Glorious Linux Penguin Correspondence

[UrsaTempest]

So, anyone has any experiences with triple booting? I'm trying to boot Windows, Linux Mint and Android (RemixOS) on the same PC, but the grub is giving me trouble.

Specifically, when booting to android, Grub2 calls Windows Bootloader (which redirects it to Unetbootin) to then call android via it's own grub.

Does it need to be soo convoluted?

Click to shrink...

Nah, sorry. Never tried that.

On unrelated note, RPG Maker MV is now available on Linux! ...no, I haven't actually tried it. Way too expensive for me.

 

[Horton]

So, anyone has any experiences with triple booting? I'm trying to boot Windows, Linux Mint and Android (RemixOS) on the same PC, but the grub is giving me trouble.

Specifically, when booting to android, Grub2 calls Windows Bootloader (which redirects it to Unetbootin) to then call android via it's own grub.

Does it need to be soo convoluted?

Click to shrink...

I started with Windows and then added a SSD with Debian on and then boot into either from Grub.

 

[Mu-Sensei]

Well, found a tutorial that explains how to boot it with grub directly. It works quite well.

Heh, now my note has a 128gb SSD with Windows, Linux and Android, and a secondary 2tb hdd for data.

~Happiness~

 

[Dakkaface]

Endless Sky is on Linux - I'm unsure if it was or wasn't on Linux prior to me checking it earlier this week. It didn't make the jump to Linux in my Steam Library, but then the Library is pretty shit about remembering your free or free-to-play games, and Endless Sky is free.

It's a 2d space trading/combat game. Interface is simple, but there's a surprisingly deep system for ship customization and classes. You manage hyperdrive fuel, heat, and energy as stats when flying. There's an actual storyline in the game, but remember to explore and see lots of planets and visit the spaceport on each one to trigger the story events. In addition to the main story there's also numerous smaller arcs on other planets. In my first game I smuggled a slave family off of a pirate world and to safety in the Free Worlds, and helped a scientist investigate claims of aliens in a certain set of systems. I'm running through from the beginning now, having lost my previous saves in the move to Linux.

 

[Lydia]

Endless Sky is on Linux - I'm unsure if it was or wasn't on Linux prior to me checking it earlier this week. It didn't make the jump to Linux in my Steam Library, but then the Library is pretty shit about remembering your free or free-to-play games, and Endless Sky is free.

Click to shrink...

I think I tried it already a year ago, so it should be on linux for a longer time.

 

[Horton]

Age Of Empires 2 HD works quite nicely on my rig with the latest version of Wine. The main issue stopping it from running is to do with the intro videos, so delete them and make sure you've got everything set up through Steam with it and it works fine.

 

[UrsaTempest]

Try installing video codec. That might help.

 

[Dakkaface]

Outland can be picked up for free for the next... 12ish hours. Very nice looking and feeling Metroidvania platformer, with an Ikaruga twist. Controller support too, so you can play it like a platformer is meant to be played instead of dicking around with the keyboard.

 

[Dakkaface]

Payday 2 is currently giving away free copies on Steam. It has a Linux version, but I haven't been able to try it out yet. Will update when I get a chance to install tomorrow.

 

[da3monh0st3d]

Given Mint's security track record I'd recommend Ubuntu over Mint. Both tend to do quite fine supporting proprietary drivers and whatnot.

More of a debian user myself. Gentoo isn't great on old hardware.

 

[UrsaTempest]

Thinking picking RPG Maker VX on upcoming sale. Alternatively, yuri titles aren't bad, but VN has poor replayability value. Thought?

 

[Mu-Sensei]

Given Mint's security track record I'd recommend Ubuntu over Mint. Both tend to do quite fine supporting proprietary drivers and whatnot.

More of a debian user myself. Gentoo isn't great on old hardware.

Click to shrink...

Well, half of my issues with ubuntu are derived of my TI admin, who practically shoves it into our mouths regardless of we needing it or not, but the other half, well, should you need to install some stuff other than what's in the box, especially proprietary stuff, Mint is easier.

Plus, I don't know if it's the version he has running on our workstations, but I get errors when copying text. And Libreoffice starts skipping characters at 120 characters per minute when you're over 50.000 words. That does not speak of good memory and I/O management, and despite Mint being based off it, the same error does not happen to me in there, even running from live DVD.

 

[UrsaTempest]

Strange. I've never got that problem back when I use Ubuntu last year.

 

[Mu-Sensei]

It might be the machine, but all three computers here did that. There's others I didn't use so I cannot comment.

 

[da3monh0st3d]

Well, half of my issues with ubuntu are derived of my TI admin, who practically shoves it into our mouths regardless of we needing it or not, but the other half, well, should you need to install some stuff other than what's in the box, especially proprietary stuff, Mint is easier.

Plus, I don't know if it's the version he has running on our workstations, but I get errors when copying text. And Libreoffice starts skipping characters at 120 characters per minute when you're over 50.000 words. That does not speak of good memory and I/O management, and despite Mint being based off it, the same error does not happen to me in there, even running from live DVD.

Click to shrink...

I try to avoid dealing with proprietary programs, but my latest try at installing Oracle Java on a Ubuntu VM to debug some legacy app worked about as well as could be expected.

If you mean that Mint adds such programs to its package manager, then naturally it would be easier. Package managers are always helpful.

The other problems you mention make it sound a lot like some corporate-packaged version with non-standard repositories. From last time I bought a laptop with some preinstall it took me about five minutes to find out that a lot of packages were just broken, most were outdated and that it was due to the seller providing their own badly maintained repository mirrors. Forum posts noted that just changing the repositories wouldn't work.

I'm not actually sure how someone would do to mess-up the clipboard (copy/paste), most widget toolkits have copying and pasting being simple single function calls. How can you screw that up?

I don't really use Libreoffice all that much these days, but I wouldn't but surprised to find out your workstations have some terribly outdated version of Java and Libreoffice installed. The fact a Live DVD, with the implied read buffering and not quite up-to-date packages, doesn't have that problem seems somewhat damning.

If a live Ubuntu one also works, then I'd suggest getting a new sysadmin. He obviously doesn't know what he's doing.

 

[Mu-Sensei]

If a live Ubuntu one also works, then I'd suggest getting a new sysadmin. He obviously doesn't know what he's doing.

Click to shrink...

Ooh, I wish. But not an option. Pointing it out just had him blame it on me. Also, lately the system just deleted folders for no reason, and thankfully I wasn't the last one to use the PC or I would be blamed for it.

 

[UrsaTempest]

Alright! Time to report for playability of games, now that I've burn dosh in the altar of Gaben!

A Kiss for the Petals - Remembering how we Met: It's Ren'py title, what do you think? Yeah, it works perfectly. No issue whatsoever.
VA-11 Hall-A: Cyberpunk Bartender Action: Haven't play a lot of it, but it works well enough.
Sunless Sea (+ Zubmarine Bundle): It takes quite a long time when I first started, not sure if it's for every New Game or every first time playing. So I terminated it, and SIGSERV fatal error each time after that. After I deleted the /.config/unity3d/Failbetter Games/Sunless Sea/ directory, retry, and let it load, it works perfectly.

RPG Maker MV: Not a game. Works perfectly, as far as I'm aware. Well, not quite perfectly - when I try to deploy my shitty, one-map one-sprite one-char game to web, I can do that. When I opened it, though, I only got 'Can't load actor.json' error. However, deploy to Windows works. Well, 'works' - I only test it via WINE, but there doesn't seem anything wrong.

 

[Dakkaface]

Robocraft is an interesting F2P game I stumbled across while looking through Steam at the sale games. It's Minecraft meets Mechwarrior meets Gorkamorka and it's in open beta.

The game is robots fighting - death match, TDM, capture points, various game modes. everything is voxel based, and you shoot blocks off of your opponent's machine, allowing you to disarm or cripple it. If you stay out of combat for enough time your bot will repair itself. Game hands you three pre-built robots at the start, and they're actually quite strong, if inflexible. I was able to win most of my early vs. AI matches with the starting walker with only a couple losses.

But the real meat of the game is building your own deathmachines in the Minecraft-esque garage. The starting bots are a quadruped, a hover tank and a tracked tank. But if you want to build a bot you have more options than that. Wheels, from little narrow ones to great honking monster truck ones. Sprinter legs for speed. Insect legs to cling to surfaces. Hover fans. Or take to the sky - wings, with jet or prop engines. Helicopter rotors. There's not a huge selection of weapon types, but from what you start with your choice is weak but fast firing lasers or slow firing but AOE spread plasma launchers. In the garage I can see there are also lockon missiles, chain guns, ramming/melee blades, some kind of tracking projectile launcher, close range shotgun blasters, flak cannons and a couple more I'm forgetting.

After every match, and on your first login of the day, you get crates. Pop them open and you will accrue random parts and raw material to manufacture parts. If you are paying for premium time, the crates give you some extra items. The F2P aspect isn't onerous, and It doesn't seem like the RNG is weighted to only putting good stuff in the premium half of crates - I've gotten rare and epic drops in the crates. even a legendary, though it wasn't a super useful one.

It's been fun, though I've only had it for a day or so.

Downsides: The physics engine is a bit wonky, and the driving controls are not as tight as I would like. Driving the walker was easy, as was the hovertank and the heli I built this morning. But the actual tank and a buggy I built were pains to drive. There's something wrong with grip and the way the control scheme decides what is 'forward' while driving wheeled or tracked vehicles, and despite all my guns being pintles, the car/tank wants to move toward what I'm pointing my guns at, rather than straight ahead while I driveby or circle strafe.

There's an error where the cheat prevention tool isn't recognized that can boot you from online games - and doing this will give you a penalty timeout for 'leaving the game early.' On Mint I was able to uninstall and reinstall and it went away, but from what I'm hearing the tool only works on Ubuntu based distros, so this might not work for you if you don't run a relatively recent version of Ubuntu or Mint.

 

[Dakkaface]

I picked up Dex a little while ago because it was on sale and looked interesting.

You're a regular wageslave lady in cyberpunk town when you get woken up in the middle of the night by some dude talking in your head warning you that the cops are coming for you and you need to get out now. What follows is semi standard cyberpunk - you dodge corporate cops and psychotic gangs while linking up with quasi-anarchist hackers, you do odd jobs to scrape together the money for cyberware and equipment to reveal why your life has been turned upside down. Fully voice acted, and mostly well done too.

Played around with it last night during a bout of baby-enforced insomnia and liked it. It has controller support, which is good for a side scroller like this, though the hacking bits are a bit wonky, and the melee combat is a bit unresponsive, though I'm not sure if that's because of the game or because I'm a low level, unskilled scrub with no cyberware as of yet.

Runs fine on Mint 18.1 with AMD gear. There's a weird issue that's come up on multiple different distros and builds where if you try to run it on max settings, the dialogue text and save file list don't display, but it was pretty easily fixed by dropping the settings to medium, and honestly the fact that it's a 2D side scroller means that having super high end graphics isn't really necessary anyway.

It's still on sale til August 21st, if it sounds interesting. I think its easily worth $5.

I also have my eye on Valley, as it's also $5 til the 21st, but haven't picked it up yet and I'm not 100% sure I will.

 

[Dakkaface]

Beat Dex a while ago. Good shit, though the ending left me a bit cold, and the design decision to force you to try alternate playstyles with lowered skills when you're nearly at cap for all your skills near the endgame is irritating as fuck.

That said - if you don't already know, HumbleBundle's Down Under Bundle is entirely Linux friendly. While Hurtworld doesn't have a Linux release, it does have a Linux build. I guess Humble's trying to keep their indie cred after it got out that IGN bought them.

 

[Dakkaface]

Well, it's been a while since I posted here.

Humble Bundle's Indie Bundle 20 is entirely Linux friendly. Just dropped, so there's 13 days and change to pick up anything you feel like.

Not sure about all the games in there, but I've head great things about Tangledeep and Dream Daddy. Getting Over It is from the same dev as QWOP, and I've heard it's just as frustratingly hard, though the learning curve is not as intractable. I've not heard of Overgrowth, but from the description, it sounds like a game I'd enjoy.

I jumped in at $10, but pay-what-you-want makes Tier 1 very attractive.

 

[24caratcoal]

I suppose I'll need to call upon the insufficiently lit powers to get som advice. Meh, I needed to practice my necromancy anyway.

So, rookie linux user here, a step, maybe two above a total noob, but given enough time I can more or less find solutions to any problems I run into. 'Cept for one. Picking a distro. Best advice I've heard is "customize it to fit whatyou need" but unfortunately I'm strapped for time a lot of the time (admittedly I could dick around on Youtube less and possibly cut back on QQ, but I don't wanna) and I'm not really sure where to begin for really figuring out where to begin to actually learn what I need to make my Linux my Linux. So, I kinda need something that runs more or less out of the box. The only way Windows could be any less of an option for me is if I swore a blood feud against the Gates family and swore to destroy Microsoft- I haven't, for those curious, it seems like a bit of an over reaction when I can simply just not buy into their product line with my meager earnings. Much less stressful and far cheaper in the end.

Anyway, my problem is simple. I'm not particularly tech savvy these days (used to be, way back when the power symbol was two distinct, relevant binary symbols on a switch, but that's a tad revealing about my age ) and all I'm really looking for is a distro that works well with a minimal system footprint since I mostly write, read, post and watch porn as I put it in my story thread. That said, Ubuntu grates at me recently (though iirc I loved either 6 or 8 which was my first introduction, it was great) as does Mint (loved 17, not so big on 18 and 19). I know most distros could easily handle what I want from my machine, it's really starting to piss me off that the stable, basic updates are the ones that keep screwing with me since everything is fine before I install the damn things, but I go so long without updating and occasionally I get junk files when I go "oh, that's a neat program that i'll hate in a week" since, again, I'm not so savvy on the best way to get rid of these things, nor am I clear on how to find the "broken" files that are keeping me from properly updating, much less how to fix them an hour before I absolutely must go to sleep because I wake up before 5 in the damn morning because I've got to work.

Anyway, I don't really need an extremely lightweight distro, my machine is only two, maybe three years old and handles fine for my needs. I just don't want to needlessly waste resources on a hundred applications running in the background that don't really do anything for me and I like the idea of trimming away a lot of the excess "fat" that's just kinda there because Ubuntu is a popular base to work from. At the moment I'm kind of debating between Puppy (because it's small, light and I'm pretty sure my computer would react like it's mainlining coke), Bodhi, Elementary (because I am used to the Ubuntu basics) or just going completely off the deep end and booting up Manjaro because I may or may not be going insane at this point and I know that this may well send me off the deep end by breaking my computer with updates like I hate.

I'd appreciate some feedback/advice on the matter since I'm really getting tired of distro hopping and I just kind of want to get things working properly so that I can get back to writing again. Being able to game wouldn't hurt my feelings either, but I don't have much in the way of games these days and I've got no idea how well you can mod skyrim on linux (modding is a must for me, I'm not happy unless I leave a trail of dead enemies naked in my wake). Either way, if you guys have other/better* suggestions, I'd love to hear them.

*Better being a relative term, as I'm aware the best linux is the one you make for yourself and your needs and again don't have the time to do that yet or the knowledge of where to even start.

 

[alethiophile]

If you want something that just works, has everything you need, and runs on any modern system, I normally recommend Fedora. Debian is also good for this, but often doesn't have software as recent.

If you want something extremely customizable that demands you put in the work to customize it, I recommend Arch. This is what I run on my servers.

If you want to go crazy and start chanting dread invocations of Cthulhu at R'lyeh, I recommend Gentoo.

 

[24caratcoal]

If you want something that just works, has everything you need, and runs on any modern system, I normally recommend Fedora. Debian is also good for this, but often doesn't have software as recent.

If you want something extremely customizable that demands you put in the work to customize it, I recommend Arch. This is what I run on my servers.

If you want to go crazy and start chanting dread invocations of Cthulhu at R'lyeh, I recommend Gentoo.

Click to shrink...

Cool, thanks. It'll be a while before I start trying to waken Great Cthulhu from his slumber, but I'm sure I'll fail my SAN check eventually and try my hand at it. For now I'll look into Fedora and see if it suits my needs, if not then I may just have to start checking some Tomes of Forbidden Knowledge or something.

 

[24caratcoal]

*Inadvertently awakens the kraken through a moment of sheer impulsive stupidity after a failed SAN check; somehow appeases it with a good dusting.*

I freely admit, the stupid shit I sometimes do to my computers is exactly why I've never pursued a career in them, holy shit was that close. Good lesson in not losing my patience with the machines no matter how many times I fail to convert a flash drive into a boot disk because it's being a pain in my ass and not working properly.

 

[alethiophile]

Ask me how many times I've accidentally overwritten my boot sector with a mistyped dd command.

(the answer is "too many".)

 

[24caratcoal]

Came a hairs breadth from wrecking the physical drive before I somehow un-clucked the fuster I made.

also, holy crap was that a fast install, I literally was only halfway done writing that last sentence before it got done... i really hope that that's the way fedora normally installs and not a sign that I really fucked up...

Edit: well, nothing's caught fire just yet and it loaded up properly...

Edit 2: well, apparently the "window scaling" option is mostly there to screw with new users. Probably not, but I didn't even last ten minutes before it halway broke my desktop because everything was instantly too large because I clicked on it like a fool thinking it'd be easy to revert. Fun fact, it's not.

 

[Shandi]

snip

Click to shrink...

What about Pop!_os? It seems to basically be better Ubuntu, works out of the box is snappy, isn't too bloated (though you may consider GNOME to be bloat), and you get to enjoy the wide support of Ubuntu ecosystem.
It comes with all the drivers, even nvidia on the iso you can even switch between graphics cards right from the menu(at least if you have Intel + nvidia).
Fedora seems good but I would caution against the KDE edition (for F30) it was rather wonky, not sure if it was specific to me but just in case.

MX Linux seems to be really popular, and seems to work out of the box + it is Debian based.

 

[alethiophile]

well, apparently the "window scaling" option is mostly there to screw with new users. Probably not, but I didn't even last ten minutes before it halway broke my desktop because everything was instantly too large because I clicked on it like a fool thinking it'd be easy to revert. Fun fact, it's not.

Click to shrink...

For reference, I highly recommend running one of the "classic"/"light" desktop environments, like XFCE or MATE, rather than the default GNOME 3 or KDE equivalent. Modern DEs have kind of succumbed to the Microsoft temptation of making UIs that suck because mobile is the future, or something.

 

[24caratcoal]

What about Pop!_os? It seems to basically be better Ubuntu, works out of the box is snappy, isn't too bloated (though you may consider GNOME to be bloat), and you get to enjoy the wide support of Ubuntu ecosystem.
It comes with all the drivers, even nvidia on the iso you can even switch between graphics cards right from the menu(at least if you have Intel + nvidia).
Fedora seems good but I would caution against the KDE edition (for F30) it was rather wonky, not sure if it was specific to me but just in case.

MX Linux seems to bew really popular, and seems to work out of the box + it is Debian based.

Click to shrink...

Went xfce. My hardware can handle more, but I like salvaging the extra power. One of those moments of "why waste it if I don't have to". I'm actually trying to see if I can't get majaro to make a proper GD boot disk since I want to give it a whirl before handing myself over completely to the forces of insufficient lighting. I new ten minuts in that Fedora isn't the one for me just yet, buuut I'm keeping a copy around for the inevitable crash that will eventually happen that locks away my data behind a failed OS. It's got a neat little feature where you can pretty much instantly mount your harddrive from the liveboot and that's really useful in my opinion.

For reference, I highly recommend running one of the "classic"/"light" desktop environments, like XFCE or MATE, rather than the default GNOME 3 or KDE equivalent. Modern DEs have kind of succumbed to the Microsoft temptation of making UIs that suck because mobile is the future, or something.

Click to shrink...

Heh, yeah, with so many choices, I've spent most of the last week researching what DE I want. KDE is too much for me, GNOME isn't my style and Cinammon has lost its charm after a couple years. XFCE seemed like the best choice since it doesn't clutter things up too much and as I mentioned, I don't like wasting power of frivolous things too much. I mean I like it when things look nice and I go "Oooh, so shiney" when I see neat looking things, but I'm a functional sort of guy at the end of the day. I like things to function well far more than I like them to look pretty, wonderful if they do both, but function before form. That said, I'mma 'bout to strangle this damn flash drive for being a horrific pain in my ass, after all, it's not murder if it's an inanimate object.