Asklemmy

Fucking up my UEFI on my laptop, making it difficult to boot into Linux.

Undoing that.

These are my list of changes. I still don't use it full-time but I use it outside working hours. I use Ubuntu 23.04 and I dual boot with windows 11:

Install gnome extensions and “dash to panel”

Install Chrome from google site (.deb package)

Same for Steam

Install mangohud sudo apt install mangohud Source: https://github.com/flightlessmango/MangoHud#debian-ubuntu

Disable Intel Bluetooth device so the realtek one is the only one. (Now there is a new option to also disable Intel Wifi adapter in the same word~ document).

Change default display for “Lockscreen”

Change the local time ( timedatectl set-local-rtc 1 --adjust-system-clock enabled RTC in local time.

For Ryujinx I added this “vm.max_map_count=524288” to /etc/sysctl.conf because it was saying it fixes a crash with TOTK

Disk Performance (System hanging with encryption on the SSD): Disabled the ‘no-read-workqueue" and "no-write-workqueue" sudo gedit /etc/crypttab Added "discard" "no-read-workqueue" and "no-write-workqueue" at the end of the string.Looks like this: dm_crypt-0 UUID=4170cddc-59a8-4f4e-afdb-125f70004fef none luks,discard,no-read-workqueue,no-write-workqueue sudo update-initramfs -u -k all sudo reboot

Enable OC en AMD card (Source: https://linuxgamingcentral.com/posts/increase-power-on-amd-gpus/) sudo gedit /etc/default/grub Somewhere in that file should be a GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT= line, followed by a pair of quotation marks. In my case it looks like this: GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash" We add amdgpu.ppfeaturemask=0xffffffff at the end. Example: GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash amdgpu.ppfeaturemask=0xffffffff" Sudo update-grub

Install codec bluetooth AAC for Pixel Buds (codec is lighter than SBC-XQ)

Be sure that bluetooth dongle MPOW is on USB2 and no USB3 which causes interferences (at least in Linux I can suffer it, but not in Windows).

Do the tutorial to make BT devices to work with “Dual Boot” between Ubuntu and W11 without needing to re-pair them everytime (for dualsense and pixelbuds).

Enable AMD ROCM (used to run apps like SDXL).

It's been a couple years since I tried maining Linux (Ubuntu). The state of Linux gaming was definitely less than today. Back then, Apex Legends that I played with friends didn't support Linux yet.

Probably the main reasons for me personally is that I was dual booting from a secondary SSD, so Windows was just always there to switch to if I ran into Linux hiccups I didn't want to deal with. Also I remember the secondary SSD was only 256gb so I ran into some problems with that.

As for what's preventing me from switching today

• I've heard Linux VR isn't quite there yet.
• Switching over is just a big task I don't want to deal with right now. It could be done, but I'm currently entrenched in Windows. I want to eventually.

Got a long one. I've gone back and forth a few times (I've landed on a dual-boot Windows 10 and Arch setup, maining Arch) (btw) and my biggest takeaway is this:

Mainstream Linux distros, like Mint, do have admittedly very polished basic experiences. The problem is, though, is that it breaks down as soon as you introduce it to unique use-cases or hardware features.

Linux, specifically stable distros like Mint, are already ready for mainstream use for people who use it for basic stuff like email, web browsing, desktop social media like Facebook, and so on. It's also very usable for gaming, as we saw with Steam Deck, but still has issues primarily with adoption.

But if you have for example, a 2-in-1 laptop or a VR setup, things break down very quick. I had to configure my 2-in-1 manually and not everything works still, and VR is a joke if you don't have a Vive or Index, and even that's iffy. SteamVR is still extremely buggy and missing features.

Linux is, by design, configurable and open. This is both its greatest strength and weakness, because it allows users to set up their systems how they want, but only if they know how to. A truly "user-friendly" distro is simply not possible if you retain the configurability, which Valve knows, and is why SteamOS is locked down the way it is. This model is growing in popularity but it's not quite here yet.

At the end of the day, I still use it despite these shortcomings because I feel it's important. I should be able to look at the code and know what my machine is doing, and trust that it respects my rights and freedoms. This is why Linux, and maybe BSD, have to win. But for now, I still have a drive with Windows 10 because it's just simply not a full experience yet, and that's okay. For now

Broken bootloader.

Tried out a few times in the 90s and early 2000s and the biggest barrier was lack of support for video cards and other hardware that I needed for gaming. It was also more complex to set up at that time, and windows was both easier to work with and resolving issues was easier to figure out.

In all cases I was dual booting and after a while just stopped trying with Linux because the other option was easier, not because I disliked Linux.

Haven't tried recently because windows 10 and 11 have been rock stable for me and Windows Defender plus Firefox and ublock origin have made it safe to use windows. While I thought about giving it a go again recently, I just don't have a reason to switch when things are going to well and I don't have time anymore to just fiddle with it due to other priorities.

I do keep an eye out though in case I do a media server or something as that would be a good use case for another go.

Admittedly, it's been a long time since I did anything with linux, but I have done some. I'm not a developer, I don't know how to write any code. I know some DOS scripting and now some powershell. If I need to do anything slightly different with linux, it would require me to learn a whole new scripting language, and all of the documentation I've seen for anything linux seems to be written for an audience of people who already really know what they're doing in linux and just need a specific reference material.

I've had mainly Windows machines all my life, I have been forced by necessity to figure out how to do what I need on those. I imagine if I'd had linux machines since ... 1995? I would feel as comfortable with linux now. But the barrier to entry to even having a linux machine, let alone making it do what I needed it to do, back in the late 90s, early 2000s, was way higher than it was for Windows. It arguably still is.