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Cake day: July 8th, 2023

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    • awk
    • the (usually rust-based) coreutils “alternatives” like bat, fd, eza, procs
    • trash-put (rm with trash integration. But beware that it also operates on directories by default, which rm only does with -r. There should be an option to change that behavior but there isn’t. Don’t alias rm to this)
    • wl-copy/paste (or the older one for X11, ‘xclip’ IIRC. Enables you to do stuff like “cat image.jpg | wl-copy” to copy it to the clipboard. Best alias it to something shorter)
    • xdg-open (open the file using your associated program for that file type. Alias to “o” or so)
    • pass (awesome password manager, when you have a GPG key pair. Even better in combination with e.g. wofi)
    • notify-send (to send GUI notifications from shell scripts)
    • ledger (plain-text accounting software. If you use Emacs you should take a look at this as it’s written by an Emacs dev, and has good integration of course)
    • nc
    • nohup

  • You should have played Black Mesa instead of Half-Life 1 these days. It’s not a 1:1 remake but quite close and of course much more modern, and just awesome. Xen in particular is much better in BM than it is in the original, so it even fixes HL1’s weakest part. The rest is kind of similarly awesome. Maybe you should play it right now to see the difference.

    (Black Mesa is a successful fan project remake of the whole Half-Life 1, and they even expanded on some things (especially Xen). It’s based on an updated Source engine and has at least the graphical fidelity of recent Half-Life 2 builds, if not more).


  • kyub@discuss.tchncs.detoAsklemmy@lemmy.mlAny good games you can Reccomend?
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    8 days ago
    • Cyberpunk 2077 (very good since 2.x and with Phantom Liberty expansion). Since I have similar hardware to you, you can play it with Raytracing enabled and have at least above 30 fps which should be enough for most playstyles except maybe fast melee-based combat. The game’s lighting effects look absolutely gorgeous with Raytracing.

    • Witcher 3 (keep at it. It’s amazing. It can feel clunky at the beginning due to its weird combat mechanics but you get used to it. Also you can switch it up by integrating signs (magic) into your swordfighting. Which is what I recommend doing. I think it’s more varied). Also, the game gets better as you go. The base game is great, but the DLCs are even better, especially Blood & Wine has kind of a legendary status among all DLCs, you rarely get such value inside a DLC, except Phantom Liberty which has a similar scope and quality to it.

    • Baldur’s Gate 3 is probably the best game of the last decade or so so highly recommended. It’s not open world, but it’s still huge and is at the same time very densely packed with stuff, so you need a lot of time when you want to explore and loot everything. The game feels huge that way. Especially compared to open world games, it’s like the opposite - open world games have a vast area but almost nothing in-between major points, which means the world can feel empty in a lot of open-world games. Baldur’s Gate 3 has something around every corner and never feels empty (unless you’ve cleared a whole area already).

    • Red Dead Redemption 2 - a lot of people like it, so far it didn’t feel right to me (so slow) but I can still see how it’s a good game and if you like chilling with a game it might be just your thing

    • Elden Ring is amazing but has very tough combat/action of course. Still, it really feels great as an open-world game. It completely throws the “Ubisoft formula” out of the window, which most open-world games follow, and that’s precisely why it’s so good. I’ve rarely had more feeling of true exploration and accomplishment within an open world game. Still, combat is very challenging, so if you prefer games to be on the easy side, then it’s not right for you. But if you don’t mind a challenge (a challenge you can also often delay for later when you’re stronger) then it’s a must-play. If you don’t know, as most or all games from From Software, these games don’t offer different difficulty settings so there is only one difficulty which is the same for every player (and it’s tough). These games are also very fair and reward accurate playing - it’s possible to not get hit at all by anything, for example, if you’re really good. So they never feel unfair and when you die (which you do a lot) you’ll always know why you died and have an idea how you could do it better. Besides the difficulty, what can also feel oppressive in those games is the fact that all enemies (except bosses) respawn whenever you rest. But Elden Ring kind of mitigates that because you can skip a lot of areas and come back when you’re better prepared (i.e. gained more levels/attributes or better gear). Then, past challenges can start feeling easy. And skipping weak enemies is kind of the normal thing.

    • STALKER 2 (may still need a couple more patches but it’s playable and has a great overall atmosphere and visual design. They fixed the worst post-launch problems I think). Very strong in atmosphere and immersion.


    • To learn Arch, install it from scratch (without archinstall), it’ll force you to read the Wiki and learn a lot of necessary commands in the process. After the installation, just keep using it. Using a Linux distro full-time as the only installed OS is the best way to keep at it and truly learn it over time. There’s no magic bullet here. Just keep using it and solving problems or issues as you go, learning more and more stuff as you go. If you need other OSses as well, run those in a VM. I don’t recommend dual-boot setups.

    • Don’t blindly copy/paste commands you don’t understand. Always try to understand them first. Some commands can be very disruptive or even destroy your configuration. If you don’t understand it or are able to adapt it so that it fits to your particular configuration or system, you can EASILY damage a configuration, or even make your system unusable. Also, some people like trolling other people and deliberately share harmful commands. Generally, test potentially destructive commands or complex commandlines before actually running them.

    • Document major config changes that you do. This is useful because you’ll be able to undo certain changes or even replicate your current system configuration fast when you change distros or have to reinstall in the future. For example my current Arch-based setup is fully documented in form of an almost-directly executable shell script. It does require some interactions but very little. If I ever have to reinstall this system, or upgrade my hardware, it can be done insanely fast and it’ll have the exact same configuration. This goes from basic partitioning and encryption all the way up to dotfiles and individual program configurations.

    • Don’t feel the need to learn hard/advanced tools like Vim or Emacs unless you really think you’re getting an advantage from that and aren’t hesitant to put in the time and effort to learn them. Most people don’t need to use them. They’re amazing tools but you need to be prepared to lose quite a lot of time to learn them before you can become productive with them, and this might not be a tradeoff that’s useful for every single user. You can also get away with much simpler tools, like nano (as a console-based editor) or whatever programmer’s text editor you want.
    • Similarly, whether a pure WM or compositor plus assorted tools compared to a full desktop environment is worth it for you or not, is up to you. There’s no wrong or right answer here. I’ve tried out pretty much everything and these days use KDE Plasma because I like the consistency and integrations and dislike having different, inconsistent stand-alone tools for panels, menus, notifications, wallpaper, file manager and so on. But again, there’s no wrong or right answer here. Just what makes more sense for you. It’s worth learning how to be able to configure and use a minimalistic setup, for sure. So trying it out doesn’t hurt and increases your knowledge overall. In general, in the Linux world it’s good to always know enough to not be screwed once some component suddenly doesn’t work anymore. For example, a competent Linux user should be able to deal with (temporarily) not having a GUI and fixing his system via commandline.

    • A minimalistic, DIY distro like Arch can be amazing to learn everything, if you want to do that at least. If you just want a working desktop system with as little effort as possible, then don’t do that. But if you intend to learn every detail, then a distro like Arch is better suited for that goal than a “bloated”, fully pre-configured distro like Mint or Ubuntu is. Because Arch is much simpler on a technical level than those are. It’s much easier to understand e.g. the relatively simple package building process on Arch than it is on Debian/Ubuntu-based distros. But this “simple” explicitly refers to technical simplicity or minimalism. Most users expect something else when they hear “something is simple”. Arch is not simple as in beginner-friendly, but it is simple in terms of technical complexity, which is why many advanced users and tinkerers like it because it doesn’t stand in their way. It also means though that you HAVE to learn many things, e.g. how to configure a firewall, because it doesn’t come with any preinstalled by default. With Arch, the admin is supposed to know about everything and configure every component himself, at least on a somewhat basic level.

    • If you want to go to even more details, you could also try out a source-based distro like Gentoo or Crux, which can also be a great learning experience, but it’s even more details regarding compilations of each package, dependencies, compile-time options, etc. you have to deal with than with a minimalistic binary-package-based distro like Arch, so whether that’s useful for you or not is up to you of course.
    • While we’re at it: LFS (Linux from Scratch) is not a distro per se, it’s a guide on how to build your own distribution from scratch. It’s VERY time intensive and not recommended unless you truly want to learn how to build a complete distribution from scratch, or maybe start your own distro some day which isn’t based on another existing distro.


    • Metro series (very good, contains creaures/mutants but also a lot of enemies are human)
    • STALKER series (very good, contains creaures/mutants but also a lot of enemies are human), some mods recommended because the base games are a bit “unfinished” for lack of a better word, but the modding scene is great and always kind of saves the games
    • Deus Ex series (I’ve played 1, Human Revolution + Mankind Divided, all very good. Part 1 in particular was legendary back in the day, unfortunately it looks like absolute garbage these days (it was already critizized for its dated look back when it released), but you might find some mods beefing it up a bit)
    • Wolfenstein series (the newer titles are very good in general, except Youngblood)
    • Dishonored series (very good)
    • F.E.A.R. series (great horror/scifi themed FPS)
    • DUSK, Ion Fury, … (and in general lots of other boomer shooters, lots of them are great, these are just 2 examples which I fondly remember. Lots of high quality indie games in this category)
    • Cyberpunk 2077 (as an FPS-RPG hybrid, very good since version 2.x, especially with Phantom Liberty)
    • Sniper Elite series (I’ve played 2-4, they were very decent)
    • Far Cry series (I’ve played 1, 3-5 + New Dawn + Primal, they were very decent. New Dawn was more like DLC-sized)
    • The newer Terminator FPS games are supposedly good, haven’t played them yet
    • The new Robocop FPS is supposedly good, haven’t played it yet

    These are more controversial but also can be a fun option:

    • Deathloop (interesting conceptually but also not amazing. Only get it at heavy discounts)
    • RAGE 1+2 (don’t remember much from 1 anymore, but I finished it so it was at least okay. 2 was short and unimpressive but still works as well, it’s nothing impressive but if you just want a sci-fi singleplayer shooter they’re alright I guess, and they’re probably very cheap these days. Only get them at heavy discounts)
    • The Division 1/2 also work decently in single-player, although some late-endgame stuff like Raids requires multiplayer. Might not count as FPS since it’s 3rd person by default, but it plays very close to FPS and IIRC you can change camera view to 1st person and when you aim from cover (which is most of the time) it feels like FPS regardless. I played both for a bit and it was better than expected but it’s also bland and gets boring after a while. Still a somewhat decent “realism”-based shooter. Only get them at heavy discounts.
    • Theoretically Call of Duty but I’m still not going to recommend them because of unethical developer or publisher, low value in general, inflated prices in general, short lengths in general, and so on.

  • kyub@discuss.tchncs.detoLinux@lemmy.mlLinux is religion
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    15 days ago

    Well, it might seem that way sometimes. But in the end, what’s different to religion is that this is all rooted in facts. Facts which are quite abstract, so not everyone gets them and even those who do get them sometimes wonder whether it’s important or not sometimes. The thing is, Linux is at its core a neutral, open and free operating system, and it’s basically the only one which is advanced or mature enough to be a real competitor to let’s say Windows or MacOS. Of course it’s more than a competitor on the server, it’s basically the only relevant server operating system (Windows Server has a niche in application servers within a MS intranet domain, or to control Windows clients via policies, that’s about it, and MacOS server is already long dead I think). Of course, some of Linux’ success is because those same companies also contribute a lot to the development of Linux, because they need it for themselves as well. But that’s just one more thing which makes Linux a very unique thing. It’s like a neutral baseline for an operating system. Like a very capable OS core that everyone works on, even the competition works on it, because they also rely on it.

    That it’s open source and transparent and that anyone can use it or improve it or change it or whatever makes it special, because it’s not a commercial black-box product where you just consume it as-is and have zero rights whatsoever to do or change anything about it. That’s actually incredibly special in today’s commercialized landscape. Its open nature also means it can never die, only grow. And because it’s a proven good system which is also so very different compared to established desktop OSses, it can happen that its users or fans can seem somewhat religious towards it. But, again, compared to religion, religion is based on pure belief (otherwise it would be called fact). There’s nothing religious about Linux or open source software. It’s simply a special operating system, and not in a bad way at all. And closely related to it is, of course, the whole free/open source software movement. Which every user, even those of closed operating systems, can and do benefit from.

    And since today’s commercial software continues growing more and more user hostile (ads, spying, bloat, dark patterns, high prices/software rental models), it’s getting increasingly important to have at least the option of a true alternative. Even users who absolutely hate Linux and open source software should be glad that alternatives do exist, so that once the food they are being fed by Microsoft and so on doesn’t taste good anymore, they at least have an option to switch to something else entirely.






  • kyub@discuss.tchncs.detoGaming@beehaw.orgWhat happened to gaming?
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    1 month ago

    There are a lot of phenomenal indie games. There also are still a couple of really good AAA games, but AAA gaming isn’t what it used to mean. In fact I’d be careful with AAA by default unless reviews state that the game is actually good. Ubisoft even tried to establish an “AAAA quality” game with Skulls & Bones or how it’s called and it’s a total flop.

    The real quality these days lies in indie games or (mostly) independent gaming studios. I think it’s kind of safe at this point to just assume by default that Bethesda, Microsoft, EA, Activision-Blizzard and so on simply cannot produce actual good games anymore (there may be some exceptions, but again, wait for independent reviews, and unless it was independently verified, don’t trust them to produce a good game).

    Another problem is the sheer mass of games flooding the market, because it means that true gems aren’t found so easily. But they exist. There’s no shortage of great games, you just have to look harder, and look in the right places.



  • Personal experience - I used some late version of Plasma 5.2x on desktop and now Plasma 6.x of course (always Wayland, generally always the latest stable version available), and Gnome (always Wayland, always the latest stable version) on my work notebook. I’ve never experienced any “serious” bug on Gnome, but I have experienced multiple on Plasma over that time period. I think the most “serious” bug I’ve had on Gnome was that the cursor was flipped upside down for a while until they fixed that (some time ago). While the most serious bug in KDE were multiple crashes in plasmashell since Plasma 6.x. (Meaning all your open apps got closed, I’d say that’s pretty serious for a bug). Another smaller bug, very recently, was that virtual desktops in KDE Plasma were named wrong and when I renamed them they didn’t get saved so it reverts to the wrong names (e.g. “Desktop 1”, “Desktop 3”, “Desktop 4”, “Desktop 4”). But it seems they fixed that with the latest update as well.

    Which is also why I’d like to keep it that way, Gnome for work and KDE where it’s not super important if plasmashell crashes or does some weird thing every once in a while. I think KDE is more prone to bugs because it’s simply more complex than Gnome. Gnome is quite minimalistic and doesn’t offer lots of features, KDE is a powerhouse desktop with literally tons of features, dwarfing probably every other desktop environment, at least in the available options for which a GUI exists to set them. Also, Gnome doesn’t support many advanced features like HDR (yet), while Plasma does. So the complexity in having all that stuff means Plasma must be more prone to bugs.

    So I view KDE Plasma as “slightly more buggy” than Gnome, still. Especially for dot-zero releases. But the KDE devs are also improving it all the time, so it might become more stable soon. But still, for personal use, KDE Plasma is “stable enough” despite those mentioned bugs, some of which were also fixed in the meantime. For example I didn’t have any more plasmashell crashes since they said that they fixed those causes. Which is why I’m using KDE Plasma 6.x for my personal machines. I like it more than Gnome, but when I want “100%” reliability for a DE, I’m still using Gnome. The main thing I dislike about Gnome isn’t actually its UI or design philosophy or even the limited GUI-based options it offers, but rather its philosophy regarding standards or compliance or making interoperability easier. The Gnome devs often do their own thing and don’t play that nice with others.


  • kyub@discuss.tchncs.detoPrivacy@lemmy.mlAnyone here use GrapheneOS??
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    2 months ago

    Using it since many years on many Pixels and loving it.

    Main pros: zero bloat, efficient, highly secure and highly private (about as private and secure as it can get on any smartphone), and it’s an Android without any of Android’s typical weaknesses (privacy issues, bloat, etc.). You get to utilize the advantages of Google (its security) and completely avoid the disadvantages (its many privacy issues). You get to use all the advantages of an Android mobile OS while completely avoiding all of its disadvantages. It’s like getting your cake and eating it too. You’re much better off in terms of security and privacy than almost(?) all other smartphone users. According to leaked documents, Cellebrite for example can’t crack GrapheneOS on Pixels at all. They can crack almost any other smartphone if they have physical access to it. Most smartphones are really easy for them to crack. iPhones may pose some trouble depending on model/OS. And Graphene on Pixel is the literal brick wall. And even on top of that it has tons of great security features, like auto-reboot after X hours of inactivity, charge-only-mode for USB-C when locked, distress/duress PIN entry to immediately wipe the phone, many things like that. On the privacy side it’s looking great as well: Some folks have analyzed Graphene’s network traffic and there’s zero privacy issues from the OS or its built-in apps. And the few connections it does make (for updates and so on) are all documented and work exactly like they documented them, and they only transmit the exact least amount of necessary data without anything beyond that (guess what - that’s super rare). And on top of that there’s even more great privacy features, some of which are invisible but well thought-out, for example any SUPL request goes through a Graphene proxy server first (configurable) which strips all personally-identifiable data from the request and then redirects it to your provider’s SUPL server (which is most likely Google’s SUPL server in the end). I’m seriously impressed by the quality of the GrapheneOS project. Maybe you don’t realize how good and rare such things are nowadays. Also the documentation is very good and actually answers most of your questions and doesn’t contain any marketing blurb. The social media feeds and forums are a great source of info as well. On top of all that it’s even easy to install GrapheneOS.

    Main cons: it’s only available on Google Pixel phones, so if you truly despise Google and don’t want to buy or use anything from them, it’s not the right device/OS for you (or maybe buy it used?). However, the reason GrapheneOS is on Pixel is purely a technical one: Pixels do offer very high hardware based security already (probably the most, although iPhones have good hardware-based security as well. As is known, Apple tends to be produce good quality hardware, not quite so good software) as well as a very high degree of “platform neutrality”, i.e. it’s supported by Google to flash a different OS on it or use more advanced tools like adb without any sort of tinkering or unnecessary danger involved. Also you don’t have to register to unlock your phone or anything, you only need to be online once to enable the OEM unlocking feature (I think this is because Google needs your IMEI to check whether the phone is carrier-locked (cannot ever be OEM unlocked) or can be unlocked, and they will immediately receive some device data including the IMEI as soon as you go online with the preinstalled Android OS once [of course they will receive some more device data than just the IMEI]), so it’s best to not insert your SIM yet (and not do anything with the preinstalled OS) before you’ve installed GrapheneOS on your new Pixel. Do the OEM unlocking step on WiFi only, best on a public WiFi so Google has much less of a chance to identify you based on your IP or related data. Then install Graphene, then insert your SIM and start using your new phone. Other cons exist but they’re rare or pretty much irrelevant in daily use. If you have to hear them, read an older post by me about some potential downsides: https://discuss.tchncs.de/post/19867254/12069767



  • You shouldn’t have to sign into any account just to use your operating system. This is wrong regardless of OS. It’s wrong and bad on iOS and proprietary Androids, and it’s wrong and bad on Windows. Also, it wasn’t even a thing on Windows before Win8. Don’t just blindly accept such enshittification. It would be tolerable if it would be opt-in and purely optional, but MS is pretty much enforcing this crap upon their users, and that’s more than a red line being crossed. That’s simply hostility towards their users.

    MS noticed that people do this willingly on iOS/proprietary Android and thought hey if we do this on Windows we can harvest even more data from the logged-in users and we have a confirmation of identity and also always get their current IP address and more device data.

    To better sell this to the average user, they offer some minor benefits such as settings synchronization across devices, for which they also harvest your settings data, obviously (and even more they’re not telling you directly). Either way, the only real reason they want this is to know who uses their OS, to control access (they could disable your account) and to harvest even more data from the logged-in users. With local user accounts, as it should be, this would not be possible.

    Online accounts make sense for online services, not for your OS which should work independently from online services.

    Either use a Linux distro (desktop/notebook/server/mobile) or an open-source Android distro such as GrapheneOS, DivestOS, /e/OS, CalyxOS, LineageOS (mobile).


  • It depends. It’s viable if you just need a phone with several open source applications (non-Android) and are fine with that. But if you need Android app compatibility it’s probably going to be harder or more inconvenient to do, though I haven’t checked the status in recent time. And then there’s this evil thing called Google Play Integrity (essentially DRM restricting which apps can run on which OS) which is a problem even for non-proprietary Androids, so you probably won’t have any chance if you’re dependent on such an app (thankfully it’s rare but as we all know stupid ideas tend to become annoyingly popular).

    Main problem, as usual, is that Android and iOS have become such big and popular “platforms” for mobile apps that establishing a “third” platform for app developers is basically impossible (also remember what happened to Windows Phone OS, they were late to the market and failed spectacularly to catch up. Of course in this case it’s open source so it can grow regardless of user numbers, but still, it’s hard to catch up when lots of great Android apps were already developed specifically for Android). So you can only hope that Android app compatibility grows mature enough to be close to 100% compatible, so that you can also run almost all Android apps on your mainline Linux mobile OS. Then you’re not “limited” anymore. (At least if you consider it “limited” when you can’t run Android apps. Which most probably consider to be “limited”).

    So I think it’s less about the hardware and OS/UI (I think they work fine these days) and more about the available apps.

    [My main daily driver phone is a GrapheneOS (Android) and I have a Pinephone with Linux for playing around in WiFi at home only]


  • kyub@discuss.tchncs.detoLinux@lemmy.ml*Permanently Deleted*
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    2 months ago

    Use Matrix or any good messenger like Signal or Threema for daily communication with friends.

    If you want to see a good table of messenger recommendations, see https://www.messenger-matrix.de/messenger-matrix-en.html

    E-Mail is not a suitable replacement because it lacks end-to-end encryption (unless you and your friends use PGP or S/MIME for that but since that’s rare and slightly too complicated for the common user to use, I’ll just assume that you don’t). While mails are usually encrypted during transport, they lie in plain text format at their destination servers. Depending on which e-mail host you or your friends use, that means the whole content of your e-mail might be scanned and analyzed automatically. Especially if you or your friends use privacy-disrespecting mail hosts like any big commercial one or Gmail or Outlook or what have you. Then your communication via unencrypted mail to or from that person isn’t private.