easymode

ward wrote: Mar 12th, '26, 08:38

ravanal wrote: Mar 12th, '26, 06:27 I tried getting into these fancy setups with hyprland, but realized it wasn't really for me. I just want to keep stuff simple. Currently running Catchy OS.

Your ui looks really awesome. Which theme is that?

I'm using Reactionary Plus with KDE (plus some small modifications i made myself). It's really smooth compared to other Win9x based themes. It also goes well with my collection of Lain wallpapers.

https://store.kde.org/p/1252412/

ravanal wrote: Mar 13th, '26, 08:41

ward wrote: Mar 12th, '26, 08:38

ravanal wrote: Mar 12th, '26, 06:27 I tried getting into these fancy setups with hyprland, but realized it wasn't really for me. I just want to keep stuff simple. Currently running Catchy OS.

Your ui looks really awesome. Which theme is that?

I'm using Reactionary Plus with KDE (plus some small modifications i made myself). It's really smooth compared to other Win9x based themes. It also goes well with my collection of Lain wallpapers.

https://store.kde.org/p/1252412/

Yeah I'm currently going through my "explain everything to me like I'm a five year old" era. It's like re-learning how to walk but way harder. I wan't all of the fancy cyberdeck lookin shit but at the same time I am basic and like nice cute GUI's and helpful frontends.

TheLeatherMushroom wrote: Mar 13th, '26, 13:25 Yeah I'm currently going through my "explain everything to me like I'm a five year old" era. It's like re-learning how to walk but way harder. I wan't all of the fancy cyberdeck lookin shit but at the same time I am basic and like nice cute GUI's and helpful frontends.

I feel this. It's not just the style, but also the functionality for me. I have used Linux servers for a long while, but only some of that knowledge translated over to the desktop. It took me about three hours to map network drives on CachyOS and I think I did it the wrong way. On a server, I just used Systemd and some .mount files and it usually just werks because there's always a connection to the network... but on my laptop I won't always be on the network. So when I disconnect, the mounts vanish and I have to re-mount them all manually. So, I'm at the part where I try to figure out how to get them to automatically mount if available. The learning curve is real...

However, I'm liking things more than Windows and gaming is pretty easy. I just need FL Studio to come over to Linux (plus some of the premium plugins I paid thousands for). The creative world is taking WAY too long to migrate over. A lot of that is the fault of the Linux devs as well. I don't know of any distro that has better audio latency compared to Windows or MacOS... in fact, the latency is almost a deal-breaker if you're using a keyboard (piano).

Anyway, more to learn.

I get you. I build a proper machine in the next few months and I will be using that for audio stuff too and I intend to explore some of the liux DAW's and see how I get on.

Learning is fun but also frustrating, the new build will actually have a dual boot because I do still need windows in some respect. That being windows 7 obviously.

ward wrote: Mar 12th, '26, 08:38

ravanal wrote: Mar 12th, '26, 06:27 I tried getting into these fancy setups with hyprland, but realized it wasn't really for me. I just want to keep stuff simple. Currently running Catchy OS.

Your ui looks really awesome. Which theme is that?

Need to check this one out myself, this looks awesome on KDE

I used to distro-hop quite a bit, trying out everything from Arch to OpenSUSE to Manjaro to Ubuntu/Kubuntu/Lubuntu... but now I've built my nest on Debian. My main "rig" at the moment is an old mid-2012 Macbook Air running Kubuntu. My main PC is hooked up to the living room TV and is being used as an HTPC that's running Debian.

I'm looking into buying a Thinkpad and beefing it up to use as my main rig alongside a docking station, with Debian of course.

CachyOS decided that it liked to freeze my video signal mid-everything; even when adjusting schedulers and GPU profiles to powersave, no dice. I just decided to get back on my old Arch config apart from switching out Niri for KDE Plasma.

chiefterror wrote: Mar 17th, '26, 15:02 CachyOS decided that it liked to freeze my video signal mid-everything; even when adjusting schedulers and GPU profiles to powersave, no dice. I just decided to get back on my old Arch config apart from switching out Niri for KDE Plasma.

Did you know what was causing it? I usually tinker for a bit, but the thing with Linux is that I usually end up doing a clean install when it gets too frustrating. I'm trying to stick with CachyOS though and so far I haven't been extremely annoyed beyond other distros. I wonder if it was Wayland nonsense or something?

Did you go back to GRUB too?

ward wrote: Mar 22nd, '26, 08:31
Did you know what was causing it? I usually tinker for a bit, but the thing with Linux is that I usually end up doing a clean install when it gets too frustrating. I'm trying to stick with CachyOS though and so far I haven't been extremely annoyed beyond other distros. I wonder if it was Wayland nonsense or something?

Did you go back to GRUB too?

i think the Sched-ext features in CachyOS didn't play nice with my machine (any tool that can potentially improve HW performance is something i'm going to explore), and the way I was trying to set it up was awfully similar to how i compiled my TKG kernel from Arch. It felt redundant

So i went back to all that and everything is smooth again. I now use LACT to get optimal performance for my GPU and, with the TKG running the BORE CPU scheduler, its pretty much equivalent performance in my eyes. And yeah i still use GRUB-btrfs

Owing to systemd's inherent complicity in the FOSS age-verification surveillance sweepstakes, I'm gonna switch to Artix. Will report back with results likely tomorrow.

EDIT: I'm just init system-hopping, thankfully, but I feel like an unstable partner to my PC. Most if not all my configs will be largely the same as with Arch.

EDITx2: All is pretty well, instead of adding CachyOS repos since they're systemd-dependent, I just installed the supplemental Arch repos and chaotic-aur. Forgot to add swap-to-file, I'll fix that later. Gaming things run too. TKG kernel had to be built twice since modprobe didn't detect ip_tables.ko at the beginning? Ah well