Any other Linux users here? And has anyone fully migrated?

[vulonkaaz's iconvulonkaaz]

I want to really bad switch 100% to Linux, but my wifi adapter throws a fit every time I'm in Linux and ethernet is not possible at my place. So far I tried Mint, Ubuntu, and another I can't remember and same issue. Everything runs so much smoother in Linux, I don't have my RAM being taken over by questionable apps, and games that would make my pc fans sound like an airplane lifting off no longer make my pc overheat.

wifi cards aren't exactly expensive if that's the one thing holding you back, not hard to swap out either

never had problems with any of my wifi cards apart from that one time when I was trying out Trisquel but that's because it's a hardcore FSF approved distro that have every single bit of proprietary software stripped out of the thing and that includes some weird binary blobs that most wifi cards just can't work without for whatever reason

 

[Piper Halliwell]

It's Ubuntu based which Ubuntu itself is Debian based. I'm a bit biased against Ubuntu being a Fedora fan :P But there is a Linux Mint Debian Edition. I'm not sure what all distros I will be jumping around on though I know when Cosmic becomes viable for gaming I will probably head straight to Fedora Cosmic Edition. They already have the Spin posted on their site now just need System 76 to iron out all of the bugs in the Windows Environment. I have considered trying out Cinnamon but it's hard to want to give up the features in GNOME.

Edit - Well, think I'm already dropping Debian 12 since I went to play Stormgate and it says my system doesn't support Direct X12. Back to Fedora :P Which is also really weird since Steam's proton layers normally handle all of that.

That’s honestly fair. People have their preferences. That’s really strange though, usually people say that Proton works just fine. I’ve never had any experience with it asides seeing posts here and there about it. You’re most likely better off hopping around and seeing what’s a perfect fit for you. Maybe use the suggestion you gave me about checking out Linux communities on Reddit or whatever site you’d like. I wish you luck on that Soldier!

 

[SpikeSlania]

That’s honestly fair. People have their preferences. That’s really strange though, usually people say that Proton works just fine. I’ve never had any experience with it asides seeing posts here and there about it. You’re most likely better off hopping around and seeing what’s a perfect fit for you. Maybe use the suggestion you gave me about checking out Linux communities on Reddit or whatever site you’d like. I wish you luck on that Soldier!

Yeah the game perfectly works on Fedora. So not sure why on Debian it has issues. I know Debian requires a lot more tinkering in the terminal to get things running properly. I tend to stick to Fedora Workstation instead of Nobara since GE guts the discover/GNOME store front and I like having a GUI with app descriptions to go through when looking at programs. When I used PikaOS for a few months never had any DirectX 12 issues so its probably just a stock Debian issue

 

[MonkeyMondays]

If it's newer hardware for your wifi adapter you would want a "bleeding edge" distro like Arch and Fedora. But if it's just an obscure older adapter then you might be out of luck beyond searching for your model and seeing if someone posted a patch for that model on GitHub.

Old pc from 2017-2018, I bought it at a discount so it might be older than that. As for switching to Arch I'm a bit reluctant to do so as I heard you need to essentially manually do everything from the terminal. I used Ubuntu and still struggled a bit with the terminal, it wasn't that bad but I can't imagine trying to get most of everything done through the terminal on something like Arc. Granted I could be wrong on that and it's just a misconception that I have. My adapter is Qualcomm QCA9377 and all I see online are people with problems with it.

Wifi drivers have often been a problem with both linux and windows. I always use ethernet to install OSs. Even got CPL here with plug adapters to bring ethernet on every floor via the electric cables and avoid packet loss when downloading critical updates.

If you cant get ethernet, try with USB tethering and your smartphone. Wifi antennas on smartphones are always better than the wifi you get on laptops, and USB tethering is usually available without tinkering.

Even with bleeding edge Arch here the wifi adapter on my laptop performs less well than on windows with the official drivers. In scenarios with few networks around and good signal it's working fine, but with low signal it tends to disconnect and bug out. And of course, I had to use the terminal to get it working, so if you're allergic to copy pasting command lines from well documented wiki pages and would be completely lost without a GUI, making wifi work on linux, any linux, might be a challenge... XD

Thank you, I will try this. I didn't think this was a possibility, if I needed to something like this i usually just connected my phone to wifi then opened a Hotspot on my phone for my pc to connect to and even then it had issues.

wifi cards aren't exactly expensive if that's the one thing holding you back, not hard to swap out either

never had problems with any of my wifi cards apart from that one time when I was trying out Trisquel but that's because it's a hardcore FSF approved distro that have every single bit of proprietary software stripped out of the thing and that includes some weird binary blobs that most wifi cards just can't work without for whatever reason

I currently live paycheck to paycheck so even if it's not that expensive it's something I can't really afford at the moment, as for Trisquel I will check it out.

 

[vulonkaaz's iconvulonkaaz]

as for Trisquel I will check it out.

just to clarify I mentioned that distro as an example of something where wifi does NOT work

 

[MonkeyMondays]

just to clarify I mentioned that distro as an example of something where wifi does NOT work

Ah, I misread since I read it too fast and thank you for clarifying or I would had had more issues down the line.

 

[SpikeSlania]

Old pc from 2017-2018, I bought it at a discount so it might be older than that. As for switching to Arch I'm a bit reluctant to do so as I heard you need to essentially manually do everything from the terminal. I used Ubuntu and still struggled a bit with the terminal, it wasn't that bad but I can't imagine trying to get most of everything done through the terminal on something like Arc. Granted I could be wrong on that and it's just a misconception that I have. My adapter is Qualcomm QCA9377 and all I see online are people with problems with it.

I wouldn't recommend base Arch to someone but there are distros based on Arch that makes installation and usage a lot easier. But I did a quick google search and found a reddit post where someone had success with your wifi adapter by changing to Fedora and running somethings. He wrote a guide for it https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1k387ef/update_successfully_fixed_the_problems_of_qca9377/

Since you are distro hopping anyway, have you tried Garuda?

I am thinking about buying another 1tb ssd to throw in my rig to run the Fedora Cosmic spin to mess around in while it's still in Alpha and I won't be able to daily drive it for gaming yet. I might mess around with Garuda for a day before throwing Fedora Cosmic on it to get a general idea of what it's like, especially since I can't find any youtube videos from Linux youtubers I know and what ones I click on I have trouble listening to their accents.

Edit - Looking at the various Garuda editions and it did make me laugh seeing their KDE Lite version is under advanced users since it requires the user to theme it if they want :P But I will say I like what they did to KDE in their Mokka and Dragonized editions. Similar to how I use GNOME with my dock at the bottom and I use the extension dock to dash to keep it down there.

 

[Piper Halliwell]

Yeah the game perfectly works on Fedora. So not sure why on Debian it has issues. I know Debian requires a lot more tinkering in the terminal to get things running properly. I tend to stick to Fedora Workstation instead of Nobara since GE guts the discover/GNOME store front and I like having a GUI with app descriptions to go through when looking at programs. When I used PikaOS for a few months never had any DirectX 12 issues so its probably just a stock Debian issue

Yeah that's definitely the case. In my experience, it was a bit of a hassle with Mint 19 to get wine downloaded with it causing problems. I did eventually get it to work and run UT99 as well as Unreal '98. I do get where you're coming from though. There's a likely chance you might be able to script a few things to suit your needs, if you have any experience with that. Other than that, it's really up to you on what you want to do and/or finding that right Distro.

Are you looking to avoid Windows entirely or just hopping around?

 

[superFreak420]

Linux is super useful, but there's still some Wumbows-only software I'm probably slightly too spoiled to stop using any time soon. I still use it all the time though, from virtual machines to WSL2, also I have a shitkicker server PC I've plugged a little trinitron into & installed Retroarch on. It breaks all the time but that's because I run Arch and am retarded (both related). I don't even host the roms on the server PC, they're on a raid drive in my desktop cause I'm backwards like that I guess.

The main draw of Linux for me is whatever workstation utilities are available for either Mac or Windows almost always have a native Linux alternative that is a. free, and b. usually works better. I'm talking about like, media conversion tools, file recovery, server and file management rather than stuff like Kdenlive. IMO, emulation is typically better and way more accessible on Linux if you take the time to hop the learning curve, with better accuracy and performance.

 

[SpikeSlania]

Are you looking to avoid Windows entirely or just hopping around?

I gave up on Windows about a year ago. I caved in briefly over the weekend to try to get Windows 11 since World of Warcraft Legion is my favorite expansion and they announced Legion Remix happening. But of course, that was a terrible experience trying to get to work, for the short version I got stuck at the infinite loading circle while trying to start up 11, reminding me of the red ring of death :P

@diapered well, I just gave Garuda a try, back on Fedora. The Garuda Rani app kept freezing on me while I was setting things up and got tired of constantly restarting.

 

[diapered]

Garuda uses the chaotic aur and i believe asks you what installer app store programs you want, i can't remember all the differences between the aur and the chaotic aur, only that the chaotic aur is tested and certified aur packages to work under the os's configuration, garuda doesn't offer aur support out of the box, though you can activate it.

the chaotic aur. That's also what pretty much sold me on moving to garuda from manjaro. It's crazy how a dummy like me has access to so much AUR software now easily, I wouldn't know how to build any of it myself O_o But so far, everything has worked ^_^

@diapered well, I just gave Garuda a try, back on Fedora. The Garuda Rani app kept freezing on me while I was setting things up and got tired of constantly restarting.

That sucks rani doesn't work the xfce edition I installed didn't ship with it: xfce has the three separate garuda assistants. I think @Leon also likes KDE so maybe knows what happened there? I thought rani was still being tested when I last checked the forums, but I checked octopi and rani is in the main garuda repository... I was hopeful when I read about it on the forums because it looks like garuda's answer to pamac, but apparently they might have more work to do >_<

 

[MonkeyMondays]

I wouldn't recommend base Arch to someone but there are distros based on Arch that makes installation and usage a lot easier. But I did a quick google search and found a reddit post where someone had success with your wifi adapter by changing to Fedora and running somethings. He wrote a guide for it https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1k387ef/update_successfully_fixed_the_problems_of_qca9377/

Nice, I did do multiple google searches for the issue but as general wifi issues, not specifically for my wifi adapter and just like that post the main thing you find is disabling power management and other things that just didn't work for me. I'll try this when I have time during the week.

 

[Piper Halliwell]

I gave up on Windows about a year ago. I caved in briefly over the weekend to try to get Windows 11 since World of Warcraft Legion is my favorite expansion and they announced Legion Remix happening. But of course, that was a terrible experience trying to get to work, for the short version I got stuck at the infinite loading circle while trying to start up 11, reminding me of the red ring of death :P

Oh gosh. That sounds like a nightmare. Is there no way to run it? Or is there an Anti-cheat system in place like battle eye? I was going to suggest using a VM or dual boot (since people talk about doing that instead of a VM).

 

[SpikeSlania]

Nice, I did do multiple google searches for the issue but as general wifi issues, not specifically for my wifi adapter and just like that post the main thing you find is disabling power management and other things that just didn't work for me. I'll try this when I have time during the week.

Listed 4 different methods and the first 3 didn't work for him, the 4th one did which was changing some stuff in the configuration files for ath10k so you might be able to skip right down to the 4th method if you don't want to go through the other stuff first to see if that works.

Oh gosh. That sounds like a nightmare. Is there no way to run it? Or is there an Anti-cheat system in place like battle eye? I was going to suggest using a VM or dual boot (since people talk about doing that instead of a VM).

Currently the only known ways of being able to run it is through Steam using Proton 10 beta or a Wine Runner using kron4ek-wine-10.6-staging-tkg-amd64. Since I can't change the runner in Lutris until after I install and it won't install properly currently can't use my preferred method of running b.net. But you can get it to install in Bottles and then change the runner. My experience trying to get Windows 11 to work over the weekend pretty much soured any ideas of dual booting or using a vm to run Windows. Sure Windows 10 is fine but it's EOL is coming and who knows what Microsoft plans on doing to that to try to get people to upgrade to 11 that I don't want to fall back on it for the rug to get pulled out underneath me.

 

[diapered]

never had problems with any of my wifi cards apart from that one time when I was trying out Trisquel but that's because it's a hardcore FSF approved distro that have every single bit of proprietary software stripped out of the thing and that includes some weird binary blobs that most wifi cards just can't work without for whatever reason

Same, I don't think wifi has really been a problem for linux since ~8 years ago (unless you are using a distro like Debian or Arch which doesn't do any handholding for configuring your hardware). Yea, back in the day wifi could be a nightmare, but I think kernel/driver/wrapper support is fairly complete across most hardware today. Aside from small annoyances logging in, I have never had a wifi problem (poor connection, dropping etc.) with mint, manjaro or garuda. To be fair though, I only buy lenovo laptops. Someone told me years ago they are generally more linux friendly (not sure how true that is), so I have always just stuck with them, so maybe that's why I have never really had problems? However, they are the "budget" lenovo options with cheap realtek chips and apparently realtek are more likely to have issues (from what I saw from forums), but not for me... Maybe just lucky?

I did run into an odd wifi problem recently and would like to see if anyone can explain why my fix worked, but again it was just an annoying login issue for one network, nothing major. The network in question uses a browser login in page, but it would not connect to the authentication server when opened, and this was a network I had previously connected to before no problem. I saw someone on the garuda forums with a different issue and someone suggested to boot into a live usb then boot back to the native installation. Well, I had my live usb with me and thought, "well, why not give it a try?" and I WAS able to log in no problems on live install and when I booted back to the native installation it was fixed O_o Anyone know why that worked?

 

[vulonkaaz's iconvulonkaaz]

I did run into an odd wifi problem recently and would like to see if anyone can explain why my fix worked, but again it was just an annoying login issue for one network, nothing major. The network in question uses a browser login in page, but it would not connect to the authentication server when opened, and this was a network I had previously connected to before no problem. I saw someone on the garuda forums with a different issue and someone suggested to boot into a live usb then boot back to the native installation. Well, I had my live usb with me and thought, "well, why not give it a try?" and I WAS able to log in no problems on live install and when I booted back to the native installation it was fixed O_o Anyone know why that worked?

the public wifi remembered your mac address

 

[diapered]

the public wifi remembered your mac address

I don't think it is related to the mac address since that wouldn't change depending on the boot medium. Then again, I'm not really a networking person...

 

[popckorn]

Some services do thumbprint your hardware instead of your browser or OS.

I have to run macchanger a bunch of times for some processes. Another thing Linux makes super simple, Mint has Mac Changer native and available in their curated Software Manager.

 

[vulonkaaz's iconvulonkaaz]

I don't think it is related to the mac address since that wouldn't change depending on the boot medium. Then again, I'm not really a networking person...

it's exactly because the address don't change that the networked remembered you and you didn't have to log in again

 

[diapered]

it's exactly because the address don't change that the networked remembered you and you didn't have to log in again

I do get that part, but why was it the live usb boot was needed to correctly connect to the authentication server in the first place? That's what has me puzzled.

 

[vulonkaaz's iconvulonkaaz]

I do get that part, but why was it the live usb boot was needed to correctly connect to the authentication server in the first place? That's what has me puzzled.

idk but captive portals (that's how we call those log in webpages on public wifi) work in a very weird janky way if there's anything about your network stack that's like non standard it can cause issue I think, with the live USB you just avoid that problem instead of actually solving it

 

[aquova]

I used Linux off and on for many years before making it my daily OS in 2019. I've played around with many distros, but used Ubuntu for a few years before switching to Arch, which I've been very pleased with ever since.

I always find it a bit difficult to gauge how easy it is to use for newcomers. It's made incredible improvements in game compatibility and ease of use since I first tried it out, but if you are coming from a Windows/Mac world I can see where it would be daunting. That being said, just this past week I helped a friend who was fed up with Windows 11 install Linux Mint, and once we got through the initial set up (didn't know that secure boot would prevent the nvidia drivers from loading...) she's actually been very pleased with her experience thus far.

 

[SpikeSlania]

I always find it a bit difficult to gauge how easy it is to use for newcomers. It's made incredible improvements in game compatibility and ease of use since I first tried it out, but if you are coming from a Windows/Mac world I can see where it would be daunting. That being said, just this past week I helped a friend who was fed up with Windows 11 install Linux Mint, and once we got through the initial set up (didn't know that secure boot would prevent the nvidia drivers from loading...) she's actually been very pleased with her experience thus far.

I'm getting ready to throw Fedora on a friend's PC this weekend. Will have to see how well he will adapt to it from Windows 10. He was on the fence because he wants to do more with VR but Windows 11 is terribad and 10 has EOL coming up. He gets the benefit of me setting everything up for him at least.

 

[popckorn]

Immutable Fedora? or Regular Fedora

 

[Piper Halliwell]

Currently the only known ways of being able to run it is through Steam using Proton 10 beta or a Wine Runner using kron4ek-wine-10.6-staging-tkg-amd64. Since I can't change the runner in Lutris until after I install and it won't install properly currently can't use my preferred method of running b.net. But you can get it to install in Bottles and then change the runner. My experience trying to get Windows 11 to work over the weekend pretty much soured any ideas of dual booting or using a vm to run Windows. Sure Windows 10 is fine but it's EOL is coming and who knows what Microsoft plans on doing to that to try to get people to upgrade to 11 that I don't want to fall back on it for the rug to get pulled out underneath me.

Yeah, in that case, it's probably best to stick with 11. I'm sure once people migrate to 11 from 10, there might be better programs or other means of bypassing the system for you to run it or make it quick and efficient to install. Honestly, I'm debating swapping my current machine to Linux since I'm planning to buy a new build. Or rather, construct one from scratch. Sure, I don't think Windows 11 is the worst thing in the world, but it's better to have something that'll do what I want it to. Probably might be a pain to setup though it's got access to everything. That's why I'm hoping Linux gets better supported in the future or make it easier for amateurs like me :,)