What Linux version are you using?

[jaxa]

14 hours ago, Xolvix said:

EDIT: For what it's worth the old Thief games (via GOG installers) along with their respective fix patches work really well without any issue.

I'll probably try Thief 3 for the first time in forever after snobel finishes making a Linux version of Sneaky Upgrade.

https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=138607&page=82
https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=153010

[datiswous]

20 hours ago, revelator said:

Xfce

Could you elaborate on the minimal aspect of xfce? I personally think it's not really that minimal and I like it more than kde (too bloathed) for example.

Openbox is not a DE. It's a windows manager. Absolutely not comparable.

[revelator]

True openbox itself is not really a standalone DE. it does play well with Xfce on nomadbsd (which is pretty minimal).

I would say Xfce can be minimal dependent on what other stuff you yoke it up with, but so can many other DE's.

I like both KDE and Xfce but for different reasons. For KDE plasma is really fun to toy with though it kinda ends up feeling like an advanced phone UI  mostly because the interface works allmost the same as on my samsung S20FE just with mouse support instead of touch (in retrospect QT was engineered by nokia so it should probably not be to surprising).

Xfce has a small footprint and is pretty fast but yeah calling it minimal may be stretching it. though distros can use use it in such a way.  MX linux seems to be based on Xfce.

[JackFarmer]

@revelator Does "xkill" work with Wayland? I read somewhere it wouldn't.

[revelator]

Not as such. Kde versions with wayland can use ctrl+meta+esc and then click the frozen window but there have been some changes between kde versions.

Theres a discussion about it here with some pointers https://askubuntu.com/questions/1378412/what-is-the-equivalent-of-xkill-on-wayland

A variant of xkill is being worked on but has not yet been released.

[revelator]

For gnome desktops the key combination is alt+F2 then enter r to reload the process.

Seems like wayland wants window managers to handle system calls so while being simpler itself it makes things rather hard for anyone else

The replacement for xkill is called wkill but so far only works for certain programs, mainly plasma.

[revelator]

hmm looks like theres quite a furor on wayland vs X11.

while it does yank out some of the cruft X11 had accumulated over the years it does not work to well and makes it harder to interface with the DE.

this has sprung up in the meantime https://github.com/X11Libre/xserver as a revitalization and modernization effort for X11.

Theres also been a rather hefty debate on whether to just scrap it all and rewrite a new DE from scratch.

Im not sure but it might seem to be the better option in the long run as X11 is getting really old and wayland seems to have to many problems.

[jaxa]

It's a politically charged situation, but the moves to kill X11 were suspiciously coordinated and corporate in nature, and X11Libre should be given a fair shake. Wayland will probably win out in the end if it has enough developers behind it, but it could take a few years before you can really call it.

[revelator]

Or both ? Seems theres a good chance we can have our cake and eat it to . Wayland does behave better on modern hardware so it seems the big problem if you are on a modern pc would be tailoring stuff to interface with it properly. X11libre keeps compatibility with older tech so might be an option for those who cant afford the latest and greatest .

[Xolvix]

Maybe. I'd think to think it's more that Wayland has matured to the point where enough of the essentials work, that the larger desktop environments like KDE and GNOME can now simplify matters and streamline their work on supporting just one session type. There's still plenty of things that need improvement (remembering window positions without workarounds being an obvious example) but it seems like the idea is that if people are only using Wayland from now on, improvements should come around much, much faster compared to when it was optional and people weren't using it because X11 was more mature. KDE's announcement certainly motivated me to move to it for example.

On 12/6/2025 at 1:21 AM, jaxa said:

I'll probably try Thief 3 for the first time in forever after snobel finishes making a Linux version of Sneaky Upgrade.

https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=138607&page=82
https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=153010

Interesting. The Sneaky Upgrade was basically all I needed with the installer defaults. But anything that improves Linux supports is always welcome, since I've only tested it a bit so far to make sure it works.

[revelator]

Perhaps to some extent i would argue that it is usable, though it does have some rough edges and not being able to kill a stuck process reliably is a big nono in my world . further development might fix that eventually though.

X11 is getting long in the teeth i agree on that but it still works reliably enough that i cant rule it out completely.

Most games will run fine on linux except a few that rely on kernel level anticheat mechanisms like world of warcraft or the division 2 which go ape on the online checks. i would say especially the division 2 suffers from that while wow can be made to run with some elbow grease. Got system shock 2 running on solus with newdark and it works quite fine so thief 2/3 should also be doable.

[revelator]

hmm instead of lutris one could try heroic for game managment, it seems more developed as lutris has a tendency of breaking everytime theres a change to python which in these days happens a lot.

does not support as many things but is generally more stable.

[revelator]

still playing fallout 3 and 4 on my solus box and strangely it works better than on my windows machine.

modding is a bit of a tongue in cheek experience but otherwise it plays pretty fantastically. fallout 4 was the only  of the two games i had to make some changes to by using proton experimental otherwise sound did not work (xaudio problem).

fallout 3 played right out of the box with no problems which i cannot say the same for on my windows machine which needed some modding with dsound wrappers and a heap replacer mod.

i play 3 with the HD texture mods now as it looks better but needs patching the game executable to support LARGE_ADDRESS_AWARE because otherwise it runs out of memory.

path of exile 2 also runs great on it  despite the gfx card in it being a bit on the older side and has no support for any raytracing (rx 5700 xt). even got alan wake 2 to run on it but the lack of support for raytracing and mesh shaders means it runs on the lowest setting otherwise fps tanks hard.

[datiswous]

14 minutes ago, revelator said:

path of exile 2

Have you ever tried Grim Dawn?

[revelator]

oh yes i have it on this pc . 

used it originally for the diablo II mod made for it but i have been around in the main game but damn its hard .

maybe when i get more used to it it will start to be more fun, right now i get smacked around pretty badly in it 

[datiswous]

I don't think it's that difficult, but I guess it depends on the difficulty set. Also, having good resistances is very important. Makes a huge difference in survival.

[revelator]

Yeah mine arent that good yet. Had some bad luck getting gear

[revelator]

hmm one oddity or maybe an oversight gamescope is not in the official package handler but must be installed via console huh?.

also if you want to develop packages for solus the old howto is outdated and does not work  so you have to ask on the forum for pointers.

dosemu or dosemu2 you need to build yourself as it is not part of the solus packages. dosbox is there but dosemu normally works better. dosemu uses freedos tools as standard.

[The Black Arrow]

With Windows 10 "dead", I plan to use Linux, just not sure which.

CachyOS seems best, but not for a beginner. Bazzite, in turn, is even better, for a beginner at least, but CachyOS is way more pro-performance.

There's also Linux Mint, which is not as good as it claims to be. Also, ZorinOS, apparently it's for those that want to go from Windows 10/11 to Linux.

So many to pick, but looking at how bad Windows 11 is and my friends were having issues with it? Heh, I don't even want to give it a second try anymore.

[revelator]

Zorin is quite good though i had one breakage after the kernel got updated last time i tried it.

Mint is popular among people which are allready used to unixy systems but can be a bit hard for novices.

Havent tried cachyos so cannot comment.

Solus is generally pretty stable but like all distros it can sometimes be hit by bugs in other system components. Happened the last time i used it where an update to wayland broke most nvidia drivers. What makes solus special is that it is not based on any other distro but built from the ground up. Downside to that is that if you need something that is not in their repository then you have to build it yourself.

[jaxa]

5 hours ago, The Black Arrow said:

With Windows 10 "dead", I plan to use Linux, just not sure which.

You can use this to get another 3 years of updates: https://massgrave.dev/

[revelator]

Also an option to get security updates for a year if you log on using your microsoft account.

The ltsc versions avaliable on jaxas linked site are also quite good as they dont come chucked with all kinds of preinstalled apps.

[revelator]

Merry christmas all

[revelator]

Btw the windows 10 iot ltsc version will get security updates untill 2032 so grab that one if you absolutely need windows. The iot versions have the same loadout as the pro versions with a few extras for managment. So it has windows store built in which the standard ltsc version does not. Also it can be activated with hardware id. The standard ltsc only accepts mak or kms activation and microsoft recently started blocking kms so you cannot activate it at all now.

That leaves iot sorry.

[jaxa]

1 hour ago, revelator said:

Merry christmas all

Bro is using the Linux thread as a general chat!

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