General Computer Thread

[Shaytan]

I don't use OpenSUSE because I don't like YaST, zypper is s-l-o-w, and my VPN doesn't work well with it. Also, OpenSUSE gets really picky about what RPM packages it will run without freaking out.

I have been distro hopping the last 3 years and OpenSUSE Tumbleweed is one of the 3 distro I like especially if I want to use KDE. I can work with YaST and without is needed, obs gives me the missing packages I might need and I don't care about the package manager being fast or not.
Their KDE is the smoothest and the best I have used even with Wayland (despite my RTX 3060) and it feels very solid for a rolling release distro with snapper/rollback in the case an update goes wrong. Sadly, KDE is too distracting for me

The other 2 distro I use are Fedora with Gnome (my main distro choice actually) and Debian stable on my older PC with Gnome or Xfce.

 

[Marc]

Yeah, it does seem like Tuxedo would be a good choice for your needs.
As for me, Linux Mint, it has been what I wanted, it doesn't do wild changes and it has remained stable and reliable.
But that's the beauty of Linux, there's a Distro for everyone.

The Linux Experience on youtube had a recent video on Tuxedo and Nick really seems to like it.

 

[Amaris]

I have been distro hopping the last 3 years and OpenSUSE Tumbleweed is one of the 3 distro I like especially if I want to use KDE. I can work with YaST and without is needed, obs gives me the missing packages I might need and I don't care about the package manager being fast or not.
Their KDE is the smoothest and the best I have used even with Wayland (despite my RTX 3060) and it feels very solid for a rolling release distro with snapper/rollback in the case an update goes wrong. Sadly, KDE is too distracting for me

The other 2 distro I use are Fedora with Gnome (my main distro choice actually) and Debian stable on my older PC with Gnome or Xfce.

True, OpenSUSE's KDE implementation is excellent, I just hate that it didn't like the rpms I tried to use, I guess due to dependency hell, and my VPN hated it. Fedora is good, though the software's incessant need to refresh the cache every couple of hours, meaning a quick update that would take 10 seconds on any other system takes anywhere from 5-15 minutes. Still it has so much going for it.

Debian 12 was going to be my choice for my desktop, but I have very modern hardware, and while the current release of Bookworm is up to date, it wouldn't be long before it fell behind, and while some folks use Debian Testing, I don't like that it freezes all updates before each release of Debian Stable.

Still, the best thing about Linux is the absurd amount of choice we get!

The Linux Experience on youtube had a recent video on Tuxedo and Nick really seems to like it.

Yep, that was one of the reasons I decided to check it out. So far, so good.

 

[Amaris]

Well, that didn't quite work out for me. Had an update that ended up wiping out a good portion of my system, and like hell if I know exactly what happened. I didn't add any PPAs, no extra anything, just running stock Tuxedo, and something wild happened when I ran what I thought was just a normal update.

Now, I'm sure it's not a common thing, but I don't want to risk it again, so I thought about it, and went over to Fedora KDE.

 

[Santaman]

That indeed doesn't happen often.. but I can understand why you jump ship to another distro.
I'll fire up the testmachine and see if it gets a bug like that as well.

*edit* Updated the thing and it still works so it might have been a fluke, of course this machine is quite old and totally different than your machine so not sure what went wrong there in any case I couldn't reproduce it.

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

I run the 5600G but with a GPU and for the last year everything just feels a little more snappy then before, old CPU was a 6300

 

[Amaris]

That indeed doesn't happen often.. but I can understand why you jump ship to another distro.
I'll fire up the testmachine and see if it gets a bug like that as well.

*edit* Updated the thing and it still works so it might have been a fluke, of course this machine is quite old and totally different than your machine so not sure what went wrong there in any case I couldn't reproduce it.

Oh, I'm sure it's fine. I tend to push things until they break. I have friends who tell me "get into Arch, you'll love it!" but I don't want 5,000 updates a day, I just want my system to work, and while I do tweak things, at the end of the day I just want stability and ease of use.

Oh, I guarantee you it was I who caused it somehow, but I also went with Fedora because it has a reputation for extreme sturdiness in the face of stupidity. Trust me, I'll need it. <--

I run the 5600G but with a GPU and for the last year everything just feels a little more snappy then before, old CPU was a 6300

The FX-6300 was a great CPU, but it was written on Piledriver architecture, and the problem with that was the unified channel access for processor throughput, which made it a bottleneck for data when all of the cores were firing. Great idea, less than great implementation. The Ryzen series fixed this issue, and the end result is a much snappier CPU.

I almost got the 5600G instead of the 5600, but I have a discrete card already. Still, the 5600 is a very speedy processor, and I'm glad it's working out for you.

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

The FX-6300 was a great CPU, but it was written on Piledriver architecture, and the problem with that was the unified channel access for processor throughput, which made it a bottleneck for data when all of the cores were firing. Great idea, less than great implementation. The Ryzen series fixed this issue, and the end result is a much snappier CPU.

I almost got the 5600G instead of the 5600, but I have a discrete card already. Still, the 5600 is a very speedy processor, and I'm glad it's working out for you.

Well so far so good.

I did try this without the graphics card and it was even snappier. I could run nearly everything except maybe one or two demanding games like Horizon Zero Dawn which had little moments of stutter during big battles.

It's nice to know if I ever get tired of games and wish to just ditch the gpu I can have that option

 

[Amaris]

Well so far so good.

I did try this without the graphics card and it was even snappier. I could run nearly everything except maybe one or two demanding games like Horizon Zero Dawn which had little moments of stutter during big battles.

It's nice to know if I ever get tired of games and wish to just ditch the gpu I can have that option

I've been tempted, but I have a few games that require that stronger GPU, and I'm not willing to part with it.
Still, I get it, and sometimes that simpler setup is worth pursuing, but there are far too many games to actually do it. Game on, my friend.

 

[Santaman]

The FX-6300 was a great CPU, but it was written on Piledriver architecture, and the problem with that was the unified channel access for processor throughput, which made it a bottleneck for data when all of the cores were firing. Great idea, less than great implementation. The Ryzen series fixed this issue, and the end result is a much snappier CPU.

There was nothing wrong with Piledriver except that the FPU was shared between the two integer cores in one module when it had to perform 256bit operations, the main problem was that it came too early, there were almost no regular programs/games/etc that could use the 6 or 8 cores of the FX 6 and 8 series which improved slowly over time which is why the performance of the FX actually improved over time because of scheduler upgrades to M$ Windows and programs being able to use the higher core count, I still have my FX 8350 which runs Win 8.1 and it really never had to struggle with anything.

 

[John Clark]

Still have my FX8350 (for my desktop) but gaming wise, some things it could do with being a bit faster

At some point I'm going to have to upgrade it, but I'm waiting for stuff that come under "I really want" for me.

 

[Santaman]

Piledriver/FX 8350 came out in 2012 so yeah, after 11 years it isn't the fastest of course.

The "I really want for me" would be AM4 latest and greatest on that specific platform or AM5 7800X3D if it would be for gaming alone otherwise wait for the second generation AM5.

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

Which generation is the 5600 and 5600G?

 

[Amaris]

There was nothing wrong with Piledriver except that the FPU was shared between the two integer cores in one module when it had to perform 256bit operations, the main problem was that it came too early, there were almost no regular programs/games/etc that could use the 6 or 8 cores of the FX 6 and 8 series which improved slowly over time which is why the performance of the FX actually improved over time because of scheduler upgrades to M$ Windows and programs being able to use the higher core count, I still have my FX 8350 which runs Win 8.1 and it really never had to struggle with anything.

You are right. I must have confused it with another processor, or more likely I just half-remembered it and mixed it up with something else.

Which generation is the 5600 and 5600G?

The Ryzen 5 5600/5600G is an AM4 socket processor.
The latest Ryzen processors are AM5 socket processors.

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

The Ryzen 5 5600/5600G is an AM4 socket processor.
The latest Ryzen processors are AM5 socket processors.

Ta thanks

 

[Amaris]

I've hopped over to Endeavour OS. It's like Arch, but with an easier to use installer and most things pre-configured so you don't spend hours setting up a system you need to run quickly. So now I use Arch btw.

I'm loving it. Everything stays up to date, I've tweaked everything to how I like it, used the AUR for a few things, and everything works without issue. It being terminal centric is a wonderful bonus. There's no store to speak of, like other distros, you just update via the command line (yay or pacman -Syu), and refresh your mirrors every month or two, which only takes a few seconds. Looking for apps is as simple as opening up the Arch repository or the AUR and typing in the search what you want, and then following the instructions. Easy peasy.

It's easier to manage so far than I first thought. It's also very quiet. I kind of expected chaos with a rolling distro, but I just update every so often, and that's it, no deep dives into the terminal unless necessary.

I got my Canon MF230 working last night by going to the aur, installing cups and cupsdrvlib, type in the IP for the wireless access point and there's my printer. It honestly reminds me of my DOS days, but far more efficient and much MUCH faster than the 286 I was working with at the time.

 

[Santaman]

Sounds like my poor old testmachine will have to deal with another OS..

 

[Amaris]

Sounds like my poor old testmachine will have to deal with another OS..

I think you'll enjoy it.

 

[Amaris]

Well, after a wild ride I'm on Fedora KDE.

Later that night, after the glowing post on Endeavour (and I still insist it's a terrific distro), everything exploded. I did an update, and suddenly I couldn't boot into the system. After I managed to find a way to boot into the system, I found almost all of my customizations removed. After re-customizing, I found that my personal files had also been deleted. I restored everything, and when I restarted, boom, couldn't log into the system. I figured that was a sign that I was either out of my depth, or that I shouldn't bother.

So I thought "this is the perfect time to see how Pop OS is doing." Installed Pop OS, everything looked and worked great, for about half an hour, and then nothing wanted to work. Programs wouldn't load, I'd get constant crashes, and I know Pop is more stable than that.

So I said, "well, I tried Arch, and I tried Pop, and I love Debian based distros, so let's install Debian 12!" and so I did.

We will never speak of it again. All I'll say is 9 hours. 9 hours and things were still falling apart despite my best efforts to keep things running smoothly. It was definitely me, but I don't know what or where. So we'll move on.

So as a last ditch effort, I said "fuck it, let's install Fedora KDE," and so I did. Everything seemed to install just fine. I created a user account for my family so they could use the system, and found that Dolphin wanted to close every time you opened it. I tried recreating the user account, and it kept doing it. So I dug around a little bit, and found that it was possible that Dolphin was denying ownership access to the user for some really weird reason. I mean, this was a fresh install, that shouldn't have been happening, but it was. So I changed permissions for the Dolphin file manager, and restarted.

Everything has worked smoothly since, so here I am, and I'm exhausted.

My poor, poor SSD.
[ insert John Coffey "I'm Tired Boss" meme here ]

All of that said, things seem to be running fine, and so here's where I'll stay while I go over the wreckage of what happened. What a weird series of events in the Linux world for me these past few days.

 

[Santaman]

You might just hop on e-bay and buy a second hand PC for testing stuff.. So you can fiddle with stuff without busting your main rig all the time...