• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

GAFs big house of Linux |OT| for gamers, ricers, newbs and greybeards - because it's free as in freedom!

BadBurger

Is 'That Pure Potato'
That is a shame, hopefully they ditch Clevo someday.

I have a StarLabs Starbook and they use their own custom hardware(ditched clevo a few years ago) but if System76 had a 100% open source firmware I might go with them next(or both!).

I am actually in the market for a new laptop. I haven't had to buy one for years so I am out of the loop. (edit: well, I dabbled with a Macbook a few years ago but it didn't work out well)

Is StarLabs the way to go right now? To put it into perspective - I am using a System76 from like 2017 my company bought me.
 
Last edited:

Unknown?

Member
I am actually in the market for a new laptop. I haven't had to buy one for years so I am out of the loop. (edit: well, I dabbled with a Macbook a few years ago but it didn't work out well)

Is StarLabs the way to go right now? To put it into perspective - I am using a System76 from like 2017 my company bought me.
StarLabs is pretty good if you ask me, great support, but as a very small company doing their own designs it does take quite a long time for it to ship. I ordered in June last year but didn't ship till December. Supply chain issues were rampant last year though.

I went with them mainly because they were cheaper than System 76 and Purism. Plus Purism doesn't seem to have as powerful hardware as the other two.

That said I love the Starbook. Take a look into it and see if it would be a good fit for your needs. https://us.starlabs.systems/
 
Last edited:

BadBurger

Is 'That Pure Potato'
StarLabs is pretty good if you ask me, great support, but as a very small company doing their own designs it does take quite a long time for it to ship. I ordered in June last year but didn't ship till December. Supply chain issues were rampant last year though.

I went with them mainly because they were cheaper than System 76 and Purism. Plus Purism doesn't seem to have as powerful hardware as the other two.

That said I love the Starbook. Take a look into it and see if it would be a good fit for your needs.

I suppose I'm not in a rush so I could wait on long fabrication and shipping times. Thanks for the advice.
 

Bitmap Frogs

Mr. Community
That is a shame, hopefully they ditch Clevo someday.

I have a StarLabs Starbook and they use their own custom hardware(ditched clevo a few years ago) but if System76 had a 100% open source firmware I might go with them next(or both!).

You sure the Starbook isn't an OEM laptop rebranded?

If it isn't wow.
 
Last edited:

Maiden Voyage

Gold™ Member

Bitmap Frogs

Mr. Community

Maiden Voyage

Gold™ Member
o81xC6jtqkQMksA0sBmehmeXmGUfa80NV7lpTX_KCmg.jpg
 

Bitmap Frogs

Mr. Community
I heard System 76 is working on their own chassis! Now they'll be in the same boat as Star Labs. Hopefully they can do some awesome stuff with their own custom design.

The founder has been tweeting photos of test parts. He mentioned that he’d want to debut the laptop with their new rust desktop environment.
 

raduque

Member
I use Mint on a spare PC. My main PC will always be Windows though.

I just tried installing DaVinci Resolve last night. What a complete waste of time. Took about 30 minutes to get it installed and it would crash on launch. Something to do with the GPU. I spent a couple hours looking for info, and ended up installing the "correct" version of the nVidia driver it wants and... Crash on launch. I gave up.

That video above this post is kinda misinformed.

Point 1: I had an nvme fail recently. For testing, I swapped in another nvme also running Windows 11, and and SSD running Windows 10. Both installs were from Intel machines, and they both simply booted up and worked fine. No issues.

Point 3: I have installed and ran Windows 11 on a 4th Gen Core system with 16gb RAM. It's fine.

Point 4: my Brother MFC printer has never had a driver installed on windows. I print and scan just fine. It's from 2016.
 

Bitmap Frogs

Mr. Community
I use Mint on a spare PC. My main PC will always be Windows though.

I just tried installing DaVinci Resolve last night. What a complete waste of time. Took about 30 minutes to get it installed and it would crash on launch. Something to do with the GPU. I spent a couple hours looking for info, and ended up installing the "correct" version of the nVidia driver it wants and... Crash on launch. I gave up.

That video above this post is kinda misinformed.

Point 1: I had an nvme fail recently. For testing, I swapped in another nvme also running Windows 11, and and SSD running Windows 10. Both installs were from Intel machines, and they both simply booted up and worked fine. No issues.

Point 3: I have installed and ran Windows 11 on a 4th Gen Core system with 16gb RAM. It's fine.

Point 4: my Brother MFC printer has never had a driver installed on windows. I print and scan just fine. It's from 2016.

Doesn't DaVinci have like a recommended distro? I vaguely remember they specify Fedora?
 

raduque

Member
Doesn't DaVinci have like a recommended distro? I vaguely remember they specify Fedora?
Actually CentOS, (along with a specific nVidia driver required, and it doesn't support x/h.264 or 265 on Linux unless you buy the $200 version) but I'm not changing distros for one piece of software, when I can run it on Windows with literally zero fuss.

I was thinking about going to Linux Mint as a daily with a Windows VM using GPU passthrough to game, but ... Nah.
 
Have upgraded my PC but have an issue with the BIOS so dual booting into Windows/Linux would be a nightmare. I was having issues before since upgrading to a 4080 where I was getting a black screen when booting into Ubuntu. My new motherboard (with a 7950X3D) doesn't even show the boot up screens and I can't get into BIOS unless I plug in a HDMI cable. So I know it's not even worth the time or energy to try dual booting because I won't be able to access the GRUB menu to select OS. Right now the only solution is to either use HDMI all the time or swap between Displayport/HDMI every time I want to change OS. On HDMI I can't get 144hz which is the native refresh rate of my monitor. It's stuck at 60hz no matter what I do. Even if I could get 144hz then gsync wouldn't work so that's not happening. I need Displayport and that doesn't work with my BIOS/boot up.

I've been wanting to come back to Linux so it looks like my only option now is running a VM. I've tried Hyper-V (built into windows) and VirtualBox but it's awful. It's as if my graphics are running on my CPU instead of my GPU. There are lots of stuttering and display issues. VMware seems to be the only one that will make use of my GPU so it feels as close as possible to using a proper installation of Linux from my SSD and forgetting that Windows is running in the background.

I have upgraded to a 7950X3D which is a 16 core CPU. My previous CPU was a 9900K with 8 cores. So I guess I could run Windows on CCD 0 (8 cores) and a Linux VM on CCD1 (8 cores). I might need to use Process Lasso for it to work properly but that's cool.

AMD-Ryzen-5000-Zen-3-Desktop-CPU-scaled-2855374254.jpg



I have also doubled my RAM from 32 to 64GB. I could allocate 16-32GB RAM to Linux and that'd leave me 32-48GB RAM for gaming if I wanted to game and leave a VM running. Most games don't use more than 8 cores or 32GB ram so my gaming performance shouldn't be affected much if at all compared to a system with something like a 7800X3D/32GB (high specs for a gaming PC)

Downloading VMware workstation player since it's free for personal use and an ISO of Ubuntu 22.04.2 LTS. Will try set it up and see how it goes.

When I was using Linux before I really enjoyed it but went back to Windows. I'm not terribly excited about the future of Windows with all this AI bullshit they are stuffing in. I'm wanting to keep Windows for gaming and running exclusive programs only and do all my other stuff in Linux. Hopefully now I've upgraded my PC it will feel much better to virtualise Linux ontop of Windows. I want to be able to boot into Linux and forget that I'm running Windows. I can fall back to Windows when I need to play games or use a specific Windows only program. Also with a VM it's much quicker to switch between OS. Having to restart every time I want to switch between OS was a pain in the ass.
 
Last edited:

Unknown?

Member
Have upgraded my PC but have an issue with the BIOS so dual booting into Windows/Linux would be a nightmare. I was having issues before since upgrading to a 4080 where I was getting a black screen when booting into Ubuntu. My new motherboard (with a 7950X3D) doesn't even show the boot up screens and I can't get into BIOS unless I plug in a HDMI cable. So I know it's not even worth the time or energy to try dual booting because I won't be able to access the GRUB menu to select OS. Right now the only solution is to either use HDMI all the time or swap between Displayport/HDMI every time I want to change OS. On HDMI I can't get 144hz which is the native refresh rate of my monitor. It's stuck at 60hz no matter what I do. Even if I could get 144hz then gsync wouldn't work so that's not happening. I need Displayport and that doesn't work with my BIOS/boot up.

I've been wanting to come back to Linux so it looks like my only option now is running a VM. I've tried Hyper-V (built into windows) and VirtualBox but it's awful. It's as if my graphics are running on my CPU instead of my GPU. There are lots of stuttering and display issues. VMware seems to be the only one that will make use of my GPU so it feels as close as possible to using a proper installation of Linux from my SSD and forgetting that Windows is running in the background.

I have upgraded to a 7950X3D which is a 16 core CPU. My previous CPU was a 9900K with 8 cores. So I guess I could run Windows on CCD 0 (8 cores) and a Linux VM on CCD1 (8 cores). I might need to use Process Lasso for it to work properly but that's cool.

AMD-Ryzen-5000-Zen-3-Desktop-CPU-scaled-2855374254.jpg



I have also doubled my RAM from 32 to 64GB. I could allocate 16-32GB RAM to Linux and that'd leave me 32-48GB RAM for gaming if I wanted to game and leave a VM running. Most games don't use more than 8 cores or 32GB ram so my gaming performance shouldn't be affected much if at all compared to a system with something like a 7800X3D/32GB (high specs for a gaming PC)

Downloading VMware workstation player since it's free for personal use and an ISO of Ubuntu 22.04.2 LTS. Will try set it up and see how it goes.

When I was using Linux before I really enjoyed it but went back to Windows. I'm not terribly excited about the future of Windows with all this AI bullshit they are stuffing in. I'm wanting to keep Windows for gaming and running exclusive programs only and do all my other stuff in Linux. Hopefully now I've upgraded my PC it will feel much better to virtualise Linux ontop of Windows. I want to be able to boot into Linux and forget that I'm running Windows. I can fall back to Windows when I need to play games or use a specific Windows only program. Also with a VM it's much quicker to switch between OS. Having to restart every time I want to switch between OS was a pain in the ass.
That's odd, hopefully you can get that sorted out.

With Proton and Wine, I've not had any problems running games although I don't do graphic intensive games as it's just integrated graphics on my laptop.

Also you can use Wine for Windows exclusive programs, are there any that don't work? Perhaps subscription based cloud programs maybe?
 

Bitmap Frogs

Mr. Community
Recently I got into it and it's great. I didn't know it was in such good shape. Besides the rising success of Proton with the Steam Deck, I'm also surprised by the abundance of native Linux games. I'm a happy Linux user now.

Excited Season 2 GIF by The Office

Welcome to the cooler side (don't mind the penguins!)

Good buddy ChoosableOne ChoosableOne pointed me here so if yall are giving out referral bonuses....he's the guy. Can see we ain't a large group so far, but that isn't exactly a shock. lol

Been on Arch Linux for four days now. So far so good. Got a GPU arriving today. Looking forward to reporting my findings as a Linux gamer.

Arch eh? Can't wait to hear your mission report!
 

ChoosableOne

ChoosableAll
I tried all night to extract 50 zip files, without creating parent folders with the same name. But I couldn't succeed. Now it's time for sleep. Enough linux for today.
 

Topher

Gold Member
Except for Chrome and Edge. Try Brave or Ungoogled Chromium for a Chromium based browser that respects your privacy. Also FF is good but the fork Librewolf is better out of the box. Of course, nothing is perfect.

Congrats on upgrading to Linux!

Use Chrome since it brings over all my saved links and such. I only have Edge for xCloud. I have FF for work email and such. Thanks for the advice on the others though. I'll check them out.
 

Topher

Gold Member
The person who developed the Heroic Launcher should be awarded the Nobel Prize for gaming. It's a dream come true.

Really is great. Some gripes about it in the Steam Deck thread, but apparently this new version is much better. Playing Cyberpunk 2077 benchmark.....

rCt3Tyz.png


QvJPiFx.png


That's not bad with an older cpu and a lower mid-range GPU.
 
Last edited:

Hudo

Member
Fedora Silverblue is treating me really well these days. Just updated to 39. Pinned my current rpm-ostree state before that, just in case and rebooted. You wouldn't even really know you've just updated. Really smooth.
Ubuntu is also really great at work.

Computing is nice again (for the most part).
 

Bitmap Frogs

Mr. Community
To scratch the itch I installed Lutris and fired up PSO: BB.

U6O3rnu.png


o8mfair.png

Enjoy the game!

Fedora Silverblue is treating me really well these days. Just updated to 39. Pinned my current rpm-ostree state before that, just in case and rebooted. You wouldn't even really know you've just updated. Really smooth.
Ubuntu is also really great at work.

Computing is nice again (for the most part).

Quite a lot of people are moving to fedora recently. I really don’t know why but the going must be good!
 

Hudo

Member
Enjoy the game!



Quite a lot of people are moving to fedora recently. I really don’t know why but the going must be good!
I think I heard someone recently say that "Fedora is the new Ubuntu", which is a bit weird but maybe not that far off.

That being said, I think the hate that Ubuntu gets, especially from fucking Reddit, is unwarranted and mostly just retarded neckbeards hating everything that isn't complicated. Ubuntu is a very solid distro, especially if you don't want to babysit your OS and need to get work done. Fedora follows closely behind, might require a bit of hands-on from time to time, though. But you get newer shit faster.

Silverblue is interesting because it's one way to go about doing a immutable distribution. The other two big approaches/implementations are Aeon (formerly MicroOS) from OpenSuse and the upcoming Ubuntu Core Desktop (which I think is the most interesting approach because everything, even the kernel, is a snap and can changed/rebased to the version/variant that you fancy). Aeon/MicroOS has probably the most straightforward approach by just letting Btrfs handling state. Fedora Silverblue's RPM-Ostree is essentially just "dude, what if our package manager is like Git and we use it to manage the whole OS as well?".
 

Bitmap Frogs

Mr. Community
I think I heard someone recently say that "Fedora is the new Ubuntu", which is a bit weird but maybe not that far off.

That being said, I think the hate that Ubuntu gets, especially from fucking Reddit, is unwarranted and mostly just retarded neckbeards hating everything that isn't complicated. Ubuntu is a very solid distro, especially if you don't want to babysit your OS and need to get work done. Fedora follows closely behind, might require a bit of hands-on from time to time, though. But you get newer shit faster.

Silverblue is interesting because it's one way to go about doing a immutable distribution. The other two big approaches/implementations are Aeon (formerly MicroOS) from OpenSuse and the upcoming Ubuntu Core Desktop (which I think is the most interesting approach because everything, even the kernel, is a snap and can changed/rebased to the version/variant that you fancy). Aeon/MicroOS has probably the most straightforward approach by just letting Btrfs handling state. Fedora Silverblue's RPM-Ostree is essentially just "dude, what if our package manager is like Git and we use it to manage the whole OS as well?".

The whole snap distribution backend being propietary code has soured people on Ubuntu, specially since they recently made so even apt pulls snaps.

Since you are trying inmutable distros, have you looked at nixos?
 

Hudo

Member
Since you are trying inmutable distros, have you looked at nixos?
I have. And while I do find the concept fascinating, I think their solution is a bit janky; you are totally reliant on shit being packaged for Nix, otherwise you are shit out of luck (or have to set up a distrobox or something). And packaging is not as straightforward as it sounds. Partially because NixOS's documentation is lacking, imho.

Also, while I am a fan of Haskell and functional programming in general, I think the Nix language is... bad. Don't like the syntax as well as some of the idiosyncracies of the language they decided on. However, if you are dealing with deploying dev environments on different PCs, NixOS can't be beaten, imho. It's really great for that. A build engineer's dream, so to speak. Even better than Docker (I know, NixOS is not really comparable to containers, but oh well). I also know about GNU Guix System, which is like NixOS but Scheme. The problem there is that it's under the thumb of GNU-extremists, who basically declare everything not open-source and "free" as evil and make you go through hurdles in order to even being able to attempt at installing proprietary stuff. Not a fan of that philosophy at all.
 
Last edited:

-Minsc-

Member
Enjoy the game!
I've misplaced the breakaway end of my Xbox360 controller so I won't be playing any time soon.

Lurtis seemed to install and get the game running. I get the impression it slows down my PC a bit. Also, when I took the screenshot the game crashed. Timeshift was running a backup at the time so that may have caused an issue.

Also looking to see if I can get the game running via Bottles. My first impression of that program is its lighter weight than Lurtis but will also take more TLC to get the game running.
 

Hudo

Member
I have. And while I do find the concept fascinating, I think their solution is a bit janky; you are totally reliant on shit being packaged for Nix, otherwise you are shit out of luck (or have to set up a distrobox or something). And packaging is not as straightforward as it sounds. Partially because NixOS's documentation is lacking, imho.

Also, while I am a fan of Haskell and functional programming in general, I think the Nix language is... bad. Don't like the syntax as well as some of the idiosyncracies of the language they decided on. However, if you are dealing with deploying dev environments on different PCs, NixOS can't be beaten, imho. It's really great for that. A build engineer's dream, so to speak. Even better than Docker (I know, NixOS is not really comparable to containers, but oh well). I also know about GNU Guix System, which is like NixOS but Scheme. The problem there is that it's under the thumb of GNU-extremists, who basically declare everything not open-source and "free" as evil and make you go through hurdles in order to even being able to attempt at installing proprietary stuff. Not a fan of that philosophy at all.
Man, I do say some smart shit from time to time.
 

-Minsc-

Member
linux grew to 4% recently, good news.

I wonder, what's the magic number where Linux still flys below the virus, malware, spyware, etc. radar? There is a price for popularity.

What will probably happen is one distribution will become the bloated face of Linux and will be just as bad as the rest of the bunch. At least that distribution will be a gateway to those clued in enough to jump to another.
 
Top Bottom