Whats your favourite Linux Distro?

[TheinsanegamerN]

I like the look of default Arch desktop actually so no issue with the design at all

My L14 G2 is Intel Tiger Lake, my old was Coffee Lake with a MX150, my gamer is as you can see in my specs, and @VulkanBros I can see you rock a 4070 Ti how is your gaming with that in linux?

I heard NV cards could be a pain in the rear because NV drivers are close source and not open source. I do enjoy the RX 7000 series but because of energy effiency and performance of the RTX 4070 it went with it.

I never remember having issues running my nvidia cards in linux, it was just like windows, download drivers, install, and play.

Then again, its been a hot minute since I used an nvidia card in linux.

Yeah, SteamOS was Debian, now it's Arch. That's pretty apparent to me, since I have way better success running games on Proton in Manjaro (Arch) vs Ubuntu (Debian). So far, running Manjaro has been a pretty dull experience, which is just how I like my OSes these days.

IIRC the big reason was the reason most of us usually abandon ubuntu after awhile: they are SLOW on the uptake, getting new kernels and MESA updates was slower than hell. Ubuntu is still using 5.4 IIRC for stability, when 6.9.6 is out and has major performance improvements. Eventually they got tired of working around issues. Manjaro, being rolling release, has all the latest, and makes it SO much easier.

steamOS on steam deck is amazing 10/10

on the 10 yr old one when they tried steam machines, pretty sure those flopped for a lot of reasons, but the software wasn't there yet

The software wasnt there, the price was silly, and IMO the biggest issue, they never sold the steambox case as a separate product. PC gamers like building, and those enthusiasts would have kept it alive far longer. Instead, it failed, and was resurrected later as a standalone product that did much better.

 

[Vario]

I tried Kubuntu and hated how it handled multimonitor (identified every monitor by its P/N rather than by #1,#2,#3, and since all are Dell, it was worthless) and task bar (hard to duplicate task bar on all windows, had to recreate the same task bar for each separately). Kubuntu also seemed less stable, had more problems with it.

Ubuntu was less hassle. I am using Ubuntu to work with TensorFlow in a conda env.

 

[Ferrum Master]

I tried Kubuntu and hated how it handled multimonitor (identified every monitor by its P/N rather than by #1,#2,#3, and since all are Dell, it was worthless) and task bar (hard to duplicate task bar on all windows, had to recreate the same task bar for each separately). Kubuntu also seemed less stable, had more problems with it.

It is KDE "feature" everyone adores, that you hate there.

 

[Vario]

It is KDE "feature" everyone adores, that you hate there.

Yeah I think one can copy and paste the settings for the task bar as code and duplicate it across monitors that way but its a hassle, it should just have a button that says "display across all monitors".

I'm a total noob, so its entirely possible that there's a way to solve this in the terminal, but as it was not immediately evident, I didn't want to deal with it.

The thing that really pissed me off was to make small changes to that task bar would always result in something being clicked and dragged off, it would get all fucked up, and then I'd have to rework it. Waste of time just to get something like Win 10 taskbar. I'd rather just get used to the Ubuntu's Mac OS style menu.

I use 3 small dell monitors all in portrait (vertical) and I don't have a single main monitor, so the task bar stuff is important to me for productivity.

 

[Ferrum Master]

Yeah I think one can copy and paste the settings for the task bar as code and duplicate it across monitors that way but its a hassle, it should just have a button that says "display across all monitors".

That is the the core way KDE treats each display output as independent entity, you cannot even have a spanned wallpaper without spending few minutes searching how to do it. KDE is highly tweakable, it is currently most feature wise advanced, thus fanboys root for it and wet their pants for it, but the fun fact, I don't spend my time looking at the desktop.

Try some different, there are plenty of different ones... I don't like KDE personally too, but I also don't like the fact that many try to mimic w10 UI features like taskbar. I have found GNOME3 hot corner principle much faster and it does not rob you from precious vertical space.

 

[Solaris17]

IIRC the big reason was the reason most of us usually abandon ubuntu after awhile: they are SLOW on the uptake, getting new kernels and MESA updates was slower than hell. Ubuntu is still using 5.4 IIRC for stability, when 6.9.6 is out and has major performance improvements. Eventually they got tired of working around issues. Manjaro, being rolling release, has all the latest, and makes it SO much easier.

Ubuntu actually isn’t bad at all and the current LTS uses kernel 6.8.

 

[SomeOne99h]

I thought Heroic Launcher only was for Epic Games Store and GoG, how will it help me with FFXIV original windows client?

I was pointing out about Lutris. I don't know about FFXIV but Heroic Launcher can generally run games. If I was you, I will simply test it out. (It also supports Amazon Prime games).
From their wiki:
"Support to add your own games (think Steam's "Add Non-Steam Game" feature) is also available."

Which games are not supported by Heroic?​

Currently, only games that require activation in Origin are unsupported.

Download: https://heroicgameslauncher.com/downloads
The Wiki: https://github.com/Heroic-Games-Launcher/HeroicGamesLauncher/wiki
FAQ: https://heroicgameslauncher.com/faq

Space Linux, I also suggest you visit their Discord server: https://discord.com/invite/rHJ2uqdquK
Once you you have installed Heroic Launcher, tried to run the FFXIV but didn't work, you could then ask them about what to do.

 

[Space Lynx]

I was pointing out about Lutris. I don't know about FFXIV but Heroic Launcher can generally run games. If I was you, I will simply test it out. (It also supports Amazon Prime games).
From their wiki:
"Support to add your own games (think Steam's "Add Non-Steam Game" feature) is also available."

Which games are not supported by Heroic?​

Currently, only games that require activation in Origin are unsupported.

Download: https://heroicgameslauncher.com/downloads
The Wiki: https://github.com/Heroic-Games-Launcher/HeroicGamesLauncher/wiki
FAQ: https://heroicgameslauncher.com/faq

I had no idea, thanks, I will give this a try. Just add the FFXIV launcher exe and see what happens

 

[SomeOne99h]

I had no idea, thanks, I will give this a try. Just add the FFXIV launcher exe and see what happens

Yep, it is a universal launcher just like Lutris and Bottles. Except certain big company game launchers need extra attention hence why they talk about supporting that and this game launcher.

 

[Solaris17]

I had no idea, thanks, I will give this a try. Just add the FFXIV launcher exe and see what happens

What distro are you running? If you have problems I can try and help you out.

 

[Space Lynx]

What distro are you running? If you have problems I can try and help you out.

I am waiting for official launch of Linux Mint 22 Cinnamon next month, then I am going to attempt to move to linux full time. I think I will be able to pull it off honestly as I am very casual user, its all going to come down to FFXIV works fine or not. I will keep your offer in mind.

 

[Super Firm Tofu]

I am waiting for official launch of Linux Mint 22 Cinnamon next month, then I am going to attempt to move to linux full time. I think I will be able to pull it off honestly as I am very casual user, its all going to come down to FFXIV works fine or not. I will keep your offer in mind.

I’d be willing to lend a hand as well.

When you’re ready, start a thread in the Linux forum and I’m sure we all can get it figured out.

I don’t play the game but I’ll see if I can get it going on few different distros in the meantime.

 

[gurusmi]

DistroWatch.com: Put the fun back into computing. Use Linux, BSD.

News and feature lists of Linux and BSD distributions.

distrowatch.com

 

[Solaris17]

I’d be willing to lend a hand as well.

When you’re ready, start a thread in the Linux forum and I’m sure we all can get it figured out.

I don’t play the game but I’ll see if I can get it going on few different distros in the meantime.

The big trick is using xivlauncher and not the native one. Xivlauncher just wants to be pointed the executable. It bundles its own wine config and runs it through that since its Linux native.

As for installing atleast for me it was simple. Most launchers lutris, bottles, ets install wine. I just double clicked the executable to do the install. I didn’t use any of the launchers just wine itself. After the “game” installed, I just pointed xivlauncher to it.

I say “game” because XIV doesn’t do the initial download etc.

Also good to note, in general XIV is super portable. I just copied the base directory from my nas and used what was basically my windows backup.

Which if you already have the game and can just back it up, will honestly be just as easy.

Big tip: remember to boot the game and do a character and a configuration backup to the servers (two different menus). Then just pull them back down when you have it running on Linux.

it was honestly painless took me like 10min just because my nas is fast.

it should be noted I am saying xivlauncher on purpose because it is different than the “client launcher” which is the vanilla experience. It is a flatpack though which is something to pay attention too. I stay away from mint so I don’t know if they are doing the flat pack thing or not. From a usability perspective anyway. I’m trying to avoid having him dig into cli. But I guess we could just write a script.

 

[Super Firm Tofu]

The big trick is using xivlauncher and not the native one. Xivlauncher just wants to be pointed the executable. It bundles its own wine config and runs it through that since its Linux native.

As for installing atleast for me it was simple. Most launchers lutris, bottles, ets install wine. I just double clicked the executable to do the install. I didn’t use any of the launchers just wine itself. After the “game” installed, I just pointed xivlauncher to it.

I say “game” because XIV doesn’t do the initial download etc.

Also good to note, in general XIV is super portable. I just copied the base directory from my nas and used what was basically my windows backup.

Which if you already have the game and can just back it up, will honestly be just as easy.

Big tip: remember to boot the game and do a character and a configuration backup to the servers (two different menus). Then just pull them back down when you have it running on Linux.

it was honestly painless took me like 10min just because my nas is fast.

it should be noted I am saying xivlauncher on purpose because it is different than the “client launcher” which is the vanilla experience. It is a flatpack though which is something to pay attention too. I stay away from mint so I don’t know if they are doing the flat pack thing or not. From a usability perspective anyway. I’m trying to avoid having him dig into cli. But I guess we could just write a script.

Ah, ok. Thanks. That confirms how I thought XIVLauncher worked after reading about it when Space Lynx mentioned it a few days ago. Really good to know that he could just copy the installed folder from Windows over to his Linux install to use with XIVLauncher.

I'll install the current release of Mint on a spare machine and confirm about Flatpak and see if I can put a list of general steps together that might help him.

 

[Darmok N Jalad]

That is the the core way KDE treats each display output as independent entity, you cannot even have a spanned wallpaper without spending few minutes searching how to do it. KDE is highly tweakable, it is currently most feature wise advanced, thus fanboys root for it and wet their pants for it, but the fun fact, I don't spend my time looking at the desktop.

Try some different, there are plenty of different ones... I don't like KDE personally too, but I also don't like the fact that many try to mimic w10 UI features like taskbar. I have found GNOME3 hot corner principle much faster and it does not rob you from precious vertical space.

I don’t mind GNOME at all, but my other machines are Macs, so it’s the most similar experience anyway.

 

[Solaris17]

I don’t mind GNOME at all, but my other machines are Macs, so it’s the most similar experience anyway.

you might really like budgie! Im not sure if they release it for manjaro though.

 

[Darmok N Jalad]

you might really like budgie! Im not sure if they release it for manjaro though.

Looks like it's possible to install it, at least after the fact. Not sure that I'd mess with it though. I'm seeing how long I can just run Manjaro as-is before I run into trouble. I'm a couple months in at this point, and it's been working great, updates and all.

 

[Solaris17]

Looks like it's possible to install it, at least after the fact. Not sure that I'd mess with it though. I'm seeing how long I can just run Manjaro as-is before I run into trouble. I'm a couple months in at this point, and it's been working great, updates and all.

Nice! yeah I dont blame you I have had issues in the past just straight up changing DEs.

 

[Ferrum Master]

I wonder how you got time for an mmo even.

Guess what mates. I managed to launch DaVinci Resolve with working openCL on my Radeon without much toothache. One more less trouble.

 

[Darmok N Jalad]

I wonder how you got time for an mmo even.

Guess what mates. I managed to launch DaVinci Resolve with working openCL on my Radeon without much toothache. One more less trouble.

I’ve tried to get On1 working through WINE. I get it installed, but upon launch it can’t find the Vulkan library. Can’t figure out how to get that to work, and it’s ironic since Vulkan is right in the Linux wheelhouse.

 

[Courier 6]

I think this could be of interest to the topic

Ubuntu 24.04 Flavours: Kubuntu, Budgie, MATE, Cinnamon & More​

 

[unwind-protect]

Is Ubuntu Studio still a think or is that in the past now that pipewire is in charge?

 

[Ferrum Master]

Is Ubuntu Studio still a think or is that in the past now that pipewire is in charge?

Audio in linux still sucks hard and is buggy as hell, no matter what combo you do, jack, alsa, pipe, pulse wire or not. Each HW and SW use case is special and very capricious

 

[unwind-protect]

Audio in linux still sucks hard and is buggy as hell, no matter what combo you do, jack, alsa, pipe, pulse wire or not. Each HW and SW use case is special and very capricious

Believe me I know

I use pulse on top of jackd which is reasonably stable when you do it yourself.