Ok dudes, which of you has a Steam Deck??
I just snagged one of the OLED models and I have to say...this thing is amazing! I didn't expect to be as impressed as I am. The hardware feels ve premium, the games I've been playing run more or less great, running emula for old console/handheld games is easy and feels very natural.
I haven't scratched the surface with it really yet but am pumped to play a with it more.
Ok dudes, which of you has a Steam Deck??
I just snagged one of the OLED models and I have to say...this thing
is amazing! I didn't expect to be as impressed as I am. The hardware
feels very premium, the games I've been playing run more or less
great, running emulation for old console/handheld games is easy and
feels very natural.
I haven't scratched the surface with it really yet but am pumped to
play around with it more.
Ok dudes, which of you has a Steam Deck??
I do! I have the 1tb OLED. It's great. Plays all of the games that I
want to play.
I'm still finding things to do with it. It almost feels like it can replace my desktop (as far as gaming goes, really depends on what you play)
Not I. I gave my son the choice last year between a Steam Deck and an
Asus ROG Ally, and he chose the latter. Since it runs Windows, you can install Steam /AND/ any other game launcher you want to. So the access
to more games was what he was after.
From everything I've read about it while I was researching handhelds, you should be very happy with it for quite some time!
snagged one of the first gen models and it's still pretty damn amazing. great little (well... smaller than a computer) handheld. i think it
would have been really great when i still was doing business trips and
the like, though in reality i mostly sit on my ass on the couch to play with it. <g>
Ok dudes, which of you has a Steam Deck??
I just snagged one of the OLED models and I have to say...this thing is amazing! I didn't expect to be as impressed as I am. The hardware feels very premium, the games I've been playing run more or less great, running emulation for old console/handheld games is easy and feels very natural.
That's what I have. I was thinking of swapping in a bigger hard drive, but cap out at 2tb so I may wait a bit and see if they'll ever come out with h capacity drives.
What are some of your fav games on the platform? Any uniquely suited to be played handheld?
I didn't realize The Last Of Us came out for PC?!?!?! but today I picked i and put it on the Steam Deck and spent WAYYYYY too much time playing aroun
Anything you can suggest to mess around with outside of the typical Steam I have a micro SD card with Batocera on it that I can boot into for doing emulation stuff. It is amazing for that...
You can totally install Windows on a Steam Deck. A lot of folks do
that for the specific reason of compatibility.
That said you can also install non-Steam games, it's just got a
clearly optimized user experience for surfacing all the Steam stuff
to you front and center.
Ok dudes, which of you has a Steam Deck??
I just snagged one of the OLED models and I have to say...this thing is amazing! I didn't expect to be as impressed as I am. The hardware feels very premium, the games I've been playing run more or less great,
running emulation for old console/handheld games is easy and feels very natural.
I haven't scratched the surface with it really yet but am pumped to play around with it more.
It was ultimately his choice. I made him do the same research as I did, and gave him the basic options at the end:
1) Windows can run anything, including Steam
2) Steam is the frontrunner, but you can mod and/or do whatever you want with it later.
I ended up adding a 1tb sdcard to mine as well. I feel like I have
plenty of storage haha.
I played A LOT of No Man's Sky when I first got it. Recently I've been playing Diablo 4 with the help of NonSteamLaunchers (https://github.com/moraroy/NonSteamLaunchers-On-Steam-Deck) and I plan
on playing Diablo II Resurrected soon.
Makes it easier to play when you can play anywhere haha!.
If you haven't, try emudeck. It lets you play emulators and it
integrates into the steam ui. It's a very nice experience when set up right. :)
1) Windows can run anything, including Steam
2) Steam is the frontrunner, but you can mod and/or do whatever you want with it later.
I was tempted to get an OLED a few months back, but I just couldn't justify it - my main use-cases would have been to stream Xbox and PlayStation games and play retro games, and both of those can be done
much cheaper. When it comes to my actual Steam library, there's never
any competition for my PC (unlike my current-gen consoles and primary
TV) and I don't travel a lot. Even still, I've used one and I think the Steam Deck is a slick piece of kit and I'm still tempted to get one, I just know it would be a waste of money for me, personally... :/ Glad you're enjoying it!
Yep totally reasonable. I get it. I just wanted this specifically
because I'm a huge linux nerd and I like what they're doing to make
linux gaming better :)
Plus I think the battery life on the Steam Deck is head and
shoulders better than other platforms, but I could be wrong.
But it was also a waste of money for me. I just don't care. :P
What kind of Linux is this? Was it completely modified in order to play most AAA games that aren't currently available on the regular Linux version of Steam?
I've always wanted to go full Linux, but it has been impossible to give up some of the new games being released that I want to play, so my desktop is still Windows, for that reason only. However, I haven't
looked into it much recently.
I don't think he's had much, if any, battery issues. But unlike my wife and daughter, he's VERY good at keeping his things (Ally, phone, beats headphones, etc) charged.
Half the time I can't even call my daughter because her phone is dead. :)
In comparison, this was a /very/ smart purchase for you, compared to
your Wildcat purchase!
Are you saying I should put Wildcat on my Steam Deck?
It actually uses arch btw (hehe) under the hood. They've been doing
a lot with Proton to make games work basically natively, which is a
real treat. It's not perfect and there are some incompatibility
issues but all I've really run into so far is the odd screen
resolution causing problems. A lot of games feel almost like they
were designed to be played with this device, though. One example is
Hades, which I've been playing the shit out of.
It's getting better every day. Linux gaming is pretty spectacular
nowadays. But I won't sugarcoat it, there are still some issues.
Many games will take a bit of finagling to make run properly, and
then occasionally an update will break things. Also, kernel level
anti-cheat is a non starter, which means some games with a large
multiplayer focus simply will not run. They do typically work in
single player mode, though.
Ac> In comparison, this was a /very/ smart purchase for you, compared to
Ac> your Wildcat purchase!
Are you saying I should put Wildcat on my Steam Deck?
You're not going to entice me with that, although they did choose a spectacular distro to build on. :)
Well, that's good. I just asked my son about his Ally, and he doesn't recall any issues with any of his games. But again, that's Windows and everything /should/ run find on it.
Granted, I haven't even been making time to play PC games in the last couple years (don't get me wrong, I'm mad at myself for it), let alone convincing myself into spending $500+ on a handheld. I'm definitely out on that one.
Yeah, I'm definitely more referring to PC related Steam on Linux kind of stuff. To be completely honest, if and when I do want to play a game, I like the fact that I can just click on it and it plays, rather than finagling with anything to make it run properly.
I've waited this long, I can keep waiting.. and at least I don't mind using Windows 11 at this point. Everything seems to work as expected after you throw Cortana and all the other data caching crap out of the mix.
I do still play with random Linux desktops in Virtualbox, though. Just
to see what is new, how the latest KDE and Gnome are looking. Hell, as a matter of fact I have three ISOs I downloaded a couple days ago and haven't looked at yet that I'll save for a rainy day (which might be tomorrow, lol). All three are Manjaro (IYKYK!? haha), but different variants: KDE, i3, and Sway. I've already looked at Gnome and this is
why I decided to check out a few more.
I mean.. it's sounding like you're spending more time on that thing than you are modding a Wildcat lightbar matrix for all eyes to see, so that may very well be an idea for you to ponder! :)
Lol yep :P honestly was a surprising pick for me to consider, since
Arch is so bleeding edge. Oh well, guess it works!
Duuuude me too. I start playing something, get into it for a day or
two, and then give up. It's almost like I really enjoy just having
the games vs actually playing them. I'm such a dork.
Yeah. It's getting closer but it'll probably never be at parity with
Windows. Hell, even Mac has a much bigger market share than Linux
but there are a shitton of games that won't run on it.
I just couldn't get into it. I wasn't really into Windows 10. All
the tweaks I tried doing really just made it as close to Windows 7
as possible. Ugh, I loathe their upgrade constructs and forced obsolescence...
Manjaro, eh?? Too scared to take the full Arch dive?
I prefer vanilla Arch. Don't ask me why, it's just a preference.
It's like a blank slate I guess.
Ac> I mean.. it's sounding like you're spending more time on that thing than
Ac> you are modding a Wildcat lightbar matrix for all eyes to see, so that
Ac> may very well be an idea for you to ponder! :)
Insert Homer disappearing into the hedges gif...
Arch is so bleeding edge. Oh well, guess it works!
I've been trying to say this for so long. Glad someone else finally noticed!
Bleeding edge doesn't really mean unstable any more, if the right people are in position to test thing out before it goes out to the public. :)
I think I only purchased two games in the last year. :(
One of them was COD MW2, not for the multiplayer, but for the campaign.
I got about halfway through it and just stopped playing it. It wasn't
bad at all, and as a matter of fact, I quite enjoyed it. No idea what happened there.
I didn't mind Windows 10, either, really. Then, Windows 11 just seemed
to fix whatever was wrong with 10 (much like 7 did for Vista). Put a little TLC into the visual aspect of it to make it look like you want it to, and it's not bad at all.
Not at all. I run vanilla Arch for all of my server VMs. If I were actually setting up a desktop machine, I would definitely go that route. I'm just checking out liveCDs to see the latest and greatest in Linux desktop environments and window managers.
I imagine going vanilla Arch and installing them would probably work a lot nicer, but I was just interested in seeing what the latest tiling window managers had going on, and wasn't able to do so. lol
Yeah the OLED is the one I picked up. The screen looks really great. Bizarre resolution which causes some weird shit with some games but it's manageable.
I also am better off gaming on my PC but I like playing with this while laying in bed or on the couch. I'm in my office at my desk so much for work, I don't tend to hang around there for personal stuff after.
But it was also a waste of money for me. I just don't care. :P
I think I only purchased two games in the last year. :(
One of them was COD MW2, not for the multiplayer, but for the campaign.
I got about halfway through it and just stopped playing it. It wasn't
bad at all, and as a matter of fact, I quite enjoyed it. No idea what happened there.
The second was called "The Quarry", which is kind of a story rich horror game that had great reviews (I'm a sucker for Resident Evil type games) at a discounted price. I started it, got about an hour and a half into it, and never touched it again. WTF is going on here!?
I've been holding myself back from buying any more $70 COD games if I'm not going to actually play them.
I use Arch on my daily driver work laptop and really dig it.
However, for all my servers, I use either Debian or Ubuntu...the
upgrade process just feels safer tbh. I like Debian's "Release when
ready" attitude for anything that needs uptime.
I purchased several. Haven't played 'em much tho :P
Sometimes these games require so much investment that after putting
it down for a day or two, it's really tough to pick it back up. I've
always really liked coffeebreak style games that can just be picked
up and put down any time. Maybe this is why I'm so into Streets of
Rage style beat-em-ups and sports games.
Really? I felt like upgrading from 10 to 11 was a step in the wrong direction. What things did it fix in your opinion? I found zero
positives personally.
Gotcha. On my Arch setup I like using KDE Plasma 6.1. IMO it's as
close to a flawless DE as one can be this day and age. Well, I
really like MacOS, but that's a different story entirely.
Check out linuxbbq.com - I think they use Debian as a backbone but
they have a ton of preconfigured DEs and WMs to play around with. I
haven't looked in several years but I recall going down a rabbit
hole with this at one point and having quite a bit of fun.
I used to do that shit with basically every game I played, but I
eventually realized at some point that I was spending a lot of money
on games and then barely playing them, which resulted in me going to
the extreme other end of trying to "beat" just about every game I
play for the last 20 years or so. I'm not entirely sure that was the
best response though - I probably play a lot less games overall now
as I'm much more wary of what time commitments they can be. *shrug*
My partner and I played The Quarry last year. It was far from
perfect, but I was impressed enough to grab the entire "Dark
Pictures Anthology" pack (which I believe are very similar games by
the same developer) when it was super discounted recently. Hoping to
fire them up soon.
Honestly, I just want to kick time commitments right square in the balls these days. Even maybe 4-5 years ago or so I was able to wake up on a Sunday morning at like 6am, do my laundry, have some coffee, then drop into a 4-6 hour PubG session with some buddies, and then logoff and get on with the rest of the day. The wife would leave me alone until I took the headphones off. It was great!
I wonder if I can still get away with some shit like that... :D
Yeah, nothing to get super excited about, but enough to keep you interested. Awhile back a buddy of mine and I started on this wierd
kick. Out of nowhere he hits me up on Steam and says "Check this game out" and points me to a game called Layers of Fear, which was priced at
a sweet sweet $19.99 or something like that. So I got it, and up till
now we point out these off the wall games nobody would ever think of buying or playing, and snag them up. :)
The resolution is actually what started me on the course of looking at alternatives - I found some nice apps to stream Xbox One/Series and PS5, but realized they didn't stream at full 1080 and wouldn't completely
fill the screen due to that funky native resolution. That's a minor
issue, honestly, but it made me look for some handhelds which had 1080 screens.
Yeah, which is the main reason I play consoles a lot, honestly, so I get that. One of my friends who uses his Deck *all the time* basically uses
it for that reason - just to diversify his surroundings and his position/posture, really.
Ha! This is the way! If I ever pick one up, I'll be saying the same
thing. As it is I've barely used my G Cloud or my Miyoo Mini+, but they were a lot smaller investments. :P
Meh, I like to live on the wild side. Debian's "Release when ready" is more like "Whatever was stable a year ago, let's go with that". lol
That's seemed to be the case. I can't just veg out and dedicate 6 hours of focus on the weekend to these things any more. :)
I have nothing specific offhand, but everything is solid as far as I can tell now. Were you checking it out when it was in it's infancy stages of being a free upgrade? I actually waited awhile before diving in, mainly because I had to do something in BIOS that I didn't really want to mess with at the time, but I'm glad I did now.
Odd, that. I just today installed a fresh copy of Archlinux in a Virtualbox VM in order to check out the newest KDE/Plasma/Wayland combination. Then deleted any instance of Manjaro I had, because that
was a bad idea. Doing it this way runs light years better (I should have known, but was lazy going the livecd route). :)
The address itself contains two of my favorite hobbies, so I bit. Then I downloaded it, because who else in the world would put 76 window
managers on a livecd!
FWIW the screen looks great and the resolution doesn't feel odd or anything, it's just that it can be goofy with compatibility. I haven't really run into it though, I don't think.
I've actually had a ton of fun with my Nintendo 3DS and now this. Most other handhelds have proven to be an utter waste but these are great :P
I have a Switch but...idk, something about it doesn't work for me.
*shrug*
Meh, I like to live on the wild side. Debian's "Release when ready" is more like "Whatever was stable a year ago, let's go with that". lol
Precisely! Which is why I dig it for servers :P
I have nothing specific offhand, but everything is solid as far as I can
tell now. Were you checking it out when it was in it's infancy stages of
being a free upgrade? I actually waited awhile before diving in, mainly because I had to do something in BIOS that I didn't really want to mess with at the time, but I'm glad I did now.
Secure boot?
I felt like Windows 11 was adware. Just constant ads. I couldn't stand
it. And it felt like every upgrade broke something or made something
more shit. Idk, it was traumatic, I've erased most of it from my
memory hehe
The address itself contains two of my favorite hobbies, so I bit. Then I
downloaded it, because who else in the world would put 76 window managers on a livecd!
It's a trip lol. Some of the WMs are configured better than others...
Yep - I've only used the OG, not the OLED, but even its screen was
pretty nice. It's more just about console compatibility, and even then, it's more about optimizing the experience, really. I know very few PC games have any issues with that resolution.
I was genuinely surprised with how much I disliked the switch when I briefly tried it in the past. All this time I assumed I'd be into it,
but the first time I tried to use one I wasn't into it at all. I'm sure
if I had my own I'd adjust to it just fine, but, yeahh...
I *am* curious about what Nintendo's next console (everyone is just calling it the Switch 2 for now) is going to be like though.
Meh, so many security features have been added in the last year, though!
You completely lost me there, bud. I don't see ads anywhere (besides in email), and I've never had any issues with upgrading anything, except
for what Windows has been known for for quite some time now, (rebooting when you don't want it to).
I'm also willing to bet there's some that you wonder why it was even
made in the first place. :P
You don't see ads in the start menu or whatever it's called now? I
saw a shitton of them. I'd switch them off, then the computer would unilaterally upgrade itself, and all the ads would be back.
Totally. I had fun playing around with tiling window managers, but I
quickly decided they're not for me. I like floating windows that I
can move and resize at will....with my mouse! Hehe
No sir. I've disabled them and they haven't come back. I don't even display weather there. At the very top is a search bar, then the top
half just under that is "Pinned icons" that can scroll if you have more than 3 rows, and the bottom half is "Recommended" which looks like it lists the last 10 or so things I've downloaded. Nothing else there, really.
Yeah definitely. I have always had a fond interest in Fluxbox, just because you were able to do both keyboard shortcuts, floating windows,
as well as the fact that you could make a nice, frill-less and clean start menu that you could access anywhere on your desktop by right clicking the background.
Interesting. I couldn't stand it lol. Every update pissed me off. At the end of the day, I just prefer MacOS and linux anyway. *shrug*
Give a distro "Bunsen Labs" a try. They have a very slick minimalist Debian derivative with an excellent Openbox setup. It's the spiritual successor to CrunchBang which is what really got me into ricing linux in the past decade or so. Maybe more like 15 years. Anywho, it's an excellent distro and I suggest taking a peek. Seems like based on what you describe, you'd really like it.
I use KDE Plasma just because it does all the things and honestly feels pretty lightweight on resources. Once upon a time I liked picking every single component - window manager, background setting application, file system explorer, dock, panel, yada yada. Nowadays I just opt for the full Plasma experience, but there's a part of me that will always like that minimal, do-it-all-yourself attitude.
I took a look at the website, and yeah, a lot of the screenshots look
much better than any Fluxbox themes I've tried. Much smoother looking. Alas, knowing it was debian (stable even), I followed some links to read about Archlabs (which is now gone) as well as ArchBang.
Then I stopped and realized, all every one of these dudes are doing are installing and customizing Openbox, Conky, with tint2 (panel) and jgmenu (desktop menu), and shipping it out as their own "customized distro."
Meh, I can do that shit myself as long as those Openbox themes are out there available to the public. Maybe another project for the future, lol.
Yeah, for sure. I don't mind keeping it minimal on my servers, because that's what they are. But if I'm going to run a full fledged desktop, I want most, if not all of the bells and whistles.
Still fun to tinker, though. It's kinda like having a nerdy Linux loving side-chick, or something.. but not really. LOL
You can track Debian Sid if you like - install the base OS and then
switch from Stable to Sid. I've done this many times :)
It's a bit more than that, but yeah, that's it in a nutshell. But
it's a great lightweight out-of-the-box experience. They also have
their own apt repos so their customizations will always update as
well.
Same! Like I said, minimal is fun, but there's not as much advantage
with modern hardware as there was like 20 years ago.
Nice! Have you done anything cool with it? Got any game recs that play super well on a handheld?
I've actually had a ton of fun with my Nintendo 3DS and now this. Most other handhelds have proven to be an utter waste but these are great :P
I have a Switch but...idk, something about it doesn't work for me.
*shrug*
Speaking of console compatibility, the Steam Deck is unsurprisingly a fantastic handheld portable emulation machine. I have this expensive ass hardware and I've been playing Blades of Steel for NES :P
It just feels dated. It feels slow. I also can't get into the shape of
the thing and the controls.
But Nintendo exclusives make it worth having!
I still love my 3DS. That's an amazing console. It's the one I'd keep if
I got rid of all others. The homebrew scene for it is also great.
I recommend picking one up! They're going up in price because a lot of folks are jumping on the 3DS train.
I may check it out in a VM, but my stance on Debian is and will always
be the same. While stable is a year or more behind, "Sid" is still 6 or more months behind the times. Getting new shit when it's released is
like Christmas for me, when it's not really Christmas, and stuff. :)
I actually took a look at the LFS book somewhat recently. Got about
20-30 pages in, and had flashbacks of my Gentoo days, nights, weekends, etc. I haven't looked at that book again since.
I'll definitely check it out, just because the window manager itself looked pretty damn slick for being so lightweight. If anything maybe it'll give me ideas if I ever want to build something like that with Archlinux.
Well, that's definitely true. However, I think nowadays it's less of the thrill of getting every last bit of your CPU and RAM, rather getting rid of bloat. An OS that boots up in 10 seconds and every program you open
up snaps into place fast as fuck is amazing to look at.
hrm, probably not a specific game per se, but i really enjoy using it for retro-esque games -- my usual gotos being kind of metroidvania style games. it's basically perfect for those.
it does "okay" with a lot of 3D titles, but honestly i would rather just use my beefy regular pc for those.
i did play most of "stray" on it as i was reorganizing my office or something at the time and it did fine.
i loved the 3ds. i think the switch would be amazing if it wasn't so friggin' uncomfortable to play in handheld mode for longer than 10
minutes at a time. i should look into "gamepad" style inserts for it because i bet that would solve my complaints.
Ha! Yeah, I mean, I would have definitely loaded it up with ROMs if I
got one, so I can't blame you, but it's still pretty funny.
I instantly heard that shitty digitized "blades... of stEEl!" sample
when I read that. That shit was dope when I was like 9. :P
It was always underpowered, but it was the latter thing that got me. It was a lot smaller and less comfortable than I was thinking it would be.
I have a Wii U (don't ask) and other than being a bit bulky, that thing actually feels a lot nicer to me.
100%. Nintendo brings the goods.
Still one of the few Nintendo handhelds I've never owned/don't own! I loved my GBA and DS though!
I instantly heard that shitty digitized "blades... of stEEl!" sample
when I read that. That shit was dope when I was like 9. :P
Blades of STEEL! OMG - I'm loading the ROM *right* now.
I never got the hate for the Wii U...but that said, I had a Wii, and wasn't really into it all that much. What was the deal with the Wii U anyway? Why do people dislike it so much?
I think Sid is more current than that! But I reserve the right to be wrong :P
Yeah, I played around with LFS once and just got sick of working on it partway through. That said, Nate (from the old Demonic IRC days) got me really interested in Gentoo back in the day and I've enjoyed messing with it once in a while. I actually have a G4 Apple Powerbook (one with a PowerPC processor) running Gentoo. I'm rather proud of that computer which I haven't used in years...lol...
Yeah, I think there are more than a few folks interested in the same. I'm bummed things like Archlabs seem to be kaput. That's unfortunate.
I think Bunsenlabs hosts all their configs and stuff in a github repo somewhere or something like that, so you should be able to see all the details for how they have things set up, theming, etc.
Totally! That's why I love my Arch desktop! Also, not for nothin', but my M3 Macbook Pro really flies in that regard as well.
Yeah, I was just joking around. Sid is probably almost up to Archlinux, however I think much less quality assurance and testing goes into it by Debian maintainers themselves. Seems they kinda let the package maintainers have their way with them and you get whatever they put out.
Both "Sid" and Archlinux are on linux-6.11.7-1, for the record. :)
Gentoo isn't bad at all, to be fair. But I'm not trying to take 45
minutes to 3 hours or more just to compile glibc. I'm definitely over those days. lol
Eh well. It's the nature of linux, they come and go. There will probably be something else at some point. Maybe we can gawk at that.
How many times do you get confused and type "sudo pacman -Syu" on your Debian boxes now, or "sudo apt whatever" on your Arch desktop? :D
When I remote desktop into my XP VM to mess around with ancient BBS software, I can't believe how many times I type "ls" in a command
prompt. :(
I'll go out on a limb, though, and say that I've never had substantial problems with Debian Sid, but I have with Arch. Fortunately the Arch problems were solved quickly thanks to the community.
Now you have me wanting to putz around with Debian again. Dangit.
Nowadays they have binary packages for things like web browsers. Kinda takes some of the fun out of using a source based package manager, but...I suppose SSDs are happy to have less churn every time you need to recompile something hehe
Haha. Never, believe it or not :P Also, one nice thing about the 'yay' AUR helper is that just typing 'yay' does the job of 'sudo pacman -Syu' - easy peasy
Haha! That's funny. Where's your XP VM? I have a Win 7 VM hosted on a DigitalOcean droplet, it actually runs really well.
I must have gotten lucky the couple times there was an actual issue to
the point where they made notices about it in the package manager. Must have been between updates. Back then I was maybe upgrading once every
few months or so.
Honestly, I wasn't trying to do that. Stick with Arch and be happy. :)
Gentoo and binary doesn't go together, in my book. If you want the Gentoo experience, do it the right way or use something lame.. like Debian. :P
I've never heard of this 'yay', but by now I'm far too set in my ways to try to change it up. lol
It's on my VMWare ESXi 6.5 server (HP Proliant ML310e Gen8) down by my feet, at the moment. It just runs, never reboots, and I can remote
desktop into it at any time from my desktop. :)
Wow, that's a long time for an arch install! I try to keep it up to date at least weekly. Any longer and I start to get nervous.
Gentoo and binary doesn't go together, in my book. If you want the Gentoo
experience, do it the right way or use something lame.. like Debian. :P
Haha yep. It feels antithetical to the whole idea of Gentoo. But at the same time, nowadays, I feel like using binary packages is more performant than constantly compiling stuff and trying to use packages at the same time. I guess it's a tradeoff. But I've become far less obsessed with resource consumption than I used to be, especially because out of the box, Arch (a binary distro) with KDE Plasma has all the necessary bells and whistles yet is still pretty damn light on resources.
Gentoo is just fun for philosophical reasons, and "holy shit it works!" reasons.
Which AUR helper do you use?
It's on my VMWare ESXi 6.5 server (HP Proliant ML310e Gen8) down by my feet, at the moment. It just runs, never reboots, and I can remote desktop into it at any time from my desktop. :)
Oh nice. For whatever reason I assumed you meant it was something hosted remotely. Oops. :P
Yeah, it is. But when you use it as a server, you can do both, it seems. During 'not so interested times' I've left my BBS server(s) completely alone unattended for probably up to 6 months at a time, in the past. Not proud of it or anything, but there have been times the BBS scene got pretty boring. :)
I probably should have left some things to be done manually, so that it would force me to stay involved, but instead.. I completely automated /everything/. lol
I'm of the same opinion, though. I'm not worried about changing compile time options to try to utilize every resource I possibly can.. and the 'cool' factor about compiling everything has left the building (for me).
I just want whatever OS I jump on at the time to work for me, and not
the other way around.
Granted, I don't mind setting up a base Arch install (ie: manually using fdisk, setting up your locale and hostname, etc.) versus a GUI
installer. These days it takes about the same amount of time, anyways.
Haha. Yeah. For some reason, it was the in between the "holy shit it works!" moments that I remember most, though. After waiting 18 hours for something like 'emerge -avuDN world', only to come home from work and realize something is broken/your emerge failed. Then try to track down whatever caused it while pulling your hair out, etc. :)
I'm not sure if it's a helper, but I've always used what I assume is the default:
Granted, I don't mind setting up a base Arch install (ie: manually
using fdisk, setting up your locale and hostname, etc.) versus a GUI installer. These days it takes about the same amount of time, anyways.
Oh no. I host everything here on that server. The ~$300 I paid for it
some 12+ years ago has definitely paid for itself multiple times
Haha I did that years ago with my BBS every time I deployed. Never had many issues :P I primarily used Debian though, so stability was kind of the point of it anyway.
Right - and I always like doing a few things outside of the normal install process, so doing things manually is pretty key for my purposes.
Ugh yeah. I remember those days. So frustrating. I remember having broken upgrades because of this. I love how fast and available things are now using modern linux.
Yeah - that's the official recommended way. I just prefer convenience. So I let the helper do all my package maintenance and upkeep :P
Agreed. I've tried out all the major disto's and you are right starting from a console is no slower... in fact it's probably faster to install from that kind of setup.
I'm used to the debian based distro's, but next time I get the urge to start from scratch I'm going to try arch. (I haven't yet)
Oh no. I host everything here on that server. The ~$300 I paid for it some 12+ years ago has definitely paid for itself multiple times
This is surprising to me. Your BBS is one of the fastest on the internet, I always ASSumed you had a fucking super computer in that house
somewhere.
This is surprising to me. Your BBS is one of the fastest on the
internet, I always ASSumed you had a fucking super computer in that
house somewhere.
If you upgrade Arch, and there's no issues at that time, I suppose
leaving it the hell alone afterwards can't be bad for it, either. Not upgrading Arch could then be compared to running Debian. :)
Same, that and the fact that you're the one doing it, so you know exactly what's happening. Doesn't Debian have an install option like this also? Isn't that what the 'netboot' option is, rather than using the full ISO?
Agreed. Although as far as I know Gentoo is still well maintained with a significantly large community, so I would imagine it wouldn't fall out
of the 'modern linux' category. It just comes down to binaries > compiling, for me.
I suppose I've never really looked into any other way, to be honest.
Very few and far between do I actually need anything from the AUR, so I just go with what's comfortable to me when those times arise.
Especially once you're comfortable doing it. The first few times you may have to go through the online documentation and/or installation guides
or whatever, but it gets faster when you get used to it. Heck, I still pull up the installation guide on the Arch wiki when I do a new install, just to glance at and so I don't forget anything (which has happened). Just last time I rushed through the install process, and I forgot to run "grub-install" at the end, only to have it fail after attempting to reboot. I had to load back up the install ISO, re-mount everything, run it, and reboot again. :)
It's just as easy, just a couple different commands to run (ie different package manager and absolutely no 'apt' commands).
and I forgot to run "grub-install" at the end, only to have it fail
after attempting to reboot. I had to load back up the install ISO,
re-mount everything, run it, and reboot again. :)
It's just as easy, just a couple different commands to run (ie
different package manager and absolutely no 'apt' commands).
HAH, naw. However, it is fully dedicated to BBS/FTN operations. 3.3ghz
Xeon CPU with 32gb (DDR3, I believe) RAM, of which I believe I've
given 2 cores and 4gb of the RAM to the BBS/FTN VM, which runs
Archlinux with nothing but what is needed installed (no X/GUI, etc).
running, but Mystic is not). Then an XP VM which is just running the
OS (kinda nice it not being supported any more, I haven't had to
reboot it yet! ;)), just to tinker with DOS based BBS softwares. And
lastly a fresh Archlinux install with the latest KDE/Plasma on it,
which is another just for toying around purposes. So none of the
Yeah, this is what I've used in the past when I wanted to manually
install all the BunsenLabs stuff on top of a baseline install (so that
I could specify a few other install options like filesystem, etc) and
it worked well.
Yeah same here. I still appreciate that the Gentoo community is alive and well, though.
Yeah, it's probably smart honestly. I use AUR for a lot of things
since I am using it as a daily driver and manually keeping everything
up to date would be a nightmare. yay deals with dependencies and stuff
which keeps things simple for me.
I always have a guide up if it's something new. I've installed debian
so many times I can do that in my sleep though. :)
I'm going to play with arch soon. It's been on my list of things
to check out a very long time.
Well it runs very fast remote.
This is one of the things I want to check out. I haven't run KDE in
around 15 years (maybe more) so I've wanted to see how it is now.
Speaking of file systems, have you tried out anything besides ext4
lately, maybe even with any intent to actually try it out and see if
there are any differences, etc?
I noticed when I installed FreeBSD I ended up with zfs, I think? But I didn't really dig into it much, and after about a week or two I deleted the VM because BSD is a whole other animal I don't care to learn about right now. :)
I do too. I'm surprised there are still that many people out there
willing to torture themselves like that. Better them than me, though!
Haha. BSD was a fun one for a bit back in the day but compatibility
issues got the best of me and I went back to ol' linux. But honestly I don't know a ton about zfs.
But yeah. The 3DS is amazing. I'll give up my Switch before the 3DS.
Hell, I'll give up my PS Vita before the 3DS without a second thought.
The Vita, on the other hand, is another pretty sweet handheld I've
enjoyed a bit...not as much as the 3DS though.
I never got the hate for the Wii U...but that said, I had a Wii, and wasn't really into it all that much. What was the deal with the Wii U anyway? Why do people dislike it so much?
Which reminds me. VMWare brought the free versions back, probably
because they lost so many customers. I want to see if I can upgrade to
The GUI installer, or the netboot version?
Careful. You may end up liking it. :)
everything else than Windows, these days. It's definitely the most
feature packed desktop environment on Linux, IMO.
jack phlash wrote to esc <=-
I used to play around with NetBSD and FreeBSD quite a bit way back in
the day, which probably isn't any sort of big revelation or anything to anyone here
I used to play around with NetBSD and FreeBSD quite a bit way back in
the day, which probably isn't any sort of big revelation or anything
to anyone here, but thinking of that unlocked a memory for me - there
was a desktop orientated BSD distro that I recall running for a while
on one of my work machines back around... I dunno, maybe ~2010? I
can't recall what it was called though. None of the ones I found with
a quick Google ring a bell. Hmmph!
Which reminds me. VMWare brought the free versions back, probably because they lost so many customers. I want to see if I can upgrade to
did they? i thought they just brought back the desktop versions. is
esxi actually available again?
Back in the late '90s, the BSDs rocked. Linux wasn't quite ready to
step up.
Later, I supported a game company's rollouts with an FTP server running
on 2 FreeBSD boxes - at one point we had something like 800 concurrent
sessions on those poor boxes!
Unless it was some sort of interstellar huge hit, after 14 years I'd imagine it's probably gone. Most people end up just going back to the original, and install what they want on it for a desktop.
In my limited experience, I went the 'pkg' route, which was all binary packaging. You can have a full desktop environment on BSD with whatever apps you want in 15-30 minutes these days. :)
Nah! I'm sure it was a huge bomb, actually. :P I'm guessing they were inspired by the success of Ubuntu and hoping to make similar waves.
But yeah, I wasn't suggesting they were still around, just wondering
if they anyone might remember WTF I was referring to, since either my Google-fu or my memory is failing me (likely the latter... :/)
I used to play around with NetBSD and FreeBSD quite a bit way back in
the day, which probably isn't any sort of big revelation or anything to anyone here, but thinking of that unlocked a memory for me - there was a desktop orientated BSD distro that I recall running for a while on one
of my work machines back around... I dunno, maybe ~2010? I can't recall what it was called though. None of the ones I found with a quick Google ring a bell. Hmmph!
the vita stayed alive in japan for quite a bit longer. became kind of a haven of shitty visual novel publishers. they loved that damn thing.
all the used game stores have a million titles of sketchy harem games
for both boys and girls. they'd be good reading practice, i guess, but
i just can't bring myself to bother.
felt like a sidegrade, tbh. i should dig mine out and find out if it's dead or not. there's some issue with it having like a 50/50 chance of crapping out permanently if it's not periodically turned on. i want to say bad caps, but those are generally replacable, so not sure. maybe
some kind of security thing?
All I can come up with are NomadBSD, GhostBSD, MidnightBSD, and FuryBSD
- which are all listed by the FreeBSD foundation as "notable." So if
it's not one of those (and again, we're talking some 14 years ago), then I'd guess it's long gone. :)
DragonFly BSD?
Yeah, I did some reading about the first three (I missed Fury, I
think) but none of the names sounded familiar. I just did a bit more
digging, I *think* it might have actually been "PC-BSD" which was
later renamed TrueOS (stupid name.) Born 2007, died 2018. It looks
like GhostBSD was actually based on it so it still lives on, but only
sort of, since they went back to FreeBSD in 2021.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TrueOS
DragonFly BSD?
Nope! Although I remember reading about that on OS Watch or one of
those sites back in the day. It's one of the more interesting BSDs I
know of.
jack phlash wrote to poindexter FORTRAN <=-
Last thing I remember playing with (besides the aforementioned desktop) was installing NetBSD on an old DEC Alpha workstation.
My co-sysop from the '90s had a web site running on a DEC Alpha running Windows NT 4.0 and IIS. The company we worked for bought it for compatibility purposes because we built software for MIPS at the time, then tossed it when they abandoned the platform. He couldn't bear to see it tossed in the dumpster.
I think he's still running it, although I hope he has it firewalled off.
jack phlash wrote to poindexter FORTRAN <=-
I kind of regret that, only because it was semi-rare and of course a
lot of older machines (even shitty consumer grade desktop machines) are sought after by retro tinkerers and collectors these days. Back then though, most of us had the attitude that if it was no longer useful, it was junk, and there wasn't much of a market for it anyway.
Yeah, being young and moving apartments every 2 years or so didn't
help. I remember fondly an AT&T 6300 PC, an Osborne 1, a Compaq Portable
II and a nice minitower 486/50 that missed the cut and got tossed out.
Oh, and the first incarnation of my telnet BBS, a mini-sized HP
Pavilion with a Celeron chip in it from the late 90s/early 2000s. Back
when HP was all in on two-tone gray and translucent fronts.
Ugh... yep! I threw my old 486sx/33, which was the machine I did pretty much all of my 90s BBSing on, and its P133 successor, into my work
recycle bin at some point, although I was at least smart enough to yank some of the more interesting components out of them, including the 5x86-P75 (AKA 486dx5/133) and AMD K6-2/400 upgrade processors I had in them (respectively) by the time I retired them. That old K6-2 is
actually going into one of my current retro machines sooner or later.
all the used game stores have a million titles of sketchy harem games for both boys and girls. they'd be good reading practice, i guess, b i just can't bring myself to bother.Sketchy harem games? Harem as in, cohort of concubines? For kids? :/
I kind of want one just because I expect them to become obscure lol.
It could be that there's some battery backup chip or something? Or PRAM? Interesting, though, now I'm curious to go do some googling...
For ages we chased the 186/286/386/486 path and then the AMD chips started to >a steal...
anyway, it turns out that maybe a lot of the ones previously thought to
be bricked can be rescued by exploiting some kind of USB protocol
parsing bug in the non-flashable firmware and using that to boot to a
tool which will let you reflash the corrupted segments that caused the bricking in the first place.
if you're interested peek at udpih on github.
Ohhh - I remember that time when the AMD CPUs started being more cost effective than Intel... that was a fun bit.
For ages we chased the 186/286/386/486 path and then the AMD chips
started to be a steal...
Remember the Cyrix ones, too? I think I bought 1 of those at some point, too. :P Man I miss the old days.
I never owned a Cyrix, but I recall a lot of local PC shops pushing
them hard back then - a lot of advertising too. I'm not sure why, but there was something about the name or maybe the logo, or maybe just because they were trying to knock Intel down a peg, that really
appealed to me about them.
jack phlash wrote to paulie420 <=-
For ages we chased the 186/286/386/486 path and then the AMD chips
started to be a steal...
Remember the Cyrix ones, too? I think I bought 1 of those at some point, too. :P Man I miss the old days.
Yeah! I actually have an AMD 486DX/66 in one of my machines now, though it's pretty much identical to an Intel.
Those were interesting times. I worked at Berkeley Systems, the people that made the After Dark screensaver (remember flying toasters?)
And, then, we got a reference unit from Intel with a Pentium/66. My
first thoughts? This thing is HOT. Thermal HOT. It was the first intel chip I'd seen with a CPU fan. And it was FAST. I knew all of the 486 debates were over.
I think that was about the same time we got PowerPC seed units from
Apple, but that's another story.
esc wrote to poindexter FORTRAN <=-
Those were interesting times. I worked at Berkeley Systems, the people that made the After Dark screensaver (remember flying toasters?)
How can I forget?! That screensaver was one of my favorites. That one
and the starry field one that I would stare at when I got a little
stoned. Fun times to be a teenager hehe.
They had a 3rd party screen saver called "Work o' the Weaver" that wove various family plaids, first by drawing all of the horizontal "threads", then the vertical. Wend and Weft, I want to say? Mesmerizing.
| Sysop: | Kurt Weiske |
|---|---|
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