The linux thread

[Retro*Derpy 3,405]

Since linux has been growing recently, I thought I'd make a general thread about it. Anyone is welcome to share anything linux-related, desktops, raspberry pi, IoTs, etc.

If you're curious about GNU/linux or it's distros, ask away! As for myself, I use linux mint(cinnamon) on my aging laptop and I have an arch linux build (hyprland) on my main desktop. I've done a lot of distro hopping, for myself and for school. I'm on my laptop at the moment so I'll share a screen shot. If you don't know, you can use the command "fastfetch" to get this result. It'll have to be installed in the terminal.

 

[Felis Amafeles 2,123]

My work needs to be done on Windows, but my laptop doesn't need Windows, so I'm going to switch its OS to Mint 

Edited July 6 by Felis Amafeles

[Street Light 754]

gosh im super interested in linux but i've squirreled it away in the back of my mind as super-smarty-pants pony stuff :3 idk why im so intimidated by it, i just am >w< 

[Crypty Scribbles 6,594]

17 hours ago, Retro*Derpy said:

arch linux

Neeeerd! ^o^ (Light-hearted)

I'm using basic Ubuntu, latest LTS version. No blowers nor whistles. A simple system for a simple guy ^•^

2 hours ago, Street Light said:

gosh im super interested in linux but i've squirreled it away in the back of my mind as super-smarty-pants pony stuff :3 idk why im so intimidated by it, i just am >w< 

It's nice to try new things. In any case you can always go back to whatever you're using now ^e^

To be honest, I'm not sure if I would be using Linux not being nerd by myself 9_9

[ZiggWheelsManning 13,412]

YouTube videos tell me Linux is very hard to use and not user friendly  

[Crypty Scribbles 6,594]

17 minutes ago, ZiggWheelsManning said:

YouTube videos tell me Linux is very hard to use and not user friendly  

That's true, Ziggy. YouTube videos never lie, that's scientifically proven fact 

[Artshine Aura 43]

omg what an aMAZING TIME to come back onto the forums i LOVE linux ive been getting so into it since february of this year, replacing my windows os with linux. initially i started off using kde neon, but after some distro hopping, i landed on tuxedo os, which is basically just kde neon but stable. ill probably switch to debian trixie when that releases though, since thatll have plasma 6.

anyways heres an obligatory screenshot of my desktop lol. i have a windows 7 theme over top it, and my wallpaper is a slideshow of random vrchat screenshots i have with me in them xP

21 hours ago, Retro*Derpy said:

I have an arch linux build (hyprland) on my main desktop.

ive been tempted to try out arch linux aswell as a tiling window manager thing like hyprland for awhile now, but it all seems so much more involved. i get switching to linux already is a little more involved than just continuing to use windows, but everypony always makes out arch to be alot more advanced to learn and manual and stuff 

[Espy 4,718]

I should probably try to move on from Windows 10. It seems like Native Instruments and Arturia would be the biggest pain to get working though (for me). Including their app managers. Arturia would suck the most if it doesn't work because I really like their stuff! 

 

I'm gonna place this here for myself later or if anyone else wants it:  https://linuxdaw.org

[Pentium100 2,299]

I use Debian on my servers and Ubuntu (with KDE) for some PCs, though if I wanted to install an new PC now, I would probably use Debian on the desktop as well. 

Linux is what I would say programmer-friendly, but not neccesarily user-friendly. It does have the "self-made" or "designed by programmers" feeling, similar to the devices I build for myselt. Windows (at least the older versions) is different in that more setting are easier to access without editing text files or using the command line. Creating a custom resolution with an nVidia card is easier on Windows for example.

Linux has the drivers for most stuff built-in, so usually most of everythign works immediately after installing. OTOH, if there is no built-in driver for some device (but there is one published by the manufacturer), you may have lots of "fun" trying to make it work. Or it may be easy.

Games on Linux run quite well (at least the ones I play), but if you have an older card (for me it was a GTX970) some games have way worse performance on Linux than on Windows on the exact same PC. Apparently there is some kind of compatibility problem and you need at least a RTX20 series card to overcome it. 

[Xada 526]

I am planning on setting up Mint cinnamon dual boot once Windows 10 stops getting updates in several months.

 

[Retro*Derpy 3,405]

On 2025-07-07 at 1:20 AM, Artshine Aura said:

omg what an aMAZING TIME to come back onto the forums i LOVE linux ive been getting so into it since february of this year, replacing my windows os with linux. initially i started off using kde neon, but after some distro hopping, i landed on tuxedo os, which is basically just kde neon but stable. ill probably switch to debian trixie when that releases though, since thatll have plasma 6.

ive been tempted to try out arch linux aswell as a tiling window manager thing like hyprland for awhile now, but it all seems so much more involved. i get switching to linux already is a little more involved than just continuing to use windows, but everypony always makes out arch to be alot more advanced to learn and manual and stuff 

Glad you're back! I love the setup its awesome!  The pinkie pie is super cute.

What a lot of arch gate-keepers won't tell you is that when you install arch you can just run "archinstall" and you run through it like a normal installer. You'd just have to get used to the pacman package manager and updating certain things manually. I've moved to cachyOS and it's very similar to arch (it is arch based). There is actually a hyprland install that comes with cachyOS installer if you're ever curious.

On 2025-07-06 at 10:11 PM, Crypty Scribbles said:

Neeeerd! ^o^ (Light-hearted)

I'm using basic Ubuntu, latest LTS version. No blowers nor whistles. A simple system for a simple guy ^•^

It's nice to try new things. In any case you can always go back to whatever you're using now ^e^

To be honest, I'm not sure if I would be using Linux not being nerd by myself 9_9

I actually just swapped to cachyOS from arch, just wanted to try it out and I'm loving it tbh. I was having troubles with arch working with proton and crash issues with the Nvidia drivers. (so I guess I can now say I use cachyOS btw) I could just of got the repos of cachyOS and still kept the arch install, but I wanted to see how it went from fresh install. Though my first linux distro was Ubuntu and I enjoyed it

 

 

On 2025-07-07 at 2:45 AM, Pentium100 said:

I use Debian on my servers and Ubuntu (with KDE) for some PCs, though if I wanted to install an new PC now, I would probably use Debian on the desktop as well. 

Linux is what I would say programmer-friendly, but not neccesarily user-friendly. It does have the "self-made" or "designed by programmers" feeling, similar to the devices I build for myselt. Windows (at least the older versions) is different in that more setting are easier to access without editing text files or using the command line. Creating a custom resolution with an nVidia card is easier on Windows for example.

Linux has the drivers for most stuff built-in, so usually most of everythign works immediately after installing. OTOH, if there is no built-in driver for some device (but there is one published by the manufacturer), you may have lots of "fun" trying to make it work. Or it may be easy.

Games on Linux run quite well (at least the ones I play), but if you have an older card (for me it was a GTX970) some games have way worse performance on Linux than on Windows on the exact same PC. Apparently there is some kind of compatibility problem and you need at least a RTX20 series card to overcome it. 

I have a couple servers in my server rack that run proxmox with a bunch of debian VMs; it works great! I like that I don't have to update it often  

I feel that "fun", especially on a "bleeding edge" distro. I forgot what it was I was trying to install, but I ended up having to find the source code and a compiler to get it to work. Though now I can just do a few terminal commands and it'll install most things.

I think the performance hit might have something to do with vulkin 1.3 architecture, and Nvidia also came out and confirmed a bug on the latest driver that drops about 8% performance with DirectX12 and linux. Hopefully patch 580 will bring some good news. If you're curious, cachyOS makes a custom proton version that you can install on steam. For deep rock galactic and MTG arena it has done a great job.

 

I'm gonna include my PC screenshot cuz why not  I've been getting into linux ricing as a learning experience and it's been pretty fun

Spoiler

 

[Pentium100 2,299]

10 hours ago, Retro*Derpy said:

I think the performance hit might have something to do with vulkin 1.3 architecture, and Nvidia also came out and confirmed a bug on the latest driver that drops about 8% performance with DirectX12 and linux.

It was not 8%, I would not care about that. With a GTX970, Derail Valley on Windows 8.1 got about 40-50fps and on Linux it got about 15fps on the same PC. With a RTX3090 the framerates are higher (obviously), but they are also more similar between Windows and Linux. Yeah, I think I read something about Vulkan that may be the cause of this.

I do not like "bleeding edge", I use Ubuntu LTS or Debian and dislike it when I have to use something else like CentOS and now I have to look for the equivalent of /etc/network/interfaces or some other config file. I also dislike updating anything and like seeing long uptimes. 

[Dawnshine Wonder 2,845]

On 2025-07-16 at 8:55 PM, Pentium100 said:

It was not 8%, I would not care about that. With a GTX970, Derail Valley on Windows 8.1 got about 40-50fps and on Linux it got about 15fps on the same PC. With a RTX3090 the framerates are higher (obviously), but they are also more similar between Windows and Linux. Yeah, I think I read something about Vulkan that may be the cause of this.

I do not like "bleeding edge", I use Ubuntu LTS or Debian and dislike it when I have to use something else like CentOS and now I have to look for the equivalent of /etc/network/interfaces or some other config file. I also dislike updating anything and like seeing long uptimes. 

I don't use high end electronics either, even my gaming PC can be only classed as mid tier at most, but Linux generally works better than Windows regardless of the fact because of how efficient it is, and as stated by somebody else, it is only because of unintentional coding that games would perform worse on Linux, with all things equal, Linux should be superior because there's less going on in the background.

I'm not partial to either Debian or Ubuntu, I use Debian on my Raspberry Pi 5, Ubuntu on my other system, but my experiences with them have been good and I discovered games on Steam work on Linux through Steam Deck which is good. It seems there will one day come a time when incompatibility with Linux will be a thing of the past, for anything DOS related, use DOSbox, I can now play Sim City 2000 on my Pi 5 if I wanted to no problem, and it doesn't crash as long as I don't go too extreme on overclocking.

Vulkan may be problematic in some areas but it obviously won't matter in simpler or less graphically intense games like Streets of Rage 4 when the frame rate is already at a stable 60fps, I use Vulkan on my system and not had a single issue from it.

[Pentium100 2,299]

12 hours ago, Dawnshine Wonder said:

for anything DOS related, use DOSbox

For anything DOS related, I use an actual old PC with DOS (and Windows 3.11). More fun that way. Similar for games that run on Windows 98 or XP - an old PC with that OS.

12 hours ago, Dawnshine Wonder said:

it is only because of unintentional coding that games would perform worse on Linux,

If a game is coded for Windows, then it makes sense that it would run worse on Linux, because the API calls are not the same, something that may be optimized on Windows may not be on Linux. I remember, at least in the past, there was a problem with Linux async file IO. There were multiple APIs to choose from and none of them worked very well, but the only async API on Windows worked better. I found out about that in relation to torrents and why a torrent client uses sync IO for disk, but that was a while ago, maybe it is fixed now. 

[Dawnshine Wonder 2,845]

12 hours ago, Pentium100 said:

If a game is coded for Windows, then it makes sense that it would run worse on Linux, because the API calls are not the same, something that may be optimized on Windows may not be on Linux. I remember, at least in the past, there was a problem with Linux async file IO. There were multiple APIs to choose from and none of them worked very well, but the only async API on Windows worked better. I found out about that in relation to torrents and why a torrent client uses sync IO for disk, but that was a while ago, maybe it is fixed now. 

Coded for Windows, mainly has to do with the popularity of the platform and Microsoft wanting control over their own video games. There is truth in what you say, however Windows 11 received some negative press not just because of its strict hardware requirements and mandating TPM 2.0 on its release years ago and not guaranteeing compatibility with older gen I series Intel processors, but it uses far too much memory.

I'm not a programmer myself however I do use my PC for gaming, and based on past experience I cannot say what Windows 11 uses on idle post installation is a good thing, a pagefile may be faster on an SSD than with a hard drive, but it is still considerably slower than RAM is so the amount of RAM Windows 11 uses on idle which is often in excess of over 8 gigabytes while using prefetch cache to justify this does not make me confident in it. Some of the stuff being prefetched isn't needed to begin with, if you're using an SSD, your system is likely already fast enough to load those programs without prefetch involved, all Windows is doing at that point is wasting RAM and depriving other applications of the RAM they may need later on to function. Ubuntu works differently it would seem as it only keeps things in RAM if they're needed at the time.

[Pentium100 2,299]

22 minutes ago, Dawnshine Wonder said:

Coded for Windows, mainly has to do with the popularity of the platform and Microsoft wanting control over their own video games.

Mainly it's the popularity of the platform. If you need to spend effort to make sure the game works on an OS, would you rather do it for a popular OS or one that only a few people use? I dislike Windows 10 and 11.

As for optimized APIs, IIRC, recently the Linu kernel got a patch that adds some functions to have Windows-style locking or something (called NTSYNC), this was done mainly to improe the performance of Windows games on Linux. 

24 minutes ago, Dawnshine Wonder said:

Ubuntu works differently it would seem as it only keeps things in RAM if they're needed at the time.

Linux caches stuff all the time, by default it even puts some programs into the swap file to free up memory for cache (you can disable that by setting vm.swappiness=1 in sysctl.conf).