this post was submitted on 30 Dec 2023

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Usually I expect to have to troubleshoot problems with Linux (lemmy.ml)

submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I've been daily driving Pop!_OS for about two years. I've had to troubleshoot and look up how to solve problems here and there, but it has largely been pain free. About eight months ago I had to dual boot Windows 10 because my wife wanted to play Hogwarts and for the life of me I couldn't get Linux to stream to the client connected to the Xbox controller and TV upstairs.

Well, today she goes to boot up the game, and the lag is beyond terrible. None of the settings I try change anything, and even trying Sunshine/moonlight instead of Steam Link is only a bit better. I decided to try booting the game in Linux, and lo and behold, the game is once again liquid smooth via Steam Link client, and whatever issues I ran into 8 months ago are gone.

I'm not used to Windows being the OS I have issues with.

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 10 months ago (4 children)

It really is kinda bonkers how much Linux has improved in the time I've been using it (since windows 10 came out and I objected to the way they did things). The first year or so, I'd have to always tweak something, have some kind of issues with programs, etc.

But the most recent install I did (ThinkPad, which is kinda cheating lol) it was zero effort. Install, get my settings where I prefer them, start using the machine. Haven't had a single issue at all. Haven't done much gaming on it, because laptop, but within its hardware limits, it even does that flawlessly.

The only complaint I have about Linux is the lack of serious music programs. I'm a bit obsessive about how I manage my music though, so I'm one of the few people I've seen complain about it. Most folks are fine with whatever music player they run across. I've run across a supposed way to get musicbee running right on Linux, which I'll try next time I'm bored. If that works, I have almost zero reason to ever touch windows again.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I've turned to downloading my music and using strawberry. The UI is a little outdated, but it has good functionality for what it is.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

Big fan of Strawberry, the UI looks pretty bad by default (on windows) but since I'm on KDE Plasma it follows my system Qt color scheme which looks nice. Still not super fancy but it works well. For managing my music I mostly just use a file browser and kid3qt or picard for metadata editing.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

For your music problem look into running a plex media server and using plex amp to play the music. It may not be super practical if you don't have a selfhosting setup. But its so far above anything else I have tried. Plus I can steam to my phone as well.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

As an open source alternative, I prefer a Jellyfin server and then using Feishin as a client. Nicer UI and options. Plex is a major no-no for me since they’ve started emailing people what they’ve been watching on their own servers. Privacy issues and required online login/plex-owned accounts for my own media? No thank you.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)

I truly wish jellyfin was even close to plex. I'd love to use the open source option. I run a jellyfin server along with plex, but have so many issues with it + the UI is worse. As for the emailing people what you watch. It should have been opt out, but its really easy to turn off in settings. Also I like the plex logins going through their servers. It adds more security to the port I have open. If their server goes down(which is really rare) I don't lose access to my media because I have at least 3 other ways to access my server. Including jellyfin. Which I use tailscale to access so I dont have the port open.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

Totally agree with this. Plex is at the top for me for all my media needs. Jellyfin is backup which I've rarely had to use. The UI and transcoding seems far superior in Plex. The opt out is not a big deal. Easy and secure remote access is a big plus. Subtitle downloading works much better in Plex. I'm sure one day Jellyfin will give fair competition but right now Plex is way in the lead.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

What is worse about jellyfins UI? I prefer it to plex.

And in some instances, like on my tablet the player is so much better. Slide up and down for volume and brightness, tap to go forward or back, or even change the player to something you like.

So I got to think it's an issue with what your client is?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

It really is crazy how far it's come. I started fooling around a bit with Linux back when Ubuntu 16.04 was released, but didn't really get into it until 20.04. Valve and proton are incredible on the gaming side.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

Same, but I switched even earlier, back in 2010 or so. Gaming sucked, but there were still a few decent games released with Linux support before Steam on Linux became a thing (e.g. Minecraft). My main issues were WiFi (bought an Intel card to fix it) and sound (messed with settings until that worked), mostly because my laptop was a POS HP. But once it was set up, it was trouble free.

Fast forward to 2013, I got my second laptop (ThinkPad) and had zero issues with Linux and gaming got better (Steam for Linux was a thing). In 2018 when Proton was a thing, I built a nicer PC to play games with, and selection has only gotten better.

I haven't ever needed to mess with sound since 2010, Wi-Fi has gotten better even on crappy cards, and everything is so stable on the rolling release distro I use (Tumbleweed), so I really don't see where this "Linux is hard" stuff comes from. You literally install the OS, install your apps, and you're done. Almost no fiddling as long as you get the right graphics drivers installed (and you don't need to do that if you get AMD). Laptops with switching graphics are probably still an issue, but imo you really shouldn't be buying a laptop for gaming. A decent desktop PC is something like $1k if you have zero parts, and a few hundred every few years to stay current in the mid range, which is where you'll be on a laptop anyway.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Windows troubleshooting always seems to get a free pass from the same people that hate on Linux for reasons two decades out of date.

I spend way more time reading through whatever that Ms support forum with clueless shill tech support advice that never seems to solve the problem than with Linux. Meanwhile searching for distro + problem more often than not gives me the one liner terminal fix with explanation for those that could be bothered to read and avoid repeats.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago

Yep. My whole career is based on fixing MS bullshit. So I guess I should be somewhat grateful for the turd.

That said, Ive had some perplexing issues with Pop!_OS myself, but was able to get it fixed by searching or posting questions here. So far it's been a pleasant experience.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago

Totally 100% prefer distro or distro family + problem to anything in MS forums. My problem solving literacy has improved so much just by getting smart on terminal commands. I am by no means a pro and have a long way to go before I would consider myself even moderately proficient, but goddamn is the terminal satisfying.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Lmao I love how different people's experiences can be, the fact that windows has so many problems is why I prefer Linux over windows.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago

I went over initially because I heard rumors of Windows 11 adding ads to the file viewer and that scared me. I prefer not having my hands held anymore.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Not sure it has anything to do with windows sadly. HL is terrible written, there’s posts all over the internet about it. It works fine on my computer and stutters and lags on my wife’s. There’s some mods you can install to fix some issues, but she has an amd gpu and it seems that that’s part of the problem.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Your guess is as good as mine. It runs well on my windows partition and probably slightly faster on Linux. I tried streaming several games, and they all lagged terribly. I tried resetting the wireless router, and installed Sunshine/Moonlight. With S/M, it would be fine and then about every 30-35 seconds it would lag for about 5-7 seconds. It was able to stream fairly smoothly at 720p if set to "performance" in the moonlight settings.

Everything points towards a slow local wifi connection, or something hogging the bandwidth in the background. I ran a speed test that came back with 250Mbit download/35Mbit upload, so it didn't seem like that was the problem. I also turned off OneDrive and ensured no updates or downloads were happening concurrently. I haven't tried doing a pcap because that's beyond the amount of effort I really want to put into it.

I don't really use windows for anything other than a handful of games I was streaming up to the steam link upstairs, so the easy option is to wipe it and start over I think.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

That would be really strange if it was tied to Internet speed. I have a unifi setup and we have synchronous gigabit internet. Also both our gaming computers are wired so they normally get 800-1000mbps.

From what I can tell it’s literally just hl being badly optimized. There doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason

One thing I did discover is that you need at least 32gb of ram. It still stutters, but was less.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

I was thinking more along the lines of whether my local wifi throughput was a bottleneck, not the connection on the other side of the router. As for the RAM, I'm sitting at 24gb, which runs smoothly on the host machine on both Linux and windows. Even when it is streaming the game upstairs, the host framerate is smooth--its the client that is stuttering if the host is running HL from windows.

Like I said, very strange all around.