I'm ready to install Linux, but I'd like your opinion first

MajinBlayze, 3 months ago (edited 3 months ago)

I’ve been running kinoite on my laptop for a short while now, and I wanted to address a few miscellaneous things.

First: I recommend trying the out of the box experience for a while before going far customizing it. For example, someone mentioned your filesystem layout with subvolumes: that’s the default in kinoite: home, var, and root are in subvolumes.

Second: Wayland either is or is about to be the default in fedora (I’m running the beta for the next version, and it’s Wayland by default). Try it and see if you have issues before trying to switch to x11.

Flatpak is your first stop for installing software on kinoite, but the fedora repo that’s configured by default is missing a lot. If <your favorite search engine> shows software available that you don’t see in discover/flatpak, you need to add the flathub repo, which is easy to do, but not obvious (to me) that it wasn’t the default.

Finally, Nvidia experience might not be good ootb. You might need to take extra steps to get the proprietary Nvidia driver.

Good luck with your endeavor!

Edit: Firefox

I don’t understand why the default install of Firefox isn’t the flatpak version. Switch to the flatpak version and you won’t have to worry about codecs.

Lol, I just noticed that this thread is 3 weeks old… How is your setup working out?

acockworkorange, 4 months ago

One suggestion I haven’t seen addressed: use a filesystem with snapshots such as Btrfs and combine it with Timeshift.

With Timeshift you’ll be able to roll back in time on your disk and undo stuff. It can take advantage of the lightning fast snapshots of Btrfs to do that.

On Btrfs, separate your /home into a subvolume @home so that, when you do roll back, your personal files aren’t affected.

Configure policies for daily and weekly snapshots on Timeshift. Don’t worry about space, they’re basically free.

That way you can feel better experimenting with your setup, as long as the system is Bootable.

bravemonkey, 4 months ago

This is one of the reasons I’m using OpenSUSE Tumbleweed. It’s been a solid distro for me.

acockworkorange, 4 months ago

Heard great things about it. Mint doesn’t suggest it as default, but if you choose Btrfs during install, it will configure @home subvolume and snapshots for you, which is nice.

JustUseMint, 4 months ago

Can you elaborate on the don’t worry about space thing? Half of my disks are timeshift snapshots.

possiblylinux127, 4 months ago

Snapshots on btrfs are at the filesystem level and only really are a list of steps to get back to the old state. They are not a complete backup and you can’t move them out of the filesystem.

JustUseMint, 4 months ago

Thanks

acockworkorange, 4 months ago

Sure. So a snapshot in itself doesn’t consume more than a few KB. The filesystem has a Copy On Write (COW) behavior, meaning it doesn’t overwrite edits on files by default. It moves the pointer to the file to a new location and writes the new version there. If there is nothing still pointing to the old data, that space is now considered free and can be overwritten.

A snapshot basically keeps pointers to data in the past. So it’s not entirely free, in the sense that older versions of files will remain and therefore not free up disk space as long as that snapshot exists. But it’s free in the sense that no data is copied to create a snapshot. Your filesystem is always only writing the difference to the last snapshot.

If you configure snapshots at small intervals and configure them not to be erased, you’ll compile the history for all the changes in all your files since ever. And that will definitely cost you space.

Typical scenarios are a daily snapshot that you keep for a week and a weekly snapshot that you keep for a month. That will cost you very little space (again in typical desktop use cases). If you have a streaming folder, a COW filesystem might not be the best idea. Or at least create a subvolume that doesn’t get snapshots.

Snapshots don’t replace backups and if you need older data that a month, that’s what backups are for.

JustUseMint, 4 months ago

Thank you

scratchandgame, 4 months ago

Split the filesystem to more partition.

have a 1G /, 500M for /boot, have partitions for /usr, /usr/local (this isn’t used on linux so keep it small), /var, /home, and /tmp if you have little ram. Otherwise use memory-based filesystem (tmpfs), for /tmp I allocate less than 1/4 of my RAM.

For partition size, refer to man.openbsd.org/disklabel.8#AUTOMATIC_DISK_ALLOCA…

Remember to keep /usr/local small on most distro (perhaps I will allocate 5G), and increase /usr, create /opt too to prevent the disaster and allocate it the size for /usr/local. Don’t allocate all disk space, a 200G home is enough for most people and leave the rest unallocated. the formatting and fsck would be faster on smaller filesystem.

And if you find other “cache” location, try log out and rm -rf the location, if login doesn’t break, I would mount tmpfs on that cache location too.

acockworkorange, 4 months ago

I actively discourage neophytes from fiddling with multiple partitions. It’s a layer of complexity that is unwarranted for them, and most users. Newbies can use a volume for home and another for the rest. Experienced users can split the system volume for the use cases you mentioned. And I don’t think having separate fixed size partitions like you suggested is a good idea for anyone on a desktop.

scratchandgame, 4 months ago (edited 4 months ago)

In my opinion newbies should learn what is called sane defaults. It’s a pity that almost every installer in the word except OpenBSD’s disklabel(8) cannot properly do automatic partitioning.

And I don’t think having separate fixed size partitions like you suggested is a good idea for anyone on a desktop.

UNIX’s removable filesystem is a BENEFIT, not a BUG. DOS and then Windows’ A: B: C: D: are BUGS.

Why not take advantage of it. Microsoft always wanted a removable filesystem like UNIX. But they simply can’t get it.

I would link another article that discuss about using a huge root partition for all: www.bsdhowto.ch/hugeroot.html

marc.info/?l=openbsd-misc&m=154054091026039&w=3

Avoid corrupting newbies’ partition is a way to keep them with Linux.

acockworkorange, 4 months ago

Agree to disagree.

scratchandgame, 4 months ago

I’ve updated:

new:

UNIX’s removable filesystem is a BENEFIT, not a BUG. DOS and then Windows’ A: B: C: D: are BUG.

Why not take advantage of it. Microsoft always wanted a removable filesystem like UNIX. But they simply can’t get it.

(Those can’t admit this advantage often say “Linux and Windows are almost identical”…)

acockworkorange, 4 months ago

Dude, that has nothing to do with logical volumes vs physical partitions. You’re tilting at the wrong windmill.

scratchandgame, 4 months ago

You can create either logical volume or physical partition, but make sure you have different partition for different mount point: /, /usr, /usr/local (keep small on linux), /var, /opt (if you use), /tmp (if you have little ram or don’t want to use memory filesystem).

What do you mean by your comment.

I haven’t said something about logical volumes vs physical partitions.

Falcon, 4 months ago

If you’re going to use nvidia, don’t even touch wayland. Truly an awful experience.

Bloat does matter it is extremely important, not because having a bunch of apps slows anything down or has any tangible impact in that regard. Because it isn’t as sexy as somebody’s hyper specific gentoo install compiled without some specific module.

The reason bloat is such a big deal, particularly if you’re new to it, is because it’s confusing. if you’re trying to fix a problem that you have run into / possibly contributed to, a dozen different programs running in the background that you didn’t put there is going leave you frustrated and disenfranchised.

Pick a modular distribution like Arch, take the loss that is your weekend putting it together and develop an understanding of how the pieces fit together. If you really don’t have time choose something like eg endeavourOS. ( or even Void is quite nice (but non systemd so less conventional))

I would personally recommend avoiding something like fedora or Debian. They are both fantastic distributions that work very well. They are not good at teaching new users how to fix problems and that should be your primary goal here.

loudWaterEnjoyer, 4 months ago

Don’t listen to the trolls please, you have to think long term, how will you grow in the next 2 to 5 (or even 10) years, because without a doubt you will grow and have a learning curve which alters the way you will use your machine. There are tons and tons of solutions and people pitching it from their Linux ricer power user perspective.

Don’t make yourself regret and/or spent countless hours switching back and forth, solving issues, looking through help articles, etc etc

I know it’s hard but trust me, you literally cannot make a good choice now with your current state. Just install Ubuntu and get a hang of it, use it, do your stuff you want to do and when you are comfortable with Ubuntu, then throw that piece of junk in the trash and switch to Debian Stable - no, not SID, no you won’t miss out on all the cool bleeding edge AUR packages.

When you take this path I described you will grow with the system and you will be able to make the decision based on your needs, wants and use cases. Trust me or suffer, I am sorry new guy.

Classy, 4 months ago

I’m downvoting this comment specifically because you decided that you had to make your long comment in a larger font just to stand out from the crowd. Very spammy, dude. I’m sure your opinions are just as worth reading without you having to put flashing lights on them.

Moobythegoldensock, 4 months ago (edited 4 months ago)

• Wayland is the new standard and X11 is the old standard. NVIDIA support is getting better. The advantages are mainly under the hood, the most relevant for most users is in security and compatibility with newer hardware. If your distro comes with Wayland, use it. If it doesn’t, then don’t worry about it.
• Bloat’s subjective and mostly a matter of taste. Unless you’re trying to squeeze every bit of performance out of a 10 year old potato, the bloatiness of your default desktop install will not meaningfully impact your performance. Even the most bloated linux install runs lighter than Windows 10.
• Keep up to date, especially security updates. Don’t work in root unless you have to, don’t use sudo if you don’t need it, and configure permissions properly rather than 777ing everything. Be careful adding package repositories: don’t add from other distros or other versions of your distro as that can screw up dependencies. Check your package manager or flatpak before resorting downloading random files and trying to install them manually.
• Yes: linux subreddits/communities, Fedora’s own documentation and forums
• How easy it is to make a mistake that’s very hard to fix. Also, understanding what “everything is a file,” the filesystem in general, and what a desktop environment even is.

flashgnash, 4 months ago

“even the most bloated Linux install runs lighter than windows”

I raise you my Linux machine with a windows VM

Moobythegoldensock, 4 months ago

windows

There’s your problem right there.

flashgnash, 4 months ago

Unfortunately need it for the rare occasion I’m asked to something weird like work with excel macros

Nibodhika, 4 months ago

• Is Wayland worth using? Especially when you consider all the issues that may come from using an NVIDIA card.

Short answer, no. There are advantages, but not worth it on an nvidia card. Wayland will replace Xorg very soon is a saying for over a decade, there’s reasons it hasn’t happened yet, nvidia is one of them.

• Does bloat actually matter or is it just a meme?

For starting up, just a meme, on the long run it’s nice to have a small system, but not that important i£ you have the disk to spare.

• What are some habits I should practice in order to keep my system organized and manageable?

Yes, the main one is “use the package manager”. The second one is keep your /home in a different partition.

• Any other resources besides the Arch Wiki that I should be aware of?

I would say that any community is also a good resource, since people are usually helpful.

• What do you wish you knew when you first started using Linux that would have saved you a headache in the future?

Set your /home to a different partition, I know I already mentioned this but it will save your ass the first t*me you break your system and have to reinstall.

vzq, 4 months ago

Set your /home to a different partition, I know I already mentioned this but it will save your ass the first t*me you break your system and have to reinstall.

Also back up your fstab so you know what partition/disk UUID is what.

SpaceCadet, 4 months ago

Or you know, just backup your system entirely.

vzq, 4 months ago

I don’t believe in backing up anything that is not user files. Pets vs cattle and all that.

SpaceCadet, 4 months ago

Unless you have a very clearly predefined and unchanging use case, I think a personal computer will always be a pet and trying to enforce a cattle paradigm on it is a mistake.

Furthermore I find it a waste of time sorting out “user files” from “system files”, not to mention that it is error prone, when I can easily just back up everything and be sure. I don’t ever intend to restore “everything” as a whole, but being able to refer to previous versions of random files (like your /etc/fstab), even if it’s just for troubleshooting, has already proven to be invaluable for me.

danielfgom, 4 months ago

I’d say avoid Wayland for now. There’s no real benefit to it at the moment and at least your card works with X11. If the Linux Mint team are happy to wait and just test it out at the moment, that tells me that is the way to go.

Not sure what bloat people mentioned but Linux doesn’t have bloat. The distro chooses their preferred apps which they hope everyone will like but it’s easy to remove them if you don’t and use the app you want. If it’s a system app (.deb, rpm etc) it will barely take up any space anyway. Only flatpaks and snaps take up huge amount of space. I wouldn’t recommend using alot of those as you’ll be pressed for disk space

Linux doesn’t require maintenance. It typically just works. It’s not like Windows where you run a cleaner every so often. Just just use it normally and don’t work about it.

What I wish I knew at the start: Linux Mint is the best distro. I wasted a lot of time distro hopping only to realise I just want a stable distro that gets out of the way but is thoughtfully put together with nice touches. Mint is that. I use Linux Mint Debian Edition because I don’t like canonical.

It’s been rock solid except for when the kernel broke my WiFi, but I had a time shift backup so in 5 minutes I had my pre-update system back and working.

tomcatt360, 4 months ago

I highly recommend timeshift. It makes it easy to make system snapshots (think system restore points) at regular intervals so that if you try something and it breaks your system, you can restore it to a working state. It has saved me hours of work from all of the reinstalls that I didn’t have to do. I wish I had something like this when I first started out with Linux. It would have saved me dozens of Linux installs.

captain_aggravated, 4 months ago

• “Is Wayland worth using, especially with Nvidia” I have no personal first-hand experience with Wayland; I run Linux Mint Cinnamon Edition, which is still X11 for the moment. MY personal philosophy is I’ll adopt Wayland when Mint does. Basically don’t worry about it.
• “Does bloat actually matter or is it just a meme?” It is 93.3% just a meme. The most extravagant diamond encrusted froie gras kitchen sink apocalypse bunker mega yacht Linux distro you can find is going to be slim and trim compared to any currently supported edition of Windows. You will legitimately find some folks in the community who would just rather go edit a config file than have a GUI that edits it for you, and you’ll find some woodworkers who prefer to use hand planes and chisels. A hobby’s a hobby.
• “What are some habits/standards to keep my system organized and manageable?” Mainly, learn how the file system works, learn what /opt and such are for. Otherwise your skills for managing your files on WIndows should suffice.
• “Any other resources besides the Arch Wiki to be aware of?” Man pages. You can read the documentation for any command in the terminal by typing “man commandname.” For example, to learn more about the change directory command, cd, type “man cd” and it will tell you all about it. It even has its own man page, you can type “man man”. All of this is stored on your system locally, so you don’t even need an internet connection for this.
• “What do you wish you knew when you first started using Linux?” What middle click does. There’s a thing called the primary buffer which allows you to highlight and paste text simply by highlighting text, then middle clicking somewhere else. It’s separate from the Ctrl+C Ctrl+V feature. Also, what dotfiles are. Short answer is, hidden files on Unix-like systems start with a dot (.) and there’s a ton of them in your home folder. These often hold things like configuration files for applications, so backing up your entire home folder including hidden files will catch all your preferences. Plus, there are directories like .fonts where you can put TTF font files and they’ll be available to applications. It’s something you don’t often get shown during onboarding but it’s there.

cetvrti_magi, 4 months ago

1. I never used Wayland but Xorg works really well.
2. Don’t copy terminal commands from internet if you don’t know what they do. Also, try new things just to try them. That’s how I started using many things that now make the core of my computer experience. Even if something looks scary I recommend giving it a go because in most cases it is much easier than it looks (at least when you have some experience with Linux).
3. YouTube can be a good resource at the start.
4. Switching to Linux was very smooth experience for me because I wanted to inform myself about Linux before switching just to know what I’m getting into. If you go prepared you probably won’t experience many problems.

scratchandgame, 4 months ago

Don’t copy terminal commands from internet if you don’t know what they do.

Very important. Don’t run arbitrary commands on the internet, but don’t paste sysctls and config too.

YouTube can be a good resource at the start.

Linux lacks much documentation. Man pages, tutorials from arch and gentoo wiki should be considered.

that’s my feedback

greedytacothief, 4 months ago

Bloat is just a meme, it comes from a time when sysadmins would need to optimize every aspect of a system to get the most out of it (like not using vi, because it took up too much space/memory). You will never need to get that much performance out of your machine.

I try not to install programs all willy nilly. If I want to try something new, I’ll fire it up in a vm. I mean this about programs from 3rd party sources, and compiling from source. Anything in the repos is good and will uninstall cleanly too.

On fedora you get more programs through RPMfusion. It’s sort of official, but also not. And you can also check out the copr repository, this is more like fedora’s aur. Opensuse’s open build service also sometimes has packages that work for red hat systems.

When I first started I wanted Linux to work just like Windows. It took me a while to shift my perspective to the way Linux people do things. I don’t know how to speed up that process though.

Fecundpossum, 4 months ago

I think it’s also worth noting that windows bloat and Linux bloat are not even in the same category. Even the heavier Linux distros are so light on system resources that installing a plethora of tools, games and assorted software isn’t going to effect your machine as negatively as it would in windows.

scratchandgame, 4 months ago

Some distro install and enable services that you would never use. Red Hat Enterprise Linux (and Fedora?) enable the cups printing daemon (I never do printing on Linux and I use a canon lbp 3300, I have to install drivers on windows). Ubuntu enable the openvpn service which “newbies” would never use.

But none of them have tmux installed by default, while OpenBSD have tmux, if I recall correctly NetBSD too

Pantherina, 4 months ago (edited 4 months ago)

Using NVIDIA please use the image from ublue.it, the official Fedora one can work but noveau is not ready. You can install Kinoite from Fedora though and give it a try, report your experience with noveau (should work and proprietary drivers are pretty scary) and then rebase to ublue (unsigned, reboot, signed, reboot)

Wayland is worth it, Plasma 6 will come out soon and primarily target it. It just works for me, always, I have like no problem with it. Flathub flatpaks always worked because they have loose permissions.

Xorg is an insecure mess and it is not maintained.

Also, give the Plasma 6 preview a try! and report bugs. Its like 99% ready.

---

Bloat: yes of course. Fedora Kinoite has none. If you install a few flatpaks, dont be scared by duplicate Libraries, they use deduplication to actually need less space.

Bloat matters as a huge LUKS drive is notably slower, but only a matter of seconds on an NVME/ any SSD. And yeah, please use LUKS, encrypting afterwards is not easy. Also use a Password that can be written in US QWERTY too, a bug in current Fedora Atomic, it doesnt use your native keyboard layout. Seems to be fixed on 40 (rawhide, Plasma 6 prerelease Version of Kinoite)

---

Habits:

• install huge apps like RStudio, an IDE, a programming environment etc. in a Distrobox. If you program hardware it needs to be a root distrobox, otherwise no USB access.
• if you git clone stuff, create a “Git” folder in your home, put that there. Guides never mention that.
• if you use Appimages, compiled apps, binaries; create a “Programs” folder in your home
• use Czkawka to find duplicate files

---

Resources:

• alternativeto.net
• itsfoss.com
• discussion.fedoraproject.org
• discuss.kde.org

What do you wish you knew when you first started using Linux that would have saved you a headache in the future?

• Fedora Kinoite (Ubuntu broke, stable Distros suck, …)
• use Flathub Flatpaks, they are often better

flashgnash, 4 months ago

Immutable distros are great

Wayland is nice, can suck in weird and wacky ways with Nvidia though. Only reason I’m using it is because my favourite WM is Wayland only

WitchHazel, 4 months ago

Mind sharing?

flashgnash, 4 months ago

NixOS/hyprland

bloodfart, 4 months ago

No, no, none, no, learn vim.

rtxn, 4 months ago (edited 4 months ago)

Is Wayland worth using?

For a first dive into the Linux ecosystem, I recommend Xorg. I use Wayland myself (Hyprland), and that’s why I know that it’s simply not ready for general adoption. There are many features that are missing, won’t be implemented, or are done much differently compared to X. Some say Xorg is old and bloated - I say it’s a mature technology.

There are also some applications that need root privileges to work (Veyon Configurator is one that I struggled a lot with) and you have to do some weird pkexec hackery to launch them.

Wayland’s development has more drama and bickering than an average sitcom - I recommend Brodie Robertson’s channel if you’re interested.

advantages/improvements to using Wayland

Wayland is better for gaming. It has a noticeably lower latency because the entire Wayland stack is implemented in a single program (what they call the compositor) as opposed to several in the X11 stack (X server, compositor, window manager) that need to communicate with each other. Unfortunately Steam and some other applications often produce graphical artifacts on Wayland+Nvidia.

Does bloat actually matter

Compared to Windows, it is insignificant. My work laptop is a Macbook Air from 2015 running Linux Mint on just 4G RAM without issues.

Any other resources besides the Arch Wiki that I should be aware of?

Install the tldr program. It’s a bit like man but lists practical examples of a command instead of a full documentation.

What are some habits I should practice

Make use of your home directory. Most user applications will have a config file in several places - usually in ~/.config (user config) and /etc (systemwide config). You should only edit the systemwide config when it makes sense, and always prioritize the user config.

A common practice is to have your /home directory on a different partition, or a different physical device. If the system breaks or you decide to distrohop, you can unmount/disconnect /home and only wipe the root partition while retaining your user files.

I also recommend using Timeshift to back up your system. It’s even better if your root partition uses btrfs since it natively supports snapshots.

What do you wish you knew when you first started using Linux

I needed to leave the Windows ways behind me. On Windows, I had a hard drive mounted as F: and an external HDD mounted as H:. Moving to Linux (Manjaro at the time) was basically a snap decision since Windows had obliterated the boot partition during an update and then broke itself, and I had no idea how to properly set up the filesystem didn’t consider how I wanted to set up the filesystem, so I mounted them to /mnt/f and /mnt/h on a whim. It caused me many hours of headache later.

GigglyBobble, 4 months ago

I had no idea how to properly set up the filesystem, so I mounted them to /mnt/f and /mnt/h. It caused me many hours of headache later.

Can you elaborate? What kind of headaches? How would you set it up now? While I've been using Linux quite a while I don't have multiple hard drives and am always interested in best practices.

ruckblack, 4 months ago

Also curious. I’ve had a couple drives on my server machine mounted to /mnt/data and /mnt/data1 for years now (ignore my lazy naming conventions) and I’ve had zero problems.

rtxn, 4 months ago

Check my other reply - it’s not an incorrect solution, but I came to regret it when I had to change the HDD’s mount point.

rtxn, 4 months ago

I should correct myself - it wasn’t a bad way to mount my drives, but it was a very Windowsy solution that I came to regret anyways.

I used that HDD as basically my home directory on Windows. It had all of my projects on it (mainly C# and Blender). When I installed Manjaro on my 240G SSD, I decided to leave my /home directory on the root partition, but it soon filled up. I later wanted to move it to the HDD, which meant that the mount point had changed, which meant that I had to relink all external files in my projects to the new mount point.

I could’ve just used a symlink that pointed /home to /mnt/f, but /mnt is generally used for manually mounted filesystems, and I wanted to at least have that and /home done properly.

Right now I have a 2T NVMe SSD, one 200G partition mounted as root, the rest mounted as /data/games (and it really only has Windows games and my Steam library), a separate 1T SSD mounted as /home, and a 3T HDD on /data/hdd that contains my backups, disk images, and large media files, each symlinked to appropriate places.

atzanteol, 4 months ago

Don’t know if you saw this but you can mount devices multiple times in Linux. And you can mount directories in different locations as well (bind mounts). These can also be helpful in moving around where things are mounted since both the old and new paths will work. But symlinks are probably simpler.

StoicLime, 4 months ago

I don’t know what you mean by Wayland not being ready for general adoption. I’ve been using it on Fedora for a year now with no issues whatsoever.

Might be a Hyprland issue instead of Wayland, as I remember from the time I tried out Hyprland.

rtxn, 4 months ago (edited 4 months ago)

Wayland itself has lots of missing features. There are applications that need absolute window positioning to move sub-windows together with the main window. It’s not an issue on Windows, Mac, or X11, but Wayland doesn’t have a protocol that would allow this (it’s still just a proposal, and there is A LOT of drama surrounding it). Wayland also doesn’t have color management, and support for drawing tablets is rudimentary, which is a deal-breaker for artists and designers. It doesn’t have a standardized way to capture windows either (for streaming or recording), which is why Hyprland’s maintainer made his own xdg-desktop-portal implementation with blackjack and hookers.

Wayland is great for my use-cases, and I’m willing to work around its issues (mainly related to portals), but there are use-cases where it’s completely unusable. Nvidia support is also sketchy - lots of visual artifacts and flickering windows.

atzanteol, 4 months ago

Wayland is better for gaming. It has a noticeably lower latency because the entire Wayland stack is implemented in a single program (what they call the compositor) as opposed to several in the X11 stack (X server, compositor, window manager) that need to communicate with each other.

Games under X11 use DRI just like with Wayland. Beyond “create a window and handle resize events” they don’t really interact with X11 or your window manager.

We should expect similar performance and indeed that’s what we find:

www.phoronix.com/review/wayland-nv-amd-2023

rtxn, 4 months ago (edited 4 months ago)

Performance is not the only factor. Running a compositor on X11 introduces a significant input latency, but turning it off caused massive screen tearing on my 60Hz monitor (I guess it’s less of an issue with a higher refresh rate). I experienced it both with Picom (on Qtile and Awesome) and Kwin. I’ve had a far better experience on Sway, Hyprland, and Plasma-wayland.

atzanteol, 4 months ago

We’re talking about gaming though?

rtxn, 4 months ago

Yes. Both screen tearing and input latency can ruin the experience. Please elaborate, I don’t know why you’re asking that question.

atzanteol, 4 months ago

As somebody who games with X11 I’d love to know what “significant input latency” I’m supposed to be experiencing?

rtxn, 4 months ago

YMMV, I’m talking about what I experienced.

I was mainly playing Cyberpunk and FFXIV at the time. In both games, camera movement was sluggish with a compositor running. It took about a tenth of a second for the game to respond to both keypresses and mouse movements (I’m not counting gamepad inputs since bluetooth has its own latency). On the same computer, on the same 60Hz monitor, with the same GPU, using the same graphics settings, nothing like that happened with the compositor off, nor after switching to Wayland.

atzanteol, 4 months ago

I’m talking about what I experienced.

Not when you say “Wayland is better for gaming” you’re not. It may be - but it also may not be. It’s not clearly better and in some cases it may be clearly worse.

elxeno, 4 months ago

I’ve been using linux exclusively for about 5 years, hopped a bit for the first 1-2 years (mint, mx, lite, debian, manjaro, artix), settled on Arch. I think Mint is the best one for ppl coming from windows.

Is Wayland worth using? Especially when you consider all the issues that may come from using an NVIDIA card.

IMO no, i have a 1060, tried about 1 year ago and it had lots of issues on KDE, gnome seemed usable but it’s gnome so no, and i use LXQt so if it gets good support or if i like plasma 6 i might try again.

Does bloat actually matter or is it just a meme?

If by bloat u mean installing lots of packages, the “problems” would be disk space and longer updates, and if it’s a service it will depend on the distro, i think debian/ubuntu and derivatives will usually enable the service after install, so they will use some cpu/ram too. Shouldn’t be too much of an issue but it’s a good idea to only install what u need and remove stuff when u don’t need anymore.

What are some habits I should practice in order to keep my system organized and manageable?

Just don’t sudo install anything outside the package manager, like node/python packages or downloaded stuff (u can usually install them somewhere in $HOME)

Any other resources besides the Arch Wiki that I should be aware of?

No, whatever search engine u use should be enough.

What do you wish you knew when you first started using Linux that would have saved you a headache in the future?

Nothing i can think at the moment, i used mint in dual boot for a while, just “switched” (deleted the windows partition) when i realized i didn’t boot it for a few months, so i was already pretty comfortable with it.