KubeRoot

I’d say having a GUI is not inherently stupid. The stupid part is, if I understand it correctly, the GUI being a required component and the primary access method.

The wiki tells you what you need on arch, and what you need it for. Those packages also don’t seem to have kernel-specific or dkms versions, so seems like they’re not kernel modules.

Mind you, the setup is clearly not monolithic, with different components for different purposes, including alternative options. On top of that, each distro will make different choices - Arch provides the components as packages and puts the responsibility of installing the right ones on you. Some features might be built into kernel drivers, like working video output, but Vulkan support clearly wants a dedicated driver.

Here’s what you need for Arch, for more context: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/AMDGPU

I think on mutable distros, or at least arch, you can run a command to reinstall all installed packages, which will verify integrity of the package files (signatures) and then ensure the files in the filesystem match package files? And I think it takes minutes at most, at least for typical setups.

I do think it’s also possible to just verify integrity of all files installed from a package, but I don’t remember if it required an external utility, pretty sure it’s on the arch wiki under pacman/tips and tricks

I also recommend rEFInd for the bootloader if you don’t want to set anything up (and risk messing up). You don’t need to configure your boot entries, it scans for boot options and shows them with a graphical interface, so your Linux and Windows should just show up.

The issue is, when doing sudo, you have to put in the password when doing sudo. In this case, you put in your password, some flag is set, the computer does a full reset, and then after it reads the flag and decides to bypass the password system. That sounds like just a step away of figuring out how to set this flag without a password to bypass logging in.

I think an issue is, this sets up your computer to have a way to bypass putting your password in on boot. If you don’t care about security too much and don’t have things like secure boot and encryption, then that’s bypassable anyways… But otherwise, I’d be concerned about introducing systems that specifically bypass security.

Why does every distro need yet another package manager?

I think most package managers - the ones actually part of a distro - are old. It’s not a question of why they all use different package managers, it’s a matter of them having developed them long ago before any single one matured.

That said, there are other considerations, which is also where new ones come from - different distros will have different approaches to package formats, dependency management, tracking of installed packages and system files, some might be implemented in a specific language due to the distro’s ideology, some might work in a different way (like NixOS), and there’s probably a whole bunch that just want a different interface.

You wouldn’t ask why Linux has a different way of viewing installed programs from Windows, and in the same vein packages are not a universal aspect of Linux, so each distro has to make its own choices.

Also I like pacman, some people complain about the commands being obscure, but I feel like they’re structured in a much more logical way. Don’t confuse it with yay though, pacman doesn’t build packages, and yay is specifically a wrapper around pacman that has different commands, while adding the ability to interact with the AUR.

That makes sense, thanks for explaining! I saw “makes space” as what’s happening right now, since Android does let you install alternatives for all those, including third party app stores, but it does go farther than that.

I don’t think anything you said makes it not free, as long as you can fork it. The same can be said about most FOSS, since somebody, usually the creator, is in control of the repository.

That’s the point of FOSS - your repository isn’t becoming a democracy by virtue of using a permissive license, but it means somebody could outcompete you with a fork and effectively take over as the dominant project.

But… Aren’t all of those things still very much dominant?

I think I saw a video mentioning they are illegal in some places, showing just why they’re so dangerous

Mind you, emoji were created in Japan, so a lot of the original ones can be weird to us due to cultural differences.

Windows 10. The reason I switched was pretty funny - I had previously bought a cheap SSD and moved my install over to it, and installed Arch on my HDD hoping to experiment with it.

I never really did that, but one day before Christmas my computer booted straight to Arch to my confusion, and after a while I figured out my SSD failed. I ended up installing gnome to have something to use in the meanwhile, since I wasn’t gonna be buying a new SSD in the next few days, but then I just decided to stick with Linux. As I learned more about it I realised I was barely missing anything, and I preferred Linux for what I had.

The good thing is, on Android you can get an APK without root or anything like that, same for installing it, and you can use an emulator (or something like waydroid) to run it on a computer. For cases where the game doesn’t use any more specialized servers, and just uses the app store for authentication, DRM, etc. the situation is no different from PC games with DRM - it’s bypassable, and if done right, will work for all games, not just one.

That said though, it’s very true for multiplayer/always online games, and those are very common on mobile. While it’s possible to reverse engineer and rewrite the servers, for most of them nobody is going to bother. And in the world of aggressively monetized games, developers have an incentive to keep it that way - they can’t make money from players who are still enjoying a game they’ve already squeezed every penny out of.

Apple has always been about locking down the system and forcing the user to do things the way Apple wants. Not only within one device, but also in locking down inter-device protocols and removing standard ones, as well as obfuscating information about the hardware, not letting the users make an informed decision. And that’s already after the fact that you aren’t legally allowed to use the system on non-Apple hardware.

I do have my screen set to sRGB, and it is possible it’s simply incorrect in SDR - when I enable HDR, everything looks greenish IIRC. As for color profiles, I think there might’ve been a built-in profile that was automatically enabled in the settings? It’s possible I’m looking at horrible colors and not realizing, but at least I’m not doing things like a friend, who “optimized” his colors to improve gaming performance, and keeps complaining about colors being weird 😅

Color management is annoying, since you need a correct reference to verify anything, and I never looked into that.

As for the monitors, I specifically meant good screens, not screens with good HDR - I feel like if you go for a good screen these days, it’ll likely have some HDR support, letting people simply try it out with little effort on Windows.

I use Wayland exclusively, and I’m on up to date Arch. I’m talking about issues like screenshare issues with software, XDG desktop portal screenshare randomly breaking, steam notifications started positioning wrongly, steam’s search stopped working (not 100% sure if those two are Wayland)…

I also tried running a game in game scope with HDR enabled, experimenting with options and env cars I found online, but it just didn’t work. It was a sample size of one, but it was one game I wanted to play with friends, so I gave up in favor of just playing.

I also don’t use MPV - I tried testing HDR with it, and it probably worked fine, but I don’t have the right media to test it. (Side note: I should try mpv more seriously, but I haven’t needed a video player much in general)

An extra annoyance is the fact that the LDR colors are quite off with HDR enabled on Plasma. I suspect this is the fault of the display or configuration, but it’s still something I’d have to spend time researching and fixing, only to barely get any use out of it.

I haven’t tried setting up steam itself in gamescope, but wouldn’t it be limited to one window then? Could try it just to experience an HDR game, but otherwise it’s a bit of a deal breaker.

You might be right about it being for enthusiasts in the first place, but I feel like there’s a lot of people who will just pay up for a good screen that includes HDR, and on Windows I’d imagine you can just turn it on and start getting HDR from various sources - something that will surely become possible on Linux, but will take a while longer.

All that said, I’m not saying this to shit on Wayland or the developers’ work on HDR. Not long ago HDR was something that just wasn’t possible, and people were whining it’ll take another 10 years at this rate. I’m excited to see the next update on this, as well as stable wider adoption, but that’s the thing - that’s something I’m anticipating, not something I’m gonna be using now.

Pretty sure HDR is “working” in the sense that KDE went ahead and implemented unfinished specs, so that the very few apps that also went ahead with it can do HDR, but only on Wayland which breaks other things that are behind, and also often requires very recent versions and specific obscure parameters to be passed to enable HDR support?

Yeah, it’s a great step forwards and great for enthusiasts, but unless I’m very behind on the state of HDR myself, it’s still something I’d consider “coming soon” and not proclaim it’s just “working for me”. It certainly feels like a “year from now” kind of thing - something to anticipate, not try to force just yet.

They probably already set it up to not happen in Europe