[Megathread] Linux,SteamOS FAQ,Support and chit chat.

[Serpha]

Don't have a GPU that can use AMDGPU drivers, but they should be open source. Unless you downloaded the AMD hybrid drivers?

Yes, beta drivers. They don't work with stock kernel and didn't feel like playing with kernel but, after updating system yesterday I noticed screen tearing with open source drivers, something that wasn't there before. That would be the only reason for me to use non open source drivers at the moment. I have to say I enjoyed Ubuntu 16.04 until the screen tearing.

[Vash The Stampede]

Tomorrow I'll play around with Ubuntu 16.04, but I plan to install Oibaf drivers on a Radeon HD 5550.

[Serpha]

I have a problem with fonts in Manjaro. Ubuntu' fonts are perfect in Chrome and FF, clear and perfect size. Manjaro on the other hand has really small fonts both in the interface and web browsers. Has anyone had this problem? Ubuntu has it's own interface fonts, and in web browsers both distro's don't have the same fonts.

[Deleted]

Install ubuntu fonts. In arch the package for them is "ttf-ubuntu-font-family". Restart X server(or whole pc). If they were not autobatically used you will probably have to toy with settings as per arch wiki. Me myself had not needed to do anything with fonts as the stock ones suit me, so unfortunately I will not be able to provide much more of assistance than this.

[Artorius]

I have a problem with fonts in Manjaro. Ubuntu' fonts are perfect in Chrome and FF, clear and perfect size. Manjaro on the other hand has really small fonts both in the interface and web browsers. Has anyone had this problem? Ubuntu has it's own interface fonts, and in web browsers both distro's don't have the same fonts.

https://bohoomil.com/

Install Infinality-ultimate and you'll probably be happy with fonts. Ubuntu comes with Freetype2 and LCD-filter turned on by default, sub-pixel font rendering is technically proprietary and US based distros tend to skip it by default (Red Hat does the same with Fedora, the fonts look gross by default). Ubuntu on another hand doesn't care since Canonical is at the UK and goes with it turned on by default.

[Serpha]

The Ubuntu fonts fixed it. Funny how I never really noticed how ugly Manjaro's stock fonts are until I used Ubuntu.
Now, speaking about Ubuntu, I've heard about people saying how evil Canonical is, that it's Linux' version of Microsoft. Ubuntu (unity) supposed to be spying on users, apparently you can turn it off in the latest version, But now with Canonical and Microsoft working together it does look very fishy, don't you think? This may be the main reason why I will stick with Manjaro as my main distro and Ubuntu Mate the casual "go to". That is unless Mint comes up with something better. Speaking of Mint, is there any beta releases like other distros have or no?

[Vash The Stampede]

Mint is going to release Mint 18 in May. So it won't be long. As far as Ubuntu spying is concerned, that's just another reason to go with Mint. I just installed Ubuntu 16.04 on a old Q6600 and sure enough Steam wouldn't start up. What kind of idiocy are they running? Anyway, these commands fixed that problem.

cd $HOME/.steam/ubuntu12_32/steam-runtime/i386/usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu
mv libstdc++.so.6 libstdc++.so.6.bak
cd $HOME/.steam/ubuntu12_32/steam-runtime/amd64/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu
mv libstdc++.so.6 libstdc++.so.6.bak

Also installed Portal 2, and that still didn't work without my script.

#!/bin/bash
DIR=$HOME/.steam

echo "Removing libstd"
find $DIR -iname "libstd*" -exec rm -rf {} \;

echo "Removing libgcc"
find $DIR -iname "libgcc*" -exec rm -rf {} \;

echo "All Done"

cd Desktop
sudo chmod 777 script
sudo ./script

Installing Cinnamon was actually easy as I just typed "sudo apt-get install cinnamon" to install it. Log off, choose Cinnamon and log back in to Cinnamon. It works well, but holy crap I still need to do a lot for basic things. But can't complain, cause my WinTV HVR 1800 actually does work. Something I couldn't do with Ubuntu 14.04. And with Cable companies now forced to allow people to not need a cable box, might mean I have a use for a TV capture card. Maybe.

[Serpha]

Ahahaha, TV capture card, that's like 12 years ago.

[Vash The Stampede]

Ahahaha, TV capture card, that's like 12 years ago.

I got like 5 of them. Kinda just fell into my hands. I use one for ATSC broadcast TV that I have setup through TVHeadEnd, that I also direct through to Emby. Which is kinda cool, if I watched TV. I don't. But I let others use my Emby, and they don't watch the Live TV either. They just watch the TV Shows and Movies. But my family insists on having Cable TV, and I really would love to cut the costs of it. But these old capture cards can handle digital cable, if the QAM wasn't encrypted. Which I hope means they will remove the encryption so I can use it. That means setting up MythTV, and it's a pain in the ass, but I can redirect it to Emby as well. And when I'm done, I'm sure nobody will use it.

[Serpha]

Sounds complicated, just torrent the shows.

[Serpha]

Today I run few tests on Ubuntu 16.04 open source drivers and Manjaro proprietary drivers.
http://openbenchmarking.org/result/1...GA-TOMMANJAR41
I need to run more tests to have a better idea how all the options compare but it looks like proprietary have 30+ fps heads up on open source. Wanted to test the AMDGPU-PRO but things got wierd when started playing with the latests kernel.

[Vash The Stampede]

Don't see two tests, just one.

Shouldn't see a difference between Manjaro and Ubuntu's performance. Ubuntu tends to be faster because the Unity UI doesn't put a heavy load on the graphics. Proprietary should be faster, cause open source isn't there yet.

[Serpha]

Ubuntu's test didn't upload for some reason and had to reinstall it after filed kernel upgrade. According to Phoronix' tests there is some difference in distro's performance in games and in general, with Clear Linux being at the front in everything than Debian testing and Ubuntu in 3rd. He didn't test Manjaro specifically but Arch was middle of the pack.
I want to test both Manjaro and Ubuntu for open source performance and proprietary but not sure when since it will take most of the day. For Ubuntu I use Mate and it is little bit slower in games.

[Vash The Stampede]

You would think Mate is the fastest for gaming, but it isn't. Ubuntu's Unity is actually pretty good with performance. But I don't care cause I'd rather use what I'm comfortable with, and Unity is a terrible UI. Some ditro's are faster than others and some are just horrible in performance. But if you stick with Debian, Arch, Fedora type distros and their derivatives, the differences should be small.

[Artorius]

Why would your desktop environment affect gaming performance? Unless it's somewhat using your GPU even when not in focus, I can't see how.

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with Clear Linux being at the front in everything than Debian testing and Ubuntu in 3rd.

I missed those 3D tests with Clear Linux and holy shit.

That's amazing.

It's also nice that now they have a arc-themed Xfce at their repo(?), I think they didn't have any when they launched the distro.

[Serpha]

I'm not sure how, they tested nearly all DE's and gnome and kde usually came at the bottom, both rely heavily on gpu, so that probably takes some hit in tests.

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You would think Mate is the fastest for gaming, but it isn't. Ubuntu's Unity is actually pretty good with performance. But I don't care cause I'd rather use what I'm comfortable with, and Unity is a terrible UI. Some ditro's are faster than others and some are just horrible in performance. But if you stick with Debian, Arch, Fedora type distros and their derivatives, the differences should be small.

Yes, the difference between distros is minimal, it's the environment. For example Ubuntu has Unity, anything else is not up to the team. Manjaro has xfce, everything else is community, Mint has Cinnamon etc. It's all about how well environment works with distro.

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I just run the phoronix test suit http://openbenchmarking.org/result/1...KH-1604287HA85
Not sure what to think of the gpu test. Open source drivers ubuntu mate 16.04

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Also, how do I fix this http://i.imgur.com/ckFzscP.jpg

I have Ubuntu on 1 SSD and Manjaro on 2nd. I install Ubuntu first, than Manjaro and put bootloader on Ubuntu disk. This way I have nice Manjaro grub instead of ugly ubuntu. However, whenever I reinstall Ubuntu, it overrides the bootloader and it screws up Manajro.

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Update on testing
Manjaro Catalyst 15.20 drivers
http://openbenchmarking.org/result/1...GA-1604287HA74
Ubuntu 16.04 Mate Open Source Mesa 11.3 drivers
http://openbenchmarking.org/result/1...KH-1604287HA85

Some strange things are going on in Manjaro. Anyone has any idea what is up?

[Vash The Stampede]

I just run the phoronix test suit http://openbenchmarking.org/result/1...KH-1604287HA85
Not sure what to think of the gpu test. Open source drivers ubuntu mate 16.04

Synthetic tests rarely represent real world performance. GPUTest is just something for Phoronix to fill their webpage with.

I have Ubuntu on 1 SSD and Manjaro on 2nd. I install Ubuntu first, than Manjaro and put bootloader on Ubuntu disk. This way I have nice Manjaro grub instead of ugly ubuntu. However, whenever I reinstall Ubuntu, it overrides the bootloader and it screws up Manajro.

That's why I hate to dual boot. At some point, something is going to screw up the bootloader. Even Windows can screw something up.

[Serpha]

What bothers me is that Manjaro's proprietary drivers are slower than open source. In ubuntu tests 2 on the right are mine, in Manjaro 3 on the right are mine. You can see the difference between Ubuntu and Manjaro on the same PC.
I'm not sure why. I like dual booting, until this happen. I reinstalled both OS's but was prepared for this.

[Butler to Baby Sloths]

Synthetic tests rarely represent real world performance. GPUTest is just something for Phoronix to fill their webpage with.

That's why I hate to dual boot. At some point, something is going to screw up the bootloader. Even Windows can screw something up.

Windows always screws things up, because Windows thinks it is the only OS on the planet and will overwrite GRUB at the first opportunity. That's why, for example, you install Windows before installing Linux, because if you do it the other way around Windows will overwrite the bootloader partition and render your Linux installation unbootable.

[Vash The Stampede]

What bothers me is that Manjaro's proprietary drivers are slower than open source. In ubuntu tests 2 on the right are mine, in Manjaro 3 on the right are mine. You can see the difference between Ubuntu and Manjaro on the same PC.
I'm not sure why. I like dual booting, until this happen. I reinstalled both OS's but was prepared for this.

This makes sense with AMD hardware as open source is now the priority. You won't see proprietary drivers for AMD next year.