The Linux Challenge

[Fred47]

I guess this is some kind of Linux challenge put forth by this Linus who is not Linus Torvalds, but that's not made very clear, nor where I could find the actual challenge. I don't know who these two guys are, I assume they are some kind You Tube influencers. Judging by the size of that one guys screen he "must" know what he is doing.

Still I have trouble transferring 3 gig files across drives, but then I'm using USB2. I too have printer problems because my Cannon isn't supported by Cups and I print so little that I haven't made any effort to load the Cannon drivers.

So what do you think of this video, oh and there are several more like this if you care to fill your afternoon.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TtsglXhbxno

[claydoh]

LTT is iirc one of the biggest computer/tech/gaming channel on YouTube, if not THE biggest. Linus has been around at least a decade, and iirc has a studio employing ~50 people, and they put out multiple highly produced videos a day, across a few channels.
Their Linux challenges is explicitly from a PC gamer's perspective, and trying to use Linux at home for a month.
This originated from hype over the upcoming Steam Deck

On one of the previous chapters, Linus destroyed his Pop!OS install due a nasty packaging bug that removed his entire desktop by simply installing Steam, and not paying attention the the warnings in the terminal, as many of us sometimes do.

They highlight some common things a lot of us Linux user have taken for granted, or have forgotten how we figured things out when we were noobs.
These videos also highlight the complete lack of documentation we have in many areas, the complete uselessness of doing basic google searches on various Linux related topics looking for answers, and how even more useless we as the user community can be.

I mean, c'mon, Manjaro as a good newbie distro? At least the guys started on two quite reasonable distros.

That is purely on the useless l33t distro-flexing fanbois we have, and tolerate, lol.

Go anywhere and ask "what is the best Linux for <blank> " and you will see what bull crap comes out. Usually involving Manjaro and Arch(BTW)
Linux blew up his desktop because he followed instructions from somewhere, and used the command line to install Steam. If he'd used a GUI package manager, the install would have failed - but he would not have nuked his install, and thus moved to Manjaro.

As to printers, theirs worked because they were either wireless - which requires no drivers, they are using a print server or oare networked. Or, possibly as seen in Ubuntu based distros, having USB printers run as faux wireless ones, so they don't need to use any specific drivers to work.


Go into any Linux related subreddit or other major forum, and there is endless jabber on these videos, and quite a lot of it proclaiming how dumb these two tech savvy guys are for not knowing everything.

I think these videos are quite fair, especially remembering the gamer-specific focus this challenge has, and setting aside our natural defensiveness, as well as our learned Linux habits.

[Fred47]

I had a hard time understanding what they were doing and if these guys are professional, it explains why I don't watch a lot of You Tube stuff. On the other hand they reminded me of myself when I first started out, in that I had a hard time understanding all the new terms of linux. Now I'm thinking we need to get some long time Linux users and see how they get along with Windows. I have my own issues, which I'm about to experience again as tax season is coming up.

[jlittle]

I've been a follower of Linus and Luke from their NCIX days. They are partly entertainers, in that they aim for entertaining tech videos, that foster engagement with their audience. I imagine that the average age of that audience is decades less than that of KFN posters. They make mistakes sometimes, and pile in to total disasters sometimes, it's part of their shtick. For example, Linus cultivates notoriety for dropping things, like $10,000 CPUs. I can't help suspecting that they exaggerate that aspect a bit.

I suspect that they know a lot more about Linux than they let on.

[claydoh]

They do have Anthony on their staff, who is very Linux savvy, and would have been quite useful. However, they purposefully have kept him away from this project completely, including things like distro suggestions and the like.
I do think that they should have used him to set up the challenges in this particular episode. He would have been more clear on defining things, such as what type of 'signing' a pdf was intended - a physical signature, or cryptographic.

It is interesting to see all, and I think I do mean ALL the Linux YouTubers riding the gravy train via commentary and reaction videos, and getting huge numbers of views.
Since the Steam Deck was announced, and tied to Windows 11 shenanigans, places like /r/linux_gaming have exploded in activity. It will be interesting to see how long this lasts.

[Fred47]

To show you how easily I'm confused, I thought Linus was Linus Torvalds. Not to mention right off the bat he had to install Notepad++ What? And, really isn't the "gravy train" what all these You Tubers are about?

[GreyGeek]

Linus is a very smart guy and he hires smart guys. None of them were/are ignorant about Linux, its installation, and its gaming situation, especially Anthony who, like Claydoh said, was kept away from the competition. The other guy in the competition (I can't remember his name) has been using Linux for several years and is very familiar with it. His attempts to be a "noob" are funny. IMO, that whole series is well scripted. However, that said, Linux did hit some Linux sore spots on some distros and DE's because he knew exactly how to trigger them..

Christ Titus, who converted from Windows to Linux 3 years ago and has built a nice YT channel discussing both OS's, took advantage of the supposed faux pas to make reaction videos, which were entertaining as well. There has been during the last couple of years a massive move to Linux for, IMO, two reasons: Microsoft's spying and tracking its Windows users, which is nothing new but getting very irksome, and the increasing support for gaming in Linux.

[claydoh]

Titus can be a turd sometimes, and his sysadmin focus on Linux hides his lack of experience on the desktop side. IMNSHO of course.

LTT's Luke has some Linux chops, but also from some time ago, and more of the command line side as well.

Though, some people are looking at these experiences in a non-judgemental manner, and legitimate discussions are happening, though they are drowned out by the gibber-jabber BS that makes up many/most Linux discussion venues online.

Take a peek ar /r/linux_gaming, and though you will see the typical opinionated, shortsighted, incorrect, misguided, and plain stupid comments, as well as some good stuff, and optimism, and successes.
If there ever will be a 'Year of the Linux Desktop', or whatever crap name you want to call it, it will be from gamers adopting Linux, not desktop users. Those folks have mostly moved to Android/iOS as their main, daily driver operating systems.

[Bings]

I recently got a copy of Manjaro with KDE running to try out what games on my windows system could run in Linux and the results were very good. My most frequently played game, actually loads up faster in Manjaro.

It's bad this Dolphin as root issue is still a thing, it's been years and still no polkit. Silly, considering the bad feeling it created.

[claydoh]

I recently got a copy of Manjaro with KDE running to try out what games on my windows system could run in Linux and the results were very good. My most frequently played game, actually loads up faster in Manjaro.
.

Did you try Kubuntu? If you can game on Manjaro, you should be able to game on *buntu, barring any hyper-recent hardware. 21.10 should be more than close enough kernel and driver-wise. Heck, I play Doom Eternal on 20.04 LTS (KDE Neon of course), admittedly on my aging RX480, at decent frame rates @ 1080p. I have no Windows reference to go by, as I have never played a Steam game in Windows ever, though I have been using Steam since 2005(!!?!). That's as long as I have been using Kubuntu!

Nvidia users have the same, current drivers in Ubuntu as they do in Arch, or at least Manjaro. Even in 20.04.

[Bings]

Did you try Kubuntu? If you can game on Manjaro, you should be able to game on *buntu, barring any hyper-recent hardware. 21.10 should be more than close enough kernel and driver-wise. Heck, I play Doom Eternal on 20.04 LTS (KDE Neon of course), admittedly on my aging RX480, at decent frame rates @ 1080p. I have no Windows reference to go by, as I have never played a Steam game in Windows ever, though I have been using Steam since 2005(!!?!). That's as long as I have been using Kubuntu!

Nvidia users have the same, current drivers in Ubuntu as they do in Arch, or at least Manjaro. Even in 20.04.

I've played native games on Kubuntu, the performance is fine. The reason I use Manjaro is because I wanted to use a separate OS because I have Kubuntu set up with my audio stuff and I wanted a dedicated OS just for the games. Decided to try something different. I bought a new SSD for it because my storage was a bit of a mess. I have Windows on a 120gb SSD. This is too small to have games on as well, so I had the drive I have kubuntu on, shared with a NTFS partition and then a partition on the HDD for an overflow of games I played least. Which is not ideal with the the difference in performance for games with HDD vs SSD. Then because I had a smaller size partition for Kubuntu, I had data stored for that on other partitions on the HDD. Turned out the Windows games didn't like mapping to the secondary drives in Steam Linux so it all turned out for the good being able to stick them all on one drive.

[claydoh]

yes, Steam on Linux doesn't like NTFS drives. Or is it the reverse? In any case, it sucks for many

Can I ask what sort of audio setup you have? This is one area I an fairly weak on. I have three output sources - HDMI audio to one of my monitors - awful but useful for notification sounds only the onboard audio going to my speakers, and USB audio , and a USB headset (games of course). Plus occasional use of Bluetooth buds.

So nothing complex or difficult to set up.

[Bings]

I use the onboard sound for regular pulseaudio use but I also have Firewire Focusrite interface which is not something that I would recommend getting. Firewire is not going be supported in the upcoming Pipewire sound server AFAIK. Plus Focusrite are zero help with Linux drivers. That said the FFADO people did a good job and there is only a couple of minor things that don't work on it. Firewire is also far from perfect. Most of the time, I have to turn the device on, then put the computer into standby and back on again before it recognises it. It doesn't work from a normal boot. I have multiple inputs on my speakers so I don't have to switch cables.

[GreyGeek]

The "Year of the Linux Desktop" means many things. To some it means the year the Linux DE installations outnumber the WinX installations. Even now, 30 years after Linus created Linux, most people buy hardware that comes with WinX preinstalled. Linux users have to replace WinX with Linux or dual boot. That means that in most cases what ever the Linux install is for a given year one can subtract that count from the WinX installs for that same year. But, that introduces another problem. Microsoft has sales channels and can accurately count the number of sales per year of WinX, even if they don''t report those sales truthfully. They were, for example, counting the WinPhones setting in storage on sellers sites as sales, when they were not. Their lying didn't help.
Linux, on the other hand, can be downloaded as a single ISO and installed on numerous machines. Keeping track of that number is impossible. What ever the number of Linux ISO installs for a year is, that number can be multiplied by 2 to 10X or more because of multiple installs. At my last job before I retired a single ISO was installed on 30 servers.

All that aside, the "year of the Linux desktop" was 1998 ... for me. That was the year I replaced Win95 with RH5.0 and Linux became my daily driver every since. And, I can name a couple dozen folks whose "YOTLD" was when I replaced their WinX installation with Linux, the last dozen or so being Kubuntu.

[Fred47]

The problem with Linux Desktop is my brother and others like him. When his PC acts up he calls Geek Squad and they wipe and load, then charge him for it. I said I would show him how to do that with Windows but he says it's easier to pay someone to do it. It was when Vista came out that I started putting Linux on my PC. Today I keep Win10 on my older laptop which I will be dragging out to do my taxes which is about as much fun as the update process I'll have to go thru.