Linux Experiences/Rants or Education/Certifications thread - November 04, 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/drcbt5
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My thoughts/experience with music DAWs on linux

For some background I've been making music on fl studio for 3 years, and will be comparing all of the DAWs to fl studio since I'm fairly experienced with it. I've spent a couple days trying to find a good daw on linux. The first I tried was lmms. For being free, it's not bad. However, I didn't like it and won't be using it for music production. It's missing some features that fl studio has and the interface isn't as good. However, I was able to import my plugins and my midi keyboard worked with it. If you've never made music before and are looking for a daw on linux, lmms isn't a bad choice. It's not as fleshed out as fl studio, but since it's free and has all the basic feature features you need, a newbie could definitely learn music production on it.

After I was let down by lmms, I decided to try reaper. This daw technically costs 60 dollars, but the trial version doesn't stop working after the trial runs out. You just need to wait a few seconds after booting it for the message about your trial being over to go away, and you'll be good. However, if you end up liking the daw, support the developers of it and buy it. But if you'd rather not, I can't blame you. :P Reaper has most of the features of fl studio. However, the interface is very different. That was the turn off for me. If you're used to fl studio, you basically need to relearn how to work DAWs. However, if you've never used a daw (or fl studio), this can definitely work for you as a fleshed out daw. I was able to import my plugins and my midi keyboard worked great. However, it's missing some stock plugins on fl studio that I normally use, but you can just import those plugins from fl studio onto reaper if you want to use them. If the interface was more familiar, or if I wanted to put the time into learning how to work it, I would use reaper as my daw on linux. But since I'm lazy and don't want to relearn, I won't be using it.

The last thing I tried was running fl studio in a windows 7 virtual machine. It worked as expected, but there's one reason I won't be using it. The input lag with using a midi keyboard. FL studio doesn't instantly record the notes that you play, which can get realyyyy annoying. If you want to put up with it, go ahead and use fl studio in a virtual machine. But I like to instantly see the notes I play being displayed for various reasons. The daw as a whole isn't as smooth as it is in stock windows, but it's usable. And since it's running in a virtual machine, obviously all plugins work. I'd use it if it wasn't for the input lag.

So I couldn't find a good daw for linux. Reaper is usable, but not for me. I've heard good stuff about bitwig, but it costs money so I didn't get around to using it. I'll be sticking with fl studio on windows for now. That means the only reason I'll still have windows on my laptop to dual boot into, is to use fl studio on it. If anyone knows any other daws on linux, or wants to say what they use, please lmk in the comments. But for now, nothing beats fl studio on windows for me.

https://redd.it/dra5kd
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"The Fathers" by m-artworks
https://redd.it/dre1q8
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Linux’s Marketing Problem
https://hackaday.com/2019/10/31/linuxs-marketing-problem/

https://redd.it/dr9cna
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Warning: Qemu 4.1 has a (silent) qcow2 data corruption bug

I just saw that somehow some data in my VMs are damaged. I checked the image (qemu-img check) and saw that pretty much all my VMs are damaged on some way. I searched around and found these issues. I don't know why the release is not pulled back and why some fixed that were already made are not released as a hotfix. That's why I want to write a warning somewhere. It seems to be a related to the the underlying filesystem (reports from ext4 and XFS are there, a bug in XFS was fixed) but there are also bugs found in qemu itself.

[https://bugs.launchpad.net/qemu/+bug/1846427](https://bugs.launchpad.net/qemu/+bug/1846427)

[https://bugs.launchpad.net/qemu/+bug/1847793](https://bugs.launchpad.net/qemu/+bug/1847793)

This issue seems to be in 4.1 with qcow2 images only

https://redd.it/drfgs4
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First impressions of MX Linux 19
https://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20191104#mx

https://redd.it/dr9n86
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Linux VS open source UNIX - Admin... by accident!
https://www.adminbyaccident.com/politics/linux-vs-open-source-unix/

https://redd.it/drhiz9
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[OC] KDE KWin window decoration "BreezewayMod" v 0.4
https://www.reddit.com/r/kde/comments/drifhs/oc_kwin_window_decoration_breezewaymod_v_04/

https://redd.it/drigoi
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Is freedesktop.org down or caught by a domain squatter?
http://www.freedesktop.org/

https://redd.it/dr8q1z
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thinking of switching to linux

What are some of the pros and learning curve I should be aware of being i switch to linux

https://redd.it/drlag0
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My CMYK workflow in FOSS creative applications.
https://krita-artists.org/t/is-working-in-cmyk-worth-it/129

https://redd.it/drltu5
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An analysis of performance evolution of Linux’s core operations
https://blog.acolyer.org/2019/11/04/an-analysis-of-performance-evolution-of-linuxs-core-operations/

https://redd.it/drmeln
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Finally I could contribute 1 TB worth of linux images
https://redd.it/dro4f2
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Debian new homepage (to be launched in November)
https://debian-newhomepage.larjona.net/

https://redd.it/droqpu
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commitsCount: shows the commits count of a project without having to clone it

So here's a new experiment, aimed for packaging: [**commits-count**](https://gitlab.com/es20490446e/commits-count). It shows the commits count of a project without having to clone it.

This allows checking for package updates without having to **source** the hole repository, making continuous integration and rolling updates feasible.

Since the **API is centralized** in a single command, in case of change of spec of a web platform, you only have to modify it in a single place for all the packages being able to continue retrieving the count.

For the time being **GitLab** and **GitHub** are supported, although adding new platforms only takes a few lines in Bash.

In the first weeks this software shall be considered **experimental** and prone to changes. As long as constructive **suggestions** are welcome.

**Usage**:commitsCount \[web\]

​

https://preview.redd.it/ob7i9kg96qw31.png?width=500&format=png&auto=webp&s=a257250d4565151d482e350c8db87385bf889520

https://redd.it/drn5ae
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KDE Plasma - AMD Phenom II X4 955 iGPU support

Hi all, first of all this is my first post to the Linux sub.

I have an issue with graphical glitching after I installed the KDE Plasma desktop on Arch Linux. I’m running the integrated graphics off my AMD Phenom II X4 processor and was wondering if anyone knew if this is even a supported CPU for plasma or Linux desktop environments in general? And if so, how do I stop the graphical glitches?

I installed using pacman: plasma, sddm

https://redd.it/drsbeq
@r_linux

Perspective

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https://preview.redd.it/dgja1nv1ruw31.png?width=606&format=png&auto=webp&s=1f9b13923105ea14333c2b3258d6cec388aece48

​

​

Credit: pycoders : instagram

https://redd.it/drxtx5
@r_linux

What you developers and software engineers do is little less than magic. Thank you.

Hi everyone!

Before I begin, disclaimer: I've been meaning to find an appropriate place to post this, but I couldn't really think of one; I hope this stays up.

I am a second-year computer science and physics undergraduate. Before I matriculated, I thought I was a tech pro when I could fix a broken Windows bootloader, configure an off-the-shelf router using its *GUI*, and slide some sliders on photos in Lightroom. Joining university was a simultaneously humbling and enlightening experience, when I realised my peers were writing hundreds, perhaps even thousands of lines of code per day; one person is a regular contributor to the Linux Kernel. Another group of people developed [this website](https://nusmods.com), to make my fellow students' lives easier when choosing our modules for the semester. Plenty others are *incredibly* talented and versatile; I felt (and still do feel) like a tiny fish in the Pacific.

That being said, beginning my CS career has also exposed me to dozens of FOSS initiatives and projects that I would have otherwise passed over, had I chosen another major: things like Arch Linux (I have it installed, but it is broken by my own volition and I have to find some time to reinstall it), Vim and Emacs (with respect to Vim: I know how to change modes, edit and quit, but that's it), LaTeX, KDE, the entire GNU initiative, Blender, Git (which I still don't know how to use), and so on, in no particular order. This list could get so long that it'd exhaust this post's character count.

All high-quality, professional, powerful software that gets things done, with nary a penny or cent needed to purchase these, and the complete source available to all.

That being said, even closed-source software is equally wondrous. I understand this is the Linux subreddit, but this is a general thank-you post to *everyone*, so things like MS Office 365, Adobe's suite (though slow and bloated), Windows, OS X, iOS, Apple's productivity suite, the hundreds of apps we use on our phones, and, last but not least, the AAA 3D video games. I just ran *The Witcher 3* some hours ago. I cannot fathom how hundreds of people came together to put out a masterpiece of art, entertainment and music, all for less than $30 (which is how much the GOTY version is during sales).

I suppose no one thinks about it much, but the things we have achieved in the past several decades, with semiconductor, electrical, electronic, computer and software engineering (to give the entire hardware stack) is, to reuse the noscript, simply magical and incredible. This post, for instance, was typed probably thousands of kilometres from any one of you reading it. And yet you *can* read it, within seconds of me hitting that 'Post' button. I can download a terabyte's worth of data in two hours flat, and were my network not the bottleneck, write all that data to a flash drive in a quarter the time. I have a slab of silicon in my computer that can render *trillions* of vertices a second, and render games that look impossibly life-like, at sixty to eighty frames a second. We fly on jet airliners that, once the VNAV and LNAV buttons are pressed, can effectively fly themselves to their destinations with minimal pilot intervention or oversight (passing over the 737 MAX).

I'm not particularly great at problem-solving, and even when it comes to assignments, I struggle plenty, and it really is quite un-imaginable that many of these software implementations have sometimes been one-man initiatives. I have (and still do) had trouble implementing a simple linked list, or a bog-standard 3D graphics assignment. I cannot comprehend the level of understanding needed to implement so many of the complex things we take for granted today. Who on earth could have thought that we could type a button, it sends an electrical signal to a slab of silicon with impurities, and a nanosecond later, what was a white text box now has the letter on that button there? The complete hardware-kernel-driver-OS-application sta

ck is mind-boggling, and the fact that Linux, an OS that today powers nearly every supercomputer, was written in someone's spare time, simply fails my comprehension.

The things that everyone here does is amazing. FOSS or not, you help billions of people worldwide save effort and time. The software and hardware you develop feed, clothe, ventilate, move, cure, and entertain people. Thank you.

___

**TL;DR:** noscript.

https://redd.it/drxxjt
@r_linux

I want to switch from Windows 10 to Ubuntu, should I ?

I've been a Windows user my whole life, but with Windows 10, I just can't stand it anymore. The automatic updates, ads, lagging, bugs just drive me up the wall. I've a small Acer Convertible laptop, it came with only 32 GB of internal storage so auto updates leaves me with absolutely no storage for school stuff.

I consider myself pretty tech savvy compared to your average Joe, so I'm familiar with Linux (Ubuntu specifically) but I know next to none when it comes to the technical stuff like terminal commands.

So, the applications I commonly use on Windows are : PaintDotNet, Premiere Pro, Source Filmaker, Chrome, MS Office, and a few old games (nothing demanding). I haven't checked up on Wine progress but how well does it handle applications now ? Specifically the ones I mentioned (PaintDotNet's .NET framework used to be an issue).

I look forward to y'alls advice, really want to ditch Windows.

https://redd.it/drzp72
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Dell bets large on Ubuntu Linux laptops for builders
http://mashviral.com/dell-bets-large-on-ubuntu-linux-laptops-for-builders/

https://redd.it/ds064y
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