My journey to successfully game under Linux (and overcome Microsoft's Stranglehold)

[Zepp]

This is how it feels after installing 11 or a major update

View attachment 137462

God. I got a laptop last year and wanted to update the BIOS before installing linux, but the only option HP provided was an .exe file. I though OK, windows came on it so I just finish the setup and get to desktop. HAH. I couldnt get past the sign in to MS account. OOBE didnt work. I had to go to my (still) windows HTPC, download windows installer tool, download the iso, and create the bootable USB with rufus to bypass the stupid login requirement just to get to the damn desktop for 5 min to update the BIOS...

I definitely felt like the above GIF

 

[manly]

God. I got a laptop last year and wanted to update the BIOS before installing linux, but the only option HP provided was an .exe file. I though OK, windows came on it so I just finish the setup and get to desktop. HAH. I couldnt get past the sign in to MS account. OOBE didnt work. I had to go to my (still) windows HTPC, download windows installer tool, download the iso, and create the bootable USB with rufus to bypass the stupid login requirement just to get to the damn desktop for 5 min to update the BIOS...

I definitely felt like the above GIF

I ran into a crazy BIOS issue a while back. My dad's HP laptop, only a few years old, seemingly had a corrupted BIOS. It was bricked, but IIRC the error message alluded to manually restoring the BIOS or something like that. (If it was just resetting CMOS to defaults, obviously I would have done that first.)

Anyway, had to download some HP tool to create a USB flash BIOS updater but it refused to run on my Dell! Tried a couple different ways, no luck. Kind of deduced that the utility would only run on HP systems. Luckily I had bought a crappy HP SFF tower at Walmart a little while back and tried it there. Indeed, the tool created the USB BIOS recovery disk and that fixed his laptop.

It was quite bizarre because having used PCs for decades, I don't recall a BIOS spontaneously getting fully bricked. Granted I don't know what he did (maybe nothing, maybe some bad HP update?) but most people would be SOL and have to take the system to some local PC repair shop.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

It's at the point for me, I definitely don't need windows anymore, at all. I am turning it on once a week to let it check for updates. In a few months I may nuke that install too. I bought a 2070 super here a few weeks back. It is nerfed when booting cachy. 4 second input delay making it unusable. Had to turn it off from the PSU. I was told it is a Nvidia driver issue, and Pop!OS is the answer. Curious

 

[Zepp]

P.S. Can someone simplify "sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y && sudo apt autoremove -y && sudo apt clean" ?

Just discovered something amazing that chatgpt led me to when asking about this

alias

run in terminal:
alias up='sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y && sudo apt autoremove -y && sudo apt clean'

now simply typing up and hitting enter in terminal runs the full update command. you can use whatever you want in place of up and whatever string of commands you want within the ' '

you can remove an alias by typing: unalias and whatever you named it. so example: unalias up

EDIT update: I mistakenly though it was sort of permanent as I described above, but the alias dies when you close the terminal unless you save it to ~/.bashrc.

 

[biostud]

just got updated to kernel 6.18.5 no problems so far (I'm currently just happy that I could boot)

Next must be version 26.2 of Libre Office, once it hits backports.

 

[Ken g6]

Just discovered something amazing that chatgpt led me to when asking about this

alias

run in terminal:
alias up='sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y && sudo apt autoremove -y && sudo apt clean'

now simply typing up and hitting enter in terminal runs the full update command. you can use whatever you want in place of up and whatever string of commands you want within the ' '

you can remove an alias by typing: unalias and whatever you named it. so example: unalias up

EDIT update: I mistakenly though it was sort of permanent as I described above, but the alias dies when you close the terminal unless you save it to ~/.bashrc.

Alias is useful for small stuff. For bigger stuff I made my own $HOME/bin directory and added it to my $PATH, so I can put scripts there.

 

[lxskllr]

I have a directory called $HOME/local. I put my miscellaneous stuff in there. Various browsers, media players, cli utilities... things that don't have to be properly installed. Easy in, easy out. Only works for my user, but since I'm the only user, it's seamless.

 

[biostud]

I have a directory called $HOME/local. I put my miscellaneous stuff in there. Various browsers, media players, cli utilities... things that don't have to be properly installed. Easy in, easy out. Only works for my user, but since I'm the only user, it's seamless.

Yeah, learning Linux and just have the "feeling" of how to structure your system is quite different from Windows.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Yeah, learning Linux and just have the "feeling" of how to structure your system is quite different from Windows.

Someone made a great point on r/CachyOS; All of us had to learn windows at some point too. It isn't like we turned on the PC, and everything we did just worked. Hell, 11 is a hot mess as of this writing. I Just let my windows system run updates and it was an ugly one. I took a look at the KB and there are some badly nerfed things it is supposed to fix. "allowing Smart App Control to be disabled without reinstalling" Yeah, that kind of nonsense is contributing to why more and more people are Noping out of windows.

 

[biostud]

Someone made a great point on r/CachyOS; All of us had to learn windows at some point too. It isn't like we turned on the PC, and everything we did just worked. Hell, 11 is a hot mess as of this writing. I Just let my windows system run updates and it was an ugly one. I took a look at the KB and there are some badly nerfed things it is supposed to fix. "allowing Smart App Control to be disabled without reinstalling" Yeah, that kind of nonsense is contributing to why more and more people are Noping out of windows.

Yeah, it's not a complaint. As hardware enthusiasm has become "meh" for me it's fun to learn something new.

 

[Zepp]

Someone made a great point on r/CachyOS; All of us had to learn windows at some point too. It isn't like we turned on the PC, and everything we did just worked.

And nowadays it's easier than ever by orders of magnitude to get into linux not because of steam's work with proton, or the ever maturing linux desktop experience, but AI help. Not having to scroll through google forum post suggestions that vaguely talk about an issue you are having. You tell AI what is happening, even better if you post an error or log entry and generally it will walk you through fixing it.
One of the complains I often see from windows stockholm syndrome victims is "if anything goes wrong I have to interact with the toxic linux community for help"
Not anymore 😀

 

[lxskllr]

I started playing with gnu/linux in the bad old days(2005), and it wasn't even the bad old days. It was pretty easy then, especially compared to the 90s, but you still had to think, and put some care into choosing hardware. I barely give it a thought these days. I just assume any arbitrary hardware I hookup is gonna JustWork™. That's not exactly correct, but pretty damned close, and much of what you need is already in the repos. No hunting manufacturer websites, and downloading bloated crap programs that are 90% trash just to get the 10% you want.

The experience may not always be flawless, but it never is, and it doesn't require any special knowledge to deal with. It's just like windows, but not. Starting from zero knowledge, windows is no easier than *nix, and in many ways is harder, because no matter how hard you search, it's still proprietary. You aren't allowed to have the information to fix your issues.

 

[biostud]

just did my first manual partition for installing Debian on an external SSD I had laying around for my work laptop. I managed to get a 1GB EFI, 60GB /root, 16GB /swap and ~170GB /home partition and installation worked perfectly and I can now dual boot if the external drive is attached. Only problem is that it's a 15 years old Crucial M4 drive and SMART is throwing errors that failure is imminent and that reserve flash cells are low. 😛

 

[biostud]

I started playing with gnu/linux in the bad old days(2005), and it wasn't even the bad old days. It was pretty easy then, especially compared to the 90s, but you still had to think, and put some care into choosing hardware. I barely give it a thought these days. I just assume any arbitrary hardware I hookup is gonna JustWork™. That's not exactly correct, but pretty damned close, and much of what you need is already in the repos. No hunting manufacturer websites, and downloading bloated crap programs that are 90% trash just to get the 10% you want.

The experience may not always be flawless, but it never is, and it doesn't require any special knowledge to deal with. It's just like windows, but not. Starting from zero knowledge, windows is no easier than *nix, and in many ways is harder, because no matter how hard you search, it's still proprietary. You aren't allowed to have the information to fix your issues.

Yeah I have lots of colleagues who are avid mac users, who don't know how to navigate and do things in Windows.

I'm sure I could get Linux up and running without help from an AI, but when you want to tinker and troubleshoot AI is really helpful, and make the switch a much more pleasant experience.

 

[biostud]

Today I tried reviving my parents old desktop an intel i5-2500S, which I prior have upgraded with 1TB SSD and 16GB ram. I repasted the cooling paste, as it reached 99C, and installed Debian 13 +KDE using Ventoy. What an amazing piece of software! being able to just copy iso images to your USB and use them to boot/install is nothing short of amazing. I did all partitioning and installation of Ventoy under Linux. so my 256GB stick now has ~64GB of space for Ventoy+images and the rest for normal data usage.

Now everything didn't went smooth, the integrated graphics didn't play well so I had to boot with 'nomodeset' to prevent hard lock, which disables all hardware acceleration. I tried a couple of things suggested by chatGPT and tried booting a live image of Debian 12 (very easy thanks to Ventoy), but all still hard locking. So the best would be to find a used video card, which I probably can do at work. Also the computer only have VGA+DVI out, so it's using a DVI to HDMI cable, which is less than optimal. Max resolution is 1024x768, which look a little bit grainy/stretched on 5120x1440.

But all in all a fun experience. 🙂

 

[Zepp]

Today I tried reviving my parents old desktop an intel i5-2500S, which I prior have upgraded with 1TB SSD and 16GB ram. I repasted the cooling paste, as it reached 99C, and installed Debian 13 +KDE using Ventoy. What an amazing piece of software! being able to just copy iso images to your USB and use them to boot/install is nothing short of amazing. I did all partitioning and installation of Ventoy under Linux. so my 256GB stick now has ~64GB of space for Ventoy+images and the rest for normal data usage.

Now everything didn't went smooth, the integrated graphics didn't play well so I had to boot with 'nomodeset' to prevent hard lock, which disables all hardware acceleration. I tried a couple of things suggested by chatGPT and tried booting a live image of Debian 12 (very easy thanks to Ventoy), but all still hard locking. So the best would be to find a used video card, which I probably can do at work. Also the computer only have VGA+DVI out, so it's using a DVI to HDMI cable, which is less than optimal. Max resolution is 1024x768, which look a little bit grainy/stretched on 5120x1440.

But all in all a fun experience. 🙂

I have a tiny FirePro W2100 2GB card based on GCN 1.0. https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/firepro-w2100.c2612

If you payed for a ship label I'd give it to you for the cause.
It worked well enough for me earlier last year with a few different distros. I no longer have an actual desktop so it will just sit indefinitely collecting dust

 

[biostud]

I have a tiny FirePro W2100 2GB card based on GCN 1.0. https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/firepro-w2100.c2612

If you payed for a ship label I'd give it to you for the cause.
It worked well enough for me earlier last year with a few different distros. I no longer have an actual desktop so it will just sit indefinitely collecting dust

Thx 🙂 , I'll see what I can get at work or I might have a friend who have something laying around. I live in Denmark, so shipping would probably be pretty steep. :/

 

[biostud]

Just bought this for my work laptop.

 

[Zepp]

I've had that same thumb drive in 128GB for about 4 years. Excellent drive.

 

[biostud]

I've had that same thumb drive in 128GB for about 4 years. Excellent drive.

Cloned the failing drive successfully to the new thumb drive. Now I can see how much I can do to get it working as a work computer. I will have to install a win 11 VM, as our school use some admin software which only run in Windows. But I'm also sure that I will use multiple desktops, far more on this laptop, so I can just dedicate one to the win11 VM.

 

[lxskllr]

I will have to install a win 11 VM, as our school use some admin software which only run in Windows.

Have you tried wine? Not saying the odds are good it works. It seems to be better for games than random office type software, but sometimes you get lucky. I'd keep going with the win11 vm, then play around with wine as a rainy day project.

 

[biostud]

Have you tried wine? Not saying the odds are good it works. It seems to be better for games than random office type software, but sometimes you get lucky. I'd keep going with the win11 vm, then play around with wine as a rainy day project.

Yeah doesn't work, it uses some kind of .net online installation and connects to online servers. I get a plethora of errors, I've also tried copy folders after a windows installation, but no luck.

 

[WelshBloke]

Anyone tried the UT2004 Linux installer?

I really fancy playing a simple twitch shooter that doesn't involve loot or skill trees!

This is the script. you need to make it trusted and executable, plus I have no guarantees that it isn't going to do something nefarious! The download speed for the UT2004.iso is proper slow, I'm guessing that the servers are getting hammered.

[Desktop Entry]
Comment=
Exec=bash -c 'set -euo pipefail; URL="https://raw.githubusercontent.com/OldUnreal/FullGameInstallers/master/Linux/install-ut2004.sh"; { if command -v curl &>/dev/null; then curl -LSs --compressed --fail "${URL}"; elif command -v wget &>/dev/null; then wget -q "${URL}" -O -; elif command -v wget2 &>/dev/null; then wget2 -q "${URL}" -O -; fi; } | bash -s -- --application-entry=install'
GenericName=
MimeType=
Name=Install Unreal Tournament 2004
Path=
Terminal=true
TerminalOptions=
Type=Application

Edit: Its restarted the download at a much faster rate!

 

[WelshBloke]

Ouchies! That crashes my DE!
Splash screen shows up, sound starts playing and I'm dumped back at a log in screen and then my gnome extensions are disabled!
I'm guessing that it's because my distro is fully Wayland with no Xorg to fall back on?

 

[biostud]

Ouchies! That crashes my DE!
Splash screen shows up, sound starts playing and I'm dumped back at a log in screen and then my gnome extensions are disabled!
I'm guessing that it's because my distro is fully Wayland with no Xorg to fall back on?

Du you run it through Lutris?