• 7 Posts
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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: June 14th, 2023

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  • Very important. I spend a lot of time at my computer and my desktop environment is like my home. I want it to look in a way that I find aesthetically pleasing and it mustn’t try to force me to change the way I work because some UX designer decided that their way was much better than everybody else’s. Perhaps you can guess where this is going :D but I’ve tried to like Gnome 3 since it was first announced. I’ve given it multiple chances but it just doesn’t work for me. It feels like they’re going down the same road as all “modern” UIs, where only the most basic features are visible and everything else is either dumped into the “advanced” category or removed entirely. On the other hand, I have a coworker who only uses his PC like a tool, and he thinks Gnome is the best DE ever and can’t understand why anyone would want something else.

    Currently I use KDE and I’m pretty happy with it. It’s highly configurable, and I’ve made it look and feel the way I want. I used mainly Xfce for a long time but now I prefer KDE.



  • I think a new Linux user shouldn’t have to choose a DE, so starting with a distro which makes this choice for them is most likely better. Unless the CachyOS installer does a good job at explaining what a desktop environment is, there’s a risk that a new user thinks they’re just selecting a skin for the OS and don’t understand how it will affect their desktop experience. If they for example choose an extreme light weight DE for their brand new gaming PC, their first impression of Linux might be that it looks dated.

    Having a DE chooser built into more distro installers could be a good thing for us more experienced users though.





  • These aliases for zsh I use all the time. It’s part of the prezto configuration framework.

    setopt AUTO_CD              # Auto changes to a directory without typing cd.
    setopt AUTO_PUSHD           # Push the old directory onto the stack on cd.
    setopt PUSHD_IGNORE_DUPS    # Do not store duplicates in the stack.
    setopt PUSHD_SILENT         # Do not print the directory stack after pushd or popd.
    setopt PUSHD_TO_HOME        # Push to home directory when no argument is given.
    
    alias d='dirs -v'
    for index ({1..9}) alias "$index"="cd +${index}"; unset index
    

    Type d and enter to list all the directories you’ve recently been in, then type the number at the start of the line followed by enter to immediately cd there.

    Not sure if latest bash can do it the same thing, but some years ago I wrote a script to implement it there too. IIRC it might’ve been the automatic removal of duplicates in dir history that was missing.








  • I’m not up to date on hardware, so I’ll refrain from recommending specific components. I went with AMD Ryzen CPU and Nvidia GPU (using closed source driver) last time I upgraded my PC and it usually works fine, though I know many recommend AMD GPUs nowadays for Linux. If €1000 is your total budget, it might be worth considering a second hand GPU. For example a used RTX 3080 goes for around €300 and they are still quite capable, though someone else will have to say if that’s enough for the flight sims.

    One thing you might want to look up is if the game uses hardware raytracing, and if that works on Linux. Out of the games I play, World of Warships looks worse for me than what I see on youtube, despite that I have set all graphics settings to max. Maybe it’s possible to fix by configuring Wine/Proton/DXVK etc. I haven’t really looked into it, but just so you’re aware of potential issues.

    I used this list for help when choosing a power supply, but I think that becomes more important if you buy a high end GPU.

    I use Steam for almost all my gaming, and it makes running (most) Windows games a breeze.


  • So far that has never happened because I’m not using that much storage :) But I shut it down when I need to turn off the mains electricity, and for powering it on afterwards the fake wall can be lifted off. It’s just the area underneath the desk so the panel might be smaller than it sounds like, and it hangs on some hooks so it’s fairly easy to remove if you know what you’re doing. Painted in the same colour as the wall, and with some some random junk on the floor in front, it blends in quite well though. I think the risk of burglary is fairly low, so it’s primarily to soothe my own paranoia.



  • If you specify a budget then people might be able to give some recommendations, if you like.

    As for aesthetics, Fractal Design offer a few cases which look really nice, if you like the Scandinavian design style. The overview shows all cases with glass or mesh sides, but there’s usually an option to get an opaque door if you don’t want LEDs from the electronics shining through


  • My friends are currently throwing a tantrum because I won’t “just enable Secure Boot and run Windows” to play Battlefield 6 with them. But I’ve never felt that I must play a specific game, so the few ones who are incompatible (usually due to bad anti-cheats) have been easy to ignore. There are plenty of good games I can play on Linux.