Been There - Tried It - I'm going back...

[jigger]

It’s probably worth pointing out that OSX is actually Linux, well Unix. The same for android.

Windows in a VM when required. Linux when performance is required. I get the point that in some instances you just need Windows every once in a while but it’s such frustrating and cobbled together lasagna of fail under the hood.

 

[Timber]

But at the end of last year I tried Bazzite on my TV "console" PC because win10 was bugging me to upgrade to 11. Well bugger me if it isn't absolutely brilliant! Works like a charm, no hardware problems at all (helps being an all AMD build) even the relatively new 9060XT 16gb is perfect.

About a month ago I tried Bazzite on my main PC, but it wasn't quite right for desktop use. I distro hopped a bit and found CachyOS. This has proven to be an excellent choice. Zero stability or hardware issues at all so far, and this PC has a 5080 in it. Proper DPI settings too (KDE Plasma). The only minor gripe was having to delve into /etc/fstab or whatever to get my secondary drives working like I want them to.

In my renewed push to try Linux again my past (nearly) 2-weeks has been really good on CachyOS. The quirks for me so-far seem to be updates. I've installed and changed quite a bit of software and it's been fine with no issues. Being on GNOME DE the update to v50 killed an extension (only day two) and the aforementioned errors when running Paru -Syu, which meant I've started to use Pacman again. Arch has caught me out on updates and the AUR in the past so I think that's the thing I'm weary with CachyOS, but it's hard not to regard it as a top-tier OS at this point in time. Although having watched some CachyOS vs Fedora discussions & Youtube videos I do wonder how much I'd notice the improvements of CachyOS in realworld gaming. That said it's clear the min-FPSes measure better on CachyOS.

With regards to Bazzite I'm still fairly keen to try that although it'll have to wait until I have a candidate PC to install it to. But I've bumped into some videos about Universal Blue which Bazzite is part of and it's been interesting learning about this initiative. Particularly Project Bluefin and this 'distroless' future they envisage. It's very interesting to read about. Although Aurora and Project Bluefin feel very similar with one being GNOME and the other being KDE Plasma, but maybe I'm missing something.

 

[Timber]

I think I fall into this category a little bit...

Nearly three months on from my first post in this thread and I've actually managed to go Windows free!

After that post I tried CachyOS on my main and refreshed Linux on the other PCs in the house. Indeed things went so well a few days ago I finally got around to building the below as my new main rig. Sitting next to me now with Fedora 44 KDE installed on it. There were some small issues with the build; things like the anti-sag bracket in the case didn't reach the GPU, memory barely fits under the CPU cooler, PC took a long time to first boot, the BIOS on the motherboard was v.F3 and over a year old so needed updating, it took way too long to configure KDE to see my nfs shares and even the first game I've tried on Steam decides not to work (Mangohud command was wrong). But overall running nicely and I have spent a bit of time changing parts of KDE I don't like (icons, panel set to-fit and spacer etc.).

CachyOS was fantastic, but I wanted to try Fedora again. And I'm trying to give KDE a proper go rather than just run back to my favourite Gnome DE. My old main PC (AM4) still feels relevant so I'm intending to repurpose that as a Bazzite-powerd Steam Machine for the lounge.

The only negative is that I've displaced my daughter from playing Roblox, so will likely look to get a cheap laptop (thinking Macbook Neo) so she has the option of that still and have some form of fallback if any driver/firmware updates need a commercial OS. I also have an old NVMe drive around which I could install Windows too, but the intention is to not do this. As part of this I've also managed to migrate away from Microsoft 365 for family cloud storage and moved to Filen for server back-ups/cloud. So bonus points there too.

 

[Ice Tea]

Did the price of the DDR5 make you start twitching?

 

[Timber]

Did the price of the DDR5 make you start twitching?

Oh yea!

I know I picked a bad time to build a PC. Unfortunately when I built my last PC in very early 2022 that also wasn't ideal as GPUs were still in an awful place with lack of availability and choice. I ended up getting by on a RX 6500XT for a short while (sold the following year).

And it's not just DDR5 but storage too; that Crucial P710 was a pretty horrific price. I ended up repurposing an existing Crucial P3 Plus Gen4 NVMe drive as a second storage drive in this new PC. If prices were better I would have bought more RAM and storage for this new build.

 

[Ice Tea]

I'm trying to give KDE a proper go rather than just run back to my favourite Gnome DE.

Every time i try i always end up going back to Gnome with dash to panel.

KDE configuration is like the part in the Spinal Tap movie where you go around in circles and end up where you first started.

 

[Timber]

Every time i try i always end up going back to Gnome with dash to panel.

KDE configuration is like the part in the Spinal Tap movie where you go around in circles and end up where you first started.

To be honest I've not customised it much. Icon pack, a few changes to the main app panel. There are a few things I prefer on KDE, but Gnome is my favourite. KDE the virtual desktops is just lacking and that's probably biggest miss.

Although I've definitely had a few issues with the PC I wasn't expecting. Even this morning, fstab not mounting drives correctly (think this is solved), a dnf update that just crashed the PC, my BIOS booting to nothing at one point (this was after switching 'erp' on in the Aorus BIOS settings) and then Fedora 44 just locked up on me and nothing in the logs. So not sure if I have hardware issues, or been a bit unlucky. Will see how this progresses.

 

[Timber]

Update some bad luck on the new PC/linux front - Fedora 44 KDE fell over big time this afternoon. Using Librewolf and it closed the browser, before going to a completely blank screen which meant I had to force shutdown the computer. This is on top of the issues earlier today (so three crashes in one day). So because I need to reinstall the OS I decided to try CachyOS (on the day the AUR is compromised - unbeknown to me! lol).

And so far very good. Indeed having run Fedora 44 KDE and CachyOS KDE together on the same PC I can notice some differences;

1. CachyOS boots up much quicker than Fedora 44. About half the time.
2. Desktop feels more responsive in KDE. Not sure if this is animations being reduced.
3. Only tried the one game it felt the same.

Managed to install Bazzite (HTPC, KDE version) on the older AM4 PC. That turned into fun and games too. Bazzite wouldn't close down after the installation and it took 2 restarts to get into the setup screen. It seems to be fine now and I've managed to play Brotato and Art of Rally on it.

Plan now is to run CachyOS for a few days (as long as I stay out of the AUR), or reinstall Fedora again. But either way to keep putting this new PC through its paces.

UPDATE: And posting this from Fedora 44 KDE. Didn't want to give-up on Fedora just yet.

 

[Ice Tea]

I know that this is the least of your problems at the moment but have you been able to control your RGB leds ok as it can be a bitch under linux?

 

[Timber]

I know that this is the least of your problems at the moment but have you been able to control your RGB leds ok as it can be a bitch under linux?

Np. Used Fedora a bit this morning and was fine. Played something quickly on Steam. So I wonder if I just had a bad image/write to the original USB stick. It was quirky from the get go on Fedora. I also did a quick test in the Aorus BIOS on the main NVMe drive and it passed.

In terms of RGB I've always been an Open RGB user, even in Windows. On this new PC I'm just running the 4 Corsair ARGB fans plus the 2 on the CPU cooler with no software. So stock pulsing of colours. On the older AM4 PC I ran OpenRGB although I only really changed the direction of the colour wave and the RGB on the motherboard. I'm not really too bothered about customisation in this respect.

Have you had issues with RGB then?

I think the one thing I have noticed about OpenRGB is that it has a learning curve to become familiar with it.

 

[Ice Tea]

Some peripherals like mice that save the RGB settings in their onboard memory can only be programmed via Windows software unless someone has reversed engineered the hex codes to use on Linux.

 

[Timber]

Some peripherals like mice that save the RGB settings in their onboard memory can only be programmed via Windows software unless someone has reversed engineered the hex codes to use on Linux.

Ah OK I'm with you. I bought a cheap ATK VXE Dragonfly mouse as it use web-based configuration software (although it's still in the box atm). And the one thing I do need to upgrade is to a QMK/VIA keyboard - which I will at some point. If I was upgrading to a more expensive mouse I'd get a Pulsar for the kernel support which they have baked in. And then I'm just using an 8bitdo Ultimate 2 for a controller which I haven't had to configure and already has its firmware updated.

 

[Mr-White]

It’s probably worth pointing out that OSX is actually Linux, well Unix. The same for android.

MacOS isn't Linux or UNIX. Apple tried to advertise MacOS as UNIX and was sued by the UNIX IP holders, The One Group, for $2m in 2001. Apple settled out of court by paying The One Group to certify Apple computers to the UNIX 03 standard from 2004. Apple hasn't since recertified to the latest version 07. MacOS originates from BSD and BSD was reverse engineered from UNIX in the same way Linux was. Linux was released first because the then owners of UNIX, AT&T, sued them for copyright infringements. Technically the only part of a Linux distro that is actually Linux is the kernel. Apple chose BSD because the licensing allowed them to copy it and then trademark it, where as the Linux GPL would have meant that Apple could use the code but they would have to let anyone else use it too.

 

[jigger]

MacOS isn't Linux or UNIX. Apple tried to advertise MacOS as UNIX and was sued by the UNIX IP holders, The One Group, for $2m in 2001. Apple settled out of court by paying The One Group to certify Apple computers to the UNIX 03 standard from 2004. Apple hasn't since recertified to the latest version 07. MacOS originates from BSD and BSD was reverse engineered from UNIX in the same way Linux was. Linux was released first because the then owners of UNIX, AT&T, sued them for copyright infringements. Technically the only part of a Linux distro that is actually Linux is the kernel. Apple chose BSD because the licensing allowed them to copy it and then trademark it, where as the Linux GPL would have meant that Apple could use the code but they would have to let anyone else use it too.

Well politics aside, they are UNIX derived systems.

 

[Mr-White]

Well politics aside, they are UNIX derived systems.

That's probably the most accurate way to describe them. The only difference is I've never heard a Linux user say Linux is UNIX but almost every Mac user opens with MacOS is UNIX.

 

[Bluecube]

Even Windows is Unix derived. I think… Windows NT was bought in from uhhhhmmm… Digital Research and given a Windows look GUI. I’m sure it was some Unixey derivation underneath. Excuse the memory failure but this was so long ago that I was working on a Y2K project at the time!

EDIT: In short - Unix has its tentacles everywhere. Long live Unix

 

[Timber]

Well another lockup/crash on Fedora 44. Came back to the new PC after 3/4 minutes and the mouse/screen everything locked up so had to hold down the power switch on the PC. I went through Journald Browser and couldn't see anything obviously before the crash (1st today). The very last thing the PC was doing was on the wifi interface so I've switched that off (PC is hardwired over 2.5g LAN). The sort of crashes I've experienced read like Wayland/GPU so my assumption is that I either have something wrong with the GPU, or there is something about Fedora 44 atm it doesn't like.

I've also downloaded and run Memtest 86+ and got the big 'pass' banner so the Patriot DDR5 seems to be happy running at EXPO 1 profile (6,000MHz) as it's rated to. I've also done that short test in the Gigabyte Aorus BIOS on the Crucial T710 & run some tests via KDiskMark. All either passes, or doesn't stand out. Gaming is fine although I've not really tested anything too demanding on it. The four times it's crashed have all been near start-up.

I want to keep running this install to keep catching the crashes, before trying Arch/Cachy again to see if that is stable over time. Although the other part of me wants to try the new Destiny 2 update on PS5 as I'm getting bored of OS installs & troubleshooting atm!

 

[Ice Tea]

Try Ubuntu.

 

[Timber]

Try Ubuntu.

FreeBSD next!

No in all seriousness I haven't tried Ubuntu for years. When I first started running Linux 15+ years or so ago that was THE recommendation. Maybe the cool kids ran Mint. I don't think it was any one thing that caused me to not use Ubuntu anymore, albeit snaps was something I didn't want to touch. But I think the last time I installed Ubuntu was on a server some 10+ years ago.

Interesting that today there has been no lockups so far. The only thing that has changed was switching off the WLAN interface, doing a DNF update (new kernel 7.0.12-201.fc44.x86_64) and just swapping ffmpeg-free to ffmpeg. I doubt that last one has any impact on anything. So ongoing using and monitoring for now.

 

[GoogalyMoogaly]

I keep trying Linux but I do a lot of gaming so I think that causes me more issues than some who might just use it more for work.
I also keep hitting the issue where I like to be able to keep an eye on things like temperatures, fans speeds, usage, maybe a few voltages, you know the sort of things you get from HWINFO and Afterburner. I've not found anything that will give me the sort of values I'm used to. LACT isn't too bad with an AMD card, but it's still limited.
And then for games, while Steam works OK and I think a lot of games probably work OK with Proton, some still don't. Then once you get to other installers things get less straightforward. Now I didn't get as far as trying "Heroic Launcher" for things like Epic Store games, but I did try to get some Blizzard games running and while it worked it was more of a faff.

So I usually end up back on Windows, which is not great, but it does make a lot of the things I do simpler.