Linux for Leftists

Chimera is an interesting new Linux distro with no systemd, BSD utils instead of gnu, and other unique design choices.

Reading about it on lobste.rs, the developer (or one of them) commented:

"

why does every other linux distribution exist? most of them provide far less added value compared to the others, yet nobody questions their existence, perhaps because they are fundamentally uninteresting

it’s always a combination of many smaller factors

i just wanted to make a well-rounded and somewhat opinionated system without cruft or sketchy parts, but still featureful and generally usable (no suckless junk), with a low-maintenance but high-correctness package build system and infrastructure, no systemd but taking service management and everything around it seriously (there are exactly 0 other non-systemd distros that do that), easy to bootstrap, architecture-agnostic, and hardened (as much as possible without introducing visible breakage or significant performance loss; the only “linux distro” that really takes this seriously is android, and that’s not general-purpose)

none of the individual choices like userland base or libc or whatever are goals in themselves, they are a means to an end or just the most obvious thing given the circumstances"

I have been using Gentoo exclusively for about two years and really enjoyed it. The customization and package manager is just top-notch. I have been curious about NixOS for some time, just randomly seeing it pop in some discussion, but never really looked into it. One day YouTube recommends this video about flakes for development instead of using Dockerfiles.

It intrigued me because I am not really fan of Dockerfiles. In my experience, it is too easy for something to break and pretty hard to maintain them properly. Plus, it is really annoying to use them for development.

So I started looking into Nix and then NixOS and created a new partition and installed it and so far it is a pretty interesting experience. The system is pretty customizable, and it is nice having the entire system described in configuration files. I could see myself using the same config for my laptop and desktop and just sync them. It is really nice and easy to have your entire system configuration in git repo, much easier than what I used with things like etckeeper.

So far there are only few issues I encountered. Not every package is implemented properly, so some configuration is the same old story of using files in /etc or maybe just specifying a configuration file in your config. I've also read about some issues with Nix not using FHS (Filesystem Hierarchy Standard) for example Steam had some issues but so far I didn't encounter them. Also, the documentation is not what I am used to coming from Gentoo, but it is still usable.

The last issue I have is not really an issue. It is pretty time-consuming to make your entire configuration, especially if you want to use flakes. I've been slowly adding more and more but so far only into default configuration.nix and would love to rewrite it completely into flakes, but it takes time.

So far I didn't decide that I would be not going back to Gentoo, but it is fascinating experience. I am especially curious how will this impact my development workflow because it should be much easier to control dependencies per project. Especially with something like Python (always really hated using venvs).

Anyone else trying NixOS or using it already?

Do you guys recommend dual-booting a Linux distro on a secondary drive, or running Linux as a main OS, using Wine for Windows applications?

I've wanted to make the switch for a very long time, just worried about compatibility issues or even performance loss in gaming using Wine.

Interested in hearing everyone's experience using alternative phone OS's. Have you ever used Lineage or Graphene, Pursim, pinephone? Was it good enough to replace your android/iphone?

I was thinking of getting an Odroid N2+ to use as a Jellyfin/Plex server. What other things can it be used for?

I know there is RetroPie but I have no interest in that. Any other suggestions?

I've just been getting up and running with a minimal distro lately and also discovered user-dirs.dirs, so I'm no longer bound by the standard auto-generated Home folders.

Looking to share and learn how other comrades organise their home directories. Any tips appreciated, and also just seeing how other people like to use and organise ~/ :-)

Here's how I've organised ~/ on my new install so far:

* audio/
    * audiobooks/
    * music/
    * podcasts/
* books/
* documents/
* dotfiles/
* downloads/
* images/
    * photos/
    * screenshots/
    * wallpaper/
* opt/
* planner/
* projects/
* scripts/
* videos/
* workspace/

… plus all the hidden cruft that's placed in home by various programs. I do my best to enforce the XDG_CONFIG_HOME standard but I'm still in the process of moving stuff into .config/.

Most of these are self-explanatory. opt/ is for software I build from source or otherwise not available in my package manager. planner/ is a git repo full of plain text and markdown files used to manage productivity and take notes. projects/ is my personal git repos containing stuff like my blog, creative writing etc. scripts/ is part of my $PATH and contains executable helper scripts such as setting a random wallpaper, fetching mail, etc. It's also a git repo. workspace/ is actually the XDG_DESKTOP_DIR but renamed. My window manager doesn't put files/folders on the actual desktop so I use this space for repos I contribute to for my job as well as transient tasks which require a folder structure for getting something done but which will likely be removed later. Basically stuff that's not an actual personal "project" and I'm working on at the moment.

Things I'm thinking about:

• alternative names for downloads/. There are three folders which start do meaning tab-complete only works on the third letter. Not ideal. I've seen some people use incoming/ but I keep flip-flopping on whether I like this or not.
• Possibly renaming dotfiles/ to .dotfiles/ but then, I use it a fair amount at the moment.
• adding an articles folder for academic articles and HTML blog posts I want to keep locally.

Talk about a new micro kernel called Helios, written in a language called Hare

Just showing off my desktop. For those curious, I use the XFCE desktop, and ULauncher tied to the windows key. I'm also experimenting with animated wallpapers using hidimari.

I'm looking to get a straight tablet (not a 360-hinge laptop with a keyboard) that will mostly be used for mobile centric applications like when I'm out and about or when I want to binge shows in bed. Ideally it will be a device that I can exclusive use the touchscreen with for when I'm either too lazy or can't practically prop it up and use it as a proper laptop.

I want to keep at least the software as open source as possible, so my options are either an Android tablet that I can sideload an AOSP de-googled ROM like Lineage OS, or a Windows tablet with an x86 CPU that I'll install a Linux distro on (inb4 "Android is technically Linux").

I currently use KDE Plasma which is my favourite environment when I'm on my desktop, and I quickly found through testing on my touchscreen laptop that it's practically unusable without a mouse and keyboard. Here are some things that I found KDE lacking that I need:

• Integrated onscreen keyboard that automatically pops up when you're in a text field, and/or can easily be brought in and out of frame when needed.

• Smooth swipe-based scrolling. I find that swiping up on many KDE apps just selects text or drags an element, or does nothing, and you have to drag the tiny scroll bar to scroll.

• Pinch to zoom

• A terminal that works well with touch screen, namely one that makes it easy to use special characters and control keys with an onscreen keyboard. Termux on Android is what I consider one of the best implementations of this.

• Active stylus support with palm rejection is a plus, like the Surface when running Windows or the iPad Pro.

I consider myself very knowledgeable with Linux, and I do tinker with my computers a lot, but for this one, I do simply want something that "just works", because I'll either be using it at school/work and can't afford to start diving into conf files and searching up cryptic error messages because something broke, or I'll be in bed just wanting to relax before going to sleep.

Finally, is this futile? If we're considering stock Android as a benchmark for a decent user experience on a tablet, can anything on the non-Android Linux side even compare?

Most of what I want to do on the web is read text, and while I love Firefox it's a bit of a resource hog for quick browsing. I've therefore been using links2 for a while. There is also Lynx, and Elinks and probably many more I'm not aware of.

links2 was somewhat of an arbitrary choice for me, so I was wondering if any comrades used terminal-based browsers and which ones they preferred? I'd value the feature of highlighting and copying text, but maybe that's a concern for the terminal emulator itself? links2 is fine so far but wondering if anyone was particularly passionate about their browser choice on the terminal.

(Note: I'm aware of Kristall, for Gemini/HTTP/Gopher but I'm specifically interested in a terminal-based web browser)

New essay, not directly related to Linux but cool nonetheless.

So the thing is that I use a 1080p display alongside a 4k display, and I only know how to change the global scaling.

At 150% scaling:

• 1080p display everything is too large
• 4k display is good

At 100% scaling:

• 1080p display is good
• 4k display everything is too tiny

Is it possible to have 100% scaling in the 1080p display and 150% in the 4k display at the same time?

I'm using Debian 11 with KDE. I'm willing to switch to another DE or to a window manager.

This is a video talking about Deepin OS, a Chinese made Linux distro based on Debian. Plus it isn't full of cringe like videos about anything related to China tend to be.

Or do you keep a few Windows/Mac PCs lying around?

You know, just in case you need to run an app/game that only works perfectly on Windows/Mac and WINE/Proton wouldn't run it?

Been thinking of Linuxifying my Laptop eversince I enjoyed Linux after defecting to it (from Windows) in my main PC (a Desktop).

I'm sorry. I shouldn't even know what Pulse Audio is. It should just quietly do it's thing. The fact that I know it's name tells you enough. I have to constantly kill it in order to stop terrible audio distortions. It often struggles managing multiple audio sources from different applications. It completely fails at managing bluetooth devices often forcing audio output that sounds like AM radio and requiring a complete system reset in order to allow high fidelity output. Pulse Audio is the worse and most unacceptable part of my Linux Distro and should be completely abandoned as a total failure and an embarrassment to any developer who is shameless enough to take credit for working on it.

I'm a windows loser looking to make the plunge into Linux. I was thinking of switching my gaming PC to Linux in the near future. Before I make up my mind, I'll probably try out VMs of distros.

I've lurked a few Linux communities here and on lemmy.ml, some I'm gonna regurgitate some things I half remember in the hope of being being corrected and starting discussion about what I should be doing.

• Ubuntu isn't good
• Mint is good despite being based on Ubuntu. Made with former windows users in mind
• Debian is good because of their packages or package manager or something. Recently sold out, but there are spinoffs that don't use proprietary software like Duvian.
• Fedora seemed to get some good word but I can't remember why.
• Arch and it's spinoffs require a shit ton of finagling to get right but can do a lot of cool things
• There are different desktop environments like GNOME, Cinnamon, and ... others? I honestly don't know what a desktop environment is.
• Wine (or the fork Proton) can run windows native games on Linux
• There are snap, flat something or other, and ... other ways for installing software.

I'm sure I'm missing a lot and got some things wrong. Any help getting started is appreciated.

Edit: I ended up going with a KDE plasma spin of Fedora 36. Once I figured out how to get the nvidia drivers set up it was smooth sailing.