Flaky

Flaky, 2 months ago

I use KDE.

Flaky, 2 months ago

Not applicable to AMD, and device passthrough can be clunky and not worth it if the user isn’t doing anything that GPU-intensive.

Flaky, 2 months ago

AFAIK it’s being worked on but time is a major issue for the person handling the MR.

I’d love to donate specifically to get Virtio/VirGL on a Windows guest. Given that VirtualBox and VMware could be on very shaky ground thanks to their owners, I think libvirt will be the long-term solution.

Flaky, 2 months ago

Has Virtiofs matured lately into something that can be used day-to-day? I ask because I think the virtio stuff will be better for Windows virtualisation in the long-term, especially when VMware’s future is not certain, but I heard folder-sharing on Windows guests was pretty bad from Lemmy recently, and a few years ago I tried it and yeah, I have to agree.

Flaky, 2 months ago

Used to use it for Apple Music but Cider 2 does what I want now, especially since Apple started locking down AM on rooted devices (of which Waydroid basically is) for no good reason.

Flaky, 2 months ago

I would say use a cross-platform password manager that supports it in that case. Bitwarden, 1Password and Enpass all have Linux versions and support TOTP, and in the case of Enpass, it has local wifi sync so none of it goes to them. I get that moving 2FA codes to that can be time-consuming, though.

Flaky, 2 months ago

I was able to get lossless back then. It’s a matter of enabling fake_wifi for the app in Waydroid. You have to play a track for it to activate, but that’s also a bug I’ve experienced on my actual phone.

Flaky, 2 months ago

Yeah I got a headphone dongle for my phone. Cider 2 is still nice though, 256kbps AAC (whether CBR or VBR) is fine for most people, and it seems to stay in that bitrate.

Flaky, 2 months ago

I’d say try Void in a virtual machine if you have that itch. It should run fine on libvirt setups or VMware.

Flaky, 2 months ago

I think they’re working on something as well. But just in case, MATE are experimenting with Wayland using Wayfire as the compositor, which is funny given that Compiz was very popular with GNOME 2/MATE back in the day and Wayfire is very much inspired by that.

Flaky, 2 months ago

I’d think so, otherwise it would’ve been dropped by a lot of the major distros by now. They don’t have a specific community like the XFCE forums, though they do have a dedicated wiki.

Flaky, 2 months ago (edited 2 months ago)

Those screenshots look really nice, ngl, hoping this goes through. Edge and Vivaldi have had their own vertical tab implementations for a while now, and there are Firefox forks that show it can be done. No reason for base Firefox not to have it at this point.

While I’m here, Mozilla bring back compact spacing, plz k thx.

Edit: Just tried it, it’s got that nightly jank but it’s promising. I hope Mozilla continues with this. It looks and feels great.

Flaky, 2 months ago

That just feels like Mozilla wants to hide the option tbh.

Flaky, 3 months ago

I dunno about non-driver anti-cheats like EAC but Genshin Impact’s kernel-level anti-cheat has been used to aid ransomware. Driver-level anti-cheat is certainly malware, that has been settled since Sony-BMG.

Flaky, 3 months ago

I got sick and tired of the AUR for the simple packages so I started using it for most things I would use the AUR for, and I’m very happy with it. I think some packages have issues with default permissions - I was wondering why 86Box would forget my hard drive images but then I realised the permissions on my home folder weren’t set properly - but that can be sorted anyway.

Flaky, 3 months ago

I’d imagine it’ll work through something like Steam Link like the Quest line of headsets do. Which is still nice, but that means for me trying to invest in networking gear that may or may not work. 😩

(and I’ve tried powerline, I’ve gone through three of those things, they all have a habit of disconnecting unless I ping my router. Someone on Twitter suggested that I rewire my entire house as if I can afford to do that. 😐)

Flaky, 3 months ago (edited 3 months ago)

It might be “just USB-C” but it also does things outside of the standard. It asks for a set amount of power not part of the USB-C standard, actually it might have implemented VirtualLink which is considered a dead standard. Not to mention that NVIDIA GPUs also stopped having a USB-C port.

iVRy, who has hacked the PSVR1 to support PC, is in the process of hacking the PSVR2 and even they state that Sony’s solution might be just streaming to the headset because of the issues with implementing direct USB-C support. There might be wired streaming (similar to Oculus), though it’s still early days.

I get the hype (I have the headset myself) but I’m definitely going to temper my expectations until Sony releases more info on it.

Flaky, 3 months ago

There’s a theory going round that the PS5 is going to be that “breakout box” for a PC-based PSVR2 setup. I’m not sure if Sony wants to spend that much on getting people out of their ecosystem when it’d be better to have their own solution, or as Oculus had done, let Valve port Steam Link to their platform. This might be the most likely situation, as it gives access to SteamVR in a way that doesn’t require as much R&D from Sony.

That being said, I would love to have a native PCVR setup (even if it means piping a video through a wire as Oculus does to maintain compatibility with even NVIDIA) and if Sony goes that way I’ll be happy.

Flaky, 3 months ago

Probably a lot more hardware using HDMI than DisplayPort? Just throwing a guess, tbh.

That being said, I might consider looking towards DisplayPort when I can get a new monitor…

Flaky, 3 months ago

MusicBee and Apple Music.

Apple is Apple so they impose dumb restrictions on the web client like any other streaming platform (and Cider is just a fancy frontend for this), so I have a Windows VM so I get the full experience.

And for MusicBee? Well, the Linux music player situation is… bad, to say the least. There is basically nothing like MusicBee in the Linux ecosystem right now. And every time I went to Reddit to see what people are going to, it’s people who are not 100% satisfied with the alternative or Linux users gaslighting them into thinking MusicBee sucks and Their Choice is the Better One. I’ve tried other players and none of them scratch the itch for MusicBee for me. Quod Libet comes close with its queries, and Tauon looks gorgeous, but I had performance issues with QL for what I wanted it for, and I had issues with Tauon’s playlist filtering. And as for WINE? Performance is slow, CJK characters don’t show up, and tab dragging results in errors due to WINE not having implemented the functions for it to work. I’m happy to keep a Windows VM for MusicBee.

Flaky, 3 months ago

How’s performance on MusicBee for you? Mine is slow for the components (AMD 7900XT/Ryzen 7950X), but I suspect it might be because of the high resolution album artwork (1200x1200).

Flaky, 3 months ago

I’ll just use ChatGPT standalone, lol. Or cheat.sh.

Flaky, 4 months ago

Gentoo can be good if you desire some very weird or exotic configurations or just want more granular customisability that binary DIY distros don’t offer. The way it’s built allows that in a way that makes it easier there. I remember hearing stories about Sony using it for PlayStation Now. If you don’t really need that and aren’t a fan of the build times, it won’t hurt going for something like Void or Arch which are also DIY distros but all-binary so you don’t need to worry. (unless you use xbps-src or the AUR).

Flaky, 4 months ago

Why would you use Gentoo for criminal activity over any other operating system

Funnily enough, someone actually did get arrested for allegedly building a Gentoo-based distro for ISIS.

Flaky, 4 months ago

I’ve yet to find something open-source that scratches what MusicBee can do, and it’s got major performance, usability and visual problems when running through WINE that have been reported.

It’s why I keep a Windows VM around.

Flaky, 4 months ago (edited 4 months ago)

I am going to temper my expectations a bit, since the article is specifically singling out their clause on accessing additional games. But at the same time, I am huffing the hopium since Sony has upstreamed PlayStation controller drivers to the Linux kernel, so they might be receptive to supporting SteamVR, Steam Link or something equivalent, if possible. (No, before you ask, I’m not expecting Linux support on PSVR2.)

Flaky, 4 months ago

I have honestly been tempted to hop to Pop!_OS for their take on GNOME. The auto-tiling was really nice when I tested it in a virtual machine.

Flaky, 4 months ago

I’ve seen a lot of Debian mentions on the Linux communities here, lately. More than usual, lol. Maybe I should give it a good try with Flatpak to handle non-system packages.

Flaky, 4 months ago

I’m probably going to stick with Arch, or maybe EndeavourOS.

I’ve hopped from distro to distro but I always keep coming back to Arch. The reason I use Arch is that it’s my weird sweet spot of “DIY” and “it just works”. It gives me a blank slate at first, but it lets me paint the canvas with whatever I want, however I want. It allows for some weird setups (like VFIO, for instance) and the wiki really helps with that. I don’t really use the AUR nowadays unless it’s for a package only available there, so I can’t say anything about that. I use Flatpak nowadays. Some people might prefer the AUR, that’s good for them! Right now it’s just not for me.

If I do distro-hop again, I’ll probably go for EndeavourOS just to have an Arch install that leans heavier on the “just works” side of things.

Flaky, 4 months ago

EndeavourOS might be worth a try if you miss the AUR, but if you don’t like the maintenance associated with Arch’s rolling release strategy then I’d stick to Debian.

Flaky, 4 months ago

Not often but I have a moment where I do. Last year I contributed a plugin for MusicBrainz Picard which allows you to submit your genre tags to MusicBrainz. I want to give it a proper good update in the future but I’m so focused on other things right now.

Flaky, 4 months ago

Gentoo isn’t so much painful but it takes a bloody long time. If anything, some of the packages are really painful. Qtwebengine is one such example.

Flaky, 4 months ago

GNOME should at least support colour schemes, in my opinion. If they don’t want theming, they can at least do that. In any case, Gradience can help with getting a coherent colour scheme on non-GNOME/libadwaita environments, and if the user is just using Breeze, they already have a Breeze colour scheme available. It’s available as a Flatpak.

Flaky, 4 months ago

I think the only thing holding me back from going for immutable Linux is desktop virtualisation. VirtualBox and VMware can’t be installed on an immutable distro AFAIK, and libvirt isn’t all there for Windows guests.

Flaky, 4 months ago

Mainly GPU acceleration without passthrough from the last time I tested (Modern Windows is slow without it and passthrough might be an issue on immutable distros), but shared folders is something I use quite a bit on VMware. I remember trying virtiofs when I used passthrough, and it was suffering.

Flaky, 4 months ago

Hmm… I’m gonna keep tabs on that one then. Good call.

Flaky, 4 months ago

While it’s not an alternative right now, I think Servo’s focus on being embeddable might help it in the long run. A big issue with Gecko is that it was difficult, if not impossible to embed. It’d be nice to see something like Vivaldi that runs on Servo.

Flaky, 4 months ago

I was more talking about Vivaldi feature-wise, FWIW. There’s features I’d like from Vivaldi that don’t have a close equivalent to Firefox, not even from its forks (tab tiling’s my go-to example), and maybe in the distant future, there’d be a browser like it running on Servo.

Flaky, 4 months ago

What about Pop!_OS? It fits all the criteria. It’s an Ubuntu distro by System76 (known for their computers that run Linux) that foregoes Snaps for Flatpaks, so you get Ubuntu’s reliability/stability without the Snaps. It does default to its own spin on GNOME, however you can install an alternative desktop environment just fine.

Flaky, 4 months ago

EndeavourOS might help with all of this but even then I wouldn’t put a newbie who just wants to try Linux on it. Arch doesn’t even have a proper GUI-based way of installing packages and there’s not really an incentive to (Arch users say it’s because PackageKit is shit, Arch developers say it’s because PackageKit doesn’t work with Arch’s rolling package releases). PackageKit isn’t actually supported on Arch and KDE Discover will go out of its way to tell people that it’s not supported on Arch. Maybe someone who has experience with the command line I’d recommend Arch/Endeavour for, since you WILL be using it on Arch, no way around it.

Flaky, 4 months ago

For me, it was when Windows 11 didn’t even give me the luxury of moving my taskbar to the top of the screen and I had to use a third-party application to do so, which was janky as hell. It sounds very small, petty and superficial, but small things like that can immensely affect one’s experience and workflow. “You don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone” is an applicable phrase to that.

Sure, I can just use Windows 10, and I do in fact have a Windows 10 VM in VMware (since WINE has issues with MusicBee and WACUP, and I’m trialing the Apple Music app for Windows as well), but Windows 10 will no longer be supported next year.

Flaky, 4 months ago

Yeah, in Windows. Windows and Arch are two completely different beasts.

I get the sentiment (Arch has provided the least friction for me when I needed something niche/specific) but putting OP on Arch is still pushing them into the deep end IMO. If OP is open to trying Arch however, I’d throw out a recommendation for EndeavourOS which is just a pre-made Arch setup.

Flaky, 4 months ago

Yup. There’s a few old re-releases there, not sure if they’re patched up for modern Windows though. Actually, they had a publisher sale on Steam quite recently.

And not just that, when they acquired LucasFilm they not only got a backlog of old Star Wars and Indiana Jones games already on Steam, but also Sam & Max Hit the Road. AFAIK Sam & Max is an independent franchise but LucasArts and thus Disney own the rights to Hit the Road.

Flaky, 4 months ago

I have been blindsided before, but honestly right now I’m in the same boat on that. Disney isn’t interested in app deployment or distribution, just to advertise their products to kids.

And even so, my copy of SAMHTR is still on my Steam account and the files are there to use with ScummVM (which I believe LucasArts actually did when the game hit Steam)

Flaky, 4 months ago

I think the new games are, Hit the Road was LucasArts and was part of Disney’s publisher sale on Steam a little while back.

Flaky, 4 months ago

I got Subnautica for free twice (PlayStation and Epic), I should really look at giving it a proper try. I have the feeling it’d be really good in VR, played No Man’s Sky in VR recently and I immediately loved it while on flatscreen it didn’t click with me as much.

Flaky, 4 months ago

A lot of USB disc drives work just fine on Linux nowadays, and it’s a matter of what features you want/need, really. I have a pretty expensive Pioneer Blu-Ray writer that connects via Type C, but I needed the extra features at the time so I went for that.

Flaky, 4 months ago

I want a big cuddly plush of Tux now.