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Topic: General Unix/Linux Thread (Read 120430 times)

Re: General Unix/Linux Thread

Reply #301 –
I was eventually never able to figure out Manjaro-iso (a tool to easily create ISO's out of an installation of Manjaro). Now it has morphed into Manjaro-tools and the makers of little community spins of Manjaro all praise it. Thus easily installable ISO's based on Manjaro keep coming in all flavours and configurations.

Community Editions ready for takeoff

Re: General Unix/Linux Thread

Reply #302 –
That could potentially be interesting, although I've always thought that for the most part it probably makes the most sense to just stick to a list of installed packages: http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/linux-get-list-installed-software-reinstallation-restore.html (this link is 10 years old, but I assume it should still be valid) Or just reinstall a few programs selectively if you miss them. I'm just not sure if making your own special ISO is worth the effort.

Re: General Unix/Linux Thread

Reply #303 –
Quote from: Frenzie on
I'm just not sure if making your own special ISO is worth the effort.
In Manjaro, I discovered that pacman can easily install packages in bulk - point it to a list of package names with the option --needed and it grabs only the packages that are missing from the system. That's how I lost interest in Manjaro ISO (and Manjaro-tools) and never properly learned it. I thought for a while to become the maintainer of the Openbox spin (currently unmaintained, very unfortunate), which would have required me to learn to put together ISO's, but I didn't.

Re: General Unix/Linux Thread

Reply #306 –
Quote from: Frenzie on
I feel that for mainstream success, Snap packages are good.
Yes, as long as you are on a Debian or derivative. For any other distro, it still pays off to compile locally, if the package is not provided in the repos.

Re: General Unix/Linux Thread

Reply #307 –
Incidentally, I bought Oxenfree in the GOG summer sale. I've had my eye on the game for a month or so now. Unbeknown to me, they came out with a Linux version a couple of weeks ago and I was pleasantly surprised to find it staring at me in my GOG library. Even though I usually play all games pretty much exclusively in Windows, on kind of a whim I decided to go with the Linux version. It runs beautifully, Xbox One controller support and all.

My biggest gripe so far is that at the very beginning of the game, one of the characters says "who's [sic] car is this". It's looking to be a good one.

Re: General Unix/Linux Thread

Reply #308 –
Talking about some finished software projects:
Quote from: http://joeyh.name/blog/entry/twenty_years_of_free_software_--_part_9_small_projects/
Studies of free software projects have found that the average free software project was written entirely by one developer, is not very large, and is not being updated. That's often taken to mean it's a failed or dead project. But all the projects above look that way, and are not failures, or dead.
I thought this was fairly obvious. Besides some occasional maintenance, free software can afford to just be done. Like a wrench or something. It's only commercial software that has to keep inventing new GUIs or whatnot to justify you buying the next version.

Re: General Unix/Linux Thread

Reply #309 –
The version of Skype I use apparently hasn't been updated since 2014. Seeing how the Windows version has evolved, I'm quite grateful. In any case, apparently there's a new version coming out again…

http://www.webupd8.org/2016/07/new-skype-for-linux-alpha-released.html

Quote from: http://blogs.skype.com/2016/07/13/skype-for-linux-alpha-and-calling-on-chrome-and-chromebooks/
For example, you’ll be using the latest, fast and responsive Skype UI, you can share files, photos and videos and send a whole new range of new emoticons.

I have no idea what they're babbling about with "responsive UI". The current version scales along just fine with DPI thanks to it being Qt-based. I guess they hope that by just tossing terms around I won't notice the old version already does all the things they're boasting. Well, except for those emoticons. Big whoop.

Re: General Unix/Linux Thread

Reply #310 –
I figured I'd point out that the Day of the Tentacle Remastered Linux version came out a couple of days ago. A quick check shows it working beautifully, gamepad at all, just like that other gaming highlight of the year, Oxenfree. An interesting feature of Day of the Tentacle is that you can resize the window (or of course run it fullscreen) and it just scales along at whatever size you decide to play it.

Re: General Unix/Linux Thread

Reply #311 –
I want to play mouse+keyboard only games (like Broken Sword 5) with my gamepad and QJoyPad seems to do the trick. I should upload my Xbox One controller config once I'm done, because it takes annoyingly long to set up…

Edit: there is also this port to Qt 5 https://github.com/panzi/qjoypad It says it has some other additional features, but it's not immediately clear to me what they are.

Edit 2: a similar program is https://github.com/AntiMicro/antimicro I haven't yet checked it out, but I did notice a missing feature in QJoyPad: you can't seem to map an axis to scrolling. (Preferably I'd want my right trigger to scroll like on the mouse wheel or two-finger scroll on a touchpad.) In any event antimicro will be very useful to check out on Windows, because it supports both Linux and Windows.

Edit 3: seems like antimicro might actually be nicer.

Re: General Unix/Linux Thread

Reply #313 –
Some simple arrows? Hmm, Google gives me about 228,000,000 results. :)

Re: General Unix/Linux Thread

Reply #314 –
I wouldn't call that very simple. Using e.g. Pinta instead might be, though.

Re: General Unix/Linux Thread

Reply #315 –
I meant images of arrows you could modify at your like. :)

Didn't know about Pinta.
Gimp isn't designed for drawing. It's primarily a great editor.
Inkspace would be my choice for drawing. You can export images (scalable vectors) to PNG and edit them with Gimp if you need to.

Re: General Unix/Linux Thread

Reply #316 –
I love Inkscape, but it's terrible with bitmaps. That being said, I would consider creating an arrow in Inkscape and exporting it to PNG much easier than trying to find or modify some random arrow from the internet.
 

Re: General Unix/Linux Thread

Reply #317 –
Quote from: Frenzie on
I should upload my Xbox One controller config once I'm done, because it takes annoyingly long to set up...

[…]

Edit 3: seems like antimicro might actually be nicer.
Here's the antimicro setup I'm trying out with Broken Sword 5. Note that there are a bunch of premade profiles available here.

Re: General Unix/Linux Thread

Reply #318 –
You can set all kinds of PulseAudio settings from the command line. For instance, to change the default sink (output):

Code: [Select]
pacmd set-default-sink 1

Re: General Unix/Linux Thread

Reply #319 –
Even though I do almost nothing with Steam (DRM-free GOG is much better, for example), I decided to check out its Linux version. To my surprise the majority of my "triple A" games are actually available on Linux.

  • Many of the Total War games
  • Tomb Raider (2013, not Rise)

More negatively you could say only 10 games out of 42 total, but most of those are actually ancient games that barely work on current Windows either, if at all. Meaning they work best in a virtual machine or on Wine anyway.

Note that Steam doesn't seem to take my DPI settings into account, or if it does it's just freaking tiny regardless.

I'm installing Tomb Raider right now out of curiosity, but I expect performance to be abysmal and the going might be tough.[1] And I'm not going to install the binary blob drivers. No way. :P

Edit: So performance actually isn't bad at all. It seems to look a bit worse than I remember, but that's probably because of Rise.
1 Even Steam itself has to be started with LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libstdc++.so.6 DISPLAY=:0 steam or it refuses.↵

Re: General Unix/Linux Thread

Reply #320 –
Slight update on Steam. It quit working after an update and I had to add another library to the preload:
Code: [Select]
LD_PRELOAD='/usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libstdc++.so.6 /lib/i386-linux-gnu/libgpg-error.so.0' steam

Re: General Unix/Linux Thread

Reply #321 –
Quote from: Frenzie on
Besides some occasional maintenance, free software can afford to just be done.
Looks like Elinks is so done that its website is down. Not sure if permanently.

Seriously, I am so happy with the browser that I have hardly any requests. It doesn't even require any maintenance. My only hope is that the web itself won't evolve in some unexpected direction.

Edit: Elinks website back online again. It didn't even take a week :)

Re: General Unix/Linux Thread

Reply #322 –
Quote from: Frenzie on
Here's the antimicro setup I'm trying out with Broken Sword 5. Note that there are a bunch of premade profiles available here.
Up-to-date antimicro DEB packages can be obtained from https://launchpad.net/~mdeguzis/+archive/ubuntu/libregeek/+packages

(Or you could use the source as an easier base for backporting and installing, but I don't bother.)

Quote from: Frenzie on
Slight update on Steam. It quit working after an update and I had to add another library to the preload:
For some games, like Broken Age (NB GOG version, not Steam), I had to add yet another directive:
Code: [Select]
LD_PRELOAD='/usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libstdc++.so.6 /lib/i386-linux-gnu/libgpg-error.so.0' LIBGL_DRI3_DISABLE=1 ./start.sh
The moral of the story, if you hand someone Linux as an alternative OS perhaps you shouldn't give them Debian/testing but something like Ubuntu 16.04 instead lest they walk away in frustration.

Me, I'm actually quite pleased that the vast majority of games I think are worth playing now run on most flavors of Linux with no or minimal effort. The problem is probably related to Broken Age being ever so slightly older. Newer games like Oxenfree and Day of the Tentacle Remastered launch just like that.

I don't think it would be fair to paint this as a Linux problem either. I've got plenty of stuff that doesn't work on Windows 10. That being said, the problem is quite likely worse on Linux. There are even games like Type:Rider (a mediocre game; I'm not recommending it) that work properly on Linux while on Windows they have serious issues. This is Microsoft's own fault, because instead of a standard gamepad API it seems they keep reinventing it for every controller they release — in my case the Xbox One controller. Seems like overkill for the only new feature: rumbling triggers.

Re: General Unix/Linux Thread

Reply #323 –
Quote from: Frenzie on
The moral of the story, if you hand someone Linux as an alternative OS perhaps you shouldn't give them Debian/testing but something like Ubuntu 16.04 instead lest they walk away in frustration.
Certainly, insofar as gaming or Mac-like out-of-the-box ease-of-use is involved. And googleable help tips and tricks for later.

I personally don't do gaming, so less frustration to begin with, but Manjaro allegedly takes Steam support seriously. Might be worth a try some day.

Lately in my own Linux propagation work I have begun installing Manjaro for people instead of Ubuntu-based distros. I'm now confident of Manjaro's stability and simplicity and of my own competence with it. And it currently has at least three releases that are so smooth out of the box that they require hardly any tinkering to perfect them: Xfce, Cinnamon, and JWM. Also i3wm is very good, but at first it comes with gaps and some other stuff that are not easy to remove or modify for noobs.

Re: General Unix/Linux Thread

Reply #324 –
I don't propagate Linux as such except through my geeky online writing, but I do oblige the occasional curious look at my Xubuntu.