Well you know me by now... can't settle down for anything. I have been back on Fedora (I have been flipping back and forth between Pop_OS! and Fedora for awhile now) for a couple of weeks. The terrible GNOME visual eye candy performance drove me crazy and, as I have noted in a previous web log entry, Fedora is vastly superior in that regard.
So I installed and configured Fedora 29, using a grey theme, easy on the eyes (similar to MX Linux greybird theme), got Nvidia going, got PlayOnLinux, Steam and other tools that I like to use up and running. But... I am always looking at odd new distros. Today my three choices were Slackware, SolydK and KaOS.
I've run all of these for at least a day at some point in time. A LONG time ago I ran Slackware on a machine with Gnome 2 or something like that. But, Slackware is nice, but it is work and I am lazy, but it was nice to see it booted fine off my thumb drive! Solyd might be a solid distro, but it did not work very well on my hardware. KaOS...
Well I had tried KaOS over a year ago and thought "this is a nice distro!" My problem with it then was its come-hell-or-high-water-we-will-only-be-64-bits mantra. And honestly I get it, the keeper/developer worked HARD to make a gorgeous, usable KDE distro unlike any other. When I say gorgeous I mean GORGEOUS! Very nice to look at. But even better than that... it supports flatpak. Yes, you can install flatpak on KaOS and (if you are not familiar with flatpak) because of that you can now use any application in the flatpak library. STEAM is one of those. In fact in a previous incarnation of Fedora I ran a flatpak version of Steam! Not only that, Wine 64 runs on KaOS and really, my favorite game runs on 64 bit Wine... so, while I might not have PlayOnLinux to install it on KaOS, I should be able to figure out how to manually install my game through Wine.
This means that if I WANT to switch over to KaOS, nothing is really holding me back. I need to think about it though as Fedora is a very good Gnome/Gtk based linux distribution.
Ahhh the FUEL part. Nothing to do with Linux really. I ordered some gasoline additive that is supposed to raise your octane points over 10! And I mean 10 Octane as you read it at the pump, not octane points... it raises over 100 of them.
My gas tank is down to about 1/2. I figure I will use a little more up tomorrow and add this to my tank and fill it with regular unleaded. That should get me over 95 octane easily. I am curious to see how my engine tuner responds to that. I thought about going with 91 octane + the additive but, that seems like overkill++.
Also, I have narrowed down my "hesitation" issue. It happens usually when accelerating half-heartedly between 40 and 50 miles per hour... I believe the tuner I have on confuses the transmission somehow... so unless I am mashing it or just driving plain-jane style around that speed the engine starts up-down-up-down shifting, or just stops shifting and almost seems to get stuck in neutral. It is a bizarre thing.
Good night!
Showing posts with label fedora 29. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fedora 29. Show all posts
Thursday, March 7, 2019
Sunday, January 6, 2019
Fedora 29 So Far
Been pretty darn good.
I had noted previously that it is work to get the NVIDIA drivers working, which I did get done, but because of the order of installing drivers PRIOR to installing Steam I ran into issues.
I installed the Flatpak version of Steam instead and got around the issue of starting. But then found that the Flatpak version of steam does not quite run as well as the installed version. But it works and I can game so... I am happy enough at the moment!
One thing I will say is that Fedora holds onto a surprising amount of RAM, more than I expected. It is not "lean and mean." On the other hand GNOME on Fedora is even smoother than it is on Pop!_OS. So perhaps the high memory usage is for good reason. I don't know.
Not complaining, I have plenty of RAM. More than I should ever need.
Although, that being said, I plan on doubling that with my next build. :)
I had noted previously that it is work to get the NVIDIA drivers working, which I did get done, but because of the order of installing drivers PRIOR to installing Steam I ran into issues.
I installed the Flatpak version of Steam instead and got around the issue of starting. But then found that the Flatpak version of steam does not quite run as well as the installed version. But it works and I can game so... I am happy enough at the moment!
One thing I will say is that Fedora holds onto a surprising amount of RAM, more than I expected. It is not "lean and mean." On the other hand GNOME on Fedora is even smoother than it is on Pop!_OS. So perhaps the high memory usage is for good reason. I don't know.
Not complaining, I have plenty of RAM. More than I should ever need.
Although, that being said, I plan on doubling that with my next build. :)
Saturday, January 5, 2019
Still on Fedora, GNOME 3... and everything is just Ducky...
Want to give it a fair shake. Just in case I did push Pop!_OS back onto my stick. But so far so good.
I've run into oddities. I had that one freeze, none since. There have been a few updates since that freeze so, not sure if it is is pure chance or something actually fixed it, or at least affected it.
The version of Steam (you saw my steam woes) I am running through Flatpak is not the same as the one run under Ubuntu. At least, I can say with certainty that games I could play I cannot, and games I had trouble playing I have been playing. So not sure what is up with that.
Have GNOME looking like I want it, so that is cool.
I think I mentioned before that I once again destroyed my good, expensive keyboard. So my new Ducky One 2 (or something like that) came today! It is not as heavy as my choice keyboard but it actually feels solid. More so than my other mechanicals. I chose the silent reds. They remind me a lot of browns, but quieter.
It has a USB C connector instead of the usual mini-USB...
Anyway, so far I like it a lot.
I've run into oddities. I had that one freeze, none since. There have been a few updates since that freeze so, not sure if it is is pure chance or something actually fixed it, or at least affected it.
The version of Steam (you saw my steam woes) I am running through Flatpak is not the same as the one run under Ubuntu. At least, I can say with certainty that games I could play I cannot, and games I had trouble playing I have been playing. So not sure what is up with that.
Have GNOME looking like I want it, so that is cool.
I think I mentioned before that I once again destroyed my good, expensive keyboard. So my new Ducky One 2 (or something like that) came today! It is not as heavy as my choice keyboard but it actually feels solid. More so than my other mechanicals. I chose the silent reds. They remind me a lot of browns, but quieter.
It has a USB C connector instead of the usual mini-USB...
Anyway, so far I like it a lot.
Thursday, January 3, 2019
Flip Flopped to Fedora...
So, because I like a challenge, I decided to install Fedora 29.
Fedora is an excellent linux distribution but, they tend to eschew non-free software and drivers. This means it can be a pain to install something like the NVIDIA drivers (like I had to do) and to get rid of Nouveau. It isn't impossible, and in reality it is actually quite easy... just takes a little while to do and includes booting into a non-UI mode, etc.
[edit: I should note that you must install the 32 bit NVIDIA drivers.]
I want to offer a word of warning for people though, if you are going to install STEAM on your Fedora box, PLEASE DO SO BEFORE you install your NVIDIA drivers. Theoretically it will save you much pain.
For whatever reason, if you try to install Steam after installing the proprietary drivers it will not run. I spent hours trying to figure out a work around to no avail. The "touted" solution is to uninstall NVIDIA and reinstall Nouveau, and then reinstall Steam. Again followed by installing the NVIDIA driver.
A royal pain.
There IS however a much simpler way of getting around all that. Fedora comes with FLATPAK installed. Flatpak is a way of installing applications in a stand-alone fashion, so one installation package can run on any version of linux (for the most part). All you really need to do is enable the flatpak repository (https://flatpak.org/setup/Fedora/) and then it will show up in your software store. Once it is there, simply install it.
Now, it will LIKELY fail the first time you start Steam. If it does, open a terminal and "sudo flatpak update". Then start Steam again. It *should* work.
MUCH easier than the alternative. I was also able to update to the latest BETA version of steam and also to run Proton. Good stuff!
----
So one of reasons I decided to try Fedora again was because I had remembered that of all the distros, when I had to manually install the NVIDIA driver as you do with Fedora, I did not see the screen freezes with You Tube videos and other types of video. I do not know why that is, nor do I know if it is a "truth" or I have just not encountered a freeze on Fedora yet as it IS a random occurrence anyway.
Well, one thing I forgot to do and I am irked with myself for it, is I forgot to copy off my Borderlands saves before I installed and I wiped it out. I am hoping I was saving to Steam cloud. Guess I will find out tomorrow. Now I am going to bed.
Fedora is an excellent linux distribution but, they tend to eschew non-free software and drivers. This means it can be a pain to install something like the NVIDIA drivers (like I had to do) and to get rid of Nouveau. It isn't impossible, and in reality it is actually quite easy... just takes a little while to do and includes booting into a non-UI mode, etc.
[edit: I should note that you must install the 32 bit NVIDIA drivers.]
I want to offer a word of warning for people though, if you are going to install STEAM on your Fedora box, PLEASE DO SO BEFORE you install your NVIDIA drivers. Theoretically it will save you much pain.
For whatever reason, if you try to install Steam after installing the proprietary drivers it will not run. I spent hours trying to figure out a work around to no avail. The "touted" solution is to uninstall NVIDIA and reinstall Nouveau, and then reinstall Steam. Again followed by installing the NVIDIA driver.
A royal pain.
There IS however a much simpler way of getting around all that. Fedora comes with FLATPAK installed. Flatpak is a way of installing applications in a stand-alone fashion, so one installation package can run on any version of linux (for the most part). All you really need to do is enable the flatpak repository (https://flatpak.org/setup/Fedora/) and then it will show up in your software store. Once it is there, simply install it.
Now, it will LIKELY fail the first time you start Steam. If it does, open a terminal and "sudo flatpak update". Then start Steam again. It *should* work.
MUCH easier than the alternative. I was also able to update to the latest BETA version of steam and also to run Proton. Good stuff!
----
So one of reasons I decided to try Fedora again was because I had remembered that of all the distros, when I had to manually install the NVIDIA driver as you do with Fedora, I did not see the screen freezes with You Tube videos and other types of video. I do not know why that is, nor do I know if it is a "truth" or I have just not encountered a freeze on Fedora yet as it IS a random occurrence anyway.
Well, one thing I forgot to do and I am irked with myself for it, is I forgot to copy off my Borderlands saves before I installed and I wiped it out. I am hoping I was saving to Steam cloud. Guess I will find out tomorrow. Now I am going to bed.
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