Anybody keeping up with their struggles with getting Linux setup for gaming? Pretty interesting to watch.
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It would be a whole lot of fun if Tom Lawrence and Jay could do a reaction video for Linus Tech Tips. 
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Not a bad idea. I’ll text Tom right now.
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Agreed! A reaction video would be great. Apparently PopOS has already made updates to better prevent users from unintentionally uninstalling their DE. Haha.
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Part 2 is up for Linux challenge! 
We recorded the reaction video yesterday. I’m going to try to get it uploaded tomorrow, but I’m not sure if it will make it in time.
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This thread is a bit quiet. On Level1Techs forum, the [Ongoing] LTT 1 month Linux Challenge thread is a total 
show. I’m probably partly to blame for that, lmao, I had some hot takes and some walls-of-text. Not a lot of comments going on here. Well, that forum is way bigger than this, so there’s also that. It would be so cool if Discourse was part of the Fediverse and we could cross-post on other instances from one account.
I’m somewhat hopeful for the part 3, I hope that Linus makes Anthony and maybe Wendell to review the challenge, point what was wrong and offer some potentially quick fixes, to show that what Linus did wasn’t the end of the world. Or maybe allow Anthony to explain some steps of how one would actually try to switch, like making a VM and learning before making the jump, or buying a second PC or old laptop and putting Linux on it and using it for as many things as one reasonably can.
To be honest, Luke did really well and it’s a real shame that LTT concentrated mostly on Linus and his issues, when Luke had basically 0 problems. If they had equal coverage, I bet people wouldn’t be as mad.
However, I’m pessimistic about part 4 (which was supposed to be the original part 3), judging from what happened in the first and second part. To be honest, part 2 wasn’t too bad (at least comparing to part 1). But the whole approach of LTT to Linux is wrong. Like Jay pointed out, you wouldn’t just slap Linux on your main machine and genuinely expect everything to work. Compatibility is still a thing you have to consider.
And Linus and Luke are trying their best to not ask for help (or so I got the impression), which is baffling. If either of them would ask on L1T or on LLTV or even on the Linux Mint forums under pseudonyms so people don’t recognize them, it would be perfectly fine, that’s what most people would do. Not find random github pages and try to run things from the internet that don’t know what they are doing. Sure, many people would probably start web searching before asking for help, but the majority of people aren’t obsessively trying to solve issues on their own, at some point, one would ask for help instead of trying to follow guides that may or may not work.
The spirit of the challenge is flawed, it just assumes a lot of wrong stuff, like as if “Windows stopped existing tomorrow, how hard would be for people to switch?” No sane person would do that. It might make for some entertainment for people who have no idea how easy Linux is, and makes for a lot of Linux enthusiasts to watch the series, so more clicks = more ad revenue (not that’s bad in itself), but that’s about it.
And I’m not a Linux evangelist personally. It’s kinda weird that people pontificate about what operating systems they are using and passionately encouraging others to use what they are using. It’s kind of tribalistic (as in, back when you had to adhere to the opinion of the tribe, otherwise getting expelled from the village would basically be a death sentence, trying to live in nature by yourself). I’m not saying it to be insulting. It’s just that, people don’t care what other people are using (and they shouldn’t).
Like, imagine seeing a BMW driver shouting his lungs out that he drives a BMW and everyone should be driving one. Not even BMW drivers are that low. But Arch people do it… And some Linux users in general do it too, trying to convince others to switch without a valid reason, which I find a bit silly. Some reasons could be valid, like a desire for privacy or for using FOSS, or heck, even not liking Microsoft as a company and boycotting them. But if the Windows user has no issue with Windows, let him be, because like anyone listening to a religious person trying to talk to him about Jesus and trying to convert him to said religion, it will backfire and the “audience” will become skeptic of the religious person and of said religion. Unless people were already frustrated with their own religion and wanted a change / convert, at which point you don’t even need to evangelize, people would be coming to you by themselves. Same with trying to switch and OS.
The civic “”“duty”"" of a Linux user is to help such users (obviously, nobody ought to do anyone any favor, it’s just duty, as in, if they want to help people), not to convert others. I personally did not get converted to Linux by someone, it took me around 7 years to switch after my first Linux taste. I kept using Windows and during that time, either dual-booted or used Linux on other machines, then I only switched because I realized Linux is a better platform for me and my own wants. Simple as that.
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Oh, part 3 appeared while I was posting:
Linus Tech Tips did a video for their Linux desktop challenge.
I would like to share my experience with everyone here.
A few months ago, I setup an LDAP server using LDAP Account Manager.
The web user interface allows me to create users and groups. Once I configure LDAP authentication in my GNOME desktop, I can then log into my desktop with different usernames and passwords. Previously, I had an account called “grayson” that contained all of my stuff, such as documents, videos, music production, 3D rendering in Blender, and Steam library. Now, I have a couple of users setup for different purposes:
- gpadmin: For performing administrative tasks
- gpeddie: All-purpose user account except for multimedia production and gaming.
- gpeddie-games: For playing Steam games and non-Steam games.
- gpeddie-avprod: Multimedia production, including video production and 3D modelling in Blender.
- gpeddie-noprivacy: For anything such as Facebook that does not respect my privacy
- gpeddie-work: For anything work-related
For accounts that I do not login are:
- pfsense: pfSense can send email to my gpeddie account.
- ansible: Ansible-related tasks that require admin privileges.
Do note that there is no graphical way to configure LDAP authentication in Linux, be it in Ubuntu or Arch Linux. Of course, Arch Linux is not for beginners, but that is besides the point. In Windows, all I have to do is enter the domain name, login to Active Directory as an administrator, restart the computer, and I’m done. But that is for Active Directory and not for OpenLDAP/LDAP Account Manager. I would probably won’t see Windows system administrators try out Linux for a challenge without working with a Linux terminal. I don’t think that will happen as Ubuntu Server does not come with a graphical user interface.
Plus, I have already created a thread regarding asking for username in addition to asking for password in a GNOME desktop environment, but I can see how this will not happen at all.
Of course, this is a Linux challenge for average users, so that thread above may not be applicable for the home users.
So now to my challenge.
I want to move my Steam library from my grayson account to gpeddie-games account. Why do I not do that using a terminal? Because I want to do this within Nautilus in my GNOME desktop. Once I started moving the Steam folder to my /home/ldapusers/gpeddie-games/.local/share folder, I entered the administrator password for grayson (not gpadmin) and the process has begun. About every 5 minutes, I entered the administrator password again. Rinse and repeat after 5 minutes. Enter admin password again. After 5 minutes, enter admin password again. Why! Is! That!?
Sure, a normal Windows user trying out Linux should be using a terminal, right? I hate to break it to anyone, but this pestering every 5 minutes for copying or moving hundreds of gigabytes of files between users will have the new Windows users switch back to Windows. Yes, I know. Linux is not Windows and Windows is not Linux, but if we want Windows users to try out Linux, we need to get rid of that password re-prompt.
The more we can implement things in a graphical user interface that does not have to be done through a terminal, the better. Sure, experienced Linux users will say “performing tasks in a Linux terminal is a lot faster than doing it in a graphical user interface,” but for average Windows users trying out Linux for the first time, this will not matter to them.
I think there’s lots of valid reasons to use Linux vs Windows, it’s just a question of balancing costs and benefits for each use case. Evangelizing doesn’t really benefit anybody, IMHO.
But I think sharing our enthusiasm is a good thing; I like doing my work on Linux way better than on Windows for a lot of reasons: it’s snappier, it’s faster, and it’s easier. 
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Since LDAP is more of an enterprise thing, I think you’ll need an eterprise Linux to get a nice GUI for configuring the client. SUSE Enterprise Linux, for example, has it. Since it’s part of Yast, it might be in OpenSUSE and Tumbleweed too, but I don’t have one running right now to check.
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LMAO @ 12:13 !
>“Why is it .zip.ufkwerfnhqfu?”
>Not seeing the file size in Dolphin growing when archiving files
Well, to be honest, I think his KDE desktop is broken, because normally, you would see a progress bar on the task bar at the bottom on Dolphin’s icon. How did Manjaro break such a basic KDE feature?
IDK Dolphin, but when I see file names like that, it looks to me like its a temporary working file/directory.
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I think it’s just that Linus had a hidden taskbar. A minute later he realized that he wasn’t seeing a bottom right progress bar, because his monitor is humongous.
Maybe? TBH, I find watching Linus do tech stuff more than a bit painful since he seems to be mostly clowning about.
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I tried installing OpenSUSE Tumbleweed in a VM 2 days ago. It was painful. I tried both the local installation, I tried enabling online repo in the same image, then I downloaded the net image. All default installations (basically 0 configuration on my side) failed because some packages appeared to have a different hash. I think the Tumbleweed repos are broken. I did verify the hash when I downloaded both .isos, they had the right hash, but packages (like vim and at one point a linux library and openssh) were reporting wrong hashes. No matter how many times I hit retry, it would not work, pressing ignore would lead to another package appearing to have a different hash an failing.
What I didn’t try was to press “keep using” the (supposedly) broken packages though, because no individual who knows what a hash check failure means would keep using said file, especially not on an enterprise distro. I am certain that SLES and OpenSUSE Leap don’t suffer from that though, it’s probably just Tumbleweed acting up. I tried installing the original offline image around 3 times, then 1 time for the other variants, it always failed, but usually with different packages reporting different hash values.
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That sounds more like connection issues, if it’s varying in what package fails the hash.
SUSE’s installer is a lot more complicated compared to CentOS/Fedora and Ubuntu/Debian’s installers. In my experience, setting up network interfaces in OpenSUSE is also convoluted as well. Not as easy as compared to Anaconda’s network setup and Debian’s, although Debian’s installer does insist in looking for a DHCP server when I do not configure one in my network, so I did intend to setup a static IP address in a virtual machine network. But then, this is not part of the Linus Tech Tips’ Linux challenge, isn’t it? I mean, I’m talking about not using a Linux terminal, after all.
I’m pretty certain my network was fine. Unfortunately I did not check YaST or Wicked, but I’ll probably try once again, as I do want to experiment with zypper more and especially with btrfs and OS snapshots. I want to eventually try OpenSUSE’s “immutable root” server setup. YaST on the other hand, I have trouble with it, as I have no idea how to update the system using it. Thankfully, zypper is pretty intuitive. Also, I haven’t read the friendly manual on YaST yet, so clearly my fault. The man pages for zypper were easier.
I agree. Anaconda is kinda hard to beat IMO. Ubuntu’s ubiquity installer is fine-ish, but kinda lacks advanced options (it is made for new users mostly, after all). Ubuntu’s server installer, subiquity, is kinda strange and also seem to lack things that the desktop one has (like ZFS root, but that feature is experimental, so probably normal).
I haven’t used Debian installer in a while, I remember it being straight forward, even if it was a ncurses installer. I didn’t look too deep into configuration options, especially not on partitioning.
Well, true, we are kinda going off-topic.
Hmm, well, I probably should give Pop!_OS a try and try not to use the terminal at all, maybe I can do the things that Linus failed to without touching the terminal. But I don’t have the hardware available yet (my main PC is a Raspberry Pi and my Proxmox server where I was trying OpenSUSE is overseas, but the internet there is way better - if the internet was down, I wouldn’t have been connected to my VPN and on Proxmox after all, and OpenSUSE wouldn’t have detected my timezone and synced the time).
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