Why don't more Arch users run Void?

So I'm by no means a purist or evangelist(ok maybe a little tiny bit). I enjoy a lot of different distro and operating systems. At work I run Regolith (Ubuntu+i3), one of my laptops I run Void and the other FreeBSD, and I also enjoy MacOS as well. However when I read about or talk to Arch users and why they use Arch it's simplicity is often one of the most talked about attributes. Now I don't contest this, and I'm also not a systemd bandwagon hater, but also as a Void user for about 3 years now I have to say the simplicity of runit is far greater than that of systemd. I think systemd works wonderfully on more fully featured desktops which are inevitably more complex to achieve a better abstraction from the underlying system, these abstractions were the reason I use an Ubuntu disto at work so I didn't have to take my entire first week getting my desktop environment dialed in. However "ricing" and deep customization is often the way of the Arch community, something I deeply admire about that community, but I often feel like Void might be better suited. Admittedly I've never run Arch for very long, not because I don't enjoy it, but because I've often needed something else and admittedly I get some weird satisfaction from running more obscure distros. So excuse me if I'm ignorant on Arch compared to a long term user.

So I have a few questions for you Arch users out there. Have you heard of Void? Have you used it? What made you pick Arch over Void if you've heard of it or even tried it in the past? What are some things you like and disklike about Void if you've tried it before? What are the qualities you look for in a distro? A lot of the Void community were or even still are Arch users, so it often makes me wonder, and I'm posting here because I'd like to reach outside both communities and see what the greater community has to say. I'm curious to know your input if you have even just a bit of experience in Arch and/or Void.

Lastly I'd like to thank the dedicated Arch community for their wiki and forums they've created over the years which I've found extremely useful and concise regardless of the distro I'm using.

https://redd.it/d7d6wb
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Global OS share for the past few years (2003-2019) it seems like linux share was growing comparably fast until 2011 when it stops at 5-6%. Interesting why !!
https://youtu.be/eJuvKn5j_kE

https://redd.it/d7je04
@r_linux

KDE's Dolphin file browser and a web browser? Wanna view a man page outside the terminal?

In Dolphin's path bar type ```man:/<command here>```

For example, ```man:/rsync```

That will open the rsync's man page in your default browser and it is formatted very pretty.

Many thanks to Aleix Pol who implemented this feature!

Edit: or just use Konqueror then you are able to follow links within the man page

Edit: or just use Khelpcenter much better than all of the above

https://redd.it/d7osdi
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Elementary customization explained
https://thekengel.wordpress.com/2019/09/18/did-you-like-my-linux-desktop/

https://redd.it/d7pmuq
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Do you have any concerns about the Linux Foundation?

I'm taking a course through the Linux Foundation and on the course launch page there is a red error box that says: "Refresh this page in your browser (on your keyboard press F5 for Windows or ⌘R for Mac) to see an updated view of your progress."

Does this rub anyone else the wrong way that they don't even give instructions for how to refresh a browser page on Linux? I also recently read that some of the "higher up" employees use Windows and Mac on their computers.

There is probably good and bad for this organization and I know they do a lot of great work with the kernel but this seems a little strange to me.

https://redd.it/d7q9ln
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What are some cliches about your distro you have found out to be false?



https://redd.it/d7qr38
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Reinstalling Windows XP on a Linux system

Not sure if this is the right place to ask but how do I go about this? I have a genuine XP product code. The old laptop I have currently has an old version of peppermint Linux on.

Cheers!

https://redd.it/d7rerj
@r_linux

Did SYSTEM-CONFIG-LVM + SYSTEM-CONFIG-LVM GUI ever make a comeback? That was an amazingly intuitive and powerful program with brilliant GUI and when combined with Gnome-disk-Utility made setting up LVM Disk Pools childs play. or is it "$oftware $ubnoscription a$ a $ervice" now?



https://redd.it/d7r18v
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Multilang Input - only reason why I don’t use Linux

For people like me, who use 3-5 languages every day, which includes Chinese, Korean, Russian it’s impossible to use Linux.

For example on Mac or Windows I just press Cmd+space(alt+shift) to change input language and I can type everywhere. But on Linux a such simple thing(from user perspective) is so complicated. Even after finding some noscripts, libraries to change input source you will find out that in some applications input layout doesn’t work.

I think I’m not alone. Reply if you have same problem.

https://redd.it/d7t4lp
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Anyone else see Huawei using Deepin as a good thing?

Honestly using Deepin as a sacrificial lamb might be nice:

* Deepin is already terrible so this gives it a use
* The association might help scare new users away from it
* If China adopts it, some of the software the third-party software they need to use might come to the rest of us.
* Another, actually reputable distro won't have to fight/worry about China

https://redd.it/d7ts0s
@r_linux

Have you seen it ? Gnome Games 3.34 supports adaptive design.

[Search](https://i.imgur.com/aESBK1Y.png)

[Savestates](https://i.imgur.com/ZwWnAbI.png)

[In game](https://i.imgur.com/BkWddCn.png)

[Preferences](https://i.imgur.com/7fUYgXQ.png)

[Main Screen](https://i.imgur.com/Vf4duUw.png)

[Platform details](https://i.imgur.com/l25DGno.png)

[Platforms](https://i.imgur.com/OEOjDG6.png)

[Backup & Restore](https://i.imgur.com/0T92sef.png)

https://redd.it/d7tlwp
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TIFU case-study: destroying a SSD with IO problems

I'm writing this after having 4 months of data being only theoretically recoverable. Partially as a warning and partially for digital closure.
Also learn from my mistakes. Don't be like me.

# -1. The setup

WD Green 480 GB SSD + Hitachi 3TB

Both disks had LVM on LUKS. The SSD was split between /, cache\[1\], mostly, and a small /boot, /boot/EFI and swap. The HDD was just data part of the LVM cache and swap with a high priority.
The encryption key for the HDD was a file located on the SSD. This was the only encryption key for the HDD.

# 0. The cat-astrophe

One day, after waiting out a IO freeze, and after deciding to reboot, when the machine did not deal itself with the problem (4hrs vs. 5-10 minutes usually), I was welcomed by a SSD that decided to obliterate itself to 16KiB.

# 1. The road to dis-aster (a.k.a. all those small things that synergize in your face).

\- A incomplete backup solution.
For many reasons I was putting of fixing this for later™. Until the later™ bit me in the ass.
A lot of important files were saved by Syncthing to another machine I'm working on in parallel, but this is not a backup.

\- Ignoring high IO-related freezes and their impact on the SSD caching.
My system was plagued by freezes caused probably by excessive swapping. When the physical RAM was exhausted the system responsiveness went out of the window and in a hurry.
Usually this happened when I've wanted to play modded Minecraft and did not close Firefox (do note, I have enough tabs and extensions to make Chrome look slim and well-mannered at the table).
If I could observe the system (as SSHd was not responding to new connections) I would see in iotop mostly JBD2 operations, the RAM-intensive processes and often Syncthing doing high IO \[2\].
This plagued me even before buying the SSD and at that time having swap on a separate drive.
As one of the symptoms was intensive HDD work noise I've disregarded the potential impact on the SSD.
The only thing I've tried was adding "commit=15" to the SSD file systems, but I did not see any results.
While it did not trash my drive the system reacted to Magic SysRq. But...

\- Trying to wait out the problem.
When the IO problem occurred at first I've decided to REISUB the problem. Just add boot time, restart the apps and you can get back to whatever you were doing.
But at some point Pidgin or libpurple-hangouts on my machine decided to stop remembering Hangouts OAuth keys (on a second machine the same setup works flawlessly(!)) and I had to renew them on each reboot. I've decided at some point just to wait out the freeze to avoid the time lost. It was just 5-10 minutes. \[3\]
The last time I've did this the system tried to sort itself for a very long time (I think \~4 hours) and stopped reacting to the Magic SysRq.

\- Buying an DRAM-less SSD.
This is uncertain as far as my knowledge goes, but maybe, just maybe, the SSD firmware would not write all those transactions as fast as they occurred. Instead they could've been written in bulk or allow the LVM caching to write them directly to the HDD.
To my defense it was hard to find a definitive answer if a not-top-tier disk has DRAM or not (unless it's hidden under the term "cache").

\- Having the swap on the SSD.
I was a hard opposer of this, only to have one. I thought that priorities would save me from problems and this swap would save me in hard times of memory usage. Now I may never know if it worked at all.
In the end I will chalk it up to a unnecessary risk.

\- Having only one encryption key to the HDD or not using a password manager to backup it.
This is why my data remains theoretically recoverable. I only need to find a 1KiB (if I remember correctly) of random data that was my key.
And I was very sure that I have a second password on that drive. Turns out I had a second password. ...for different disk...
The password manager/GPG encryption/printer part goes without saying

.

\- Buying the SSD from a lame-ass, crooAHEM... vendor.
Finally I could find a tiny bit of solace in getting a RMA'ing for new SSD. But As I've decided to go a little bit too cheap the vendor got a drive from outside of EMEA and the WD site says I can go and f\*ck myself.
Also the WD site has a broken the registration form and I can't even get any support without solving some dumb HTML/JS form problems.

# 2. Conclusions

Detailed conclusions may not interest you. Well those are simple: recover what you can, delete what you can't, get a system running.
But I will at least offer a few words that could help you avoid crashing and burning completely.
\- your memory can lie to you\[4\]; that's why password managers are your friends, especially combined with Syncthing,
\- an online password manager is better that no password manager (unless you use a password sharing site that disguises itself as a password manager),
\- diceware is a good help but may require longer phrases these days,
\- there are two kinds of people: those that have recoverable backups and everybody else,
\- bonus irony: I work in a disaster recovery team and regular DR tests are our work; but as we say in Poland: the shoemaker walks barefoot,
\- always have a backup plan (other than your backup),
\- in other words if you plan something think about a contingency plan how you'll get back to speed if your plan fails,
\- fix your sh!t, or at least work around it,
\- "Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action."
\- a written plan is better that the one in your head (see memory lying).

TL;DR: overlooked a big, but "manageable" problem with disk activity and that problem eroded my SSD. Then a few mistakes chained up to being left with a perfectly fine, but encrypted with no password HDD with my data.

\[1\] More or less like described under the Usage paragraph: [http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man7/lvmcache.7.html](http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man7/lvmcache.7.html)
\[2\] This is still a mystery to me: why Syncthing showed up so often in this case. "Write at any cost"?
\[3\] A bonus middle finger to Google here.
\[4\] Seriously, this is a psychological phenomenon: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False\_memory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_memory)
As a bonus story I once had a phrase-based password and a simple drawing to give me hints that, in assumption, only I could use to re-remember the passphrase. Unfortunately due to inflections in the polish language I could not remember the proper forms that went with the picture. ...or the order that things went. ...or maybe I've interpreted wrong words?
I've made this password two years ago. To this day I don't know what it is.

https://redd.it/d7vi5m
@r_linux

Software Package Management using apt on Ubuntu
https://thecodinginterface.com/blog/linux-apt-package-manager/

https://redd.it/d7bxv8
@r_linux

Thoughts on Redcore, a hardened, Gentoo-based desktop distro
https://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20190923#redcore

https://redd.it/d7yur3
@r_linux

Favorite things about your Desktop Environments or Window Managers?

I know, for instance, I love running XFCE on my laptops due to it being lightweight, simple, and very fast, love running KDE on my desktop where that extra RAM can be used to making my desktop look elegant, and love using IceWM on my server due to it being a super lightweight yet complete window manager/mini-desktop environment.

https://redd.it/d805yh
@r_linux

Careers or Jobs in the Linux Community

[removed]

https://redd.it/d80edh
@r_linux

Linux Experiences/Rants or Education/Certifications thread - September 23, 2019

Welcome to r/linux rants and experiences! This megathread is also to hear opinions from anyone just starting out with Linux or those that have used Linux (GNU or otherwise) for a long time.

Let us know what's annoying you, whats making you happy, or something that you want to get out to r/linux but didn't make the cut into a full post of it's own.

For those looking for certifications please use this megathread to ask about how to get certified whether it's for the business world or for your own satisfaction. Be sure to check out r/linuxadmin for more discussion in the SysAdmin world!

_Please keep questions in r/linuxquestions, r/linux4noobs, or the Wednesday automod thread._

https://redd.it/d81g7f
@r_linux

Windows update is making me switch to ubuntu (rant / over-dramatic rant)

I've always loved Ubuntu. It looks clean, smooth and works well for programming!

I only had 4 reasons not to switch over

1. Minecraft Java Edition was for Win/Mac only
2. Brawlhalla. One of my favourite games, It's now on the switch so i'll play that, also crossplatform now. I'll just have to "get gud" again
3. Most of my steam library is rendered unplayable, but i use the switch way more then steam now.
4. It's a pain to move OS.

&#x200B;

Windows 10 forcefully updated my computer in the middle of the night without my knowledge or connect. causing my drivers to fail, rendering my 2nd monitor not-working, built-in speakers into my monitor not working, minecraft unable to run.

&#x200B;

I've snapped.

It's Linux time!

https://redd.it/d82an1
@r_linux

My Talk at Microsoft - Richard Stallman
https://www.stallman.org/articles/microsoft-talk.html

https://redd.it/d855f9
@r_linux

Reinventing Home Directories
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwjzfdLJtX4

https://redd.it/d85pcy
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