Just giggled as my last meme mentioned trouble with displays and appropriately, a large chunk of the replies were “well MY displays work just fine!” (And charmingly, many were thoughts of things to check, other distros etc. It’s a very kind community, though that may also be the fediverse.)
Your meme about displays got me to go fix the 4k60 output on my PC. I use a TV as my screen and the EDID it reports us borked and leaves it off so I had to make a custom EDID and inject it at boot.
10/10 way easier than it sounds, annoyed I had to use a popular windows program to do it though because the first copy I found of the app I needed had a Trojan (thanks VirusTotal for confirming I’m not crazy for checking every exe no matter how official looking).
Why tf do we not have an EDID editor?
I have a friend who runs arch, and recommends arch to people. His computer constantly has problems because he doesn’t fully know what he’s doing.
I respect doing it for yourself, you do you, but I feel like he’s actively discouraging my friends from giving Linux a go because of his constant issues. Recommending the hardest distro to beginners just bugs me.
Yeah, let everyone do their own thing - there’s nothing wrong with starting with Slackware if you want to. But if we’re going to recommend a starting point to people, maybe go with something that is designed to work out of the box. There’s going to be so much else to get adjusted to that extra options aren’t necessary.
Oh, and by the way, most people don’t like tinkering. They want their car to take them from A to B and their computer to do the thing, it’s not a hobby for them and we shouldn’t expect new users to be looking for a new hobby.
Gentoo begs to differ
As a ~25 year Linux user, I am absolutely a gorgeous donkey
I posted in official support channels for my flavor of Fedora not having functioning Windows EXE thumbnails, despite having evidence of it working out-of-the-box for other people. It got two replies, “Lol, find another distro if you don’t like it,” and “Did you install (package that comes pre-installed)?”
In truth, this is how almost every issue I’ve had with Linux has gone, which is likely why I’ve had three false starts and gone through six different distros before deciding to stick with this one that is only mildly broken.
I find the best way to get help is to find a good source of documentation, rather than asking questions directly. ArchWiki is great, UbuntuWiki is not bad. There are lots of blogs out there with people writing guides for how to solve issues that they’ve had, and they’re usually really good (but this relies on search engines finding these results).
My experience has been finding a 5 step solution to a problem, with step 3 not working properly and requiring several hours of effort to find a workaround, finding an entirely different solution elsewhere (that also doesn’t work), then discovering there’s been a flatpack the entire time.
Still have bazzite on my shitty 10 year old laptop because it cannot possibly run windows at this point, but I don’t think I’d daily drive it.
I’d love to know what it is about help threads that attracts people who don’t believe in helping.
I’ve found the Linux community to be quite helpful. But I’ve not really used Lemmy for tech support. The Arch Wiki is damn near a Linux Wikipedia. And any active board dedicated to a particular Distro are where I’ve gotten help.
It seems really hard at first but the more problems you solve the more sense everything makes.
Ignore the gatekeepers.
But I’ve not really used Lemmy for tech support.
I would sooner ask a rabid squirrel for relaxing holiday ideas.
I’ve been running slackware as my main since the late '90s, and the arch wiki has been invaluable and often recommended by all.
My experience as well.
Also the distroshaming from some jerks. Eh, whatever floats your boat and fit your needs. Nice! Advising people that a different distro would be more appropiate as usecase - cool!
I found a Lot of stuff where people actively work on a great experience and I found more good solutions to one issue, when Microsofts own knowledgebank lacks of. And besides that there is a loooooot of good content to explain how Things work with Linux If you want to deep Dive into the whole Thing.
Overall I’m satisfied With my daily experience and how cool the community actually is.
I use Arch btw. (Kidding. Mint user Here)
I wouldn’t say “makes sense”, but I did get a bit more confident in tackling problems after a few successes using online help.
I also gave up on things I’d like to have after failures using online help, though.
Finally, I admit I’m a donkey.
Yeah, I’m always envious of people who can make sense of the info they find on the Arch wiki and forums. For me, it’s just a patchwork of solutions I found. Every time I add one, I pray to the computer gods that it doesn’t worsen my situation.
a large chunk of the replies were “well MY displays work just fine!”
I just went to check the previous thread, and I think there’s miscommunication both ways here.
They read your post as “I’m trying Linux, but it’s even hard to get monitors to work.” So, they responded, “I haven’t had a problem with monitors on Linux in decades.”
There’s not much else they can say, as you weren’t really asking for advice, so you didn’t give any technical details, but you were still complaining about something that they like.
Meanwhile, you read them as you said, “well MY displays work just fine!” So their replies seem utterly baffling, defensive, and unhelpful from your perspective.
I think you nailed it exactly. Also, someone else pointed out there was a time when Linux could legit break your monitor and even though that hasn’t been the case for years it’s still a bit of a sore spot.
My display is working fine.
*audio
Audio! I went from stereo to 7.1 and got this intense loud buzz that wouldn’t go away! (Fedora KDE). Drove me nuts. Spent hours trying every dang thing. Finally connected it to a Windows machine. Same buzz. My woofer had just ate itself. Nothing to do with Linux at all.
Alternative 2nd panel: “Linux user once you reveal your choice of distro”
Unless it’s Arch. At which point we need Ramsay bowing down or somesuch.
LSF is where it’s at. it’s the ultimate distro.
(kinda joking. kinda being literal as a joke.)
Dunno the post you talk abiut, but usually I see in forums people that respond being pretty willing to help.
This ain’t windows, bro. RTFM OR GTFO
No joke, ChatGPT has been a game changer for my linux education. Tutorials and guides are great, but it’s either a step-by-step instruction on doing exactly one thing, or it’s a general overview that assumes you already know everything.
ChatGPT doesn’t judge your gaps in knowledge, it just answers questions. Those answers are frequently wrong, but then so are the answers I get on message boards. The other nice thing is that I can copy and paste code or error logs, and it will parse the information and tell me what to look for.
I still follow guides and ask real humans for help when I need it, but I try an AI first.
It’s great for logs and learning the basics, sure, but I find it quickly ends up off the rails.
If a door came off its hinge, ChatGPT will eventually have you build an entire house around it; a house that breaks every building code imaginable, no less.
It’s best you do the steering by double checking it’s claims—usually this points you to a Reddit post where it clearly got the info from—and searching through Wikis and boards yourself. In those cases Linux users may sound like they’re speaking another language, and then ChatGPT can help break their solution down for you and implement it.
If people were to use LLMs for things they’re already experts in, they would realise how frequently and drastically wrong LLMs are. It’s honestly scary knowing it’s out there wreaking havoc on important things and people using them don’t realise.
Just don’t trust it with anything important, they get shit super wrong sometimes and insist it’s correct.
This made me laugh because I’ve had installing Linux on an old Tecra in my to do list for the better part of a year and my brother (Linux apostle, sire to three software engineers) when I told him that said “you know you can just boot if from a USB key, no need for theatrics”
I love that man, but he really gets in the way of good, solid procrastination
I saw that post, and honestly, part of the issue is that the pain of messing with mode-lines in /etc/XF86Config and worrying about physically damaging your CRT monitor with out-of-spec frequencies was a very real thing 30 years ago. Hence, the idea that configuring displays on Linux is fraught and difficult has stuck around, even though it hasn’t been true since the advent of DDC, and multiple displays for most use-cases has been sorted out for at least the past 15 years. Non-Linux users will still occasionally talk about displays on Linux as if we were still editing mode-lines in vi.
It’s a sore point, I guess I’m saying, and you poked it inadvertently. When I read the post, I just kind of smiled, because a few days before, I plugged the HDMI cable from a conference room display into my Thinkpad, and it lit up with an extension of my desktop. I started LibreOffice Impress, hit ‘F5’, and the presentation appeared on the big display, and the presentation notes on my laptop screen. (Actually, I was surprised and impressed at how smoothly it went.)
It’s no surprise that issues remain here and there, though. Glad to hear that folks wanted to be helpful!
part of the issue is that the pain of messing with mode-lines in /etc/XF86Config and worrying about physically damaging your CRT monitor with out-of-spec frequencies
I mean I fucked up my install by following the instructions for Optimus cards off the Debian wiki.
I reinstalled Debian, tried gaming specific distros, My computer still overheats when playing games
That’s so wild, I had no idea of that history, thanks for sharing!
Stuff like this is why I still love social media.
I think it would be cool to host weekly Linux setups with users sharing their desktop and such.
That’d be cool!
My display is working fine!
spoiler
As long as i don’t switch it off, because it doesn’t get initialized if i try turning it on again. But i fixed it!
spoiler
I fixed it by not turning it off and having a black desktop background and minimizing all windows when my PC has to run overnight.
At some point it would be cheaper to get a new screen than paying the extra electricity for running the computer all the time, lol
