Nicholas Toone

Linux Journal

My journal of trying to make Linux my main desktop. These are written quick and are probably full of spelling and grammar mistakes (more than usual, that is).

  • 2/24/2025 – Randoms Go Boom!

    Oh, FFS. Really. FFS.

    Weirdness abounds all of a sudden. First up, Plasma Discover is acting strange. I get this when I launch it:

    Dunno why. Researching online shows that I may have (re)configured repositories when installing my shit. Or not. Who knows really.

    I do know that when I uncheck all of these:

    The error goes away, but then I have problems installing shit. Windscribe was a particular pain to get on here even though I’ve never had issues installing it in the past. I did find a fix for this (the missing dependencies bit), however it included rechecking all of those Other Software options. So now the error is back in Discover… until I pulled the nuclear option and ran sudo rm -r sources.list.d (after I backed it up, of course). That removed all of those entries on that list and I probably have to build the repositories again… we’ll see I guess.

    Another thing to note is that my computer is randomly freezing. No rhyme or reason. Just in the middle of something, anything, and boom! Frozen. Hasn’t happened since early this morning, so maybe that nuke I dropped on the repository sources fixed up something else that fixed the freezing? I’ll never know.

    I’m kind of kicking myself since the Ubuntu Studio install I had prior to the complete wipe and reinstall was humming along just fine. Or was it? everything but my gamez was ok. Now my gamez are ok.

    Make of it what you will.

    I’m not adverse to wiping and starting all over again, but I’d much rather not.

  • 2/21/2025 #2 – Too Much

    One quick gripe before I sign off.

    These Linux distros come with so much bundled software it’s not even really funny. I mean, come on. There is

    just

    so

    much.

    Some are cool (I’m really going to give LMMS a serious look). Most are not anything I need. More than a few appear to be borderline useless. Some of them crash on startup and have I mentioned there are a LOT of them?

    Yes I did mention that, and I’ll say it again: There are a lot of preinstalled apps.

    I will say this: while there are a lot, there isn’t bloat like they way PC companies garbage up Windows (HP being the biggest offender). Most all of the apps I’ve removed are small, tiny even, and are not running in the background hogging up resources.

    So I guess it’s not all that bad really. What the hell am I complaining about anyway?

  • 2/21/2025 – Snow Everywhere

    Now that this here PC was wiped clean and up running with just Ubuntu Studio, and I don’t have to pay attention to boot loaders and all that, I really don’t want to install Windows again.

    Of course, I keep saying the one thing that would make me setup a dual boot with Windows is gaming. I’m not a huge gamer, but I do loves me some RPG action.

    The last time I tried to play The Witcher 3 via Steam/Proton on Ubuntu Studio it took well over five minutes to load up to the main menu. Then I set my video and gameplay preferences back to the way I like, played for five minutes and it crashed. Hard. To the point that when I booted into Windows to see if my save had taken, it wouldn’t even load as my cloud save was all jacked up.

    I eventually got everything back in order (on Windows) but it worried me that games on Linux was a fools errand.

    Seems that I just need to settle down and spend time looking through ProtonDB. After some minor configs for The Witcher 3, I seem to have it running just fine. Time will tell, but it’s launching and loading quickly and gameplay seems smooth. Hopefully it stays this way because I’m just about to start the final battle of the main storyline.

    Then I have the expansions to wade through.

    Another favorite is Skyrim which seems to work flawlessly out of the gate. Although I must admit I haven’t played Skyrim since last summer and I’ve forgotten most all of the controls and basic fighting tactics, bit that’s all a me problem, and nothing to to with the system it’s running on.

    So far so good!

  • 2/11/2025 – Deep Breath

    I’m reporting from Ubuntu, where most things have been great and others have been a little bumpy…

    Music

    Fucking hell, I got Reaper working with the Scarlett! Not sure why, but I think it’s because I install installed it using sudo which put the app into /opt/REAPER. After I became tired of fighting with it, I uninstalled Reaper with the idea of recording just in MixBus but quickly found my next bit of frustration was using synths and instruments in MixBus whose piano roll editor is less than stellar. On a whim, I decided to reinstall Reaper and see if I could get it working.

    This time, I decided to install it without using sudo and put it in /home/my_un/opt/REAPER/ and holy shitballs, it picked the Scarlett up on first launch and it just works.

    Now I need to see what exists as far as decent drum plugins for Linux. Off to Linux Music Rocks! I mean, AVL is fantastic, but I’m not sold on all the sounds yet and there is no way you can fine tune the individual drums.

    Writing

    Scrivner is doing its thing even though I dislike the non-native aspect. It also handles fonts weirdly. Some parts of the interface are just difficult to read and the editor does this weird thing where if I use italics some letters become illegible or, like, a capital P looks like a capital F, etc. Whatever, this is a minor gripe considering it works just fine past that.

    Gaming

    I know, I know, games are not that important in the large scheme of things, but I built this here computer for two reasons:

    1. Multimedia
    2. Gaming

    While Proton is an absolutely great idea, I am finding playing games challenging. Granted, I’m only playing The Witcher 3 at the moment, but it takes forever to load (mostly around two minutes or so, but there have been times that just getting the CDPR launch window took around five minutes after Steam loaded a bunch of Vulcan stuff), crashes randomly, some of my settings are never saved, and the cut scenes are playing only on the far right side of my monitor cutting off a chunk of the scene.

    I’m trying to take all of the gaming issues in stride. I know the issue is Proton is a compatibility layer that was created to allow Valve to build and sell Steam Decks. I know that they offer Proton to Linux users but pretty much wash their hands of it. Who can blame them? There is a literal metric fuck tonne of distros out there and Valve can’t honestly be held responsible for ensuring the games they offer in Steam are 100% flawless on every single one.

    At this point, I’ll probably be keeping a Windows partition around just for when I feel like fighting Drowners and Wyverns.

    Other Items

    Not Linux related, but my Razer Deathadder V2 Pro is slowly dying. I mean, I did buy it second hand, and the wireless dongle died a couple of months after I picked it up, but the Bluetooth has been aces. Now when the battery gets low and I plug it in, the mouse just stops working. Whatever. Not sure I’ll be picking up a wireless mouse next time around. For now I have an old Deathadder Chroma that is doing just fine, thank you very much.

    Flipping back and forth between Linux and Windows is hell on Bluetooth in general. Pretty sure this is because I’m doing it on the same hardware. It’s not a huge deal, I just have to remove and then re-pair my shit when I boot into a different OS.

  • 2/5/2025 – Pray For Me

    There are a pile of updates sitting in Discover. While there are security updates and patches, there are also a ton of updates to Plasma.

    To this point on Ubuntu, I’ve not installed anything past security updates. In the past, on Fedora, I had at least one major update hose my system so bad that I had to reinstall and turn off updates just to keep things running.

    This isn’t Fedora and, as I’ve mentioned, Ubuntu seems to be more… mature? I don’t know how else to describe it.

    Based on that, I’m going to run these updates. Even the Plasma ones.

    I’ll update here as to what happens. If you don’t see something in the next couple days, assume I’m reinstalling.

    Update: Well, that was a whole lot of worrying about nothing. Everything updated quickly and painlessly. Nice :)

    … Side note, my Razer Deathadder V2 Pro shit the bed. It won’t connect at all, even wired, Windows or Linux. It just sits there with a solid blue logo. Searching the internet for causes/fixes is like ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I’m just going to let the battery drain right out and see what happens.

    Update: battery drained. Logo went blank. Plugged it in. Seems to be working. Hope it stays that way. I love Deathadder mice as they’re just perfect ergonomically – I’ve tried a bunch of different mice and the Deathadder is, for me, the best.

  • 1/30/2025 – Knocking On ALL The Wood

    Not bad, not bad at all. The only weird thing I’ve run into is if I fullscreen Firefox, then restore it (y’know, F11 and all that) my screen starts to flicker. A restart fixes it, but it’s just weird.

    I’m still amazed at how well Bluetooth works on this distro. Both my mouse and my headphones connect without any issue at all and stay connected.

    I should have more to update but I haven’t run into issues since the last update. I mean, Spotify shit its pants the other day, but Spotify shits its pants on all platforms, so I don’t even consider that an issue.

    I did open Mixbus and do a quick remix of Oh! What A Time To Be Alive using just the inline EQ and compression (with some delay and reverb added via the included ACE plugins) and it turned out fantastic. Reminded me that you really don’t have to add a bunch of fancypants plugins to your tracks. As always, keeping things simple is usually best.

  • 1/22/2025 – Ok, Nice. Mostly.

    Thoughts Today.

    Holy hell, Ubuntu handles Bluetooth like a dream. When the computer lock screen comes up after I’ve stepped away from my desk, all I need to do it move my mouse just a little and it jumps back to life. In Windows or Fedora, I’d have to shake the thing for a bit to get it to connect. And the switch from the system audio to my headphones when I turn them on (and vice versa) is seamless. On Fedora this would work some of the time. The rest of this time, Bluetooth would just drop altogether taking my mouse with it. Sometimes it would come back on its own, other times I’d have to restart.

    Also to note, Ubuntu handles OpenRazer and Polychromatic beautifully. As of right now, I’ve not lost my settings once. Static white is the name of my game and that’s what’s happening. Even my old Deathadder Chroma 1 is happy. Razer doesn’t even support this mouse in the newer versions of their software, but OpenRazer is more than happy to step up.

    And good goddamn, I can’t overstate how fucking good Strawberry Music Player is. I only really use it for Radio (Soma FM) and my local collection, but it’s just so lovely to use. I first discovered it years ago on Fedora, brought it over to Windows when I switched back, and I’m happy to report it’s still awesome.

    Minor Gripe

    For a system that constantly brags about how customizable it can be, there are certainly some limitations that make little sense. Maybe it’s different distro to distro, but I find the Menu Editor in KDE Plasma weird in that it allows you to rename/rearrange/delete/whatever you want except “these few items!”. While I’m sure most can be accomplished via the terminal, or by fucking around in config files, I wish I were able to do more in the GUI or that what’s there is more obvious. Saying you can customize what you want and then limiting this is something I’ve come to expect from Microsoft or Apple (not that you can customize much of anything in macOS to begin with).

    At least there is an option to reset everything back to default, so there is that.

    Minor Thought

    I really think that most people could totally use Linux as a daily driver. What does the everyday person use a computer for? The web. seriously, everything is available on the web from Google to Facebook to MS 365 app and most all of this runs great in browser.

    Why don’t more people switch?  Most of it is change. People really don’t like change. They move to new things kicking and screaming and while they finally get used to change, it takes a long, long time. I know people who lose their minds when there is a slight GUI update. Hell, there have been more than a few GUI updates that I haven’t liked. 2

    A great example is my dad who, back in the day, freaked out when Outlook Express was put out to pasture and he had to switch to Windows Live Mail. Then he freaked out when Live Mail was gone and he had to use the Windows 10 Mail app. Then earlier this year there was the New Outlook and, well, yeah. The freakout over the New Outlook has only recently subsided. This was nothing compared to the freakouts when he had to upgrade Windows itself (every single time from 95 to XP and then to 7 and then to 10). Those were were epic 3. I don’t even want to imagine what trying to get him on Linux would be like (or any other platform to be honest).

    There is also the fact that the one thing Microsoft has worked on is relative ease of use. For all the things people complain about (and there are things to complain about), Windows is pretty easy to navigate. Anyone who has used Windows for any reason is used to, for example, just downloading and double clicking an exe file to install whatever application they need. They don’t want to have to figure out what Repositories are available, or what to do with a .run file once it’s downloaded. Or install an .sh file from the Command line. Deciding between Snap or Flatpack.

    For some of us, hunting around for solutions to the problems we encounter is not really an issue. We’re the minority, so we don’t count. The fact is that Linux offers just enough friction that even someone who want to just live in a browser will give up pretty quick.

    I have more thoughts on why people won’t be rushing to Linux anytime soon but for now I’ll end here.

    1: I generally use mouse on a new install before setting up Bluetooth, and now keep plugged in just in case something decides to shit the bed.

    2:<cough>Bitwarden</cough> Their update wasn’t that bad, but changing how you populate your creds in the browser is kinda counterintuitive after so many years of training your users to doi it a certain way that works just fine to something completely new is rough, man. Now I find myself clicking on the site name and seeing all the info show up in the BW window rather than populate the un/pw fields on the site I’m trying to login to (I turn off the autofil suggestions on the form fields because they’re annoying) . I then backtrack and click on the little button that says “Fill”. Like I said minor, and it doesn’t ruin my day when it happens, but why?

    3: My favorite memory was him absolutely losing his mind when I installed Windows XP for the first time. I had to go in and flip from the Luna interface back to the old Windows Classic interface and set up Explorer to look and run exactly like it did on Win 95 – yes, when you double clicked on a folder another folder would open. Even after all this was done (including finding the wallpaper for the old 95 Plus Pack Dangerous Creatures theme – and he still uses this wallpaper today), he was beside himself that there was a My Documents folder on the desktop. It took a long time for him to just give up and accept it.

  • 01/21/2025 – Fuck It

    I don’t know what it is, but the moment I get comfortable, I manage to click on something and then everything breaks.

    There seemed to be a brief period in 2022/23 where everything was working just fine. Hell, I even finished two songs under Fedora, and the experience was smooth pretty much all around. I was happy in the thought that Linux had finally achieved something near mainstream workability. Then I ran an upgrade (a jump from 36 to 38 I think?) and it completely wiped out my audio. Nothing I tired would get it back. So I reinstalled the earlier version and turned updates off. Didn’t matter though. A couple of months later, I did something else that hosed nearly everything on my system. Then I went back to Windows and then missed Linux, then Linux really got janky and …

    … Fuck it, back to Windows. I just didn’t have any more patience left at that time to deal with Linux’s little fits. Windows 11 is a lot of things but one of the things it hardly does anymore is crash. Next to Windows 2000, it’s one of my favorite versions based on stability and general ease of use. The marks against it are the increasing levels of shit MS is stuffing in there. I don’t wants ads or tracking or AI and I’m speaking as someone who has a home built computer with enough horsepower to run most things well and who doesn’t have to put up with Windows S mode.

    Then last week I decided to say fuck it, and put my money where my mouth is and try Linux again. I downloaded and installed Fedora Jam (I was used to it) and it was ok but a little weird due to some minor changes in the latest version of KDE Plasma. I also had a few hiccups, one of which caused me to do a full reinstall … and things were just off. Sound, especially sound kept dropping in and out. Among other things, devices would drop off the list if I chose a different  profile for another device. Fedora Jam just didn’t feel as “welcoming” as it did a couple of years ago. Finally I gave up and spent Sunday evening back in Windows just to finish a few writing things up.

    Yesterday I said fuck it. There are sooooo mannnnyyyy distros out there why try and force something that’s just not working? Throw a dart. Let’s try Ubuntu Studio.

    And here I in Ubuntu studio. Even though it’s taking a little bit of getting used to, Ubuntu is holding its own at the moment (I’m knocking on all the wood I can find). The only issue I’ve run into is, again, Reaper just does not want to play nice with the Scarlett 2i2. Mixbus loves it so, ok. Fine for now.

    Ubuntu Notes
        • Installing Steam was a bit of a pain until I realized that the Flatpack repository wasn’t enabled. Once I was pointed to Flatpack, everything was smooth sailing. The Wither 3 took an inordinately long time to start on first launch, but it runs just as well as it did under Fedora which is to say it runs just as well as it does under Windows (again, knocking on that wood).
        • Got Scrivener running with zero issues this time around.
        • Configuring the desktop look and feel was easy as Ubuntu Studio is still using KDE Plasma 5.x. I think I’ll hold off upgrading Plasma for a good while.
        • Wayland is a much better graphics option than X11 if you have a large monitor.
        • Sure there are no ads and trackers to disable, but christ in a sidecar, the amount of apps installed by default on these distros is insane.