What Linux version are you using?

[revelator]

Yeah should probably move it to general . 

[revelator]

Linux seems to have a good year despite the layofs from some commercial sources.

Im going full solus on my pc's and if needed ill run windoze from a virtual machine from inside it. And who knows maybe some day we get something similar to wsl but using linux as the main os. Should not be to hard since it allready has wine and this can actually run a windows desktop from linux allready. It is just a bit hard to setup atm.

[datiswous]

1 hour ago, revelator said:

can actually run a windows desktop from linux allready

Really? Cool have to check that out

Edited December 26, 2025 by datiswous

[revelator]

Yep but it is not a cakewalk to do it . In fact it really sucks to setup. Atm the best way is still to use a virtual machine and enable seamless mode. Works quite well here with win10. Wine is not an emulator as such though it can in some sense be used like it. Its more like the windows vdm though geared towards running windows software by converting windows calls to linux. A bit like odin from os2 which is used to run 32 bit windows software (the old os2 vm only supported 16 bit windows as it was used with win 3.11 software in mind). Well you could actually run some 32 bit stuff using win 3.11 win32s so a vm inside a vm.

[stgatilov]

Looking at how Microsoft gradually turns a local OS into half-cloud OS, I am also considering a move to Linux as the main system.

I'll probably take Bazzite or Bazzite Dev (which is probably almost the same).
It looks like the most popular out of the gamer-oriented distros today, so I hope I'll be able to play games more or less without dual-boot or virtual machine or whatever...

And it is immutable / image-based, so I think I won't have to spent too much time resolving package conflicts. With 5 TB of SSD storage, I do believe the Windows-world approach of putting binaries with all dependencies included is better than trying to maintain some kind of "mutually consistent" and efficient snapshot of inter-dependent packages.

My biggest doubt is about C++ development.
I'm afraid the full-blown Visual C++ would be hard to replace.

[datiswous]

3 hours ago, stgatilov said:

I'll probably take Bazzite or Bazzite Dev (which is probably almost the same).
It looks like the most popular out of the gamer-oriented distros today, so I hope I'll be able to play games more or less without dual-boot or virtual machine or whatever...

I don't understand the Bazzite hype. How is it better for gamers?

[stgatilov]

50 minutes ago, datiswous said:

I don't understand the Bazzite hype. How is it better for gamers?

I think it has some stuff preinstalled which gamers typically use, that's it.
Something tells me there is little difference beyond that.
And there is also popularity effect: if it gets attention from gamers, then there is probably more troubleshooting resources tuned specifically for this setup. Does it make any sense?

[datiswous]

I think there is more troubleshouting recourses for Ubuntu based distro's. Also it's very easy to install stuff via the package managers, so wouldn't choose a distro for what comes preinstalled.

I think it's best to go for a mature distro that exists for many years with a good community (forum) to rely on to ask questions, etc. 

Although I guess Bazzite is Fedora based which is a major os.

I guess Bazzite is a nice project, but I'm a bit skeptical about if this is a good first Linux os, except if you specifically know why you would chose it for it's internal features. Any Linux os can be a gamers os.

 

Edited January 1 by datiswous

[datiswous]

5 hours ago, stgatilov said:

My biggest doubt is about C++ development.

I don't know anything about this, but I read Clion is a good tool (and it's free for Non-Commercial). I just share it for info.

https://www.jetbrains.com/clion/

[revelator]

12 hours ago, stgatilov said:

My biggest doubt is about C++ development.
I'm afraid the full-blown Visual C++ would be hard to replace.

Works pretty good here with wine and can be used for crossbuilds also though it does take more setting it up. Use clion as datiswous pointed out it makes it so much better . Also allows working with cuda as the nvcc compiler has linux integration which only works for msvc on windows.

[JackFarmer]

On 12/26/2025 at 10:12 AM, revelator said:

Linux seems to have a good year despite the layofs from some commercial sources.

Im going full solus on my pc's and if needed ill run windoze from a virtual machine from inside it. And who knows maybe some day we get something similar to wsl but using linux as the main os. Should not be to hard since it allready has wine and this can actually run a windows desktop from linux allready. It is just a bit hard to setup atm.

 

On 1/1/2026 at 11:46 PM, datiswous said:

I think there is more troubleshouting recourses for Ubuntu based distro's. Also it's very easy to install stuff via the package managers, so wouldn't choose a distro for what comes preinstalled.

I think it's best to go for a mature distro that exists for many years with a good community (forum) to rely on to ask questions, etc. 

Although I guess Bazzite is Fedora based which is a major os.

I guess Bazzite is a nice project, but I'm a bit skeptical about if this is a good first Linux os, except if you specifically know why you would chose it for it's internal features. Any Linux os can be a gamers os.

 

I also think it's better to go with an established distro that has been around for years and has many developers. 

What I also don't understand is why a different distro is hyped up every few months.  CachyOS has caught my attention in recent months. As far as I understand, it's only maintained by one person (or a very small group) with the known risks. 

In the first place, getting an Linux distro overview is no easy task, and what you read/hear online is often contradictory. I also get the impression that many of these (especially) YouTube experts don't really know what they're talking about. Recently,  I listened to an analysis of OpenSuse by an American and when he called it “Open Zeus”, I already knew it was going to be a wild ride.

 

[Dragofer]

I've started using Linux systems in 2023 when I got a NAS with an appliance-style OS and a router with OpenWrt, both of which introduced me to Unix concepts. Since then I've expanded to running a Proxmox hypervisor that runs various VMs and Linux containers that are centered around networking, file management, smart home and machine learning applications. I use Debian for these VMs the majority of the time, and Proxmox itself is based on Debian.

Desktop-wise I'm still purely on Windows as my servers keep me busy, but feel certain the days are numbered before I switch to Linux. Debian seems too conservative as a DE, so I was eyeing ArchLinux. Another idea is Bazzite, but at the end of the day it seems the distros differ mainly in their package manager and what's on offer in their repositories.

[datiswous]

1 hour ago, Dragofer said:

so I was eyeing ArchLinux

Maybe Endeavour os is an option to consider then.

 

(for Linux noobs Manjaro is probably better suited)

Edited January 4 by datiswous

[revelator]

for me it was solus because it was the most stable at the time and i like the layout .

Some older distros can be a good idea to explore though like redhat or debian.

There are quite a few DE's to choose from by now so id say go with what works for you .

Getting a distro is not the hardest setting it up with all bells and whistles is if your from the windows world and not used to how a unix system runs.

The main difference between how windows does it and how unix based operating systems do it is that pretty much everything on unix is an executable. unix does have something like dll's (*.so) which is short for shared object but compared to windows where damn near 80% of the OS is dll based unix uses it far far less.

the OS folder layout is actually more like a compiler on unix which i guess is why gcc works so well with it but can sometimes be a pain in the neck on windows .

where things get a bit iffy is the difference in how some interfaces link up with the kernel which is done quite differently than on windows and hence why linux will probably newer have an easy interface for messing with the system like on windows.

Everything is locked down tight on unix so it is generally more secure than windows but viruses do exist on unix as well.

 

 

[Domark]

I use Debian because it is just general purpose distro you can use for just about anything and it is volunteer driven, instead a corporate product. But admittedly it is not as streamlined and beginner friendly like some more popular distros are. And I would like to think Linux might be more secure and private, but of course it still requires user to have some sense using it. Nowadays you can even use Proton or Wine to run most Windows programs somewhat well and of course, Dark Mod works beautifully on it, thank you very much.

[revelator]

Got linux on all my pc's now except for my retro box which runs xp win2k and 98 se.

But that one is nowhere near the internet. Disabled networking after i got all updates installed.

Takes some getting used to especially since i have a frak ton of old game iso's so some mucking about was nessesary to get them up and running.

The rest are on gog steam and one on the ea launcher. All work perfectly fine.

I do miss things like the device manager. Doing driver updates from the console does get a bit tedious.

[Domark]

I agree that sometimes Windows GUI-driven interface would be nice to have, but the upside is that Linux is at least in theory not a black box dictated by Microsoft to the user. And for the random software here and there there is always that dual-boot Windows LTSC which is more sensible and contains less cruft and user hostile nonsense. Sometimes I do wonder if some more beginner friendly or gui-driven distro would be more fun to use, but I am used to how things work as is.

[Bikerdude]

Not really a linux user, but have some devices that run it - 

Old asus router:
- ddWRT

Pi2 running Pihole:
- RasberryPi OS - bookworm

Desktop PC:
- CatchyOS - Latest
- Bazzite - Latest

Misc:
- Partition magic - 2025 (custom live stick I used for doing a factory reset of SSD prior to OS install)
- Acronis - 2016, Linux bootloader, (Used to backup/restore my machines)

[JackFarmer]

On 2/14/2026 at 1:53 PM, revelator said:

Got linux on all my pc's now except for my retro box which runs xp win2k and 98 se.

 

For very old PC games you cannot run under Linux?

[revelator]

I can, the retro box is just a fun project i put together out of old parts . Sadly even the most light distro i could find runs like crap on it so i stuck with old win.

[revelator]

also quite fun to notice the difference from modern windows which is literally holding your hand (behind your back while stealing your data hehe). 

but it does put into perspective how easy to the point of brain death this os has become over the years.

its literally only when things go terribly wrong that you might have to use your gray cells to figure out what happened and attempt to correct it which compared with old windows versions can be quite a daunting task because the system has become so complex.

linux does take a little more effort to get around in, and i dont mind that. 

[taffernicus]

2 hours ago, Bikerdude said:

Not really a linux user, but have some devices that run it - 

Old asus router:
- ddWRT

Pi2 running Pihole:
- RasberryPi OS - bookworm

Desktop PC:
- CatchyOS - Latest
- Bazzite - Latest

Misc:
- Partition magic - 2025 (custom live stick I used for doing a factory reset of SSD prior to OS install)
- Acronis - 2016, Linux bootloader, (Used to backup/restore my machines)

how's dd-wrt compared to freshtomato? I don't want to use asuswrt-merlin because of the same reason: dropping support in the near future for EOL products.Looks like I also have to attach a 5 or 12v fan to cool it down.

my AC68U still refuses to die, it still serves to broadcast wifi and perform routing. Asus RT-AX53U or AX55 is quite cheap these days. Im planning to change the operating mode to AP mode for the new floor plan. i was tempted to buy a used ruckus r6xx or unifi u6 pro because it's quite cheap. still unsure about running an x86 router.

 If I turn a laptop into a headless laptop for router, I'm just afraid it will become a fire hazard if the components run 24/7 and ants or lizard happen to pass by the components and gets fried(if you remove the laptop case and keyboard completely for improved airflow). The vendor blacklist system at the BIOS level for mini-PCIe on laptops is also annoying.

To repurpose my unused RPi, I'm a bit confused about finding a smoke detector and gas leak detector device that can be placed near the stove and connected to the Pi. Preferably one that can use MQTT or Zigbee, with the Pi operating as a Zigbee gateway.

=============================================================

i still hate the fact that Windows hides many advanced troubleshooting layers from users.

When there is an error that causes frustration, you have to train yourself to get used to looking at the Windows event log.

not all softwares will leniently give you the log if the problem is related to that specific software

To solve some specific problems, you even need some Sysinternals tools such as procmon

On the other hand, I am also curious about how to learn to maximize & utliize Windows ETW.

 

 

[taffernicus]

I used to have fun with Slackware (versions 13 and 14) and Mandriva. it was a rather short lived endeavor.  I rarely hear much about them nowadays

 

crazy, I used to be a distro hopper and enjoy engaging in distro wars.

 

Now I'm more interested in the “black magic” that works on the kernel side. The deeper I dive into it, the more confusion I encounter. I mean a plethora of black magic like execve API,linux cfq rbtree, netfilter, erc

Edited February 17 by taffernicus

[taffernicus]

On 2/14/2026 at 7:53 PM, revelator said:

Got linux on all my pc's now except for my retro box which runs xp win2k and 98 se.

But that one is nowhere near the internet. Disabled networking after i got all updates installed.

Takes some getting used to especially since i have a frak ton of old game iso's so some mucking about was nessesary to get them up and running.

The rest are on gog steam and one on the ea launcher. All work perfectly fine.

I do miss things like the device manager. Doing driver updates from the console does get a bit tedious.

Not directly related to the context : Everytime i hear new linux kernel releases deprecate certain legacy devices, it breaks my heart

 

Such as these : 

 

https://hackaday.com/2025/07/02/why-the-latest-linux-kernel-wont-run-on-your-486-and-586-anymore/

and here is the latest news this week : https://www.tomshardware.com/software/linux/linux-kernel-7-0-finally-abandons-intel-440bx-edac-driver-removal-marks-another-goodbye-to-the-legendary-motherboard-chipset

 

[Bikerdude]

5 hours ago, taffernicus said:

• how's dd-wrt compared to freshtomato? 
• I don't want to use asuswrt-merlin because of the same reason: dropping.
• Looks like I also have to attach a 5 or 12v fan to cool it down. 
• my AC68U still refuses to die
   

• freshtomato?
• same
• Eh, really..? whats temps are you getting? where are you looking at putting the fan and what make and model?
• same