My Linux Journey So Far (Simplified)

I've actually never in my life had a Windows OS installed on any of my machines. I'm 14 and my dad had me using a Debian XFCE PC when I was around 7 or 8. I didn't really actually know anything apart from playing games and basic web browsing, but about 2-3 years later I had a new computer with Ubuntu 16.04 and he \*finally\* gave me root privileges. Broke my install later that night. After this, I started actually learning how to manipulate the system without messing it up. During this time, I stayed within the bubble of what I knew: Debian based Distros (Mainly because of I LOVED apt and dpkg). I think it was in the middle of last year that I tried out Arch and I LOVED it. Pacman was SO much easier than apt and I had access to the AUR which was awesome. I removed xUbuntu from my system and switched full time to Manjaro (mainly because it just works with very little troubles and all the goodness of Arch). That brings me to where I am today. My dad bought me a fantastic Thinkpad T510 a few months ago. I've been using my current Manjaro GNOME install for OVER A MONTH NOW! Very stable and productivity is fantastic. I've learned a lot on my journey including some basic understanding for programming languages like C, Bash (love it), CSS, Python, and HTML. I would not choose ANY operating system over Linux and I'm very happy that my dad was into Linux and the Open Source world and passed it on to me. Now I think he regrets it, though, because it's all I ever talk about.

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I found a disk copy of Fedora going through my late Uncles software
https://redd.it/c9xlan
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Every criticism against user-friendly distributions
https://mastodon.social/@cassidyjames/102381091117363181

https://redd.it/c9x9wm
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Cheap laptop to run Ubuntu on

So my 10 year old MacBook Pro finally died a few days ago. I am now looking a for a cheap used laptop (probably something like a thinkpad) in the price range of 100-150 EUR to run Ubuntu on. I don’t need much processing power, as I only use it for web browsing and SSHing into my servers. What would you recommend at that price range?

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What is a small application, utility or tool you use on a regular basis that you are surprised more people don't use?

I'll get you started with two:

1) [xargs](https://shapeshed.com/unix-xargs/) for which there is no substitute

xargs allows you to pipe output from one command to input on another.

For instance, this would allow you to kill any processes being run by a certain user:

ps -ef | awk '/anthony/ {print $2}' | xargs kill -9

So, this gets a list of the pids for the user anthony and kills each one of them individually, essentially running kill -9 <pid> for each process being run by anthony.

2) [GPaste](https://github.com/Keruspe/GPaste)
If you aren't using a clipboard manager ... you are wasting time

https://redd.it/c9zpkc
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With today's Debian release, only Debian 2.1 (Slink) and Debian 10 (Buster) have been released the same year as a new Toy Story film since using character names.
https://www.reddit.com/r/debian/comments/ca0oov/til_that_with_todays_release_only_debian_21_slink/

https://redd.it/ca0q2j
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Debian 10 "buster" released
https://www.debian.org/News/2019/20190706

https://redd.it/ca0shb
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Passed my comptia LXO-103 today

Whooo whooo! Now the 104 test in a couple weeks!!

https://redd.it/ca1lp3
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Tiling Window Managers suck. Here's why
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5n_rl9jWUMo

https://redd.it/c9vca5
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Lubuntu saves kid brother’s classmate’s hand-me-down laptop!
https://redd.it/ca2q3m
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Secure DNS doesn't make us a villain Mozilla tells UK ISP Association
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/07/06/mozilla_ukisp_vallain/

https://redd.it/ca2oid
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Saw that someone found a Fedora 17 disc. Reminded me of the Ubuntu 10.10 disc I got when Canonical shipped them out for free. Best part, it still boots!!
https://redd.it/ca2x2j
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Debian 10 'Buster' Released
https://redd.it/ca39tz
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KDE Usability & Productivity: Week 78
https://pointieststick.com/2019/07/06/kde-usability-productivity-week-78/

https://redd.it/ca4jkc
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Linux Laptops

Linux-on-Laptops website is a resource for those who use Linux on a specific laptop model.

Check out https://linux-on-laptops.com if you have any linux issues on your laptop. If you have solutions to any linux issues, please submit here: https://www.linux-on-laptops.com/entry.html

https://redd.it/ca2quu
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Haven't even had Linux on my computer for a year and I'm already testing ArchLinux in a virtual machine. Wish me luck!
https://redd.it/ca5cgb
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A better way to control the mouse

I avoid using the mouse whenever possible, but sometimes there is no alternative, so I looked for a program that allows me to move the mouse with the keyboard without much speed loss. The best I found is keynav which has an interesting concept, but I couldn't configure it to be as efficient as I wanted, so I finally wrote a new program:

[https://github.com/jbensmann/xmouseless](https://github.com/jbensmann/xmouseless)

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It basically moves the pointer continuously by holding down keys and changes the speed by holding down some other keys. So maybe someone will find it useful as well. Or do you have another good way of controlling the mouse with the keyboard?

https://redd.it/ca5bkk
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Debian GNU/Hurd 2019 released!
https://lists.debian.org/debian-hurd/2019/07/msg00001.html

https://redd.it/ca573c
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Comparing Wayland and X11 Display Server Protocols in Full-screen Applications

Hey everyone! I am a recent computer science graduate who has a passion for Linux so I wanted to do something for my dissertation that would benefit the community. My undergraduate dissertation was on comparing X11 and Wayland display server protocols in full-screen applications. As you may know if you e.g. play games on Linux, the X11 compositor imposes a performance penalty on the game as it introduces [unnecessary steps](https://wayland.freedesktop.org/architecture.html) in the graphics stack. You can usually increase video game performance by disabling compositing. KDE’s compositor, Kwin, has an interesting solution to this issue – automatically disabling compositing when playing full-screen games. [This article](https://blog.martin-graesslin.com/blog/2015/12/gaming-on-linux-move-to-next-generation/), while a bit dated, explains why X11’s graphics stack is inefficient and how Wayland improves on this in more detail.

My dissertation focused on providing benchmarks and doing research on whether Wayland can be an improvement over X11. I wanted to test if Wayland has benefits for the average user (even though IMO Wayland provides most benefits to developers, it makes implementing and maintaining features easier, which helps the average user as well). To fully understand why there is a need for a new display server protocol, we need to look at issues with X11, which [this article](https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=x_wayland_situation&num=1) covers in detail.

**NOTE: I am going to refer to window managers and compositing window managers as compositors in this post.**

The test was running a very unfinished version of my game on the compositors mentioned below. The game was made with SDL2, it counted the number of frames per second, repeated the test 5 times and averaged the results (the specific game release used for this test can be found [here](https://github.com/SerCoach1/DauntingDungeon/releases/tag/v0.1)).

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**X11 compositors benchmarked:** i3, KWin and Mutter.

**Wayland compositors benchmarked:** Sway, Weston, Mutter and my own attempt at a compositor, [Wayward](https://github.com/SerCoach1/Wayward), which was a failure to say the least.

**Compositor versions used:**

• i3: 4.16.1-1

• KWin: 5.15.4-1

• Mutter:3.32.1-1

• Sway: 1.0-8

• Weston: 5.0.90

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I tried to compare similar X11 and Wayland compositors (i3 vs Sway, Both X11 versions of Mutter). The details of how I launched the compositors and everything else can be found in my dissertation [here](https://sercoach1.github.io/).

Finally, **the results**: [https://imgur.com/a/LtqmTGW](https://imgur.com/a/LtqmTGW)

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All tested Wayland compositors have achieved a slightly better frame rate than the X11 ones. This can be attributed to the simplified graphics stack in Wayland. This is because the compositor is the display server: it allows for more efficient rendering and therefore better performance. According to the tests done in this project, that increase can be from 5 to 10 FPS. In addition to that, rendering was also improved by eliminating screen tearing.

While Wayland outperformed X11, it is still a new protocol that lacks some of the functionality of X11. The results achieved in this dissertation may not be conclusive enough to declare Wayland as superior to X11, but they do show that Wayland is a promising project and, if it keeps evolving at its current rate, this new display server protocol might just overtake the almost three-decade-old protocol used in Linux currently.

The main issue I encountered during the project was outdated and/or insufficient documentation for [Wlroots](https://github.com/swaywm/wlroots). I struggled with understanding how to write a compositor even after reading through Wlroot’s header files and Wayland documentation. That might also be due to Wlroots being updated over time and therefore [other sources](https://drewdevault.com/2018/02/17/Writing-a-Wayland-compositor-1.html) used for the project b

eing of limited use.

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I would like to thank Daniel Nesbitt for supervising this project and providing his invaluable Linux expertise. Also I would like to thank Adam Gąsior for teaching me how to use cmake, clang and helping with other Linux related issues. Finally, I’d like to mention /u/malano22 for helping me write this post.

If I have made any mistakes please let me know as I am by no means an expert on this topic, just a passionate student trying to contribute to the open source community.

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Lastly, links summary: [my dissertation](https://sercoach1.github.io/), [the finished game](https://github.com/SerCoach1/DauntingDungeon), [my unfinished Wayland compositor](https://github.com/SerCoach1/Wayward)

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Tl;dr: Wayland fast, X11 slower.

https://redd.it/ca60wg
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TIL that Python's pip is not curated, and anybody can publish code (malicious or otherwise).

Is this common knowledge? I've been using Python for *years*, trusting pip the same way I do apt or other package managers. I didn't realize this was uncurated in such a way. I feel kind of dumb tbh.

Anybody else have similar experience?

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