Manjaro alternatives ?

After the recent news on manjaro I'd like another arch-based distro.

https://redd.it/ckdpze
@r_linux

Rockbox user since 2010, now updated to 3.14. The USB Keypad mode when plugged in blows my mind!

When you have it plugged into your computer, to charge or transfer files, it also acts like a USB keypad, with different modes you can switch between. With one I can flip between slides of a presentation. Another gives me multimedia keys so I change the volume, skip track, pause music, it's all there.

I never thought that after all this time, I'd still discover something new about Rockbox. And the release notes from 2017 say my battery life should have doubled? Again, I'm speechless.

And it's not like these people are stopping. [Less than two weeks ago](https://www.rockbox.org/wiki/MajorChanges) they added Quake. I'm thinking of getting a third Clip+ as backup just so I can keep using Rockbox as long as possible.

https://redd.it/ckdbrt
@r_linux

Manjaro Developer on FreeOffice (Starts at 13:40) - xpost
https://youtu.be/-lB6I8bCZt8

https://redd.it/ckep2w
@r_linux

List of the best CLI apps that i use as a daily driver and my story of migration from GUI to Terminal

First i want to share my story of migration, but you can skip it to TL;DR and the list.

One day, around a year ago i woke up, opened the Gnome File manager and was feeling a bit depressed... It was the design that made me sad. Took me several hours to find a decent GTK theme, but it was still not okay, here and there something was a bit off.

I opened Google Play Music to find the music for the working day and it was loading and loading, spinner after spinner it took around 30 seconds to load the initial bloated slow GUI. At this point i didn't want to listen to music.

No music today, I've stared some radio station and opened Sublime Editor. Thank god (Sublime Devs), it loaded very quickly and was actually okay, the only GUI app that works fast and that i still use. So finally i started working and after hour of work I've opened the Gnome Calculator to solve some math equations. It started in 5 seconds, but when i tried to close it it just stuck unresponsive for around 10 seconds at this point i wasn't depressed anymore, i was laughing.

In the evening the same day I've decided to make a pizza, after the pizza was in oven i opened chromium, duckduckgo, started the timer for 5 minutes, after 10 minutes i switched to duck duck go tab with a timer and it started ringing with minus 5 minutes left. Probably because of new chromium autoplay policy - cheese on pizza was brown.

That was more than enough. That day I've decided that modern software is not only bloated, it sometimes can't even do the work it created for. I've started switching apps one by one.

The next day i switched from Gnome to i3 and started searching for replacement apps. After around a year i have a list of great apps that i want to share with you.

TL;DR: GUI apps are slow, bloated, ugly and sometimes don't work, CLI apps are fast and do their job well.

1. Calcurse - Calendar and scheduling application - helps me add tasks and events, keeps my day planned.

2. Cmus - The greatest music player for Linux. I usually download albums from Bandcamp (you can pay author approx $5 per album or download some of them for free).

3. Calc - Just a calculator.

4. Timer - Actually not an app. I have simple noscript for timer. I just write in terminal timer 10 and it sets the timer for 10 minutes with backwards countdown and alert. Useful for cooking and i love cooking.

5. Ranger - Great terminal file manager, supports panels and stuff, you can also bind your own keys, bundle noscripts and edit open with list. It's not so fast as nnn, as some people say, but it has great functionality.

6. Top - I don't use htop, because top is absolutely okay for me and gives all the info i need.

7. Units - Useful when you need to convert some metric units to imperial system and back.

8. Ncdu - When i need to keep track on directories/files size in my file system i use this utility. I used baobab before, but i don't like it's ugly GUI, so i found this app. I've also added an alias -x for ncdu to not cross the filesystem boundaries when scanning files.

I think that there are even more awesome apps, you can share them in comments.

https://redd.it/ckdk28
@r_linux

Linux: Systemd, Graphics and Benchmarks
http://www.tuxmachines.org/node/126484

https://redd.it/ckfrh8
@r_linux

New release of you-should-use zsh plugin (reminds you to use your aliases)
https://www.reddit.com/r/zsh/comments/ckasqb/new_release_of_youshoulduse_plugin_reminds_you_to/

https://redd.it/ckcsza
@r_linux

Windows to Linux home server, good distos?

So, thinking about switching from Windows 10 Enterprise LTSB to Linux for my home server but I'm not 100% sure yet. The reason I'm thinking about switching is because I'm sick of Windows update breaking things, currently it's VM's, cant run any without a BSOD.

I've got very basic knowledge of Linux, played with it on and off over the years but never really stuck to it because everything I was doing at the time needed Windows. Now with my home server I've realised I should be able to do everything on Linux without to much of an issue (hopefully), all I do is: Folding, VM's, Steam game servers, Minecraft servers, batch file renaming, CD / DVD burning / ripping & some file storage.

Currently I'm playing around with Debian 10 KDE and Ubuntu 18.04.2 LTS. So far Debian has been a little quicker with somethings but more of a pain to set things up (network sharing of folders and drives hasn't worked at all) while Ubuntu has been pretty easy but seems a little sluggish, maybe the default desktop is a little to "fancy" for VNC & IPMI.

Are there any other distros I should look at that are easy enough to work with, preferably mostly GUI?

Also are there any issues I could run into with any of the stuff I do? Sometimes I'm doing multiple servers while folding, ripping, renaming and a VM or 2.

Thanks.

https://redd.it/cki4wt
@r_linux

New function tracing feature released

Guider provides with a new function tracing feature that do not require any kernel or program rebuild.
Just run it on linux shell.

# git clone https://github.com/iipeace/guider
# guider/guider/guider.py usertop -g TID or COMM

https://redd.it/ckex38
@r_linux

Onivim2: "In 24 hours we'll be releasing our pre-alpha builds to backers and raising the price."
https://twitter.com/oni_vim/status/1156272977874309120

https://redd.it/ck7uuv
@r_linux

GNU/Linux vs KDE/Linux?

Some people prefer to call Linux for GNU/Linux since they are using the GNU tool chain. Should I then be calling Linux for KDE/Linux since I am running KDE Plasma and KDE's programs as well?
Or should we just call it Linux?

https://redd.it/ckl1bc
@r_linux

A beginner's guide to Silverblue: Fedora Silverblue is an immutable, easy to install, and simple to use Linux operating system
https://www.redhat.com/sysadmin/beginners-guide-silverblue

https://redd.it/ckliyp
@r_linux

Summer Update for FreeCAD & Debian Science Work
https://www.patreon.com/posts/summer-update-28822998

https://redd.it/cklds0
@r_linux

It feels like an unpopular opinion, but I really like GNOME!

Coming from macOS, I'm used to 'very opinionated' desktop environments, where you can learn the proposed workflow or just have a bad experience. The lack of a lot of customization is also not unusual to me.

Coming to linux, I tried XFCE, KDE, Budgie and GNOME and I gotta say, GNOME just fits so well. The consistency between everything is great (better than macOS, if you ask me) and it just feels really simple. It gets out of my way. The animations are discrete and pretty and runs butter smooth in my PC (which has some horse power, so I guess there's that).

I feel that people hate on GNOME a lot, and maybe they're right for old hardware. For me, it fits like a glove and I wouldn't trade it for any other DE, even macOS.

Is there any more people that really like GNOME out there? :D

https://redd.it/ckm50s
@r_linux

Drawing is a Promising ‘Microsoft Paint’ Alternative for Linux
https://moopost.blogspot.com/2019/08/drawing-is-promising-microsoft-paint.html

https://redd.it/ckmksg
@r_linux

Arch Linux + Gnome or Android x86

Hello!
I am very new to Linux and I want to install something lightweight with touch support on my Acer Aspire R3-131T.
It has an Intel Celeron N3160 with the Intel AC 3165 Wi-Fi Card.

Would you recommend Arch Linux with Gnome or Android x86?

Does Android x86 support my CPU?
Does Android x86 support the Wireless Card?
I googled a lot but couldn't find very much.

Cheers,
Tschöppeli

https://redd.it/cknamk
@r_linux

Xfce 4.14pre3 released!
https://simon.shimmerproject.org/2019/07/31/xfce-4-14pre3-released/

https://redd.it/cknpme
@r_linux

2019 - the year of the merging OSs may be good for linux

I just happened across [this article](https://www.pcworld.com/article/3394680/how-windows-and-chrome-quietly-made-2019-the-year-of-linux-on-the-desktop.html) whichs talks about WSL2 and the improvements in Windows 10 with running linux - including a new terminal that looks REALLY nice from the short video at least. It also talks about how Chrome will be able to run linux apps natively soon.

It uses the tired old cliche of "the year of the linux desktop", but it does give an overview of linux gains in other OSs this year. In addition, there is [this video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwhMThePdIo) that includes a very long video explaining WSL2, contrasting it to WSL1 and even explaining why you'd want to use it rather than a VM.

It seems to me that Microsoft is looking at it from a develop and deploy perspective - develop on your Windows desktop then deploy to your linux server. But, I've already seen comments by dual booters saying that this gives them a way to stop dual booting. However, I think the opposite is also true: it gives people who are not familiar with linux a chance to try it in an environment where they can change and save things without having to make the leap of installing it as an OS on their hard drive.

In the case of Chrome, however, it's already linux. It may help in the fact that it will be pointing out the fact to all those people who are already using chromebooks: you don't have to be afraid of linux. You're already running it.

https://redd.it/ckoovi
@r_linux

Peppermint OS 10 – Based on Ubuntu 18.04.2 LTS and Available in 32bit and 64bit
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ze6CIt6GPDI

https://redd.it/ckp4pz
@r_linux

First programming language to learn?

This may seems unrelated, but be patient please.

* Linux is a hobby of mine and I'm a not programmer
* I'm a relatively advanced linux user, I use arch btw and do lots of tinkering with minimal prgramms/wm and I especially play a lot with emacs.
* This caused me to learn some bash noscripting and elisp, but I'm no expert
* I got interested in programming and I'm looking to learn real programming
* Python seems to the popular choice, but given my linux background, wouldn't be too easy? Is it better for me learn something harder? If yes, then what is it?

https://redd.it/ckq05e
@r_linux

LibreOffice Asia Conference Report: Part 1
https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2019/08/01/libreoffice-asia-conference-report-part-1/

https://redd.it/ckqhde
@r_linux

I made a tool for trying our Arch Linux on real hardware

There are many Arch Linux based live distributions but they are all volatile. Most of them can be customized only by rebuilding them, which makes them less ideal for experimentation.

A few months ago I made [ALMA](https://github.com/r-darwish/alma/), a tool for automating the installation of Arch Linux on USB flash drives and SD cards, just as they were real hard drives, with a few optimizations to reduce writes. These bootable environments are mutable just like a real system, and can be updated using pacman itself.

This tool can only work on Arch Linux, so it wasn't relevant to people who did not have a running Arch Linux installation. Today I made a Docker image which allows using this tool on any operating system supporting Docker, even macOS and probably Windows as well.

You should define the following alias:

`alias alma='docker run --rm -it --privileged -v /dev:/dev -v /run:/run -v pacman-cache:/var/cache/pacman -v (pwd):/work darwish/alma alma'`

And then use the tool as intended in the README. I suggest you start by running `alma --help`

If you're using Linux then you can omit the device name and you'll be presented with a menu containing the connected USB drives. Otherwise you should use `--image 4G` to create a 4GB bootable image which you can flash using dd or [balenaEtcher](https://www.balena.io/etcher/).

By default, the tool will only install a basic Arch system. You can pass some toml files with `--preset example.toml`. Some example preset files can be found [here](https://github.com/r-darwish/alma/tree/master/presets).

The Docker hasn't been thoroughly tested and my documentation could use some more love. I'll try to assist with any questions here.

BTW you can use arch.

https://redd.it/ckmy4y
@r_linux