4 ms·

I am using Linux rn because my Windows computer is busted. On Windows, I was using WSL for development. It was amazing to have a good dev environment as well as

I am using Linux rn because my Windows computer is busted. On Windows, I was using WSL for development. It was amazing to have a good dev environment as well as a real computer at the same time! I can't even use my large MSI 1440p monitor with this computer because Linux (also perhaps because of the actual gfx card too, to be fair). I had to manually install Discord's update yesterday and now there are 2 Discord apps on my computer because Linux (and only one works).

redeeman 3y ago
> I can't even use my large MSI 1440p monitor with this computer because Linux ridiculous, Is it also fords fault I cant use an f150 because I live on a mountain without roads? You may have purchased hardware that has explicitly chosen to make life difficult for anything but windows, that is hardly "because linux". Nobody is even asking THEM to make drivers, which allthough would be nice, everyone would settle for "tell us how to use the hardware", or at best "dont actively prevent us from making drivers". And why can you not use the monitor? Your discord problems are almost certainly caused by you doing it wrong. Linux is not a magic solver of problems, you know your way around windows, but if you invested same time into learning linux as you did windows, you'd know how to do things there aswell.
- catlover76 3y ago
  I think this comment exemplifies the attitude that leads Linux to be this mostly niche thing that even most devs don't want to deal with. > Your discord problems are almost certainly caused by you doing it wrong. Linux is not a magic solver of problems, you know your way around windows, but if you invested same time into learning linux as you did windows, you'd know how to do things there aswell. No bro, it requires zero investment of time to "know your way around windows" for basic stuff like installing consumer programs--that's the thing. Not sure how you're missing that. I don't think I've ever installed anything incorrectly on Windows. I'm not sure that's even possible. The issue is not that I expect Linux to be a "magic solver of problems"--it's that there are a lot of problems it has which are ridiculous in the first place and don't exist on other operating systems.
  - testrun 3y ago
    Cannot agree more. Using linux since Slackware in the '90s but still now and again Linux for everyday use can be so frustrating. Currently using Ubuntu 22.10, because 23.04 has a problem with multiple window management. But 22.10 on my PC have mono sound, but it is stereo on 23.04. Stream works fantastic on 23.04, but I have problems login in to some games on 22.10. Having problems using Cuda on 23.04 but it works 100% on 22.10, and on and on it goes. Did go back to 22.04, but there were other problems then, so decided 22.10 will be it for now. As so many people said before, Linux is 95% there, it is just the last 5% that is so frustrating.
    - catlover76 3y ago
      Yeah How is gaming on Linux? What do you play?
      - Raineer 3y ago
        I was commenting on this just last week. Gaming on Linux has exploded since the Steam Deck was released (just as all Linux users were hoping it would). All the effort which went into Proton to get games working on Steam Deck has done wonders for the desktop. It used to be that you could play AAA games up to about 2 years prior (same story like macOS today), but now you can play almost anything on desktop Linux. I even run HiDPI / 5K monitor and it all works now, at least on Arch. The only notable exception (truly, a surprise), at the moment, is Starfield not working on day 1. This was surprising, but the reasons net down to GPU drivers - and progress is already being made.
        catlover76 3y ago
        Nice! Yeah I downloaded Steam on here to try it, but my hardware isn't up to the task. Seems like it worked well from a software perspective though!
      - happymellon 3y ago
        I'm playing Horizon Zero Dawn right now. Works great on Linux, as do the hundreds of other games I've played.
xerox13ster 3y ago
Fam, you probably installed Discord through the package manager or the AUR and then when it said there was an update you said "I'll figure it out" and downloaded the tarball that option offers and built it. you should remove them by doing `sudo pacman -Rns discord` followed by trying yay -R discord. Then install it from either the AUR with yay or Arch repo with pacman.
- catlover76 3y ago
  I don't remember how I first installed it, but for the update, I downloaded the .deb file they offered by default, couldn't do anything with it. Don't remember how I solved the problem. Edit: actually, I think I installed it via Snap Store. And the current Snap Store version is .28, but the new update is .29. So the .28 client is just in a loop of "there is a new update and I am out of date, so now I am just a modal that downloads the packages at these URLs". Not sure where my other installation came from, if I somehow did a fresh install or what. I don't really get why there isn't just one obvious reliable and centralized way to install software on this thing. My Slack, VSCode, and other apps auto-update without my having to manually do anything, which, IMO, is how it should be by default. I'm on Ubuntu--is there benefit to using Pacman on there? My understanding is that people do.
  - Tijdreiziger 3y ago
    > I don't really get why there isn't just one obvious reliable and centralized way to install software on this thing. To be fair — there isn’t that on any desktop OS.
    - catlover76 3y ago
      Yeah I know, I'm kind of expecting more from Linux in that respect. But I'm also just genuinely wondering if people more experienced in software engineering would agree that it is better, ideally, to have one clear, right way of installing software.
      - 3y ago
midoridensha 3y ago
>I can't even use my large MSI 1440p monitor with this computer because Linux (also perhaps because of the actual gfx card too, to be fair) This part makes no sense. Linux works with any monitor; monitors connect via DP/HDMI and don't need device drivers. I have two 1440p monitors on my system. If you're having a problem here, it's undoubtedly the graphics card, and Linux has long had issues with drivers there (mainly Nvidia), but even here most Nvidia users say it works fine for them.
- aforwardslash 3y ago
  My experience with 1440p monitors on linux is terrible, and I'm being generous. Starting with the obvious, dpi detection is mostly non-existing and it seems the default text subhinting configurations aren't actually good for high dpi monitors - so you either get shitty fonts and graphics with good screen real estate or FHD experience with acceptable quality. And then you have to choose - do you want color management or different dpi settings per monitor? Because you can't have both - Wayland doesn't seem to have proper color management yet, and X/Xorg doesn't have different scaling settings per monitor. Did I mention Wayland supports different dpi settings per monitor? Well sometimes it gets confused, and doesn't work well. Getting my kubuntu (I know, running kde doesn't help) to work with both my FHD and QHD monitor in an acceptable dpi setting took several hours, and forced me to switch from XOrg to wayland. Now instead of a robust desktop, I have a machine that needs to be rebooted every week because it starts forgetting to update screen regions - imagine a youtube video playing, but you only see the first frame.
  - midoridensha 3y ago
    I definitely do not recommend mixing monitor resolutions; I tried that on my work PC and it was a disaster. So for both work and home, I have dual 27" monitors with the same resolution (4k at work, QHD at home). The one at home works fine, but the one at work needed manual setting of the DPI, so there do seem to be problems with DPI detection as you say.
    - kaliszad 3y ago
kaliszad 3y ago
From the thread it seems you are on Ubuntu. There are basically two package managers out of the box. One, the traditional combo of dpkg + apt on top is deeply embedded into the system. You can install a Discord .deb package using `$ sudo dpkg -i ~/Downlaods/discord-0.0.28.deb` or whatever because it is not in the operating system's repositories. If it was, it would be `$ sudo apt install discord` or something along those lines. The Snap packaging system also includes a layer of software that can sandbox the packages it installed. The idea is, a single package is less distro-specific and also is limited in the damage it can do. Ubuntu is the main user of Snap. Many other distributions, especially Fedora and the like seem to lean more towards Flatpak, which is a different take on what Snap does. Yes, it is complicated but the idea is to increase the security and portability of software packages for Linux. To manage Snap packages from the command line, you can use the snap command.
- catlover76 3y ago
  Yeah, I think I may have got the second installation working via the sudo dpkg route, but I'm not sure. I know I definitely tried it as part of troubleshooting the issue. If that is what I did to eventually get Discord working again, then it's strange that I now have two installations, because the download of the .deb file is what the Discord client wanted me to do in the first place. That being said, I probably initially installed it via Snap--but then, shouldn't it have auto-updated? Yet the Snap store version is still stuck on v 0.28, and the Discord client is what insisted I download the .deb for 0.29. :shrug: I do not think either of the above routes is too onerous or complicated, but I think the situation is made more complicated by the multiple options. If I am understanding things correctly, APT is a third option in addition to Snap and downloading .deb directly--actually, there is a fourth, which is a variety of things we can lump together under "execute an an installation script"
  - kaliszad 3y ago
    Apt is the default thing that manages dpkg for you, does dependency resolution, etc. dpkg is quite low level actually. Snap and Flatpak and others are en vogue now, they are basically more app-storey approach to application installation, permissions and more. So apt/ dpkg or if you are on Fedora dnf/yum/rpm are the traditional approaches and Snap/ Flatpak is a very different approach altogether. I would probably just deinstall the Discord from Snap and keep using the .deb/ dpkg approach.

redeeman 3y ago

> I can't even use my large MSI 1440p monitor with this computer because Linux ridiculous, Is it also fords fault I cant use an f150 because I live on a mountain without roads? You may have purchased hardware that has explicitly chosen to make life difficult for anything but windows, that is hardly "because linux". Nobody is even asking THEM to make drivers, which allthough would be nice, everyone would settle for "tell us how to use the hardware", or at best "dont actively prevent us from making drivers". And why can you not use the monitor? Your discord problems are almost certainly caused by you doing it wrong. Linux is not a magic solver of problems, you know your way around windows, but if you invested same time into learning linux as you did windows, you'd know how to do things there aswell.

catlover76 3y ago
I think this comment exemplifies the attitude that leads Linux to be this mostly niche thing that even most devs don't want to deal with. > Your discord problems are almost certainly caused by you doing it wrong. Linux is not a magic solver of problems, you know your way around windows, but if you invested same time into learning linux as you did windows, you'd know how to do things there aswell. No bro, it requires zero investment of time to "know your way around windows" for basic stuff like installing consumer programs--that's the thing. Not sure how you're missing that. I don't think I've ever installed anything incorrectly on Windows. I'm not sure that's even possible. The issue is not that I expect Linux to be a "magic solver of problems"--it's that there are a lot of problems it has which are ridiculous in the first place and don't exist on other operating systems.
- testrun 3y ago
  Cannot agree more. Using linux since Slackware in the '90s but still now and again Linux for everyday use can be so frustrating. Currently using Ubuntu 22.10, because 23.04 has a problem with multiple window management. But 22.10 on my PC have mono sound, but it is stereo on 23.04. Stream works fantastic on 23.04, but I have problems login in to some games on 22.10. Having problems using Cuda on 23.04 but it works 100% on 22.10, and on and on it goes. Did go back to 22.04, but there were other problems then, so decided 22.10 will be it for now. As so many people said before, Linux is 95% there, it is just the last 5% that is so frustrating.
  - catlover76 3y ago
    Yeah How is gaming on Linux? What do you play?
    - Raineer 3y ago
      I was commenting on this just last week. Gaming on Linux has exploded since the Steam Deck was released (just as all Linux users were hoping it would). All the effort which went into Proton to get games working on Steam Deck has done wonders for the desktop. It used to be that you could play AAA games up to about 2 years prior (same story like macOS today), but now you can play almost anything on desktop Linux. I even run HiDPI / 5K monitor and it all works now, at least on Arch. The only notable exception (truly, a surprise), at the moment, is Starfield not working on day 1. This was surprising, but the reasons net down to GPU drivers - and progress is already being made.
      - catlover76 3y ago
        Nice! Yeah I downloaded Steam on here to try it, but my hardware isn't up to the task. Seems like it worked well from a software perspective though!
    - happymellon 3y ago
      I'm playing Horizon Zero Dawn right now. Works great on Linux, as do the hundreds of other games I've played.

xerox13ster 3y ago

Fam, you probably installed Discord through the package manager or the AUR and then when it said there was an update you said "I'll figure it out" and downloaded the tarball that option offers and built it. you should remove them by doing `sudo pacman -Rns discord` followed by trying yay -R discord. Then install it from either the AUR with yay or Arch repo with pacman.

catlover76 3y ago
I don't remember how I first installed it, but for the update, I downloaded the .deb file they offered by default, couldn't do anything with it. Don't remember how I solved the problem. Edit: actually, I think I installed it via Snap Store. And the current Snap Store version is .28, but the new update is .29. So the .28 client is just in a loop of "there is a new update and I am out of date, so now I am just a modal that downloads the packages at these URLs". Not sure where my other installation came from, if I somehow did a fresh install or what. I don't really get why there isn't just one obvious reliable and centralized way to install software on this thing. My Slack, VSCode, and other apps auto-update without my having to manually do anything, which, IMO, is how it should be by default. I'm on Ubuntu--is there benefit to using Pacman on there? My understanding is that people do.
- Tijdreiziger 3y ago
  > I don't really get why there isn't just one obvious reliable and centralized way to install software on this thing. To be fair — there isn’t that on any desktop OS.
  - catlover76 3y ago
    Yeah I know, I'm kind of expecting more from Linux in that respect. But I'm also just genuinely wondering if people more experienced in software engineering would agree that it is better, ideally, to have one clear, right way of installing software.
    - 3y ago

midoridensha 3y ago

>I can't even use my large MSI 1440p monitor with this computer because Linux (also perhaps because of the actual gfx card too, to be fair) This part makes no sense. Linux works with any monitor; monitors connect via DP/HDMI and don't need device drivers. I have two 1440p monitors on my system. If you're having a problem here, it's undoubtedly the graphics card, and Linux has long had issues with drivers there (mainly Nvidia), but even here most Nvidia users say it works fine for them.

aforwardslash 3y ago
My experience with 1440p monitors on linux is terrible, and I'm being generous. Starting with the obvious, dpi detection is mostly non-existing and it seems the default text subhinting configurations aren't actually good for high dpi monitors - so you either get shitty fonts and graphics with good screen real estate or FHD experience with acceptable quality. And then you have to choose - do you want color management or different dpi settings per monitor? Because you can't have both - Wayland doesn't seem to have proper color management yet, and X/Xorg doesn't have different scaling settings per monitor. Did I mention Wayland supports different dpi settings per monitor? Well sometimes it gets confused, and doesn't work well. Getting my kubuntu (I know, running kde doesn't help) to work with both my FHD and QHD monitor in an acceptable dpi setting took several hours, and forced me to switch from XOrg to wayland. Now instead of a robust desktop, I have a machine that needs to be rebooted every week because it starts forgetting to update screen regions - imagine a youtube video playing, but you only see the first frame.
- midoridensha 3y ago
  I definitely do not recommend mixing monitor resolutions; I tried that on my work PC and it was a disaster. So for both work and home, I have dual 27" monitors with the same resolution (4k at work, QHD at home). The one at home works fine, but the one at work needed manual setting of the DPI, so there do seem to be problems with DPI detection as you say.
  - kaliszad 3y ago

kaliszad 3y ago

From the thread it seems you are on Ubuntu. There are basically two package managers out of the box. One, the traditional combo of dpkg + apt on top is deeply embedded into the system. You can install a Discord .deb package using `$ sudo dpkg -i ~/Downlaods/discord-0.0.28.deb` or whatever because it is not in the operating system's repositories. If it was, it would be `$ sudo apt install discord` or something along those lines. The Snap packaging system also includes a layer of software that can sandbox the packages it installed. The idea is, a single package is less distro-specific and also is limited in the damage it can do. Ubuntu is the main user of Snap. Many other distributions, especially Fedora and the like seem to lean more towards Flatpak, which is a different take on what Snap does. Yes, it is complicated but the idea is to increase the security and portability of software packages for Linux. To manage Snap packages from the command line, you can use the snap command.

catlover76 3y ago
Yeah, I think I may have got the second installation working via the sudo dpkg route, but I'm not sure. I know I definitely tried it as part of troubleshooting the issue. If that is what I did to eventually get Discord working again, then it's strange that I now have two installations, because the download of the .deb file is what the Discord client wanted me to do in the first place. That being said, I probably initially installed it via Snap--but then, shouldn't it have auto-updated? Yet the Snap store version is still stuck on v 0.28, and the Discord client is what insisted I download the .deb for 0.29. :shrug: I do not think either of the above routes is too onerous or complicated, but I think the situation is made more complicated by the multiple options. If I am understanding things correctly, APT is a third option in addition to Snap and downloading .deb directly--actually, there is a fourth, which is a variety of things we can lump together under "execute an an installation script"
- kaliszad 3y ago
  Apt is the default thing that manages dpkg for you, does dependency resolution, etc. dpkg is quite low level actually. Snap and Flatpak and others are en vogue now, they are basically more app-storey approach to application installation, permissions and more. So apt/ dpkg or if you are on Fedora dnf/yum/rpm are the traditional approaches and Snap/ Flatpak is a very different approach altogether. I would probably just deinstall the Discord from Snap and keep using the .deb/ dpkg approach.