The Spam Thread!

[cpd2009]

I had a brain fart with my printer earlier. I thought my printer either stopped working or the drivers in Mageia weren't working.

Turns out I hadn't plugged in the USB cable into the rear socket properly.

[huckleberrypie]

I had a brain fart with my printer earlier. I thought my printer either stopped working or the drivers in Mageia weren't working.

Turns out I hadn't plugged in the USB cable into the rear socket properly.

Been there, done that.

[cpd2009]

Lately, I've been getting around with setting up Wine in Mageia. Standard Wine is 64-bit, and to run 32-bit Windows programs, you need to also install the 32-bit Wine.

My main goal with Wine is to get my Windows games up and running. So far, it's very promising. My casual games like Bejeweled, Chuzzle, and Peggle, all run great on the Intel HD Graphics 530. There were others that surprised me, I have three DRM-free games I bought off DotEmu before they closed their store; Irem Arcade Hits, Tyrian, and Raiden Legacy. The first game only loads up the menu screen, and does nothing afterwards. Trying to launch the emulated game EXE brings up a NET framework error even though I installed it. Tyrian launches and I can navigate through the menu and the music plays. I still need to actually test it. Raiden Legacy launches and I was able to get one of the arcade ROMs started and it was running great. Though on exit, Wine coughs up an error message that's hidden behind the fullscreen menu, which I have to close with the KDE window switcher thing (don't know the actual name yet). What is funny about Raiden Legacy is the menu responsiveness. Running on Windows, there is a noticeable delay when selecting which Raiden game to play. That delay doesn't exist in Wine.

The tool I use for Wine is Q4Wine, a GUI frontend for configuring your Wine directories (known as a wineprefix in Linux lingo), installing libraries or configuring minor details like what Windows version to report to applications. I have mine set on Windows XP.

[huckleberrypie]

Wine can be a little fiddly no thanks to Microsoft moving the goalposts more often than often, so to speak. Which reminds me... Red Dead Redemption 2 has support for Vulkan partly due to Google Stadia. This may make it less of a pain for the game to run on Linux via Wine, or may give a (faint) possibility of a Linux port of the game assuming there is a market for it.

[huckleberrypie]

So I upgraded to a Ryzen 3 2200G, and the results were a little good but sometimes mixed. Single-threaded performance is a little crap compared to the Pentium G4560 I used to run Samantha on, but it's the multithreaded performance that AMD shines. At least it's a nice upgrade from all the dual cores I had over the past decade.

[cpd2009]

So I upgraded to a Ryzen 3 2200G, and the results were a little good but sometimes mixed. Single-threaded performance is a little crap compared to the Pentium G4560 I used to run Samantha on, but it's the multithreaded performance that AMD shines. At least it's a nice upgrade from all the dual cores I had over the past decade.

Still thinking on using next year's income tax refund to upgrade Pearl to a quad-core Kaby Lake CPU, but as it stands, her current i3-6100 is still fine for most things I do on the computer outside of video encoding. Hopefully NVENC or QuickSync support comes to at least some Linux video conversion apps. Still mulling about flip-flopping back to Windows 10 from time to time, but hey, I did get YTP+ working under VirtualBox....

...but it runs very slow compared to a native Windows install. I believe it has to do with my VM being set up to use only one of the CPU cores. I will see if I can get it running on both cores to try and improve rendering time. If I can get YTP+ to work in a Windows 8 VM, then there is one more incentive to stick with Linux other than the improved video capture ability.

Since YTP+ is a Java program, it can run natively under Linux using OpenJDK. But for whatever reason, the program can't seem to find the required FFMPEG binaries even if I specify their paths in the config dialog. YTP+ uses FFMPEG and ImageMagick to do it's work and I have both of those libraries installed from the Mageia repo.

I'm also considering replacing Greta with a MS Surface Pro tablet... or more specifically, a used first or second gen Surface model which, according to a Reddit specializing in running Linux on Surface tablets, have near complete Linux support for the tablets' various hardware components. The only downside is that first and second gen Surface tablets are quite old. While Linux performance is likely to still be rather good with these, the batteries are more of a concern. They aren't meant to be user replaceable, and an iFixit teardown shows it's a lengthy process just to open the Surface to access the battery. At least with Greta, her battery is replaceable and the battery I ordered for her a month back still holds a charge well.

[cpd2009]

Well, there was a post I made earlier here, but I deleted it since I'm having second thoughts about going back to Windows 10.

I dunno... Linux works well for what I need it, but the complete lack of official NVENC/QuickSync video encoding is disappointing. Perhaps encoding times would improve when I swap out Pearl's CPU with a quad-core Kaby Lake? Maybe soon, some Linux app will gain NVENC/QuickSync encoding support? And there's the sad state of the official Nvidia drivers too, and the open source ones aren't any better.

Perhaps I need some insight. I know it's my choice in the long run, but I feel if I abandon Linux again, I'd be failing to live up to my goals. I can never seem to make firm decisions and make them stick.

---

Here's what I'll do instead.

I will install Windows 8.1 as dual-boot. I can repartition Pearl's second internal hard disk and create a new NTFS drive for Windows. I can then just boot back into Linux and reconfigure the UEFI bootloader to add a Windows option.

For the few Windows programs I need to run on real hardware, the dual-boot looks to be a better option. I'll let you know how it goes.

---

While I'm still here, may as well post something else. Looks like Disney+ works on Linux now...
https://old.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/...s_working/

Previously, Disney+ didn't work thanks to them using a Widevine DRM level that is incompatible with Linux systems. I have been considering giving Disney+ a go, and this is good news indeed. Seeing as how I'm sort of "cutting the cord" (read: downgrading to the $20 limited cable package), finding affordable streaming services is a must. And hey, they stream old Disney Afternoon shows that I never got to watch as a kid.

[huckleberrypie]

Whichever compromise that works the best for you is surely appreciated.

[cpd2009]

Dual boot setup is complete, and I'm able to run YTP+ well. But, while playing around with my new Win8 install, it made me realize some things that I miss about Windows...

To me, Windows seems a lot more polished than Linux. Don't get me wrong, there exist Linux distros and desktop environments that are very pretty to look at and are much more capable than what they were even five years ago. But there are inconsistencies that are more present here than on Windows thanks to most apps using either the Qt or GTK+ UI. Not every distro is able to use the latest software packages, and for things like Disney+ or Netflix, you are confined to your web browser while Windows has the official apps for these and other streaming video services.

I also want to be able to utilize my GeForce 750Ti again. Linux support is poor in comparison to Windows. I also miss IrfanView and Winamp. Gwenview and Audacious are okay, but they don't compare at all.

So, I'll just move back to Windows 10 and consider the last two or so months a rather interesting experiment. Linux is usable for my daily needs, but overall, compatibility with software and hardware still needs to be better.

[huckleberrypie]

Dual boot setup is complete, and I'm able to run YTP+ well. But, while playing around with my new Win8 install, it made me realize some things that I miss about Windows...

To me, Windows seems a lot more polished than Linux. Don't get me wrong, there exist Linux distros and desktop environments that are very pretty to look at and are much more capable than what they were even five years ago. But there are inconsistencies that are more present here than on Windows thanks to most apps using either the Qt or GTK+ UI. Not every distro is able to use the latest software packages, and for things like Disney+ or Netflix, you are confined to your web browser while Windows has the official apps for these and other streaming video services.

I also want to be able to utilize my GeForce 750Ti again. Linux support is poor in comparison to Windows. I also miss IrfanView and Winamp. Gwenview and Audacious are okay, but they don't compare at all.

So, I'll just move back to Windows 10 and consider the last two or so months a rather interesting experiment. Linux is usable for my daily needs, but overall, compatibility with software and hardware still needs to be better.

Linux is good if you have specific use cases like building Android ROMs or if your enterprise couldn't afford a Windows licence and all you do is type documents and whatnot (barring compatibility between LibreOffice and MS Office), but I do agree that the transition period can be quite jarring.