Full Time Linux Plunge +GAMING! -- Journal/blog

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Hello, World! – last updated 6/7/2020

5/19/2020, my M.2 SSD with Win10 on it died. Other than my phone, most of my lifestyle died with it, as I am a homebody who spends every waking minute with music or educational materials… or less productive things like games/anime. But you get the idea. I work for myself these days, so that night I ordered a replacement drive (and a new HDD and 2 more sticks RAM while I was at it… because why not) and planned to spend the next 7 or so days working while I waited on shipping.

I figured that, since I didn’t want to get another legal copy of Win10 right now, this was fate telling me to make an actually serious attempt at going Linux full time. This is not my first Linux plunge. But I have never made it all that far in learning or sticking with the OS. Now, I plan on using it full time. Here is the story for anyone interested in following or giving help, suggestions on what to do next, etc. I will not be posting updates via new posts on the thread, but all via edits, so keep that in mind if you choose to follow.

HARDWARE SETUP:

Summary

Case: In Win GRone
Mobo: Rog Strix… X370-F (I think)
CPU: Ryzen 2700X
RAM: T-Force Nighthawk 4x8GB 3,200 (set to 3,000 for stability issues)
GPU: RX 480 (might be an X model, don’t remember)
PSU: Some 850W fully mod gold cert box
Linux Kubuntu on a 500GB NvME M.2 SSD
Currently 3 HDDs for content with 2 larger HDDs serving as backups
2 regular monitors, 1 touchpen monitor

TO DO LIST:

Summary

  1. Get more familiar with the console and learn how to solve problems with it

  2. Finish customizing the desktop environment and set up desktop function hotkeys; find better system monitor software or learn to make a script to modify panel functions

  3. Set up my touchpen monitor and find a working Linux driver for it.

  4. Find and set up a program or script that functions in the same way that a function of Win program SyncbackFree works (direct, uncompressed, unchanged mirroring of one drive onto another)

  5. Install and test more games

ISSUES TO BE RESOLVED AT THIS TIME:

Summary
  1. Figure out why MakeMKV can’t access and write to my now-fixed storage drives.

TIMELINE:

Summary

May 19th: M.2 commits self-die. Not even detected by the BIOS anymore. Order replacements and upgrades.

May 21st: Got an email while working that my “7 days expected shipping” just arrived, ruining my plans to be uninterrupted working for a week straight. Serious first world problem complaining ensued. Installed Kubuntu and use the package manager to install a handful of utilities. Set up a number of desktop environment functions, such as customized panels, system monitor widgets, changing wallpapers for each screen, etc. Installed Lutris and set up the new 2TB HDD as my new drive for games that are working on Linux. Later on, I will get a new 1TB HDD for games that are too difficult to even attempt to use outside of Windows (such as Skyrim with 200 mods). Went straight for World of Warcraft Classic to see if I can get it to work. Successfully logged in as my priest, jumped around, checked mail, logged out, went to bed.

May 22nd: Spent half the day playing WoW without a single problem (other than a widget glitch freezing the panels). Set up home folder systems across their appropriate drives (music, downloads, documents, etc). Learned (mostly) how to use the console to fix ownership and permission issues. Installed Steam, successfully setting up directories on the gaming HDD. Installed Icey and The Sun and Moon indie Steam games (not Linux native). Tested both; both function as if on Windows. Reformatted one of the 2 mirrored movie/video drives, as it just REFUSED to change ownership/permissions like the other drives had. After formatting, copied over the data from first drive in case anything went wrong. 6 hour estimated transfer time. Turned off monitors, went to bed.

May 23rd: Made this post.

May 26-28th: installed Unigine benchmarks and successfully ran tests. Installed The Turing Test via Proton Steam and played through it without issues. Installed Path of Exile via Steam Proton. Game works! There are framerate and other lag issues, but the game is playable at this state.

May 26th-June 6th: Busy, didn’t do a lot other than World of Warcraft on my spare time. Had to go out of state on an emergency trip. Got Clementine and other daily-use programs up and running.

June 7th: Installed and attempted use of MakeMKV/Handbreak for a blueray. Caught up on these forums.

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This I have found is one of the best steps to do when setting up Linux for gaming. Even if you do not have a steam account and/or no games on it (altho… who doesn’t these days?), Steam has an extensive list of dependencies that solve most issues in the most random of games so you mostly don’t have to worry about those.

As for non-steam games I would suggest you look into Lutris as it makes installation of a lot of games a whole lot easier (it’s not perfect, but let’s be real, what is…?).

I made the switch roughly 2 years ago and haven’t looked back. Only booted into Windows twice or so (still keep the drive around cause you never know), once to check an issue with my capture card and once to shrink the Windows partition.

Out of curiosity, which distro did you go for?

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Seems like he went with Kubuntu.

Shame there really are no good KDE-based distros these days, KDE support seems to slowly fade away. Wouldn’t surprise me if it has the same status as XFCE and Cinnamon in a few years. Nothing wrong with that of course, but unless something drastic happens, Gnome will be the de-facto default desktop in a few years. For better or worse.

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I have had no issues with my Fedora KDE for the last 2 years so IDK… and people also seem to like Manjaro KDE.

Kubuntu is OK, but personally I never had any luck with *buntu

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Oh, I have a library of games and it’s the main reason I never went full Linux years ago. It’s been I think 1.5 years since I last tried Linux. I can already tell YUGE improvements in compatability. I have stuff working with 2 clicks now that didn’t work after hours of trial and error back then.

And yes, I went with the latest release of Kubuntu because… it’s popular and that means support. If I was experienced, I’d have went with OpenSUSE because their customization is so gud.

Yeah, where the hell is good ol’ KDE? I have Plasma running right now but… I miss the customization I had when I tried OpenSUSE KDE a long time ago.

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It’s not “SUSE” that is costumizable (well, it is, just like any other Distro, but that’s not what you mean here probably), but KDE.
Another alternative would be Fedora. Since it’s the base/development version for RHEL there is plenty support for it and most tutorials that work for RHEL or centOS work just as well for Fedora. So that might also be something you can look into at some point.
Generally I wouldn’t really worry about which distro to use though, you can switch anytime especially if you have your home separated (which it sounds like you did).

I guess it depends what you want to customize? KDE is still widely regarded as the most customizable for a reason.

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This is all just customization stuff…

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Actually, it is! Because when I tried SUSE, their widget and other desktop gadget repository was perfect for what I needed (If I understand it correctly, Linux distros don’t always share packages due to package type… SUSE is .deb I think?). This might just be that I haven’t found those same things I liked back then yet. And part of it, I’m sure, is just that I haven’t explored everything on this desktop yet (see to do list). But you get the point. So far, a lot of my searches in package manager and widgets don’t seem like I’m getting the same exact stuff.

  1. This is news to me, although I expected that switching distros would be easier than, say, doing a reinstall of Windows… which always breaks EVERYTHING, requiring me to, at the very least, run file searches and file integrity checks on every program I have. God, I really do hate Windows.
  2. No, my home folder is on my M.2 with the rest of Kubuntu. I did reroute folders/destinations such as music/downloads/etc for my “Places” group in Dolphin, but I did not remove the stuff in home or have home installed on my drive labeled “Cesspool” (that’s my general purpose drive in case you remember the name from the screenshots on the other thread). There are reasons why I do it this way… although a lot of those reasons may not matter here on Linux.
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The gadgets and widgets are not provided as part of the package repositories, they are part of the KDE infrastructure. So yes, it is indeed KDE and not SUSE itself, SUSE just happens to be using KDE as the Desktop Environment by default :slight_smile:

That is correct, in the case of customization however not relevant (see above). The package type (SUSE is .rpm by the way) doesn’t dictate what is and is not in a distros repository though, that is governed by their packaging policies. Fedora for example has some rules that certain packages cannot be built on their infrastructure because they touch US patents, and IBM/Red Hat being a US company they have to abide by them. Those packages are instead usually found in RPM Fusion. They also have a user-repository (similar to PPAs on *buntu), but that is unfortunately governed by the same guidelines as the main Fedora repo.
Now, why do I say that, well, SUSE is a German company and so they have different packaging rules and laws to abide by. So it might be you find some packages in SUSE that you can’t find on Fedora (by default anyway), and the same is true for the reverse.
Canonical is based in the UK and has yet another different set of rules so… basically: It’s complicated.

IDK it’s been a while for me, but I did have to do the Windows reset on a friends machine recently when she built a new PC and transplanted her SSD to the new one, worked like a charm and her stuff was still there. I had been using Win10 since the second Tech Preview (first wouldn’t boot on my old Phenom II), and never had to reinstall.
But that’s getting off track anyway :slight_smile:

You may want to adjust that in the future. Yes putting the individual folders somewhere else will work, but you will miss out on all the hidden directories that are in your home’s root-directory. Do an ls -l and an ls -al in your home directory and compare the results, and you will see what I mean :slight_smile:

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-l gave me 4 results and -al gave me 12. Not entirely sure what you mean by “missing out” on those directories though. Is there something I should know?

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Yes that is exactly what I mean :slight_smile: the a lists you hidden directories and files (starting with a dot like .local, .config, .bashrc, etc.), and those are what store your user preferences.

I mean that those are not on a separate drive and so you’ll loose them if you nuke the drive.

Currently as I understand your setup your home is on the same drive as your Kubuntu root.
Now lets assume something goes wrong and you need to nuke your Kubuntu root and need to re-install. What’ll happen is that your manually moved directories are safe, but all your settings are gone because they were still on your root-partition (since your /home is part of the root partition).

What would be better is moving the entire /home directory to a different drive (i.e. make /home the moint-point for that drive), that way your user settings are isolated from your system-stuff and you can switch distros as you like as long as you remember to set it in the installer (or do it at a later point after installation).

I wouldn’t worry about it now, but it’s something to think about for the future :slight_smile:

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Ohhh… I get it now. I was wondering why you’d be concerned about that because all the stuff that I would be worried about losing isn’t in the home folder. I only use home folder stuff for utility in certain situations (just as an example, the pictures folder under home has a folder within it holding a COPY of all my in-use rotating desktop wallpapers. It’s so that there’s 1: no lag, 2: not dependent on whether the drive with the full gallery is plugged in/mounted, and 3: doesn’t constantly spin an HDD back up to get files)

I didn’t even think about the settings and other stuff getting nuked… mostly because, coming from Windows, I’m not used to having a never ending list of possible customization. It takes like 3-5 minutes for me to set up all the customization I need on a Windows desktop, other than the start menu… which usually has to be redone anyway due to already mentioned problems with file path and integrity checks.

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Interface customisations are the smaller issue IMO, what’s more annoying is reconfiguring every single program after a reinstall.

That being said, the same thing can be achieved on Windows if you move the %AppData% directory (well, for the most part anyway) or the entire user folder with everything in it, but that’s getting a bit out of scope for Linux :slight_smile:

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I’m going to leave this here as my explanation as to why I did not attempt to do things with Windows that I knew were technically possible. It may not directly apply to what you were saying, but you get the idea. With Windows, there’s things that can be done, and then there’s things I’m willing to try to figure out :stuck_out_tongue:

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Yeah, by no decent KDE distros, I don’t mean you can’t run KDE, but the polish and extra integration that is available in say, Fedora Gnome or Ubuntu Gnome and so on, is often lacking in KDE. Though, admittedly, my KDE experience is quite limited since I don’t find Gnome particularly jarring once you get used to the workflow.

From my experience, KDE seems to require quite a bit customization before you can get even basic things like Bluetooth audio to work. But I’m working with outdated info, so take that with a truckload of salt. When it comes to “Just works” Gnome seems to be much better at it.

I run i3 as my daily driver though, so…

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I guess that may depend on the default configuration shipped by the distro.
I don’t personally use Bluetooth audio, but I do have a Bluetooth tab in my System Tray. And the audio itself is handled by Pulse anyway, not by KDE.

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Main reason I liked KDE is because it resembles Win layout but can be customized easily. I think you can change gnome up to be the same way, but I havne’t gotten that far.

What I need out of the desktop invironment is mostly 1) a Win10 like pannel on the bottom of each screen, 2) a Win10 like start menu, like with the drag to move tiles and catagories, and 3) a system monitor showing use and temperature on everything, preferably with the option of automatically hiding itself until I have a game upon on main screen or if I move my mouse to that corner of 2nd screen. I know the last thing can be scripted, but that is beyond my skill with Linux at this time. Other than that, everything else I need can be done on any setup (such as wallpapers)

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For those interested in the journey, sorry I haven’t kept it up to date. There was nothing to update. I had an emergency out-of-state journey and wasn’t around to learn much of anything. I’ve been back for a few days now, and am back to installing and learning the Linux quirks with my bread-and-butter programs. Today, it’s MakeMKV - trying to rip a Blue Ray.

I’m running into a really weird issue where I think it’s failing to register access to anything other than my home/M.2/OS drive. When I copy pasted the exact folder destination to find it, I thought it would work. But I got a… posix error…?.. and it said it could not access destination. I believe this might be because MakeMKV on Linux is a snap package (which I only somewhat understand.)

Anyway, this is obviously something sorta-big-ish that I need to learn to deal with, so I figured I’d throw it in here for anyone who might know. @mihawk90 , I’ll ask you in particular since you seem to know your way around. Thanks again for your time on my posts.

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I’m not too familiar with snap (it’s an Ubuntu thing), so I can only say that Snaps are sandboxed and so yes that might be the reason you’re getting that error. It might be looking for a specific path for the drive, could be other things, I’m honestly not sure.
From what I can tell on the makemkv forum the snap is not an official package though. They only provide instructions on how to build it yourself:

https://forum.makemkv.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=224

My experiences on Snap in various Support Discords basically comes down to: Avoid it, and search for a native alternative.

There is a fairly up to date PPA, might try that for better luck:

Otherwise, the compile instructions above aren’t too complicated.

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Well, that was easy… scrapped the snap, copy pasta in console, ripping now with no problems. I think it being a snap was the issue. What is a PPA? Some kind of full build of a program that’s outside the community distro/package manager database for some reason?

So far my experience with snap packages has been mixed bag. Like with MakeMKV, I ran into this issue. But with, say, Unigine’s products… their downloads directly off the website were installed as snaps and work fine. I didn’t find Heaven/Valley/etc on the package manager so went with the website and it worked.

EDIT: at some point I need to learn this whole “compiling” business. But that seems beyond what is necessary for my purposes for the time being. Until I start getting into some really niche stuff I don’t use very often, what I’ve learned so far will carry me. I have to note how surprisingly easy this transition has been. I have few programs left that I use often that are yet to be sought out. Mostly, it’s just the rest of my games library left.

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PPA = Personal Package Archive
A repository built by someone, that is not in the official package repository of Ubuntu. Reasons can vary, usually it’s because the software can’t be packaged in the official repos for one reason or another (usually licensing, legal, or packaging guidelines), or because it is a custom build with additional features or patches. Another big reason is providing more up to date versions to a package that is in the official repos.

For example OBS Studio is in the official Ubuntu repository, but the OBS team still provides their own PPA. The PPA comes with the Browser Source and some other stuff, that isn’t shipped in the official Ubuntu repostory. In addition to that, they always ship the latest version in the PPA while the Ubuntu repo is lagging behind.

Pretty much all Linux software comes with instructions on how to build it, and in most cases will include instructions for Ubuntu since it’s a popular distro (or base for other distros). So unless you’re modifying source you don’t have to worry about how to do it for the most part.