/fglt/ - Friendly GNU/Linux Thread

Welcome to /fglt/ - Friendly GNU/Linux Thread.
Users of all levels are welcome to ask questions about GNU/Linux and share their experiences.

*** Please be civil, notice the "Friendly" in every Friendly GNU/Linux Thread ***

Before asking for help, please check our list of resources[*].

Previous thread: If you would like to try out GNU/Linux you can do one of the following:
0) Install a GNU/Linux distribution of your choice in a Virtual Machine.
1) Use a live image and to boot directly into the GNU/Linux distribution without installing anything.
2) Dual boot the GNU/Linux distribution of your choice along with Windows or Mac.
3) Go balls deep and replace everything with GNU/Linux.

>What distro should I choose?
wiki.installgentoo.com/index.php/Babbies_First_Linux

>What's the alternative for x?
alternativeto.net
linuxalt.com
Search for software by category:
linuxlinks.com/Software
directory.fsf.org/wiki/Main_Page

News:
phoronix.com
webupd8.org
linuxjournal.com
lwn.net
Gaming news:
gamingonlinux.com
linuxgameconsortium.com

/t/'s GNU/Linux Games: /t/'s GNU/Linux Training Videos: * Resources:
Your friendly neighborhood search engine
(try to use a search engine that respects your privacy such as searx, ixquick or startpage)
$ man
$ info
$ --help
Don't know what to look for?
$ apropos

Check the Wikis (most troubleshoots work for all distros)
wiki.archlinux.org
wiki.gentoo.org

Learn the command line:
linuxcommand.org/tlcl.php

Break out of the botnet:
prism-break.org/en/categories/gnu-linux

Learn more about Free Software:
gnu.org

Sup Forums's Wiki on GNU/Linux:
wiki.installgentoo.com/index.php/Category:GNU/Linux

/fglt/'s website:
fglt.nl

/fglt/'s copypasta collection:
p.teknik.io/wJ9Zy

Other urls found in this thread:

apple.stackexchange.com/questions/60805/convert-a-number-of-zip-file-to-rar
bugs.archlinux.org/task/46374
twitter.com/NSFWRedditGif

First for Arch + i3

Does X work?

>inb4 spamming because upset

If I understand your question, yes I launch i3 through X

I'm buying a new laptop soon. Is there anything wrong with getting one with Ubuntu preinstalled? I'd probably replace it with arch, but if it comes with Ubuntu you are guaranteed to have good drivers for everything on GNU/Linux.

most laptops sold with linux preinstalled are horribly overpriced, just check out places like system76 for examples of what I mean

I'd just like to interject for a moment. What you're referring to as Linux, is in fact, GNU/Linux, or as I've recently taken to calling it, GNU plus Linux. Linux is not an operating system unto itself, but rather another free component of a fully functioning GNU system made useful by the GNU corelibs, shell utilities and vital system components comprising a full OS as defined by POSIX.

Many computer users run a modified version of the GNU system every day, without realizing it. Through a peculiar turn of events, the version of GNU which is widely used today is often called "Linux", and many of its users are not aware that it is basically the GNU system, developed by the GNU Project.

There really is a Linux, and these people are using it, but it is just a part of the system they use. Linux is the kernel: the program in the system that allocates the machine's resources to the other programs that you run. The kernel is an essential part of an operating system, but useless by itself; it can only function in the context of a complete operating system. Linux is normally used in combination with the GNU operating system: the whole system is basically GNU with Linux added, or GNU/Linux. All the so-called "Linux" distributions are really distributions of GNU/Linux.

I was thinking more dell xps 13, which is actually $100 less than the windows version, and has a different wifi card apparently

interject all you want but it doesn't matter, I'll go on calling it just linux and you can't stop me

All distros have the same drivers. You can install any distro you like.

What the fuck is wrong with vim plugin maintainers? They should have some level of automation for installing plugins and detecting environment. If a library is not present the plugin should download relevant compiler, source files and libraries and store it under own directory.

just remember that business grade refurbished is an option and usually nets you better hardware for less money

I think he's talking about restricted vs non-restricted drivers

Doesn't change anything.

some laptops have hardware (like a wifi card for example) that is objectively harder to deal with on GNU/Linux than Windows

I hear people here saying that nvidia optimus is absolute cancer and barely works on gnu/linux. is that true?

NVIDIA just made a huge contribution to Qt

opensuse or fedora? Which gets packages faster? which is overall the better distro?

I'm going crazy here

What files/programs control the keyboard settings system-wide?

I just started trying spectrwm and the laptop's hardware control keys (ie fn-F11 -> XF86VolumeDown) broke. xev shows them as functional but nothing happens. had been using openbox so far with no problem

Just setup Debian for the first time.

Trying to use wine but when I search for it through gnome's search function, I can't find it. I tried using a front end but it will not work. How do I solve this.

Why can't I get my 7870 to work on any distro?

More details please. Are you using the open source driver or catalyst (proprietary)? What distros have you tried?

I'd like either gnome-terminal-transparency or gnome-terminal-fedora from the aur installed, but I don't want 200mb of gnome dependencies (it looks like it actually makes you install the DE. gnome-terminal from the arch repos doesn't need any of this stuff. How do I force pacaur or something to ignore dependencies?

xev + xbindkeys +xmodmap

arch is for advanced users only

>just ordered a kaby lake NUC
Am I going to be having a fucking bad time with anything less than a bleeding edge kernel or did Intel/Linux actually get this one right?

thanks for the help bro. i can't really think of what to do, makepkg -d fails because gnome shell is missing.

Go in to the pkgbuild and change deps....
Your milage may vary if it actually works

Got a few of these in at the office last week. They ran fine out of the box with Fedora but I haven't tested anything else.

you could work around this problem by realizing that you will uninstall in the future anyway and just go straight to urxvt, termite, etc

why does anyone care about the terminal they use? I've tried urxvt, termite, gnome term, and really couldn't give a shit which one I use. the only thing I care about is that urxvt seems to work the best with a script i made to match terminal colours with my wallpaper

The point of urxvt, termite, etc. is that they give you modern fonts, colors, rendering, internationalization, transparency, etc. but are just an empty box with a terminal in it visually. It gets all the configuration shit out of the way at run time and doesn't try to reinvent window management when you can use your WM or tmux.

Case in point, here's a pair of Termite windows under Fluxbox with both WM-level tabbing and tmux at work.

So I want to give i3 a shot. Just use a WM a nothing else, when I try to find i3 packages though these are my options

[-] dri3proto-1.0_1 DRI3 extension headers from X.org
[-] grub-i386-efi-2.02~rc1_1 GRand Unified Bootloader 2 - i386 EFI support
[-] i3-4.13_1 Improved tiling window manager
[-] i3-devel-4.13_1 Improved tiling window manager - development files
[-] i3-gaps-4.12_1 Improved tiling window manager - i3 fork with more features
[-] i3blocks-1.4_1 Flexible scheduler for i3bar
[-] i3ipc-glib-0.6.0_1 C interface library to i3 window manager
[-] i3ipc-glib-devel-0.6.0_1 C interface library to i3 window manager - development files
[-] i3lock-2.8_1 An improved screenlocker based upon XCB and PAM
[-] i3status-2.11_1 Status bar generator for i3bar, dzen2, xmobar or similar programs
[-] libgladeui3-3.20.0_1 GTK+ User Interface Build core library
[-] perl-AnyEvent-I3-0.16_1 AnyEvent::I3 - communicate with the i3 window manager
[-] py3status-3.4_1 Alternative i3bar
[-] sway-0.11_1 i3 compatible window manager for Wayland
[-] i3ipc-glib-32bit-0.6.0_1 C interface library to i3 window manager (32bit)
[-] i3ipc-glib-devel-32bit-0.6.0_1 C interface library to i3 window manager - development files (32bit)
[-] libgladeui3-32bit-3.20.0_1 GTK+ User Interface Build core library (32bit)


What am I supposed to be getting here? i3 vs is-gaps, what about sway?

>Read description
>make informed decision

Stick with i3 for now. i3gaps is more features you might not need right away, but it's a pure superset.

:^) thanks for the (you) dickhead

I need to quickly convert a rar file into a zip file, anyone got some handy oneliner?

Do you expect to be hand held all of your fucking life?
Pick one and see what happens.
OH LAWDY I DONT LIKE IT
fucking uninstall it and install another
fucks sake you fucking milienials

why the hell are people still creating rar files?
it's current year, 7zip lrzip, hell even zip is widly supported
>reeee

Of those I have:
i3.x86_64
i3lock.x86_64
i3status.x86_64
perl-AnyEvent-I3.noarch

I don't think the perl package has anything to do with it. It's probably a dependency for something else I have. I suggest dmenu. It will probably get pulled in as a dependency of i3 but if it doesn't you want it.

i3-gaps is a fork of i3. I think the point is to make it easier to have spaces in between windows.

Didn't create it, I want to get rid of it.

>meanwhile on os x
apple.stackexchange.com/questions/60805/convert-a-number-of-zip-file-to-rar

Fedora is more bleeding edge. Though the stated aim is to fix bugs through patching the stable version, in practice, if it takes updating the package, it'll be updated. And that lack of anal retention is an excellent thing, imho.

Basically, Fedora is a cross between a stable release and a rolling release. Rather compare it to openSUSE Tumbleweed, as far as freshness goes (though it's a lot more usable; Fedora's Tumbleweed equivalent, ie Rawhide, shouldn't even ben described as bleeding edge: don't use that one srsly, as it's more shredding edge than anything).

Fedora "stable" base also is released more often than openSUSE (about erry 6 months vs erry year). In turn, Fedora releases are only supported for about a year, while an openSUSE release is supported for about two years (mostly useless on desktop, imho, and still too short for the very few cases when desktop long support is needed).

openSUSE tries to get proprietary clickodrome bells and whistles (useless fucktardry, imho, but that depends on what you're after). Fedora is more classical.

Also, as far as I know, there's no CentOS equivalent in the openSUSE world (and the openSUSE two years lifecycle is uselessly short for servers).

Obviously, I am a Fedora/CentOS (very happy) user. Will prbly soon try the fairly new Raspberry version to hack me an alarm clock with an easy to read without glasses 7" screen.

allright thanks

Only run rawhide if you are well versed in SELinux. I ran it for a few months just to see what it was like. I swear I ran in the SELinux problems twice a week. It got to where I only upgraded Monday through Wednesday because if I got something that broke SELinux configuration or needed new rules on Friday, a fix wouldn't hit the repos until Monday.

It's cool because you should only run rawhide to fix stuff or break stuff. Using it normally doesn't make sense.

>What distros have you tried?
OpenSUSE, Debian, Ubuntu and Xubuntu.
>Are you using the open source driver or catalyst (proprietary)?
I've read that AMD doesn't support older cards anymore, so I went straight for open source, but to no avail.

Hence why I call it shredding edge. Erry time I tested it (been a few years last time, I'll admit), at first, the new things I wanted to see were already there, and I was happy...

... at first. Until Rawhide ended up destroying itself in one horrible way or another. And fairly fast, at that.

PSeaking of SElinux and other kerenel patches for security. Why aren't those security features in the kernel by default? If they were included in the kernel from the beginning wouldn't it be much easier for devs to account for and cause users less problems?

Why is linux so much easier to install than BSD?
Should I just go full GNU?

Torvalds is more of the opinion security is a process, resulting of a balance with perfs, usability, etc. He thinks security absolutists are crazy and obsessively narrow sighted.

Security absolutists think it's never enough, that there's no compromise too big in the name of security, and those not agreeing are shit flinging hippie apes.

Neither side is exactly wrong. And that's precisely why they should each keep to what they do best.

>Why is linux so much easier to install than BSD?
Because people actually do use Linux.

how the fuck do I get vim syntax highlighting to work on arch?
>using vim, not vi
>/home/user/.vimrc reads
filetype plugin on
syntax on

see

archfags are the most cancerous people in the unix community
they think their distro is some kind of secret club because you need to read a wiki for ten minutes to install it

So providing all these security patches will always make the kerenel more difficult to work with then, even if they are natively included?

As an impartial observer of these threads who has never used Arch my observations actually show that Arch haters are the most cancerous (at least on /fglt/)
You guys seem WAY more elite minded than any Arch users I've encountered here. Could it be that you're all ex-Arch users bringing baggage you've obtained from the Arch forums along with you over to /fglt/ where it doesn't really apply or something?

I don't care what distro people use, it just seems like arch users are always acting like they're part of a sekrit club and they're better than everyone else for following a simple install

Arch users on /fglt/ though? I haven't really noticed

as of late it's become popular to shit on arch as a distro. a lot of the ex-arch users here have moved on to gentoo and slackware.

on the other hand, if you see Arch as a containment distro for those in their "tinker with ERRYTHING" phase, like what LFS and Gentoo are/have been, it doesn't end up looking all that bad
also, they're at least learning something, if a bit too enthusiastically (who never went through this, apart from Ubuntu users?)

well, making it harder in erry way possible is part of the point in security
anyway, from a distro user point of view, hardening IS natively included
it's just that the distro maintainers serve as a balance between the practical and the absolutist sides

I'm using Arch right now.

Anyone using Gentoo Hardened on their desktop/main machine? How is it, ie. do you run into compiler problems often?

Try looking for it in the synaptic package manager.

...

I didn't actually "use" the computer for anything it just werks.
Ignoring stuff goes on under the hood doesn't change what happens.
Fucking frustrating part is linux distro's have an easy thing with ... let me dig in my files
checksums. I download a linux variation I've got at least 2 saved but had at least 3 or 4.
I don't know if it's a difference between a .iso image or a DDTHANKSGNU file but with linux I get an easy checksum, BSD has a checksum file I have no fucking idea what to do with when linux fucking spoon fed me a checksum# vs. what I was doing with the .iso
DD sounds like it should be better in theory if I knew what was going on under the hood.

this is now the GNU/Pajeet thread

I don't even know anymore if you're confused, or if it's me.

this is Sup Forums, everyone is confused...

>all these distro wars
beyond package management, and the initial install, every distro can function exactly like another.

wait, what, this is Sup Forums?

>poo in loo
flux
>bloated script kiddie shit
redshift
>functional aryan software
sct

take a note, it could save you're life

Dude nobody is confused. The problem is fucking windows.
I got an awesome windows system. I have a fucking barebones zero'd out mother fucker of a system I have to learn.
I can put linux on it but I want fucking BSD. The system is fucking scrap if I don't learn. It's a fun challenge but some bullshit is happening that isn't making it werk.
How am I suppose to make a checksum file work on windows?
It's hiding information. It doesn't list what type of file the checksum is where some of the linux distro's I've tried have some people really interested in getting people to migrate to their OS spoonfeeding the relevant information to making a OS installation possible. I really don't care if my 32bit system is a piece of shit, it's my piece of shit. I get to start fresh with it and want to fuck around with a unix variant.

Forgot to add: I'm on Arch btw.

GNU/Linux*

I just put most all my other tech news sources on hold and been reading LWN exclusively and I'm in love. Really high quality content, exclusively Linux and OSS related articles and distro news and I learn so much more there than being enticed to skim through comments of reddit/hackernews rather than actually reading the article.

Does Sup Forums sub to LWN? No point perhaps seeing as you can get the content a week later regardless, but I'd like to support them.

What games do you auto-install on a new GNU/Linux setup?

For me, Dwarf Fortress and Nethack, which are both in the Arch repo so I assume are in other repos as well

>How am I suppose to make a checksum file work on windows?
Depends on what you want that poor checksum file to do. Windows or not, I'm afraid it won't be able to prepare a decent coffee or even make you a sammich, for instance.

>Does Sup Forums sub to LWN?
yes

THANKSGNU

WAT
Fuck I know you're trolling me. There is no way I have to learn how to fuck with my windows to get it to tell me useful stuff. All it wants is an interpreter to open the file but since it's a GUI it likes to hide that stuff instead of just giving a file name and tree like a console text would, if I use the apps window and go to the apps screen I can scroll right and when I scroll back left the information and listed gui clicks changes I need a freaking internet connection to even google how to open a command prompt with windows this is freaking insane why would the icons change when scrolling? This is designed to be confusing on purpose.

Do I have a virus or is my OS just fucking shit?

Do you do the starving hacker or professional? The content is exceptional, but 7 dollars adds up quickly with every other expense in life.

Is there a one page version of all linuxcommand.org lessons?

when I go into bspwm by using startx, I can't launch the terminal (gnome-terminal). starting from lightdm works fine

By the way, I'm on Arch if it matters.

How are you launching? A run menu such as dmenu?

I have sxhkd bound for alt + enter, which doesn't work. rofi also fails to start it. starting it from terminal also doesn't do anything.

Can you post the output of attempting 'gnome-terminal' from your shell?

literally nothing. just goes to the next line, and doesn't let me do any commands until i control c. If I wait long enough I get ''ddError constructing proxy for org.gnome.Terminal:/org/gnome/Terminal/Factory0: Error calling StartServiceByName for org.gnome.Terminal: Timeout was reached"

Sounds like some missing dependency to me. Can you try `dbus-launch gnome-terminal` (assuming you are on arch)?

dbus-launch works, thanks. how do I make it always do that?

You can map that to your keybind for opening your terminal I guess, I don't know much about bspwm. Alternatively, you can create an alias in your bashrc/zshrc like alias gnome-term='dbus-launch gnome-terminal'

This might be useful, consider a gnome-session but it might be overkill?
bugs.archlinux.org/task/46374

Also consider not using gnome-terminal at all but something like xterm/uxvrt. Installing gnome software will pull in a lot of unnecessary dependencies for a system using just a window manager, hence why people use XFCE4 GUI applications a lot like Thunar instead of Nautilus/Nemo because their components don't rely on heavy DE dependencies.

new content on /t/ (tutorials) new content on /t/ (games)

The LXDE/LXQt versions of stuff are top notch for light setups, and don't pull in a bunch of bullshit dependencies LXDE/LXQt is basically just a tiny set of applications and some session glue scripts, but you can just as easily roll your own glue scripts and use a different WM. I use lxappearance and pcmanfm with my Fluxbox setup, along with a bunch of DE-agnostic stuff like Termite and Firefox.

>inconsistent capitalisation of x config files
it's a bit autistic but this genuinely triggers me

Are the "." & ".." actual directories or something?

user, these refer to current directory and parent directory respectively

also pls no bait

I was dead serious. sorry.

no worries; i just don't know who to trust anymore.
these are unfriendly times around here, friend