My experience with Linux Day 3
My experience with Linux Day 3
Recap. I'm a relative noob to linux, but have been trying it on and off since around 2005 when Ubuntu was first making waves, to test the viability of Linux as a Windows replacement for me personally. I've been documenting my relative impressions and process so far.
Day 1 - Nvidia driver issues and issues attaching a NAS drive.
Day 2 - Solved Nvidia issues with Pop!OS transition from Fedora (Nobara was totally non-functional for me), figured out NAS drive was sambav1 drive and was able to get those packages installed and enabled. Also solved external hdd connection issues with steam by using steam console to force the mounted drive, which is now working.
Which brings us to Day 3.
I wish I could say that solving those issues was the end of it, I wish I could say we were double rainbow gold across the board right now. But these things are not so.
Current issues plaguing me.
- I have 2 'monitors' one which is a samsung odyssey ultrawide. Obviously my primary for gaming and work. Mounted on the wall behind and over it is a 55in TV. It's awesome cause they almost perfectly line up, but the 55in TV is a touch hard to read text on in 4k. So my usual solution is to set scaling on the second monitor to 150%. Initially I couldn't figure it out, in windows the setting was under the Nvidia controls, in Linux it's under the xorg config. After some fucking around I got it working!
Holy shit does that break things. Steam, which I have installed, and have installed a few games to my external HDD and local SSD for testing has a super weird error where the text and icons go absolutely nano, and even when you resize the screen the icons and text do not resize. I found a sort of fix, where you can add a manual entry to a steam file described here but while this did sorta fix it, the problem persisted in any window that steam launched like friends lists.
After hours of digging further I came up with this. It's a known issue in steam and has been for 2 years. There is no fix, for any version of linux. Rather than deal with it or go further, I just set the scaling to 100 and said fuck it. I may lower the resolution on the upper monitor from 4k to 1080p to make things easier to read in a way that doesn't break Linux.
- I use NordVPN, which I guess I'm now taking recommendations on what to switch to. Using NordVPN on this is through command line with no GUI which annoys me, because I actually liked the windows GUI for a number of reasons. But there's also two glaring functionality issues. When I connect to a NordVPN server it breaks my NAS connection. So I checked fstab and I'm connected via local IP 192.168.1.1 so it looks like NordVPN connections break my local connection in name resolution? How that's possible is beyond me and I'm a networking guy, that just makes zero sense. I use a VPN for the obvious sailing of the high seas, so this creates an issue cause I usually just had it download locally then upload automatically, looks like I'll be doing this manually. Oh yeah and have no access to media while using piracy. I also liked just leaving the VPN active for anon browsing, but guess I can't do that and access my stuff locally. So annoying.
So my goal has been to get my media and games working. So far, aces across the board on VLC on PopOS! Failure on Fedora. Now, let's try a game. Easily my most played 3 games are the Total War Warhammer series, Elite Dangerous with a HOTAS setup... so we'll be trying that later, cause I still need to set up the HOTAS system, something I'm super duper looking forward to. And BattleTech with the 3062 mod, because I played with the minis as a kid and it's amazing to see it fully programmed into a game. I couldn't afford many mechs as a kid so collecting them in game is cathartic.
I know this sounds rambling, but these are the things that tie me to windows. Getting all this working in Linux is kind of necessary for me to remain here.
So let's start with Warhammer, since out of the gate it's going to require the least configuration. I also figure since it's a AAA game with tons of players, it's probably the best optimized. I'm also watching The Expanse on the big screen, so streaming 4k video to a second monitor and typing this at the same time. I just finished the first battle on an Immortal Empires campaign, and performance wise, just wow. I mean I was doing this from sort of thing from windows as well, but yeah, running the same graphics there's a performance jump while the game is running. However on the con side... I was running it like this off the external HDD before and while load times are definitely increased compared to the SSD there is definitely some lag when going from battles to the campaign overview. From a diagnostics standpoint I'm going to have to check to make sure that it's reading at a 'high speed usb' connection. Also another theory is linux takes more time to compile assets because it's undergoing some kind of conversion or something, but once compiled it runs better. That's my theory at least, or where I'd start tugging that performance issue.
This is kind of a wow moment for me. I'm going to cautiously say that switching to Linux is a real possibility in a longer run scenario. However, there are still tons of isos and other... acquired games that I have that aren't running. And while I do like steam I also don't want to be locked to it and other pay stores. So tomorrow will be trying to fix whatever issue NordVPN is having, and trying to figure out some installs from isos and exes, which should be super fun from what I've seen.
For the rest of tonight I'm just going to enjoy a campaign of warhammer and watch my stories, and marvel at the fact that I'm doing it on Linux. I never thought I'd see this day.
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Are you using gnome? Gnome is fucking awful with fractional scaling, especially of multiple monitors. So much tearing.
Try KDE, as long as your plasma version is >= 5.27
so it looks like NordVPN connections break my local connection in name resolution? How that’s possible is beyond me and I’m a networking guy
This is call "split tunnel". By default almost all VPNs should default to full tunnel because it's more secure. If windows isn't, it's doing the less secure thing. Someone else gave a nordvpn command, but if that doesn't work "split tunnel" is the keyword to search.
nordvpn whitelist add 192.168.1.0/24
Fixed my Nord issue, someone did say something about lan discovery mode being a thing, which, as a quality of life thing should be enabled by default I would think, but whatever.
I'm sticking with this distro for a minute, for now I mostly care about text in websites on the big screen and ctrl mousewheel is working fine for zooming a bit for now. Right now I'm all about trying to just get settled and familiar with something before hopping around too much. Pop has been pretty good to me so far. I did try Fedora's KDEPlasma spin, it did NOT me and I didn't like it.
Do you have a recommendation for an Nvidia setup should I be interested?
You could theoretically install KDE on your existing system. I don't know what repos Pop uses though. A quick look shows it's based on Ubuntu 22.04, which is pretty ancient and doesn't even have close to 5.27 yet. I think a lot of the problems people like you switching to linux run into is you're running more unique setups, but trying to run ancient distros. Ubuntu 22.04 is over a year and a half old at this point, and was frozen well before then. So any kernel updates or tool updates for new hardware/software just aren't in your repos. And it's why non-rolling release distros are a horrible choice for desktops IMO.
I would normally suggest using arch, even though I know I'll get shit for suggesting that. It's not the most friendly distro, especially in terms of setup (there's no graphical live environment or installer, though there's now a command line installer that works great). An alternative is opensuse tumbleweed. It's KDE native, and a rolling distro so should have all the latest packages. https://get.opensuse.org/tumbleweed/ I've never personally used it, but I've heard good things.
All in all, the choice of distro is almost meaningless. What you're really just deciding is how ancient you want your packages (as well as the package manager). (From arch, which means bleeding edge. To Ubuntu LTS, meaning years old). As well as just some default apps. For example, you could install KDE on your existing Pop OS, but you would get 5.24, which I don't think you'd like, it's quite old at this point. And distros like arch don't even come with a DE, you choose that yourself.
As for nvidia, I've never had to do more than install the proprietary drivers. And on my work machine which is ubuntu (unfortunately) there's an nvidia app that gets installed with the drivers that you can set the "Performance Mode" profile. It fixes some of the tearing, but not all. My 2nd monitor isn't great.
Do you know if you're running X11 or wayland? That's a whole other can of worms, but you might have better luck running whichever one you're not running. Though again if you're running 22.04, your wayland version will be quite old. Which honestly might be a lot of your problem. Wayland is brand new, and there's been a LOT of fixes on it. And the latest versions might totally fix your issues.
My first experience was with Fedora. The very first install I tried was the KDEPrism version.
You're really not selling me here. You had me worried for a second with the old version of Ubuntu 22. But that's just when they diverged, they have a rolling 6 month release as well and are an active OS after my noob few seconds of googling. I also see dev comments that state that they when they release those updates they're basically modified versions of whatever Ubuntu is releasing. So looks like for all intents and purposes I'm on the latest version of ubuntu. Reading comparisons between the two, this is kind of a slightly stripped down and debloated ubuntu, which almost makes me want to give that a look.
You're definitely not going to sell me soon on a version that depends on command line installation. That's just ridiculous in 2023 dawg. You're talking to a Windows refugee, who admittedly knows enough about DOS and writes his own .bat files and other stuff, but for a lot of things, I want it as dumb and easy as possible. Pop!OS is doing a great job of that.
I also like that they sell their own hardware. It means they have commercial reasons to want their product to work as best it can, and since I have a pretty close hardware profile to their Nvidia setup, I'm actually even more sold because of the sheer level of compatibility of my existing hardware after looking for a minute.
Pop uses x11 by default but can be switched to Wayland at the boot screen by clicking the gear and selecting Wayland. So looks like either or on the fly.
What was your issue with KDE on fedora? It was likely running an old version of stuff.
I wasn't necessarily suggesting arch, especially if you feel that strongly about a graphical installer. IMO it's better, but that's fine. Opensuse is also a rolling distro with a graphical installer and everything you would expect, but it has all the latest tools rather than ancient ones.
And I didn't see where Pop was on 6 month cyles. Their "download" link shows it's based on ubuntu 22.04, which like I said has tools from over a year and a half ago. ONLY security fixes get included in those repos. And if you're using wayland, wayland from 1.5 years ago is very different from today.
I got KDE running in safe graphics mode, followed the steps to load the nvidia graphics driver, and the instant I did, black screen lol. I followed the exact same process on Workstation 39 and it worked, so I'm not sure what the issue was.
Likely old kernels or old drivers. I suggest trying opensuse tumbleweed. There really shouldn't be anything more than just installing the drivers. Documented here for suse https://en.opensuse.org/SDB:NVIDIA_drivers (you'd follow the Yast guide for doing it in the GUI).
I appreciate the recommendations. So far Pop!OS has been working great for me. It's a great replacement environment, I have all my stuff more or less configured, and am still getting things deployed. Once I'm more familiar with Linux I fully do intend to revisit this and try some other OS's out, but for this moment I'm pretty happy with how things are working.
If you're happy, that's fine. Sounded like you weren't happy though
Mixed feelings. And we're still very much so in the beginner phase. I can stand issues with scaling since the fix was to set both to the same and just deal with it for now. That's fine. Getting all my other stuff, games, various devices, all that is much more important right now. Once I know how to do all that and feel familiar with running as much command line as linux demands, then we can move on.