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.)
But sir, I am not fucking a donkey, I am typing text with keyboard!
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.
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)
Just want to say Gordon Ramsay’s a cunt and a baby boy that never grew up.
Marco Pierre White, is that you!?
On Mint and some screen issues as well
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.
Weird 👀
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.
Had issues with screen flickering in grey while on Wayland on a laptop computer
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 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.
Sounds like the average Arch user to me
Funny meme
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 Arch minus elitist culture minus breaking all the time. Also, it has properly set snapshots by default, so almost any screw-up can be reversed.
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.
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.
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.
I run slack, alpine, freebsd and mint for the gui testing.
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.
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.
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
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.
Gentoo begs to differ
As a ~25 year Linux user, I am absolutely a gorgeous donkey
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?
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.
The collective Arch username has already encountered every single possible problem so of course their wiki is excellent
But I’ve not really used Lemmy for tech support.
I would sooner ask a rabid squirrel for relaxing holiday ideas.
I’ve been running slackware as my main since the late '90s, and the arch wiki has been invaluable and often recommended by all.
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)
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, in 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
My display is working fine.
*audio
Audio! I went from stereo to 7.1 and got this intense loud buzz that wouldn’t go away! (Fedora KDE). Drove me nuts. Spent hours trying every dang thing. Finally connected it to a Windows machine. Same buzz. My woofer had just ate itself. Nothing to do with Linux at all.
Alternative 2nd panel: “Linux user once you reveal your choice of distro”
Unless it’s Arch. At which point we need Ramsay bowing down or somesuch.
Quiet majority of Linux users when someone starts with Arch:
LSF is where it’s at. it’s the ultimate distro.
This made me laugh because I’ve had installing Linux on an old Tecra in my to do list for the better part of a year and my brother (Linux apostle, sire to three software engineers) when I told him that said “you know you can just boot if from a USB key, no need for theatrics”
I love that man, but he really gets in the way of good, solid procrastination
I saw that post, and honestly, part of the issue is that the pain of messing with mode-lines in /etc/XF86Config and worrying about physically damaging your CRT monitor with out-of-spec frequencies was a very real thing 30 years ago. Hence, the idea that configuring displays on Linux is fraught and difficult has stuck around, even though it hasn’t been true since the advent of DDC, and multiple displays for most use-cases has been sorted out for at least the past 15 years. Non-Linux users will still occasionally talk about displays on Linux as if we were still editing mode-lines in vi.
It’s a sore point, I guess I’m saying, and you poked it inadvertently. When I read the post, I just kind of smiled, because a few days before, I plugged the HDMI cable from a conference room display into my Thinkpad, and it lit up with an extension of my desktop. I started LibreOffice Impress, hit ‘F5’, and the presentation appeared on the big display, and the presentation notes on my laptop screen. (Actually, I was surprised and impressed at how smoothly it went.)
It’s no surprise that issues remain here and there, though. Glad to hear that folks wanted to be helpful!
part of the issue is that the pain of messing with mode-lines in /etc/XF86Config and worrying about physically damaging your CRT monitor with out-of-spec frequencies
I mean I fucked up my install by following the instructions for Optimus cards off the Debian wiki.
My computer still overheats when playing games
That’s so wild, I had no idea of that history, thanks for sharing!
Stuff like this is why I still love social media.
