I'm considering switching my daily driver computer to Linux (for the 20th time)

[wbmnfktr]

1 hour ago, FireWire said:

I don't remember it being difficult, everything works as well as it did when I was on Ubuntu. Odd that it gave you trouble. I installed Docker then DDEV then done.

Don't remember the exact packages but some weren't available at all, some broken... it was a disaster. Stayed on Manjaro for a few weeks on, even a big update didn't fix it. So I moved on.

Right now the latest minimal i3 .iso is loading and Gnome Boxes is ready for test-drive. Perfect sunday evening. ?

 

Update:
Maybe I'm sold on Manjaro again. Installed the i3 and Gnome version in Boxes and even the Gnome version was way faster there than the native/bare-metal Ubuntu-version of Gnome.

Installing DDEV on Manjaro is even easier than on Ubuntu now:

sudo pacman -Syyu
sudo pacman -S docker
yay -Syyu ddev-bin
sudo usermod -aG docker $USER
sudo systemctl start docker.service
sudo systemctl enable docker.service
reboot

AND... everything looks way more polished in Gnome now.
Will keep the VM for a while and work on some projects there.

That's insane how good Manjaro became (compared to Ubuntu and Fedora).

 

Edited June 16 by wbmnfktr
added update to Manjaro

[FireWire]

1 hour ago, wbmnfktr said:

the Gnome version was way faster there than the native/bare-metal Ubuntu-version of Gnome

Best Gnome I've ever used for sure.

1 hour ago, wbmnfktr said:

Installing DDEV on Manjaro is even easier than on Ubuntu now:

NICE. Glad you got it working!

[gebeer]

12 hours ago, FireWire said:

Mad respect. I wish I could live on this level of bleeding edge. Feels like I'm watching a someone drive by in a Porsche 911 GT2 from behind the fence at a daycare playground ?

It is actually not that wild. Once you got the hang of the terminology, config file structure and basics of nix lang, it is fun setting up your machine. And in the case I had to move to a different machine quickly, all is setup exactly as I need it with copying over the config files and issueing one command.

[Andi]

+1 for Manjaro from me ?

I decided to make the jump to Linux again during Covid, with Windows 7 reaching EOL. Did some distro-hopping for a while and landed on Manjaro Cinnamon Community Edition. You basically get the stability of Mint with the rolling release model of the Manjaro / Arch ecosystem with this one.

Manjaro Gnome is very polished, but during my time with it I got really annoyed with extensions breaking on every update, and some other qol issues.

Cinnamon is just solid as a rock. Nemo is a fantastic file manager with tons of extensions, ddev-bin from the AUR works right out of the box. If there's issues with system updates, you pretty much always find the answers in the official announcements. Also the Manjaro forums and Arch Wiki are great places to find help on pretty much anything.

Also, if you're doing a lot of RAW photo editing, darktable is a great option once you get past the initial confusion. It runs ten times faster than LR and I couldn't imagine ever going back at this point.

Lots of options! Good luck and and yay for FOSS! ?

P.S. Attaching a screenshot with Code OSS and DDEV running on a dual head setup. Don't forget you can CSS your actual desktop environment ?

[netcarver]

Manjaro here as well - though I have had a few issues with updates due to an AUR dependency on an obscure qt5 package that left things broken and pacman non-runnable. Had to use a staticly linked version of pacman to fix things.

[Andi]

6 minutes ago, netcarver said:

though I have had a few issues with updates due to an AUR dependency on an obscure qt5 package that left things broken and pacman non-runnable.

Sorry to hear that @netcarver- glad you found a solution.

One thing I would strongly suggest when running Manjaro on a production machine is to choose BTRFS as file system during installation, and then make sure timeshift-autosnap-manjaro is installed. This way you get an automatic BTRFS snapshot of your system files on every update, that you can restore or directly boot into from GRUB.

[FireWire]

@netcarver I keep a backup drive connected when I'm at my desk and also use Timeshift as well as Back In Time.

Timeshift, as @Andi recommends, is set up to snapshot the system as often as hourly when needed and every time I execute a package command including install/update/uninstall with timeshift autsnap. I keep snapshots for X number of hours/days/weeks/months. If you're running EXT4 it's all done easily with an external drive.

Back in time for user file snapshots at 30min intervals. Being able to grab a file at an earlier version with pretty granular diffs is great.

Samsung 990 Pro internal + T9 external, fastest snapshots ever ?

[netcarver]

Thanks @FireWire, @Andi Actually, that dependency problem broke both timeshift and pacman - so I had to resort to...

# SKIP_AUTOSNAP=1 pacman-static -Syu

to skip timeshift snapshots (I'm using BTRFS) and use the staticly linked version of pacman. Also removed the offending AUR install of cutycapt-qt5-git and qt5-webkit, and now all is good.

[FireWire]

@netcarver Figured you may be familiar but added some recommendations here for the Linux curious!

[wbmnfktr]

Interim status: About almost 2 weeks in on Manjaro... in a VM (on the main machine but as a daily, beside e-mails, yes performance is not an issue) and on real hardware... outside of home on a Thinkpad X260 (still no performance issues, maybe even better).

NOPE. Not for me. Don't like it. Doesn't feel right. It's off. A bit.

Don't know if it's Manjaro, as I had troubles with it in the past, or the fact that I had to download about 2GB of updates since installing it already or the keyring issue I had (probably from AUR package - didn't look deeper into it). Nothing I have seen or had issues with on Ubuntu 23.10 since installing.

There was a reason I moved to Debian Stable quite a whille ago just to have less updates just because my internet speed here was about 0.5 Mbit in total (DON'T LAUGH! I live in Germany. That's fast internet on the countryside here ?).
It's faster now, still... downloading such big updates feels weird to me. Especially in that time period and there was no major Manjaro release since then.

I will try it for another two weeks just to ...

1. either feel more at home and give Manjaro a bigger chance to convince me.
2. remove my bias towards Manjaro
3. don't give up too fast (again on a distro)

But to be honest, even though everything works, I don't feel at home.
Even less at home than on Fedora, which feels like walking on raw eggs for some kind.

I have my i3 and Gnome, my keyboard shortcuts from sxhkd, my overall settings from my dotfiles, but still...

Did you guys ever felt NOT AT HOME on a distro and if so WHY?

[zoeck]

15 hours ago, wbmnfktr said:

about 0.5 Mbit in total (DON'T LAUGH! I live in Germany. That's fast internet on the countryside here ?).

Oh, that's really bad. Don't you have the hybrid option from deutsche telekom?
I live in a village with only 1500 inhabitants and could order 250mbit/s immediately (but currently have 100Mbit/s).
I'm currently waiting for my fiber line, which is already in the sidewalk in front of the house (up to 1000Mbit/s).

It's hard to believe that there are such extreme differences in the country.

[wbmnfktr]

On 6/28/2024 at 9:32 PM, zoeck said:

I live in a village with only 1500 inhabitants

Well... we have 197 eligible voters (official number from the last EU vote - June 9th, 2024) here. So, yeah... was tough. Got faster internet last year, but still stone age compared to almost everything. Still... I love it here.

[kongondo]

Any of you Linux folks use Visual Studio Code? How does it run? It is one of the reasons I went back to Windows the last time I tried Linux. Currently, CapCut PC would also hold me back.

[da²]

@kongondo https://flathub.org/apps/com.visualstudio.code-oss

16 minutes ago, kongondo said:

How does it run?

Like on Windows, or better. ^^ But I prefer PhpStorm, it's not free but way better than VSCode.

[wbmnfktr]

12 hours ago, kongondo said:

Any of you Linux folks use Visual Studio Code? How does it run?

Super smooth. It's an official app for Linux nowadays with the latest updates.
Yet it feels better integrated than on Windows (at least - don't know how it feels on Mac).

VSCodium (Free/Libre version of VS Code) feels a bit different. A bit off.
Cursor uses it for example - therefore I'm not that happy with it for now.

 

Unfortunately I can't assist with CapCut or any other video editing tools.
But I know that there are a lot of tools available.

[gebeer]

22 hours ago, kongondo said:

Any of you Linux folks use Visual Studio Code?

Yes, using VSCodium. Running smoothly for the last 3 years or so. Prefer that over the original binary from Microsoft that comes with all their telemetry shenanigans. Only drawback is that some extensions from the official MS extensions store are not (yet) published at https://open-vsx.org/ which is the default extensions source in VSCodium. But you can still manually download the vsx file from the official store and install. Other than that, I'm very happy with my telemetry-free VSCode experience. Depending on your distribution, you can find the package in the official repos of your distro or in the AUR for Arch (which I'm on btw).

10 hours ago, wbmnfktr said:

VSCodium (Free/Libre version of VS Code) feels a bit different. A bit off.

Cannot confirm that. On my end it feels ok. But then, I don't have the comparison with MS windows. Can only compare it to Cursor which (unfortunately) is only available as AppImage. And those are not as well integrated into your OS as native packages are.

[kongondo]

So I decided to take the plunge. Laptop was having issues (Windows 11) and decided to try Ubuntu + Omakub! I had been trying this out for a few days. Had decided to run CapCut in a VM whenever I needed it. Omakub is amazing! Only annoying thing was my CAPSLOCK being bound to emojis! I changed this. Yesterday, I was preparing to post here to thank you guys for 're-introducing' me to Linux for the umpteenth time.. I was going to tell you I was even considering Ubuntu + Omakub for my main PC. I was going to tell you that, thanks to @bernhard, I have found DDEV (more on that later in this thread). Amazing! Meanwhile, a system update was running in the background. It was done before I could start my post. It asked to restart the machine. I wasn't expecting this; on Windows, yes, this was common place. I thought Linux doesn't need this? Anyway, I obliged and boom! It was all white after that! Crash! I mean, what??!!! 

Quote

"oh no! Something has gone wrong. A problem has occurred and the system can't recover. Please contact a system administrator."

I AM THE SYS ADMIN!!! Suffice is to say I went to bed not happy!

Googled a bit this morning, tried a few things, nothing worked! I always end up on this white screen! At least I learnt  Ctrl+Alt+F3!

I don't think the error has anything to do with Omakub. It is crashing at some 'color.d' something from what I can see. Might be related to video/graphics.

Help, anyone?

If I cannot resolve, I'll try a fresh install. Otherwise, looks like back to Windows 11 we go. At least 'it works - mostly'.

Thanks.

 

Ubuntu 24.04.1 LTS

[gebeer]

45 minutes ago, kongondo said:

So I decided to take the plunge. Laptop was having issues (Windows 11) and decided to try Ubuntu + Omakub! I had been trying this out for a few days. Had decided to run CapCut in a VM whenever I needed it. Omakub is amazing! Only annoying thing was my CAPSLOCK being bound to emojis! I changed this. Yesterday, I was preparing to post here to thank you guys for 're-introducing' me to Linux for the umpteenth time.. I was going to tell you I was even considering Ubuntu + Omakub for my main PC. I was going to tell you that, thanks to @bernhard, I have found DDEV (more on that later in this thread). Amazing! Meanwhile, a system update was running in the background. It was done before I could start my post. It asked to restart the machine. I wasn't expecting this; on Windows, yes, this was common place. I thought Linux doesn't need this? Anyway, I obliged and boom! It was all white after that! Crash! I mean, what??!!! 

I AM THE SYS ADMIN!!! Suffice is to say I went to bed not happy!

Googled a bit this morning, tried a few things, nothing worked! I always end up on this white screen! At least I learnt  Ctrl+Alt+F3!

I don't think the error has anything to do with Omakub. It is crashing at some 'color.d' something from what I can see. Might be related to video/graphics.

Help, anyone?

If I cannot resolve, I'll try a fresh install. Otherwise, looks like back to Windows 11 we go. At least 'it works - mostly'.

Thanks.

 

Ubuntu 24.04.1 LTS

Sad to hear about your bad experience with upgrading. Not that I don't want to help. But for these kinds of scenarios I found Claude or ChatGPT very helpful in many cases. Everyone's setup is different. You can go and debug with the help of AI, describing your specific scenario. Since you have a tty (Ctrl+Alt+F3) you can log on and use journalctl and dmesg to find the cause of the problem. The AI will tell you the right commands to find the errors (hopefully).

I wish you success!

[Ivan Gretsky]

Hey, @kongondo! This is the true Linux way. You get into something strange that looks bad pretty soon. And you curse your decision to get into Linux. And then you read. And you understand. And you fix. And you come out stronger and smarter and with a self esteem at the roof level. And then the cycle repeats)) Just don't get away before you feel the vibe.

The problems are often with drivers. Not all hardware is compatible. At least out of the box.

P.S. They say there is less and less of this nowadays. Not to the point it is not Linux anymore though)

[gebeer]

9 minutes ago, Ivan Gretsky said:

The problems are often with drivers. Not all hardware is compatible. At least out of the box.

Nvidia GPU in particular often causes problems. But their drivers have become much better. @kongondo since you chose Ubuntu, you might want to consider giving https://pop.system76.com/ a try. Their releases are quite stable and GPU support is great. Some of the high profile coders on YT use it. I tried it years ago and even back then it was a pleasant experience.

 

[kongondo]

Hey @Ivan Gretsky and @gebeer,

Thanks for chiming in all sorted now - more below!

20 hours ago, Ivan Gretsky said:

And then you read. And you understand. And you fix. And you come out stronger and smarter and with a self esteem at the roof level.

True. Main issue for me is time 😁. I have the tenacity and the curiosity; just not the time to be fixing and fixing.

20 hours ago, gebeer said:

you might want to consider giving https://pop.system76.com/ a try. Their releases are quite stable and GPU support is great.

It was a very pleasant experience. I tried it (installed it) but it just wasn't Omakub 😀. Apart from its awesome aesthetics, Omakub just feels snappier. 

So, I went back to Omakub + Ubuntu. This time, I brought a friend; Timeshift! I did a fresh install of Ubuntu, then added Omakub. After that I went crazy with Timeshift, creating snap shots after every little tinkering. So far so good - system is up to date and chugging away smoothly. 

Thanks again!

[Ivan Gretsky]

@kongondo, could you please write what is so exciting about Omakub? I am a long time fan of DHH and all the Basecamp stuff. But the Omakub just appeared to me to be more of a hype type of thing.

[palacios000]

My too I'm happy Linux user. I actually tried many years ago to make my Hackintosh, but, luckily, didn't work and I moved from Mac to Linux and never regret it. The freedom you have is priceless.

My distro of choice:  https://www.bunsenlabs.org/ very clean and stable, based on Debian.

As for Adobe, yes, still miss a proper app for Linux. I now use https://affinity.serif.com/ on a dual boot Windows machine. Affinity does pretty much what Adobe does, but it has a reasonable price.

File manager: Thunar does the job, but if you want to have fun try Midnight Commander!

[kongondo]

On 9/19/2024 at 12:57 PM, Ivan Gretsky said:

@kongondo, could you please write what is so exciting about Omakub? I am a long time fan of DHH and all the Basecamp stuff. But the Omakub just appeared to me to be more of a hype type of thing.

Sure 😀. The key thing is that I am coming from Windows (but also that have tried so many Linux distros before). A one-liner that sets things up for me is great! It is beautiful right of the box, fast and installs the tools I need. Sure, I could have configured things myself but that means hours of research. I want the cake now and later, if I want, I can try and find out how the cake was made or change the recipe. In addition, the name (and by extension the company) behind it.  It gives me confidence that he has done the research behind his configuration decisions for Omakub. Then there's the manual. It is concise and well-thought out. It has helped me discover tools I didn't know existed such as Xournal++ and a bunch of shell tools. Finally, if I am feeling adventurous, the whole thing is on GitHub 😀.

[kongondo]

My Linux adventure has come to a swift end! I don't know what it is with me and Linux! There's always something. I spent most of the weekend battling a 'Unable to access location Error mounting /dev/sdb1 at /media/username' error! Not sure if it is an Ubuntu 24.04 issue but it seemed to be related to Visual Studio Code. The other week, the system would hang and I would have to hard reboot it. I thought it was my updates (this was before Omakub round 2). This weekend, I couldn't access one of my drives. The system froze. I fixed it. It happened again, and again, and again. SO et al. threw up all sorts of reasons, ranging from opening a folder with a .git folder in VSCode (??!!!) to other myriad possibilities. In the end I gave up (tick tock, tick, tock) and back to Windows we are! This time I actually felt sad 😃. I really liked Omakub. I also really enjoyed developing in a Linux machine. All is not lost though! I really like DDEV and they suggested, if on Windows, why not give WSL a chance. So, I did and boy!🙌. The thing just works! WSL2 + VSCode WSL Extension + DDEV just rocks! Installing stuff with winget also makes me feel all nerdy and Linuxy! 🤓. All is well 😊.. Better get back to reality though; I mean, work's only delayed by a couple of months, sigh. ..🤫.