I’m sure no one in this community needs to be convinced to try Linux. But I love it every time I see a non-Linux person trying Linux and showing other people that it works. (Also nice to see that Jeff Gerstmann is still around and doing alright after getting screwed over by Gamespot for like 15 years.)
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Haven’t heard of that guy since Giant Bomb - of which I haven’t even thought about for years.
I don’t think it’s as good as it used to be. It got acquired by Gamespot, then Gamespot was acquired by a few different private equity firms, so of course there were layoffs across all of their sites, and Gerstmann was one of them.
They’re 100% independent now. And doing some great stuff. GB never left you. You just left them.
Oh damn, that’s awesome! Very much a reversal of how it has been going lately with other gaming websites.
edit: OK now that you say it, I do remember hearing something about this. I must have forgotten. I listen to Aftermath’s podcast and probably heard it there. https://aftermath.site/podcasts/giant-bomb-fandom-sale-independent-media/
Yet here I am. I have been using Ubuntu and Mint for several years on my dual boot systems. Installed CachyOS on my gaming rig yesterday because I would like to ditch Windows altogether.
First install failed because it didn’t like using its own recommended btrfs. Tried again, used ext4, that worked. The system ran and I attempted to install some basic software that I currently use. VLC was easy enough, but I diidn’t even manage to install the second software, Orca Slicer. I know that CachyOS is based on Arch and I cannot use apt anymore, but I have no clue what flatpak images are and how I install or use them.
I consider myself not to be the dumbest possible Windows user, and if I can’t figure that stuff out within 10-15 minutes, I don’t know how I’m supposed to spread the gospel. If you download a .exe installer and click “Next” a few times, you usually have the software you want ready to go. Why is that stuff so hard unless said software is some small thing that’s been in the official repos for ages?
CachyOS is not ready for beginners, the clue you ignored was in the installer.
CachyOS is never going to be ready for beginners, because that’s not its target audience.
Depends. I’d consider myself still a Linux beginner and CachyOS is the perfect fit for me while Bazzite or Mint wasnt.
But i was already pretty geeky when it came to computers. Just not Linux levels of geeky. But i fucked around with Windows quite a bit. pOweRuSer or whatever. Also i’d say i’m capable of reading documentation/wikis. Idk Cachy strikes the perfect balance for me(!). Most stuff was super easy to setup. For other things i had to do a bit of reading in the great cachy/arch wikis. For some of the more niche stuff i want to do on my PC it was even easier than on Bazzite or Ubuntu based distros. There are still some guardrails and if i dont want to fuck around it just keeps working while i just use the computer(so far atleast).
Would i recommend Cachy to everyone? No. But if you are curious and nerdy enough its a damn great starting point IMHO.
I think beginners usually refers to casuals but Great point
The “you’re too dumb” argument doesn’t help people like myself. I need an OS that is not Microslop, but still works after some setup. I’m not asking for much, just working drivers and some basic software that I use besides gaming.
That’s why you shouldn’t drive a 1969 Mustang project car immediately after getting your licence. You figure it out on a 2003 Honda Civic, then move on to bigger things when you have both the basic knowledge and the willingness and ability to advance your knowledge.
You claim that installing with btrfs failed. Did you look into what the error messages meant? You claim to not know what Flatpak is. Did you look it up?
RTFM is not just a thought-terminating cliché used by elitist wankers. It’s a philosophy you have to live by if you want to play with powerful toys. Look at manuals, the Arch Wiki, Stackoverflow, or ask a clanker. If that’s beyond your abilities at this time, you’ll either have to improve yourself, or surrender for the time and try a more beginner-friendly OS.
I just called you a beginner…
This thread is quite literally about Bazzite
OP topic is about Bazzite.
Posts comment about how entirely different Linux distro has some problems.
Thinks ‘if you download a .exe and click next a few times, it usually works’.
Has no idea what a flatpak is or how they work.
Interperets being called a beginner at linux and being told said entirely different linux distro is not for beginners as being called dumb.
… sigh.
Yeah, you are at beginner at linux.
Your experience with Windows as an OS is almost entirely irrelevant to any ability you may or may not have with linux.
Maybe either keep sticking with distros oriented toward beginners at linux, or, learn more about and become more experienced with linux, so you can use distros that are not targetted at beginners, where more advanced users are assumed to be capable of doing some of their own investigation and problem solving.
As an example:
… why didn’t the intial btrfs attempt at setting up cachyOS work?
If you were a more advanced linux user, you might have actually noted a specific error that was thrown out, been able to do some research into why that error got thrown, where the problem stems from, what the state of the filesystem was prior to attempting and failing to format it, what part of the formatting process failed, whether or not some hardware incompatibility or error was part of the problem, etc.
If that all sounds too complicated or like gobbledygoop… you are a beginner at linux.
The vast majority of Arch based distros are basically experimental, as in, you should expect them to break and often not work properly, for one reason or another.
I’ll add my own anecdote since I installed CachyOS a few weeks ago and have used it daily since. Have some experience with Linux Mint from before, but in the past few years I’ve almost exclusively used Windows.
For me, everything worked with default settings out the box, but I did see the wiki specifically mention “use btrfs if it works, if not, use…”. I even got my *arr stack and Jellyfin up and running relatively painlessly. And some games and programs not made for Arch/Linux.
The thing is I say relatively painlessly, but some of them involved a day of tinkering, diving into the Cachy and Arch wiki pages, etc. I’m fine with that, I find it fun. It’s the price you pay for wanting the benefits of the distro (performance, customisability, etc). And I was very clearly warned going into it, which TBF almost made me not go with an Arch-based distro.
So yeah, they are made a bit painful to use on purpose. Or rather, it’s a side effect of the core philosophies. It’s not for everyone, but it does cater to specific groups, and I think that is good. Kinda like how not every fediverse instance is for everyone (see also: Mastodon vs Lemmy vs Piefed)
I would still without a doubt recommend Linux Mint if someone wants an easy and painless experience after Windows. Heck, because of apt it’s even easier than Windows a lot of the time. And for the stuff that doesn’t work, it’ll happen if Linux gets more traction. Sadly we’re just not there yet.
(Though apparently the main thing out of everything I use in work and outside of it, it’s damned Xbox controllers that I have yet to get around to making function)
I don’t think people who aren’t willing or lack the knowledge to tinker should use anything Arch.
CachyOS doesn’t support Flatpak out-of-the-box because they think their repositories have everything.
I’m not even sure if they support AppImage by default, but both of those installations is available with Orca Slicer on their official website.
If you wanna continue with CachyOS and use Orca Slicer:
sudo pacman -S flatpakDownload Orca Slicer Linux Flatpak x64
flatpak install \<path-to-flatpakref-file>I’ve never tried Catchy, but everyone does seem to rave about it. Fedora, however, has been an excellent experience for me.
Ignore these guys. I’m on bazzite. I write kubernetes code in go/rust all day. IE a giant ass nerd Linux contributor.
Still a buggy mess. Bluetooth doesn’t work oy motherboard, display doesn’t work if I turn off the display, and I need to run scripts on boot to enable my audio on every boot.
Despite improvements from valve over the past few years, it’s not ready for normies and these nerds will gaslight you all day.
You ain’t dumb, this shit is a mess. Many times by design.
… Valve does not directly maintain or update or publish Bazzite.
Bazzite is an atomic version of Fedora, made by basically the Bazzite team… SteamOS, which is actually developed by Valve, is basically an atomic version of Arch.
Are you using Bazzite, or SteamOS?
Also: Display doesn’t work if I turn off the display.
… what?
You… would you expect a thing to work if you turned it off?
Now, bluetooth not working on your mobo could be a legitimate driver compatibility issue, and it also sounds like you’re having similar weirdness with your audio drivers.
What is your actual OS?
What is your actual mobo?
Bazzite is building off of the, maybe literally, billion dollars valve is pumping into the ecosystem.
As for the rest, you can’t help me, driver issues. Which is the point.
Uh… I mean, kind of? Not really?
Bazzite makes significant use of Proton, which yes Valve primarily funds, though… probably more to the tune of millions to tens of millions, over its entire history so far, not… billions…
But as I said, its… mostly Fedora, with a good deal of prepackaged tweaks and prebuilt flatpaks and other systems they either manage or contribute to as a kind of functional ecosystem.
Fedora != Valve.
Anyway, I daily drive Bazzite.
I probably can help you, I’ve managed to fuck and unfuck myself by breaking and then fixing Bazzite more than once, by doing things they say you probably shouldn’t do, and then using their provided wiki/tools/macros to fix things… and they’ve refined and improved their rollback command macros and such over the years.
But, you don’t want to be helped, you want to complain, so, best of luck with that.
I don’t want to be helped 🤣
YES! YOU ARE 100% CORRECT! YOU FINALLY GET IT I want valve to fix up nix DE shit so I don’t need to deal with this broken ass shit so I can stop complaining and have shit just work without the MS bloat. You’ve finally cracked the mind of the average person who isn’t going to switch to nix for a buggy mess with nerds who lose their shit when you complain about bugs instead of getting on a trouble shooting session with the terminal and some nerd.
I don’t want gamerconf to just have my resolutions show up in game. I don’t want to have to copy a new device ID and update my environment variable every fucking time pulse audio changes my device id and I lose sound. I don’t want to figure out why I can’t turn my display off and then on without having to pull a plug or restart.
Congratulations on finally getting here and figuring out what I meant when I said it wasn’t ready and some nerds will be here to gas light you.
I would sooner commit sudoku than ever do anything Kubernetes, and yet shit basically just works for me. Nothing is perfect, but it’s 5x better than Windows, so I’m never going back. It seems the server and desktop Linux experience doesn’t quite transfer and apply that much between each other.
I’m not denying your experience to be clear. But for some people it really does work all well. Multi-monitor handling on KDE is so superior for me that I don’t know how I ever dealt with whatever Windows was doing
> But for some people
Yes a minority of them when specific hardware either though purchasing specific shit or dumb luck.
I can’t even use my second monitor because they both break off I have DP and HDMI in use at the same time.
I will say I have one funny regression with my HDMI monitor where it sometimes goes blank for a bit when app goes full-screen on another monitor or right after wake-up. I laugh at this, because it’s still a superior experience, and the kernel version that introduced this, fixed another quirk. Because the problem isn’t with Linux here, but that this monitor has a broken ass firmware. And it resets itself after waking up from sleep or changing inputs, I had problems with this under Windows too, and other monitors don’t do this. But I’m not going to point fingers at wrong direction, plus current state of things doesn’t bother me. Same cannot be said about Windows, where another one of my monitors would randomly reset itself from time to time, which would cause the screen to remove itself from the system and cause the whole system to get 1-2 minute long aneurysm (hope you weren’t gaming during that, especially a multiplayer game…). Meanwhile if that thing happens to this monitor on Linux, simply nothing happens and I don’t even notice it.
Sooo maybe it’s dumb luck that shit works better or just as well on Linux. But it’s real. I didn’t buy anything specifically for Linux, other than always sticking to AMD and avoiding NVIDIA, because I’ve long despised the latter. My whole system works great, the laptop I randomly purchases (AMD-based) works great, my parents’ laptop works great, my grandma’s computer works great, my work machine works great (well certainly much better than on Windows, though it’s not a powerful machine), my friend-with-NVIDIA’s computer works great (surprisingly), my other friend’s computer works great (after figuring out how to install Arch; also with a broken monitor firmware suffering btw), his girlfriend’s computer also works great.
Maybe it’s actually dumb misfortune for those who have problems or some terribly obscure hardware. Maybe I live in some great lucky bubble where things work for the most part around me. Hard to tell which group is a majority and which isn’t.
I do have the fingerprint reader on my laptop not working, that’s unfortunate, but I forgot it’s even a thing, since I never had one on another machine anyway. That same poor laptop got a bunch of 1-star reviews on the store’s website for “poor work culture” just because Windows 11 at setup or idle would ramp up its fans to 100% for no reason, this never happens on Linux unless maybe I actually intentionally hammer it with something. It’s crazy.
Okay one thing I’ll have to admit, about one actual thing not working well, oh irony: my Steam Deck is the only device that has some huge problems with my Wi-Fi router. Just that device out of like 20 others. And just with that router. Drat. I’ll have to see if the next major OpenWrt version will improve it.
Aaaaanyway, can you tell me more about the DP+HDMI problem? I’m actually somewhat curious. And what GPU do you have. I’m wondering if it’s related to anything I’ve ever seen, or something else entirely.
It baffles me how a lot of people in the Linux bubble are simultaneously massive gatekeepers and annoyed when Windows people don’t love Linux. A lot of replies to my comment is essentially “Well, this distro is not for noobs. Have you tried not being an idiot?” They don’t realize how condescending and arrogant they sound. I didn’t take computer science classes at university, and I shouldn’t have to in order to be able to use an operating system that is not Windows, but doesn’t take more time solving problems than doing the stuff that I actually purchased my hardware for.
I’m not annoyed that you don’t love linux, I’m annoyed that you don’t understand what words mean and think you have a higher level of relevant experience than you actually do, that you are going out of your way to feel insulted.
It points toward you being the kind of entitled and emotionally unstable person that people who actually are experienced with linux tend to have PTSD from consistently dealing with.
And your subsequent comment I am here replying to confirms it.
I didn’t tell you to not be an idiot, I didn’t call you dumb, I gave you the blueprint of a way to become a more experienced linux user, or a functional alternative to that.
Nobody in this thread called you dumb or an idiot, unless I somehow have someone who replied to you already blocked for some reason.
Your ego is too large, that is why ‘linux people’ don’t like you; you’re the arrogant entitled asshole who is unwilling to either learn or accept your own limitations.
Normally, in IT departments, acting the way you’ve acted would get you flagged or categorized as a more hostile or combatative client… here on lemmy, nobody is being paid to deal with your ego.
I appreciate you proving my point so well on multiple fronts. Just absolutely fantastic.
Yep. The community is its own worst enemy with usability. There was a discussion on how guis were terrible and shouldn’t be needed. In 2026. Baffling.
Sp3ter put on a fine display.
Use paru to install software :) search online for aur software-name, and then install with paru -S name-from-aur-website. Paru also has search, but I don’t remember the syntax :)
Paru, aur and yay came up when I did some googling. I was left even more confused.
The AUR is the Arch User Repository. All it is is User uploaded software packages with a script that Arch Linux and its many derivatives recognize and know how to utilize to install a piece of software and the necessary libraries/dependencies on your system.
It is similar to Debian based systems when you install software that’s not in the officially repos by appending an unofficial mirror to :
/etc/sources.list.dTake installing Mullvad VPN on Debian for example. It’s not in the official repos, so you have to tell
aptwhere to go get it.Paru and Yay are what are known as AUR Helpers. All they are doing is automating the update process of the packages you installed from the AUR, which normally you’d have to update one by one manually. They also can help you easily search the AUR from the command line.
In essence, they are wrappers around pacman and makepkg.
Flatpak is different in that it is an OS agnostic package manager that sandboxes applications away from the main OS and essentially downloads/installs all its libraries and dependencies into
~/.local/share/flatpakinstead of/usr/lib, though this is a vast oversimplification.Very basically, paru/yay says “We install stuff on Arch and Arch based distros from unofficial, user maintained sources and keep them up to date so you don’t have to update them one by one once installed. When possible, you should probably default to just installing with pacman and using the official repos though.”
Very basically Flatpak says “I don’t care if I’m run on Debian, Arch, Gentoo, whatever, I’m bringing all my system libraries with me cuz I don’t know what version of what is on here, and I just need this app to run right the fuck now. So even though it’s heavier and less efficient, here’s plumbing and the kitchen sink so you have running water right fucking now. BTW, you probably shouldn’t run anything installed with me as root.”
This is a very oversimplified explanation, but hopefully that helps clear things up for you.
It’s actually somewhat curious that pacman supports third party repos just like any other package manager, and yet user repos are generally so unpopular in Arch community
Did you try, I don’t know, reading more about the options?
Jesus Christ. You are not helpless.
Cura has appimages right on their download page if you can’t be arsed to figure out pacman
Love the guy.
Didnt watch the video but if its the gerstmann show I listened that as a podcast a few weeks ago.
I think he was generally in favor of it?
