MudMan

MudMan , vor 23 Tagen

Technically all sandwiches are proprietary. Don't eat public sandwiches, we went through a pandemic, we should know better.

MudMan , vor 23 Tagen

Don't eat free to use sandwiches, either. Ew.

The UX is mostly garbage on those anyway.

Man, you must be a riot at parties.

MudMan , vor einem Monat

But no, seriously, if you can vote this weekend, do vote.

MudMan , vor einem Monat

I tried last week. Bunch of stuff in my system didn't work out of the gate, trying to use fixes that were meant for slightly different hardware/distro combos broke it further. Ultimately it became trying to start over or going back to the default Windows install.

So anyway, I'm using Windows on that machine now. How's your week been?

MudMan , vor einem Monat

Oh, that was absolutely not my problem. The "crashing whenever it was put to sleep" part was my problem. The distro I tried was pretty good about wiping and repartitioning the drive I gave it without messing with anything else, actually. Gotta give it to Linux devs, at least at this point they fully acknowledge that "just checking this out to see if I like it" is a major use case.

MudMan , vor einem Monat

Nope, we're not doing this.

I used distro "ShouldWork" and GPU "ShouldBeSupported". And given that it didn't work and wasn't supported, I didn't keep troubleshooting it, because I already have a OS install that works and requires no troubleshooting.

I would love a one click install for each of my specific devices that is reliable out of the box, but that's not the world we live in, so in this timeline that computer is back to Windows now.

MudMan , vor einem Monat

Guys, seriously, I know how to do this. I've installed Linux on random PCs for decades. It's not my first rodeo.

Once you turn the century it starts to get annoying when people's default stance to legit compatibility issues becomes to affect condescending patience at you. I knew how to set up a dual boot (I chose not to, instead directly booting from an external drive, which works just fine and allows you to revert by just yanking it out), I knew how to find support (the guides don't match because the laptop family I was using needs specific libraries and kernel modifications and my model is relatively rare so the tutorials aren't meant for it specifically).

I swear, the Linux community, such as it is, thinks that everybody backing off is some technically illiterate rando and mostly scared of UX differences and typing terminal commands. That's really not the case. All available Linux DEs are extremely easy to parse for both Windows and MacOs users, being able to copy/paste text to take semi-complex actions instead of digging through the visual interface saves some time and the total normies that could use this type of feedback aren't trying to do this in the first place. It's fine.

I'll try again next time I have a disposable computer that has some specific plug-and-play distro ready to go. Maybe. If I feel like it. And if I need tech help with it, I'll gladly ask. For now, though, this particular machine is back to Windows because the troubleshooting is more of a hassle than the transition is an improvement. That's the beginning and the end of this conversation, really.

MudMan , vor einem Monat

Yeah, no, not doing that either.

I mean, yeah, Linux ran leaner and felt a bit snappier in the OS and in like-for-like loads on Firefox, but the difference is a few dB, I can certainly live with it.

I'm not "set" on anything here, if I hadn't had issues with compatibility I would have stuck with Linux on it. I really, really don't mind either for most tasks.

MudMan , vor einem Monat

Seriously, you guys need to stop trying to troubleshoot Linux's shortcomings at people. I know. Everybody knows. If you don't, that's the first thing any tutorial will tell you. I'm not looking for technical help, just sharing an anecdote.

If you're curious, no, I couldn't do Pop because I needed some specific libraries and kernel modules to support this particular device's power management and I/O quirks and those were only officially supported in a handful of distros, so I picked one of the ones with better documentation, and even that wasn't meant for my specific hardware.

Not that it matters, because it's a laptop with a iGPU and a dGPU, and the Intel iGPU was just fine out of the box, so getting the Nvidia dGPU to work well was way down my priority list for this exercise, since the device was meant mostly for web browsing and media consumption. Instead, I had issues with sleep mode, since that was related to those specific modifications, and I coudn't figure out a way to make it wake from boot without locking up, which is a pretty big dealbreaker for a device on a battery. Plus the embedded audio controls had some issues, the touchpad was flaky and eventually trying to go through the process of getting that dGPU running exposed other compatibility troubles.

I was ready to roll back to Windows once I noticed the touchpad acceleration was messy out of the gate, honestly, that's my bar for troubleshooting tolerance. So no, I didn't fail to do a cursory Google search in 2020 and find out that Nvidia support is messy. I knew that my slightly nonstandard device was going to be a bit of a challenge, but was hoping to get lucky. Didn't get lucky and went back to what works on it. It's not a call for help, it's just a thing that happened last time I tried to switch a device to Linux.

MudMan , vor einem Monat

I mean, call it what you want, that's why I qualified it in the first place.

I'm not mad at them, but it's been long enough that I do find it frustrating that you can't share any degree of a technical problem or UX issue without having a bunch of people crawl from under every rock to share with you the same three pieces of Linux 101 advice.

MudMan , vor einem Monat

Nah, I don't have a problem at all. That's my point. I never asked for help and got a bunch of condescending, inapplicable, very basic advice regardless.

MudMan , vor einem Monat

The third time.

I shrugged it off the first couple of times. Which, if I say so myself, was big of me, considering this has been going on for twenty five years. I'm exceedingly patient, if anything.

Look, it's the age-old story of social media: your well-intentioned post with basic anecdote is the first time you bring it up, but the hundredth time the person you're responding to has been in this exact conversation. They're not snippy at you because they're trolling or arrogant, they've just been having a dozen people tell them the same obviously wrong exact thing every five minutes for a while and are increasingly unwilling to go through the motions.

That's a big, important lesson when you're trying to make an online space grow, if you want to be constructive about it and bring this little spat back to topic.

MudMan , vor einem Monat

I mean... yeah. Wiser, too.

Welcome to social media. That ship sailed like a decade ago. Also applies to both of us equally.

MudMan , vor einem Monat

Believe what you want. I actually would like to move some (more) of my devices over. I'm just not so married to any one OS to try super hard. I just use whatever works.

It's kinda nuts to me that not everybody is on the same page with that.

MudMan , vor einem Monat (Bearbeitet vor einem Monat)

Nah, my point is there is no "dearth of knowledge", there is a genuine lack of support and I said so at the off pretty openly in far less florid language.

But also, if it took a "guru" to get this stuff done that'd be a good argument against this stuff being viable for the mainstream, and about how useless the basic advice being provided would be, so it works for me either way.

MudMan , vor einem Monat

Hah. Nope. There's a ton of custom features on hardware that need tweaking all over Windows laptops. There are entire forums dedicated to specific brands out there. None of this was much of a surprise, I had put off giving this a try because I had read about the hoops I'd have to jump through and been too lazy to try.

MudMan , vor einem Monat

To each their own, but I can tell you I found people flagging all the issues I encountered online.

MudMan , vor einem Monat

I'm... not impressed with the concept of disk partitioning, what a weird way to read that.

I'm impressed with the interface smartly picking up on what you're trying to do, shrinking and growing partitions and setting up things automatically to specifically support a non-destructive install to coexist with other OSs because the idea that you'd be just testing a distro alongside Windows or something else is a specifically supported use case.

MudMan , vor einem Monat

Like I told the guy accusing me of trolling, I'm not even trying to "trigger" anyone, it's just that people will walk you through the same three basic troubleshooting options whenever you point out you bumped into a compatibility issue and it gets annoying after a while.

Agreed on the other thing, though. I actively want Linux on desktop/laptop to be better. I actively like many things about it already, which is why I was trying to set it up on this thing in the first place. I use it on other devices that have specific support for it, from SBCs to the Steam Deck. And I definitely also have issues, concerns and pet peeves with Windows, Android variants, MacOS, iOS, iPadOS and every other alternative out there.

I just don't particularly care to stick to a single thing and will use whatever the path of least resistance is for each application. Anything else seems nuts. An OS is a utility, not a sports team. It's like rooting for an AC manufacturer.

MudMan , vor einem Monat (Bearbeitet vor einem Monat)

Hey, you guys wanna rage for a bit?

There are more microtransactions in Valve's latest game than on EA's, by a huge margin.

ROUND 1, FIGHT!

MudMan , vor einem Monat

You missed one, the last game EA published is Tales of Kenzera: Zau, a single player metroidvania. Also no MTX. So that's what? Three for three?

You can't go too wide here, though, because EA makes so many more games than Valve, so let me reframe it.

EA has released way more games with no games-as-service stuff in them than Valve in the past decade.

ROUND 2...

MudMan , vor einem Monat

EA has a PC storefront as well, though, so technically that is not a difference between the two, but I'm not gonna be disingenuous and pretend the two storefronts are comparable or as much of a priority. And published releases absolutely count, otherwise you'd have to tally each individual EA studio. Valve has published third party games, too. And, in fairness, EA has published Valve games in the past as well.

Either way, by any reasonable metric you choose Valve is at best as deeply invested in MTX and games as a service as EA. Unless you count "how many total games with MTX each has published", because when you make no games you make no MTX, I suppose.

MudMan , vor einem Monat

Oh, no, I meant it the same way you do. In either case it's nitpicking and we're agreeing too much to bother with that, honestly.