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Linux Discussion

maflynn said:
Kernel 7.0 has been released
You can use Linux 7.0 on these 7 distros today - here's what to expect
CachyOS Rolls Out A Super-Charged Linux 7.0 Kernel

I'll probably wait a little while before updating my system, and take the time to review the cachyos forums for any possible issues
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I updated to the 7.0 kernel and now I can't reboot my machine. It just hangs at a blinking cursor. I can press the Power button and shut it down correctly (UEFI logo and spinning wheel), however. Other than that it's working fine.
 
maflynn said:
At the end of the day, I felt cachyos (with the gnome DE) was a better fit for how I wanted to approach using linux, it's solid, fast and offers the newest features. What I thought was its weakness, rolling releases instead of point releases, is its strength. I can see the wisdom in rolling out updates once they're ready and tested. Smaller updates is less likely to hose a system then larger updates. In a weird sense, this is why I gravitated to the LTS version, so I can remain on a stable system longer.
Click to expand...

I recently found a reason to try out CachyOS a bit more. I was curious about how our 2011 iMacs with updated Kepler GPUs would hold up once the final end of OCLP/Intel macOS support approaches. These Kepler GPUs are not supported by Nvidia for either Windows/MacOS or Linux anymore. While old drivers still work on MacOS and Windows, the last proprietary Nvidia driver 470 lacks Wayland support under Linux. I elaborated on this issue here.

But then I heard of great improvements of the Nouveau driver for Kepler and newer GPUs. NVK seems to use Vulkan in the userspace to display the desktop etc. But in order to try it out I had to use a bleeding edge version of the Mesa package, i.e. build it from source. That is why I came back to CachyOS as an Arch derivative.

It is actually working fine; Nouveau (kernelspace)+ NVK (userspace) is functional while not bug-free yet. When booting up, I have some flickering on the right side of the screen. It disappears after a sleep cycle. With manual reclocking performance is ok, while not at the same level as Windows.

Taking into account that CachyOS is running from an external SSD through USB2 it is also very fast. I have to say, however, that it takes quite a while, building the new version from source with the old i7 CPU. I think, for the moment I will stay on Debian-based distros on our legacy Macs.
 
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Just browsing at the Thinkpad X1 Carbon and ran into this:

SS 1.jpg
 
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pshufd said:
Just browsing at the Thinkpad X1 Carbon and ran into this:
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Yeah, Lenovo has made more of an effort to provide the buyer more choices. Dell also does something along these lines as well.

I just googled it, and it seems HP is certified to run Linux, though I don't think you can buy a laptop with a linux distro pre-installed.
 
@maflynn You mentioned my system bios setup having wrong settings when I was trying to get Zorin to work on my laptop. Can you explain this further. The issue is that Linux has issues booting sometimes while windows, for the most part boots fine. It's on different SSD. I am moving to linux full time.
 
Steve Adams said:
Can you explain this further.
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I don't recall, but I know many distros want you to disable secure boot, and that's what I did.

Also, you may be opening up more headaches by going with a dual boot setup. While the boot managers like grub and limine can handle multiple operating systems, my experience has been less then stellar. CachyOS mentions the install along side is not as reliable as it should be.

Here's some of the notes about the bios and install for cachyos
1777373545429.png
 
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maflynn said:
I don't recall, but I know many distros want you to disable secure boot, and that's what I did.

Also, you may be opening up more headaches by going with a dual boot setup. While the boot managers like grub and limine can handle multiple operating systems, my experience has been less then stellar. CachyOS mentions the install along side is not as reliable as it should be.

Here's some of the notes about the bios and install for cachyos
View attachment 2625495
Click to expand...
I am not going dual boot, I am putting in a new ssd with Zorin on it and using IT only.

yes, it was secure boot. thanks. when I install my Zorin Pro ssd, I will turn off secure boot.
 
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I dropped a new hard drive in my XPS to try Ubuntu 26.04 while preserving my Debian install on the other drive. I have to say that it really seem like a great distro even with the default to snaps.
 
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I am just sticking with Zorin as it seems very user friendly and fast. I am on my linux "tablet" now. My little dell inspiron 3179 2 in 1. It's only running a core m3, 4gb of ram and has a 960gb ssd. It's a great replacement for my ipad. It's just as small and light, display is decent and touch enabled, it has lots of ports, TONNES of storage, I am going to get waydroid back installed correctly so I can run android apps on it, and basically can replace my ipad without issue.

It gets decent battery life to the tune of around 8hrs of mixed use while on balanced. To put this into context, When on windows 11, it was barely useable, and would get 2 to 3 hrs of battery life.

I have no compliants regarding zorin other than how it handles sound. I downloaded an app and it's mostly great. Not quite as good as windows sound but close enough. I am sure with more tweaking I can get it working.
 
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Steve Adams said:
I am just sticking with Zorin as it seems very user friendly and fast. I am on my linux "tablet" now. My little dell inspiron 3179 2 in 1. It's only running a core m3, 4gb of ram and has a 960gb ssd. It's a great replacement for my ipad. It's just as small and light, display is decent and touch enabled, it has lots of ports, TONNES of storage, I am going to get waydroid back installed correctly so I can run android apps on it, and basically can replace my ipad without issue.

It gets decent battery life to the tune of around 8hrs of mixed use while on balanced. To put this into context, When on windows 11, it was barely useable, and would get 2 to 3 hrs of battery life.

I have no compliants regarding zorin other than how it handles sound. I downloaded an app and it's mostly great. Not quite as good as windows sound but close enough. I am sure with more tweaking I can get it working.
Click to expand...

Dammit, you just sent me down a rabbit hole. 😛 That's really cool.
 
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dmr727 said:
Dammit, you just sent me down a rabbit hole. 😛 That's really cool.
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It's a system I bought for my wife brand new and she never took to it because it was too slow. Fast forward some years, I decided to load Zorin on it for a test platform. it's so good that I use it regularly while sitting on the couch or travelling. I can edit photos on it without issue using RapidRaw as well.
 
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maflynn said:
I think the biggest complaints seem to be higher requirements and possibly more bloated then it ought too.
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The snap apps are a bit fatter than their .deb counterparts but I'm not sure how they compare to flatpak app, that's probably why they upped the RAM requirement.
 
lowendlinux said:
The snap apps are a bit fatter than their .deb counterparts but I'm not sure how they compare to flatpak app, that's probably why they upped the RAM requirement.
Click to expand...
I think the biggest issue is that the Snap Store backend is proprietary and controlled solely by Canonical. Ubuntu folks are upset because that some apt get packages are now snap, so that means its being forced upon them.

It seems that most people are not terribly upset over this, though there's a vocal minority.
 
Got the wife back on Zorin. Her system is much faster gets amazing battery life and it just overall...Better than the AiSlopified Windows.

Her laptop was reporting between 8 and 9 1/2 hrs of battery life on Zorin on balanced mode. That's decent for a older intel processor.
 
Steve Adams said:
gets amazing battery life and it just overall.
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That's good to hear but a little surprising only because Linux doesn't have the same level of effeciency, Windows has more robust power management frameworks and custom ACPI tables

Still nice to see battery life is good. I was generally happy with the battery life on my Thinkpad T14s, though it was a bit worse then on windows - I never really did any sort of testing/benchmarking to see how big a difference
 
maflynn said:
That's good to hear but a little surprising only because Linux doesn't have the same level of effeciency, Windows has more robust power management frameworks and custom ACPI tables

Still nice to see battery life is good. I was generally happy with the battery life on my Thinkpad T14s, though it was a bit worse then on windows - I never really did any sort of testing/benchmarking to see how big a difference
Click to expand...
really. there is so much going on in the background of windows that it kills battery life. both systems I have it running on now are much more efficient without all the reporting back to the mothership.
 
Steve Adams said:
really. there is so much going on in the background of windows that it kills battery life.
Click to expand...
I think Windows battery management is good in general. X86 laptops are attaining battery performance on par with Macs. Granted, a lot of that has to do with the efficiencies built into the hardware, but the other piece of the puzzle is that Windows does a good job with its power management.

This is what I found in googling
  • Higher idle power draw
  • CPU not dropping into deep C-states consistently
  • Background services not power-aware
  • Poor GPU switching on hybrid graphics systems
It seems based on reddit, and other social platforms, Linux (in general) a 20-40% worse then windows, YMMV

Can that number be improved in Linux? I'm sure, but that will require time, knowledge and expertise. Me personally - that's probably beyond my skill level at the moment.

I asked chatgpt about windows services and here's what it says in my own words (because we cannot cut/paste AI text in posts due to MR rules):
A higher service count does not equate to worse efficiency. Many services consumer little to no cpu cycles as they're event driven
 
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I am surprised about how good battery performance is on my MBP 2015 (dual-core i5) with Pop OS 24.04. It is on par with OCLP Sequoia on the same machine - perhaps even a bit better. "Traditionally" battery performance used to be an argument against using Linux, at least in comparison to Windows. But that was before Windows 11, which I feel becomes more demanding with each update (although I am using a stripped down tiny11 version).
 
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My milage says the opposite and that's not one system. It's three as when I had my linux drive in my laptop, it was the same. Better battery on all three systems.
 
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I am easily satisfied as long as it will last at least eight hours a day since everything goes on a charger while I am sleeping so give me high performance so I can get it done sooner close the lid and move on to something else.
 
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