be judged as one)
Can you recommend any deep dives on resource management?
I wouldn’t say “makes sense”, but I did get a bit more confident in tackling problems after a few successes using online help.
I also gave up on things I’d like to have after failures using online help, though.
Finally, I admit I’m a donkey.
Yeah, I’m always envious of people who can make sense of the info they find on the Arch wiki and forums. For me, it’s just a patchwork of solutions I found. Every time I add one, I pray to the computer gods that it doesn’t worsen my situation.
As a ~25 year Linux user, I am absolutely a gorgeous donkey
a large chunk of the replies were “well MY displays work just fine!”
I just went to check the previous thread, and I think there’s miscommunication both ways here.
They read your post as “I’m trying Linux, but it’s even hard to get monitors to work.” So, they responded, “I haven’t had a problem with monitors on Linux in decades.”
There’s not much else they can say, as you weren’t really asking for advice, so you didn’t give any technical details, but you were still complaining about something that they like.
Meanwhile, you read them as you said, “well MY displays work just fine!” So their replies seem utterly baffling, defensive, and unhelpful from your perspective.
I think you nailed it exactly. Also, someone else pointed out there was a time when Linux could legit break your monitor and even though that hasn’t been the case for years it’s still a bit of a sore spot.
I posted in official support channels for my flavor of Fedora not having functioning Windows EXE thumbnails, despite having evidence of it working out-of-the-box for other people. It got two replies, “Lol, find another distro if you don’t like it,” and “Did you install (package that comes pre-installed)?”
In truth, this is how almost every issue I’ve had with Linux has gone, which is likely why I’ve had three false starts and gone through six different distros before deciding to stick with this one that is only mildly broken.
I’d love to know what it is about help threads that attracts people who don’t believe in helping.
My theory is they want to help and believe themselves capable but when someone asks a question that they don’t know the answer to, they either have to admit to themselves that they don’t know and aren’t as capable as they thought or they have to find a way to blame the person asking for help. Mentally the path of least resistance is to just blame the user and it’s also not exactly false to say it’s the help seekers fault, it’s just a bit of a dick move and unhelpful.
Here you go: https://github.com/jlu5/icoextract
Looks like it’s got AUR and apt
Yep, know about that. Set it up back when I tried a few Debian-based distros with Gnome. I’m using Plasma with Dolphin as my file manager now, which has its own thumbnailer that relies on icoutils. I’ve got the whole thing set up and enabled, it just… doesn’t work.
My experience has been finding a 5 step solution to a problem, with step 3 not working properly and requiring several hours of effort to find a workaround, finding an entirely different solution elsewhere (that also doesn’t work), then discovering there’s been a flatpack the entire time.
Still have bazzite on my shitty 10 year old laptop because it cannot possibly run windows at this point, but I don’t think I’d daily drive it.
Flatpak is a godsend when you don’t want to manage a mess.
I find the best way to get help is to find a good source of documentation, rather than asking questions directly. ArchWiki is great, UbuntuWiki is not bad. There are lots of blogs out there with people writing guides for how to solve issues that they’ve had, and they’re usually really good (but this relies on search engines finding these results).
I find that it depends on how niche the distro is.
Somewhat obviously, niche distros don’t have as many resources out there to begin with.
This also means you’re unlikely to be told to research yourself.But users of niche distros also made a conscious choice to be on that specific distro and therefore tend to be more enthusiastic. Both, about helping others who made the same choice, but also about fixing problems or at least documenting a workaround for the distro that they plan to stay on for the foreseeable future.
Well, and due to survivorship bias, folks on niche distros tend to also be Linux experts, who can solve virtually any problem, given enough motivation.
If you find a kind soul, they will walk you through hell and back, which is worth so much more than any documentation in the world.
Your meme about displays got me to go fix the 4k60 output on my PC. I use a TV as my screen and the EDID it reports us borked and leaves it off so I had to make a custom EDID and inject it at boot.
10/10 way easier than it sounds, annoyed I had to use a popular windows program to do it though because the first copy I found of the app I needed had a Trojan (thanks VirusTotal for confirming I’m not crazy for checking every exe no matter how official looking).
Why tf do we not have an EDID editor?
