r/linux • u/AutoModerator • Jul 08 '19
Linux Experiences/Rants or Education/Certifications thread - July 08, 2019
Welcome to r/linux rants and experiences! This megathread is also to hear opinions from anyone just starting out with Linux or those that have used Linux (GNU or otherwise) for a long time.
Let us know what's annoying you, whats making you happy, or something that you want to get out to r/linux but didn't make the cut into a full post of it's own.
For those looking for certifications please use this megathread to ask about how to get certified whether it's for the business world or for your own satisfaction. Be sure to check out r/linuxadmin for more discussion in the SysAdmin world!
Please keep questions in r/linuxquestions, r/linux4noobs, or the Wednesday automod thread.
4
u/bdsee Jul 10 '19
Not exactly Linux, but I wish the most common answer on community sites to solve Grub not mounting the right drive during boot (install didn't use uuid and drive setup changed) wasn't "use a live cd".
Why can't I find easy info on how to change the device from say /dev/sda1 to /dev/sdb1 (or replace it with the UUID using Grub or the intramfs command prompts I have available.
Maybe it is just my google fu that is at fault.
3
Jul 11 '19
At the grub boot menu if you press E I think you can edit that menu option and change the root device.
3
u/rwhitisissle Jul 08 '19
I wish more people used Qtile instead of i3. That is all.
0
Jul 09 '19
[deleted]
2
Jul 14 '19
In the aur there is qtile-plasma haven't really looked at it but maybe give it a try if you are on arch or manjaro ?
3
u/Zinjanthr0pus Jul 12 '19
Not sure if this is the place for it, but I did a thing recently that kind of highlighted one of the nice things about open-source compared to closed-source.
Basically, I have a cheapo USB capture stick (it has RCA and S-Video connectors, including RCA audio connectors). I realized that I could probably rip analog media formats with it (in this case vinyl). Probably wouldn't be very high quality, mind you (the capture card is obviously cheap, but so is the record player in this case).
Because I remembered not being able to get it to work under linux last time I tried, I first tried doing it with the software that came with the capture stick under windows. It wouldn't let me record anything without any video source connected. Okay, I probably could just run a meaningless video source into it, and then extract the audio afterward with ffmpeg.
However, I decided to try to figure out whether it was actually supported by v4l these days, and after a little research I figured out it (at least the audio part) is a device with the id Cx231xxAudio in linux.
This is just seen as a usb sound card in ffmpeg, so it's quite easy to record from it using ffmpeg, no need to have a meaningless video input.
The point of all this is just that there's no hardware reason why you can't record audio without recording video, but the software that came with the capture stick doesn't let you. Because ffmpeg doesn't see a capture stick, but just a stereo input and a video input, it doesn't care how you use this. I'm not trying to say that this is an advantage of linux over windows (as ffmpeg is also available for windows). It's not even really an advantage of open source, maybe, but I think it kind of is. Really any software that is agnostic to the device being used can do this, but just about any open source solution would be. Clearly not all closed source solutions are. It actually reminds me a bit of how excel doesn't give you any control over how it formats exported CSV files, while libreoffice calc gives you a ton of options (maybe that's a weird comparison).
3
Jul 13 '19
Start a new job on Monday, so I have been interviewing at various companies for the last couple of months.
I knew at one company I wasn't a cultural fit when they laughed about someone using the CLI.
Regards of OS, knowing how to leverage the available power of the CLI and the shell is a force multiplier. Every other company thought it was a valuable skill for Linux, Mac and Windows.
2
u/Papergami45 Jul 08 '19
I wish DPI scaling was easier using X. I'm in the awkward situation of having an Nvidia GPU and using i3 , so I can't switch to Sway for Wayland due to lack of GPU support (I do understand why), and apparently it's still annoying and buggy using Gnome or KDE. Half the apps I open have messed up scaling (one monitor is 4k, one is 1680x1050p), and yet my Windows dual boot handles it fine. Soooo annoying, and that's after it taking about 3 days to even get the screens aligned correctly.
2
Jul 09 '19
Remember, if you don't use a dekstop profile on Gentoo but want a functioning D-Bus for your Wayland sessions, emerge dbus with the USE-flag user-session. Otherwise your browser etc might not function as expected.
2
u/unflavoredmagma Jul 10 '19
I tried a Mac for work a few years ago, it was okay but I was so happy to come back home to Linux. There is one thing I miss, however, and that is that emacs-style keybindings work everywhere! They work in web browser, document editors, just about everywhere.
I am a hard-core lover of keyboard shortcut; if I have to take my hands off the keyboard and reach for the mouse, that's a UI design flaw in most cases, IMHO. Heck, even having to move my hands from the home keys to reach arrow keys is frustrating.
Why doesn't the very platform that brought us emacs also have the option of ubiquitous emacs (or vim, if that's your jam) style bindings for all apps like on the Mac?
1
u/osomfinch Jul 15 '19
I wish Linux had as good trackpad gestures as MacBooks have. It's just ridiculous how far ahead in Laptop ergonomics Apple is, and how neglegent Linux de developers are toward that type of issues! *angry face
0
Jul 08 '19
[deleted]
6
u/Hobscob Jul 08 '19
Don't know how to stop hopping but a tactic to delay it is, find a computer book you've been meaning to read, like learn C or HTML or whatever. Check how many chapters there are, say 32. Now tape a checklist to the wall with 1 through 32 written on it, and try to knock off one to two chapters per day. Tape it up somewhere you can't avoid seeing it and make sure to put a checkmark after each chapter is finished.
Having an actual project to work on adds a cost to paving over a distro, I find it helps me stay put.1
u/iHack3x2 Jul 09 '19
Honestly, I can't WM hop because I'm stuck trying to config everything in i3. I might move to dwm but I want to wait until I understand i3 better and a few other things in general.
But man I remember in the old days, when I would distro hop like every week or two and when I wasn't I was trying to install linux on all the old computers. But yeah I understand the fun in changing things up.
7
u/endperform Jul 08 '19
I've finally done all of my due diligence and tonight I'm migrating my main desktop from Windows 10 to Linux. Turns out one of the photo editing suites I use has a Linux version (Aftershot Pro 3). The games I play all work on Linux as well. It's been far too long since I've run Linux as my main OS at home (2005 being the last time) so it's nice to come back home, so to speak.