Breaking free from Windows

Awesome. I saw some online stuff about running Vortex on Linux so it's encouraging.

I'm really tempted to go all the way and skip Windows on my desktop but troubleshooting games is not my top priority with my baby daughter on my arms.

Plus it seems Gog and Steam are sorted but what about Origin, Ubicrap, Epic and Battlenet? I need some Dragon Age and Assassin's Creed games in my life.

Lutris can run Origin, UBI I know that much. Not sure about Epic and Battlenet, I will check.

And yeh, save some space aside for Redcore or Artix and go Winblows as primary. Going full Linux will require tinkering and brain cells, been working on my quest since last March actually.

I was just toying with the idea but it's just too much work for me at the moment.

There's also bloody Rockstar... I've been meaning to play RDR2 at a decent frame rate for years.

I'll keep playing with the laptop and getting to learn stuff about Linux, walk before you can run that sort of thing.

RC might be an easier Gentoo but you are starting right with the elite mate

Gentoo really is one of a kind. Yes it's difficult to master and it's for very advanced users but there is nothing like it. I squeeze great performance out of Artix/Arch but it pales in comparaison to the mighty Gentoo. Everything is perfectly optimized to squeeze the best performance from your hardware.

Portage is more complicated than Pacman and so is building from source but in the end Portage wins the deathbattle between the two.

Only thing is, holy bloody bollocks Optimus was a PAIN to work out on Gentoo........ 🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬

That said nothing prevents a triple boot and doing RC and Artix both at the same time. Arch/Artix and Gentoo are just

I hate Optimus. It's like you're trying to get up from your chair but you've forgotten some sadistic bastard had stapled your bollocks to your seat. You never wanted your balls to be jammed into your seat. You never asked for that but some green cunt thought it would be a good idea in order to make your pain last a bit longer. I tend to go for big ass laptops so not plugging in is not an option anyway. Useless Optimus shit and probably much less entertaining than getting some rando staple your privates to your chair anyway.

Well, Winblows handles it seamlessly but on Linux it's a bagatelle of flavours of working well or a royal pain in the arse. Xero has it built in, Artix/Arch it needs to be built from the AUR, OpenSUSE, Gentoo, Slackware have Prime-Run... and let us never mention Bumblebee. *shudders*

If the NVIDIA drivers do not break your install, that is...

In my experience the Optimus crap means the app will always try and run on the wrong card unless you manually set it to use the right one which is a real pita.

Yep. In Arch it always defaulted to the onboard so I had to switch manually but in Artix it's a bit borked because of missing SystemD dependencies so I edited a configuration file and forced it to always default to NVIDIA unless on battery power.

GNOME has it built in, kind of... you can right click an application and select "Run using discrete GPU" but GNOME is a disgusting resource waster so no thanks

I've been busy cleaning up my new Windows installation and the one good thing I've managed this time around is to not use an MS account by going offline at the right moment. It feels so much better this way just how it used to.

EDIT: by the way it's nice to see that AMD software comes with Linux support. I have to say I'm pretty impressed with how the app allows you to tweak your settings. In just a few minutes I was able to tune my card's performance and get +7% FPS in the AC Odyssey benchmark all the while keeping temperatures in check.

AMD has always played ball with FOSS since day 1. Even in BSD the ATI drivers are just so good and have been since day 1. AMD understand that being dickholes only hurt their bottom line in the end.

Oh and playing with Redcore more I realize it's a retarded Gentoo I got Xfce running to replace KDE but internet connections only work if I start a KDE session first, connect, logout, then start a Xfce session which is very silly indeed

Oh well think I'll stick with Gentoo. Might give Void another crack tho. Gotta be a version of the bloody NVIDIA drivers that won't destroy an install.

That Redcore thing is definitely stupid but considering it's a package for stupid people I can't really complain.

I haven't had any AMD hardware for quite a while. What I remember from the old days is that the components have a tendency to run a lot hotter with AMD and it seems to be the case still (not that I'm worried considering the cooling solution I picked but it's definitely something to keep in mind).

I'm bloody impressed with AMD Adrenaline increasing performance on a benchmark test by 7% with just a few painless tweaks is just awesome.

Nvidia Experience is a useless bloated piece of crap in comparison.

Well, while I built my own pure Gentoo from scratch it's always interesting to see user-friendlier versions of Gentoo. It's a solid, reliable distro that is probably the most well-rounded there is, Portage is efficient and powerful and I need to tae a look at the kernel see what's in there versus a pure Gentoo built kernel. I am not against making harder distros more accessible, but my personal curiosity will always push me to take the non-traditional route.

I trid Void again. Fucking NVIDIA broke my install again. What a bloody shame. Void is so good.

I almost went for a 3060 but then I started looking at the alternative and realised that if I decided to give up on ray tracing then an RX6600 was a strong contender for a lot less €. Frankly I regret nothing.

Hey I've got a Linux related question for you.

See, this old laptop comes with a DVD drive and I wanted to hook it up on my mom's TV. I'm using an HDMI cable and I've managed to get the display settings right switching to the TV but the sounds keeps coming from the laptop speakers (which suck). Presumably I could use some external speakers to bypass the issue but the clean way to do it would be to use the TV instead.

I've tried looking into the audio options but the TV is not listed anywhere so I'm a bit baffled.

I won't be staying here long as I have to drive back in the morning but if you can point me in the right direction I'm hoping to fix this next time I'm here.

I am thinking this will likely be in Pipewire settings. Let me take a look in the next few days see what I can dig up.

Thanks. Like I said there's no rush.

Actually since you are running Redcore I am not sure if it's Pipewire. I'll check at work when I have time to actually do stuff.

I left the old laptop at my mother's so I can't check. I did manage to get the display sorted but couldn't transfer the sound to the TV.

No it's fine I just need to figure out what sound plugin Redcore uses. My Gentoo uses Pipewire but this might not be the case for Redcore.

I did have a go online before I posted here and sound issues seem to be pretty common (even with Windows).

I am still working on your problem, Carabas... I was cleaning up my HDD and I accidentally borked everything up. Destroy, erase, improve I suppose :lol

I did find a way to fix Void though... the fix was actually pretty simple... just blacklisting the bloody NVIDIA nouveau driver in several files and at boot by adding modprobe.blacklist=nouveau to the GRUB file. It's still quite wonky not gonna lie, but hey at least it's a fix. I will not be reinstalling Void, though... great, great distro, and XBPS is one of the best package managers I have ever seen bar none, but for my daily needs, it's not quite there. Now I don't mind spending a few brain cells getting stuff to run, but I can tell NVIDIA is going to be a constant pain in my arse with Void. And quite frankly I don't have the time nor desire to fight with NVIDIA.

Right now, I am reinstalling everything under Artix. Not gonna lie, Arch is the one I am the most comfortable with, and for my needs it's wonderful. Artix strips out SystemD so that works for me. It's also very light on resources, and I got that sweet Moksha green desktop from Bodhi which is awesome.

I don't have the time, or patience to do another Gentoo install, and Redcore is just so retarded compared to a real Gentoo that while it's great for entry level users, it just doesn't do it for me.

I was gonna try Venom Linux, another independent like Void, but it took me 4 Rufus formats and writes to get the installer to boot properly, and once done I landed into GRUB emergency rescue. So I passed. That's an issue with little guy independent distros... still, I wish Venom the best because scratchpkg is pretty efficient so I hear.

Well after raging at hardcoded SystemD dependencies in a lot of stuff I use... Artix pissed me off for the last time so I went back to OG SystemD Arch. Yeah... it is what it is. I have given it the entirety of my 1TB secondary HDD and I am just slowly going to rebuild and reinstall everything I had. Everything just... works... with Arch. No bollocks, no nonsense.

As for your problem, Carabas, I will run a Live image of Redcore. I need to know if it uses ALSA, Pipewire or the other one whose name I forgot.

And Venom Linux was an abysmal failure. Took 4 attempts before the installer booted properly and after installing I was dropped into the GRUB emergency rescue shell despite my partitions having been properly done...

Ni worries. In the meantime I've bypassed the issue by plugging some external speakers. It may not be the most elegant solution but it works.

Redcore uses Alsa. I am familiar with Pipewire.

I did find some instructions for Gentoo that will work for Redcore also. I am a bit on the run so I didn't read through completely but this addresses your issue

https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-1094774-start-0.html

This is for Arch but might be relevent also. There's switches to alternate from Pulse/Alsa to HDMI output

https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=234683

Even though you use Gentoo basically I would still suggest bookmarking the Arch Wiki. It's a fantastic resource that can teach you a lot even if you don't actively use Arch.

Nice! I'll make sure to check this up next time. Thanks.