What Linux version are you using?

[revelator]

There are a few legacy capable distros out there unfortunatly while they keept compatibility the footprint got way bigger than many of those pc's could handle. Bsd might be a good alternative its light and truth be told it does not work well on modern machines anyway . Mostly due to being left behind when sco sued them for infringement which btw was bs. But it took them so long to untangle the knot that by the time they were exonerated linux was lightyears ahead.

Kernels Are black magic , some rather funny comments found in the sources to.

[taffernicus]

11 hours ago, revelator said:

There are a few legacy capable distros out there unfortunatly while they keept compatibility the footprint got way bigger than many of those pc's could handle. Bsd might be a good alternative its light and truth be told it does not work well on modern machines anyway . Mostly due to being left behind when sco sued them for infringement which btw was bs. But it took them so long to untangle the knot that by the time they were exonerated linux was lightyears ahead.

Kernels Are black magic , some rather funny comments found in the sources to.

netbsd comes to mind, is supports wide variety of architecture

 

and it can run on toaster , an old joke

 

 

[taffernicus]

GhostBSD is more user friendly and less hassle . The cons of BSDs image is they lack liveusb/cd feature

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

im still seething on systemd-resolved. If you run a custom DNS server, sometimes it can interfere. the rest is fine 

 

[revelator]

Nomadbsd has live image

Newer tried it with a cd/dvd though so no idea if that would work but worth trying.

[revelator]

Hmm ghostbsd does have liveboot. Unfortunatly it has the same bug that broke solus linux a while back when using a nvidia gfx card. They are working on a fix for it.

[revelator]

hmm solus has the same problem with custom dns (dnscrypt in my case) it is also systemd based.

 i can set the dns ip manually to any of the most used ones to avoid dns blocking like cloudflare but it will not accept the 127.0.0.1 loopback that dnscrypt uses.

[taffernicus]

On 2/18/2026 at 12:00 AM, Bikerdude said:

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

1. yes freshtomato, a fork of tomato project with and it's more up-to-date

2. sometimes it can reach 82-87 °C so I'm thinking of adding a fan

[taffernicus]

10 hours ago, revelator said:

Nomadbsd has live image

Newer tried it with a cd/dvd though so no idea if that would work but worth trying.

never tried that one now it's time to try it

[Bikerdude]

21 minutes ago, taffernicus said:

1. yes freshtomato, a fork of tomato project with and it's more up-to-date

2. sometimes it can reach 82-87 °C so I'm thinking of adding a fan

- hmm will have to check out FT then.
- And regarding the fan, are you sure it need that and not just a better heatsink. That said just came across this little mod/hack that doesn’t require taking the thing apart - 

- https://www.aliexpress.com/p/wiki/article.html?keywords=ac86u-router 
- https://www.amazon.com/Cooling-Radiator-Dissipate-Temperature-RT-AC68U/dp/B0721SYYTF

But I think I will look for a more elegant solution...

Also mine dosen't appear to be running that hot, but the summer time is a different beast and may require active cooling. I have some small 60mm fans and old usb cables, let me make my version of the above kit and tape the fans to the router to begin with and then see how much of a difference they make and/or how much noise they produce at 5 volts.

Edited February 18 by Bikerdude

[SeriousToni]

Can Linux or the GREP bootloader somehow affect my windows installation ? I have installed Linux on a separate ssd and since then when I boot up Windows it will show the wrong time and also sometimes make my speakers creek really loud or they won't work at all. Never happened before that.. 

[Domark]

In terms of Linux one great router software is OpenWrt if you happen to have compatible hardware at hand.

For SeriousToni: Well, Windows has it's own time which is usually the local timezone you are, but linux usually uses UTC as far as I am aware. And possibly linux initializes sound hardware differently or sets mixer volumes really high, and there is the added complication of either Pulseaudio or Pipewire as sound servers and of course Bluetooth can bug out. But could be a some mysterious bug or glitch anyway.  

[revelator]

The bootloader should not interfere with windows at all ? Newer seen that problem before otherwise the various hacks used through time to erm pirate windows would have been a mess since most of them used "grub" to fool the os into thinking it was installed on an oem pc .

Grep is a console search tool like the windows dir command btw and not related . 

Microsofts later os like 10 and 11 does not allways play nice with linux bootloaders though and today it is generally more bugproof to just let both use there own. Downside is that you need to use F12 or whatever key your mainboard uses for bootsequence.

[datiswous]

7 minutes ago, revelator said:

Microsofts later os like 10 and 11 does not allways play nice with linux bootloaders though and today it is generally more bugproof to just let both use there own. Downside is that you need to use F12 or whatever key your mainboard uses for bootsequence.

I thought you can each put them on seperate harddrives and then specify the boot order in the bios. You set Linux to boot first, which boots into a boot menu, where Windows is present as well.

[revelator]

@datiswous Exactly . Though it also should work with seperate partitions. 

One can also do the seperate harddrive version and keeping the bootloader from each but then you need to physically remove the windows harddrive before installing linux normally. When done plug back in the harddrive with the windows installation and use F12 (faster than entering the bios and setting the boot order) and select which harddrive to use. Both should now use there own bootloader. (For windows it even shows as windows_bootloader in uefi).

Or if you prefer to try and rectify grub boot problems try this https://itsfoss.com/dual-boot-issues/. 

Has a fix for the time problem to.

[revelator]

Grub has many options but with the advent of uefi and microsofts secureboot it became a somewhat different beast to handle when dualbooting.

Mbr which was used before uefi became the standard generally did not have a lot of say other than starting the os (a bit like dos was to boot windows 3.11 for instance). With uefi the bios became quite a bit more integrated and uefi is its own whole mini os with gui features.

The mbr was generally to small for advanced features like the os writing into it in general, uefi on the other hand is much bigger so more features could be used.

This also made it somewhat more involved when dualbooting unfortunatly. Sure you can get lucky and things just work but in some cases you might look into ours spent because of strange flukes like toni's.

The last few times i used dualboot i simply unplugged every harddrive except the one i was currently installing windows on then after it completed i unplugged that disk then plugged in the one i wanted linux on and when done i replugged all the harddrives and used the bios bootmenu key to select which one to boot from. It takes a bit more work but it also skips all the unpleasantries

 

[taffernicus]

3 hours ago, Bikerdude said:

- hmm will have to check out FT then.
- And regarding the fan, are you sure it need that and not just a better heatsink. That said just came across this little mod/hack that doesn’t require taking the thing apart - 

- https://www.aliexpress.com/p/wiki/article.html?keywords=ac86u-router 
- https://www.amazon.com/Cooling-Radiator-Dissipate-Temperature-RT-AC68U/dp/B0721SYYTF

But I think I will look for a more elegant solution...

Also mine dosen't appear to be running that hot, but the summer time is a different beast and may require active cooling. I have some small 60mm fans and old usb cables, let me make my version of the above kit and tape the fans to the router to begin with and then see how much of a difference they make and/or how much noise they produce at 5 volts.

At first, I thought about just removing the router case, leaving only the board. 

But I needed many small acrylic containers in the shape of a box that could fit the dimensions of the router board. without the top cover for sure (open airflow)

 

I won't put that on cardboard 

Adding a better heatsink looks like a good solution other than small fan

Edited February 19 by taffernicus

[taffernicus]

Sad openwrt is flaky with broadcom chipsets

Regarding router, i wonder how's m0n0wall and shorewall doing these day. IPFire is till exist

Some linux utilities is quite confusing such as tc command . If only it were more refined and had more introductory content.

 

 

[revelator]

try man tc in a shell   most linux commands have help built into the executables.

or here https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man8/tc.8.html

bit more specific here https://netbeez.net/blog/how-to-use-the-linux-traffic-control/

[taffernicus]

7 hours ago, revelator said:

try man tc in a shell   most linux commands have help built into the executables.

or here https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man8/tc.8.html

bit more specific here https://netbeez.net/blog/how-to-use-the-linux-traffic-control/

found this useful website Linux Advanced Routing & Traffic Control HOWTO. 

a more detailed and concise version

but still tc utility is quite hard to use and hard to done right 

i also stumbled upon tc wrapper that might be handy 

i recall there was an old tool called wondershaper . it has similar functionaility iirc 

i should revisit BSD's PF next time

Edited February 19 by taffernicus

[SeriousToni]

13 hours ago, SeriousToni said:

Can Linux or the GREP bootloader somehow affect my windows installation ? I have installed Linux on a separate ssd and since then when I boot up Windows it will show the wrong time and also sometimes make my speakers creek really loud or they won't work at all. Never happened before that.. 

Thanks guys, I disabled local time mode via regedit in windows and also disabled the fast boot option. Will see how it goes then! 

[revelator]

Yeah a few of the tools have really annoying syntax .

Doing driver adjustments with lspci can also be a real pita.

[revelator]

Fast boot can sometimes lead to problems so not a bad idea .

 

[revelator]

https://github.com/magnific0/wondershaper

Also works with systemd as a service.

Can be run locally as is without installing but if you want to use it as a service setting traffic control at every boot then it is probably best to install it.

Its a simple bash script that uses tc for traffic control but simplifies the commands immensly.

Tested it with solus and works really well

[revelator]

@SeriousToni btw did it work turning off fastboot ?.

i seen some problems that turned out to be that but better to be certain.

[SeriousToni]

1 hour ago, revelator said:

@SeriousToni btw did it work turning off fastboot ?.

i seen some problems that turned out to be that but better to be certain.

I didn't dare to test it again yet. The last time it was at night when I booted up windows and it scared the hell outta me while th speakers and bass were shreeking at what seemed max volume. 

I am scared. 

But I will return with an answer as soon as I find the courage to boot it up again.