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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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My experience with Arch (sh.itjust.works)

submitted 2 days ago by utnapishtim@sh.itjust.works to c/linux@lemmy.ml

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Hello everyone, lately I got really into Linux. I installed it in every machine I have, but I still had to try Arch. From what people were saying online I thought that it was going to be a hard and impossible task. So I bought a Thinkpad for a hundred euros (x260 if you're wondering) and I followed a guide on how to install Arch. I thought I was going to be using the terminal all the time, and had to type everything. No black screen of death, no prompt saying "Are you awake?" Matrix style, the pc didn't breack, reality didn't bend and just following simply the guide I had Arch running in fifhteen-twenty minutes no problem. Only the Network Manager wasn't on were I rebooted after installation but it took five minutes to search online how to fix it. Everything works: bluetooth, internet, apps and so on. I could leave it as it is and I could just use it as any other pc. So all I'm saying is that I'm having a great time with Linux distros, the pain to learn how install repository and other things is really worth it. Every time I learn something more about my computer puts me more in control. So thank you Linux and its community.

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[–] DarkAri@lemmy.blahaj.zone -2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

I stopped using arch because you can't change your user name without breaking the entire system for some reason. Probably not an issue if you build yourself but I was using pinephone and steam deck images. I prefer Debian and fedora.

[–] coltn@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

What issue did you run into? Wiki makes it seem like it should be easy to change your username.

[–] DarkAri@lemmy.blahaj.zone 0 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 16 hours ago)

On the steamdeck, people say to not even attempt it because it will break the boot process. On pinephone it stopped the display manager from loading. I did what seemed like the standard steps, I'm a bit of a noob, but I opened a root shell in single user mode, changed the name, chowned my old home directory, renamed it to my new user name, but this broke it. I noticed that in the two arch distros I tried, the original steamOS and the arch for pinephone image, in the gui if you try to change your username it errors out, and I see why. Changing it in a root shell completely broke the system. I'm not sure exactly why, but I'm using mobian (Debian) on the pine phone now which I like much more, and making my own fork of it that is actually really cool, and on my steamdeck and PC in running bazzite, which is fedora and very nice. I'm very happy with it. Neither of these have those issues but these are all pre built images. If you actually build arch from scratch it probably works fine. Debian is by far my favorite though. It's very simple, and sort of designed around the idea of simplicity and uniformity with the standard layout. Which I like. Sort of the windows XP of Linux. Easy to hack and understand.

The pinephone fork of mobian I'm working on, which I will release some day, just has a lot of improvements to make it a bit more complete like,

-more repos, and flatpack, plus rules to always prefer mobian repos when software exists there.

-Some better clocks for the hardware, GPU, CPU, and memory, both higher and lower with a slight undervolt, I'm going to write a script to automate testing this when I release it, so it will auto overclock for the user from a simple gui button. Also with undervolting and changing max clocks based on tempurure.

-Im going to add xfce and a udev rule to make it come up when it's plugged into a moniter, also with a toggle, to use beside phosh, so you have the best of both worlds.

-im going to add better support for low energy modes specific to the pinephone even though the battery life as I have it now is getting much better, also with posh and mobian it's much better then others distros.

-Going to create a script to auto update the modem firmware.

-Add more themes, a gui tool to configure zram and btrfs.

-adding tons of software out of the box, like waydroid, box86, wine, vscodium, and tons of little misc tools that are useful, also a better fileManager, flatpack store, some other stuff.

-if I'm able, I want to write a complex script to strip down the kernel when it's in screen off/suspend modes to save more power, a sort of software scheduler that keeps clocks low and undervolted most of the time, and downclocks the modems CPU when it doesn't need full power. Also toggles the data use intermittently to get additional power savings with apps that check the internet, by only letting them poll for a few seconds once every two minutes or so outside of screen on mode.

-probably some other stuff. I just started on it and it's not ready to be released yet.