I still remember the time I managed to unwillingly run two DE at the same time simultaneously. The screen was refreshing between gnome and kde at 50Hz. It was tripping.
These are the “I don’t have epilepsy but I sure as hell don’t want to find out right now that I have it” moments.
This is the greatest truth of being a computer person. Our shit is also broken, just in ways you’d never heard of.
Guys and gals, please use Niri. It has animations, blur and wayland.
Never crashed in my one year of using it.
That’s why, as a computer nerd, I use a non modified Linux Mint.
First time using hyprland with cachyos: wow it’s so productive, I love it!
After one month I log in after a
yayand everything is broken. I waste a full day adapting the config from 0.44 to 0.45. Wow that was worth, I love it.Another month passes, and again it’s broken to 0.50
I just gave up
Can’t they just put a discontinuation warning for a couple releases to let people adapt their config instead of suddenly having the surprise of booting to a broken wm?
welcome to life as an AwesomeWM user. After a normal system upgrade – oh look my Lua version is incompatible with the libraries I need, guess I need to build them from scratch and tell my WM to use them
Maybe try an atomic distro? It’ll still break but you can roll back and deal with it later.
it’s not really broken-broken to be unusable, just all the window management rules syntax that changed suddenly and you need to read 24 pages of documentation to guess what’s changed and adapt the config.
honestly, after dealing with this 3 times in 3 months, i am no longer interested in this wm.
It’s like if your friend rearranges your living room for pure fun when you come back tired from work. Funny prank done once in a lifetime, remove from existence the third time.
I don’t want to fault you, I just want to point out that Hyprland is in version 0.x. It’s essentially in development. Expecting software in alpha phase to be backwards compatible is a bit unrealistic :) If you enjoyed it that much, come back to it in a few years once it comes out of development phase (if ever…)
Bullshit all of my computers work, maybe this guy just sucks.
-Average linux user
Hyprland the “ironically” nazi desktop?
No, that is the ruby guy
I’ve recently moved everything over to CachyOS after a Windows 10 LTSC security update failed to install multiple times.
I’m actually really surprised by how well everything works, including my nvidia GPU, microphone, and drawing tablet. The only thing that’s not working rn is my Canon printer but that might be more of my own skill issue with using CUPS and CAPT and can be remedied by emailing myself a PDF and printing from my phone.
I was fully expecting to fuck my shit up forever.
EDIT: To be clear, Windows would occasionally crash on me and take forever to start back up. Linux is running much better.
I recently had trouble with a very old Canon printer, I acquired. After some attempts that even involved tracking down original driver files from 13 years ago, I realized I just had to install ‘gutenprint’ and then add it throuoh my KDE menu. Just works now.
Bro, it’s a printer. I call them a Schrödinger printer, both dead or alive until you try to use it… in which case it’ll likely be dead. Because it’s a printer. And they’re shit.
There’s the German saying, that the shoemaker always has the worst shoes.
In America we say “never buy a mechanic’s car.”
Is Spain we say that the blacksmith uses wooden spoons.
Wouldn’t that mean something else?
The saying literally translates to “in the house of a blacksmith there are wooden spoons”. In Poland we say “the shoemaker walks in shoes with holes”. They all just means that people who build things as their job don’t have the time to build those things for themselves.
But why doesn’t the blacksmith have spoons which are bent or something. Blacksmith using wooden spoons sound to me like a technician that doesn’t use tech in his private life.
It just means he uses cheaper spoons made by someone else, not fancy metal spoons.
This is why you keep 2 computers. One that is dull and as stock as you can. And then you have that beater box to get stupid with. Drive the sum biotch right into that kernal panic at 100mph just for fun.
So therapeutic some days…
That’s not how it works.
- Okay, let’s read a chapter of this book about Software Design.
- I need to take notes
- Ugh, it sucks that I have to do three steps to open them
- Let’s write a short fish script
- Actually is there a more elegant note taking app
- Research
- Setting up the most over engineered zettelkasten solution
- It’s time for bed, you have two broken note taking apps, but still an open to do to read a chapter of that book
If you think that is a true story, you are absolutely right.
That’s continuing the tradition leve stuff right there.
I feel seen.
Me too. Interest in comuters combined with ADHD leads to interesting side quests sometimes. They might not end up being productive, but I often learn a few things along the way.
Fastest I ever got a kernel panic was ~50mph. There are photos.
Nice!
Mac and a half a dozen server homelab. Plex was a homelab test that’s now “prod” (family won’t let me shut it off) so it’s in the prod environment outside of my homelab
I feel this one
My Mac is supposed to be the safe box too. I keep having to talk myself down from installing Asahi.
Haha I have an older m1 I’m about to put asahi on. Going to use it for small models
You and me both.
A good excuse to get another cheap box to crash and burn!
Any excuse to hoard more hardware these days
This is precisely why I use NixOS. I have almost my entire configuration as “code” (data structures more like, but what’s the difference any way?), such that when I break something, I can just undo my commits and go back to a working version (and the OS itself retrains several snapshots, so I can always pick the previous one.
And with LLMs the bar to do things, with my nix configuration (nixcfg), has lowered to the ground. Throw in a few videos from Vimjoyer and you got a stew going.
Sorry to divert from the topic but
I have almost my entire configuration as “code” (data structures more like, but what’s the difference any way?)
This is the first time I’ve seen someone make this distinction.
Configuration files are specifications, not code. Code means it needs to be compiled/interpreted.
Urge to distro hop again…rising…
I’ve hopped from HoloISO to Nobora and EndeavourOS to OpenSUSE. Landed on NixOS on all my machines now and it’s perfect. There’s a bit of a learning curve even compared to other distros but once it clicks, you wonder why you weren’t using it earlier.
To get started: Install NixOS, grab your
/etc/nix/configuration.nix, and/etc/nix/hardware-configuration.nix(from the top of my head) and throw them in a git repo.nix-shell -p <application>if you quickly need a shell with a specific (temporary) program, like git (just for bootstrapping; add git to theconfiguration.nixif you wish to keep it.Start with that, and slowly keep adding programs, configuration. If you eventually wish to add a second computer to the one configuration (so you can start reusing configuration), do that. Keep steps small.
Here you can dig through each step I take in my nixcfg - I started with just the
configuration.nix, and share that between machines, but it turns out you’re supposed to add thehardware-conguration.nixto the repo as well, so then I started to do that (with still a sharedconfiguration.nix. Well, partially:Read nixstory.md if you want to see a quick LLM-generated history of how my repo changed over time (based on my git history).
I’ve jumped in Nix/Guix many times and always jumped back out. Sometimes you just want to edit a system file without second guessing or rebuilding the system. Same battle as initRC vs SystemD. Sometimes you just want to tinker live, because there are bigger battles elsewhere and going down a productivity sink hole of immutability is not something you can easily explain away at 3am
So it’s kinda like klipper/mainsail but for an operating system?
In the sense that klipper does everything through configuration files: yes.
my linux honeymoon has far gone. nowadays I just use fedora gnome and actually work on something that makes money.
my linux honeymoon has far gone.
Reminded me of:
In the spring, we climbed the rolling hills
And talked about our budding plans
And we smiled
Our faces like a mirror showing us our secret sides
But then the fights, the sharp words splintering the night
How I couldn’t be what you’d need
But oh how I could make you bleed
This really is the journey, isn’t it?
Tinkering is fun when your actual goal is to tinker.
But when your goal is to get work done then the machine is just a tool, and there is nothing more frustrating than a broken tool.
I’m still tinkering but insofar to keep myself from doing anything else with my computer, I got shit to do.
- We tried setting up hyprland with Arch
- Used an older guide, updated and translated it to the newest standard, learning about the unique scripting
- Get almost everything working
- Actually loved the feel of the ui and did get used to using terminal for almost everything
- Things started falling apart
- Steam started fucking up, everything was going horrible.
- joined the support discord, found problem doing good over more :)
- Update? Oo oki!
- Hyprland: hmm nice fully custom set up you have here, would be a shame if someone were to change all the ui script you literally just learned :)
- :(
- Back on KDE + Cachy OS as we didn’t want to fight with our computer anymore, it’s good, great even, but… missing the window management of Hyprland now.
- Don’t get us wrong, we’re very happy with KDE! It’s just… that window management 🥺
- if only we could get that in KDE
Hyprland is cancer by cancer
I like Niri a lot. Plus the maintainer isn’t an asshole.
Haven’t heard of Niri, what’s that one all about?
It’s a column-based tiling window manager, with scrolling!
That’s why sway and river exist. They’re actually stable.
Haven’t heard of them before tbh, from the replies Sway not be super stable. And river?
I have my (edit: RIVER) config for over a year and it’s very reliable. It never broke on me apart from the misconfigurations which were my fault.
It also integrates well with Waybar and is compatible with other Wayland tools for wlroots.
But keep in mind that my config is relatively minimal.
Sway still struggling with screensharing (specifically window sharing) tho or atleast it was last time I yried it in february :(
Sway 1.12, released last week, added support for capturing individual windows.
Yay it worked, still not usable for me tho, since XWayland fucks up too many applications I need and moving windows with my mod key + left mouse does not count as a single input which then opens rofi which is bound to mod qq
I had that issue with the mod key launcher too, but instead of looking up a proper fix I turned my Capslock key into my launcher lol
For river, I had to do some kind of fix. I’ll talk about it later. Reply if I forget.
At least for me, Linux people are never content with their system.
There’s always something new to try…
That’s the fun of Linux : you can customize your experience instead of having to put up with Microsoft or Apple.
You choose a distribution that fits your preferences.

PSA: get a cheap thumb drive and install ventoy. You’ll never regret it!
Plus you can technically still use it to store files if you make a directory in the ventoy dump partition.
I keep memtest86+, clonezilla, Ubuntu 24.04lts, gparted, and boot-repair on the drive.
maybe not ventoy specifically since it’s full of binary blobs that are virtually unvettable
I’ve got a binary blob right here 🥵
Eh, good enough. Your Linux install also has binary blobs.
That’s a terrible reason to introduce even more.
Yeah, I need to find a better way. Been trying to setup pxe boot in docker
Always been partial to this one
I had that exact situation but simply went to the library to fix it. Modern phones scare me.
I never even thought of that - you then plug in your phone as a thumb drive? Makes sense.
I mean I’m not sure I could actually boot off of my phone as a USB drive. That would be an interesting concept.
Unlikely. The USB protocol requires one master and one or more slaves (or whatever less charged nomenclature you prefer). In all likelihood UEFI will blindly assume to be the master while Android and iOS require negotiation to figure out who’s boss and what interface to present.
Although given UEFI it might be possible to patch that functionality in.i had this feature when i installed ubports (ubuntu touch) on my phone in 2021.
much before that in 2013 my phone’s stock rom had a ‘driver install’ mode that presents an iso file in the system partition to the computer as a virtual cdrom, i could swap out that file with a linux iso and it would boot
The USB protocol and UEFI aren’t a problem, but Android/iOS might be. I’ve booted various PCs from a raspberry pi (USB-OTG), but the last time I tried to boot an iso from my android phone I couldn’t get it to work. It’s been a while so I can’t remember exactly what the issue was.
My guess the issue is that phones don’t just show up as simple drives, they rely on MTP support
That’s what I was referring to with “which interface to present.”
It does, though with an app that exposes the iso.
Edit: Right, i thought it was EtchDroid. I think it was DriveDroid (with a broken cert)? There’s also SimpleBoot now.
That looks like a program that is using your phone to write an ISO to a USB using your phone, not using your phone as a bootable source. But, still useful.
Edited, thanks.
There’s a tool, whose name I forget, which is included in Kali NetHunter to do just that. It does whatever trickery is needed to present the phone/tablet as a bootable thumb drive. It requires root and, to my dismay when I needed it, I never owned a device that was rootable to fully use NetHunter. It could do a lot of other cool stuff via USB too; phone as a Bad USB, Rubber Ducky, automated Windows login bypasses, etc.
Been there, done that
Just a couple days ago I needed a microsd to usb adapter. Couldn’t find one, so I loaded the files to a memory with fat usb(I don’t know what it’s called) and usb c connections. Then connected the memory to my phone and on my phone I moved the files to the microsd card.
Not the same but similar vibes I think.
It’s sad that several phones are removing the memory slot.
Fat USB is called USB A. The one you use for printers is USB B. Then there are mini-A, mini-B, micro-A, micro-B and USB 3.0 micro-B which are all different shapes physically. And USB A 3.0 has slightly different contacts from USB A 1.0/2.0
Anyway, that was when USB nomenclature was still simple. Don’t google anything they did past version 3.0, for your own sanity. We’re now down to mostly the USB C and A shapes, but USB 3.2 gen 1x1 is the same thing as USB 3.1 gen 1 is the same thing as USB 3.0.
USB 4 simplified things a bit, but now you can get things like
Gen 4 asymmetric 3:1What have we done…
It seems we need a new standard to prevent all this confusion…

























