Quoting: denyasisFor those looking to jump off Ubuntu, Debian testing is nice. I used it for the past 10 years.

Perhaps because it's new and shiny (to me), but I recently left Debian and tried Suse tumbleweed (their rolling distro). I find it much easier to set up (great installer) and it feels much more polished. It has simple instructions to activate Nvidia drivers and is more up to date (bleeding edge) than Debian testing. The package manager is different and takes some getting used to, but it seems well thought out.

If your looking for something on the user friendly side, it might be worth a look.

Maybe it's because I've been using it for so damned long, but Debian to me is VERY easy to set up. The only things out of the box I do really is this;
1) add user to sudo (not really needed, but some may like it this way.)
2) install nvidia drivers 'sudo apt install nvidia-driver'
3) enable i386 packages 'sudo dpkg --add-architecture i386' (something apparently Ubuntu is going to kill)
4) 'sudo apt install plymouth-themes'
5) 'sudo plymouth-set-default-theme futureprototype' (assuming you're running buster/testing)
6) edit /etc/default/grub to add 'splash' next to 'quiet'
7) 'sudo update-grub2'
8) reboot.

Only thing Debian could use work on for the install, is probably the partitioning. Though they are the one distribution who I think just letting it choose actually works well (every other distro I've tried does something ridiculous and gives like 100GB to root, and still uses the 'double the ram for swap' idea that went away as soon as we went over 1gb of ram..

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Quoting: 14

Quoting: slaapliedjeI'm a huge supporter of Debian as a desktop / server, whatever.
It really goes like this, use stable with backports (namely kernel / nvidia driver, if you have such hardware, etc.) with the debian-multimedia repo, and you're pretty much set. Then you can wait about a year into stable, then switch to testing, since their release cycles seem to be about every 2 years. Just note that testing gets a bit unstable right after a release, and switch to stable at that point so the couple months of all the new crap coming from experimental and unstable don't break your system.

Coming from someone who has used it since the late 90s :)

Sounds like a good system if you're still in the reformat-every-year-or-two mindset. That was really an XP era thing that I find pretty annoying these days. I don't like major upgrades, thus the move to a rolling release years ago. Theoretically never have to reinstall? "Sign me up," is what I thought.

Not saying you're doing it wrong, -- it's your system -- just commenting my preference.

Ha, what? No, I know how to fix sid when it goes sideways, and only time I reinstall (weirdly enough) is when I'm bored that my system works to well and I want to play with something else, which inevitably fails and I go back to Debian, which I can have set up exactly the way I want in like 20 minutes.

You don't format / re-install with Debian... really ever. When a new release comes out, you just dist-upgrade, maybe read the release notes and they'll tell you the major changes that you may have to do to keep things running. That's mostly for server stuff though (like there were some config changes going from apache 2.2 to 2.4). Desktop wise, just update away.

Also, I never reformat, I have that same /home partition for ages, with the exception of upgrading hard drives, which I dd my old drive, dd onto the new, and then resize :P Only time I've not done that is when a hard drive outright fails, then I just have the data copied over from the backups :)

But yes, personally I run Sid (so rolling release) I was just warning others that wish to do so that there are some gotchas right around release time in Debian, because the freeze lifts and all the new stuff starts hurdling down the hill.
Good example, currently Sid is frozen at Gnome 3.30, but 3.32 is in experimental for those who want to pick and chose things from there.

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Quoting: gojul

Quoting: ShmerlDidn't Valve select Debian for SteamOS? So Valve would simply swap Ubuntu with Debian as most recommended target. Quite natural to expect that.

They did this because Canonical has a shitty license policy.

Debian is a more solid base, where they don't just accept new technologies to go against the grain of everyone else.
Ubuntu has tried many times and failed to become a special snowflake among Linux distributions, I think they saying they're dropping 32bit library support is the next attempt at this. Just look at Unity, Mir, Upstart, etc.

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Quoting: PatolaI am tired of that. Why does Canonical have this propensity of being an asshole to its users? When we most need proper desktop support, with the amount of influence they have, they do a backwards decision like this one? That's absurd.

They want to be Apple.

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Quoting: elmapul" The issue then, is mainly software and libraries needed to actually run 32bit applications. This is where it sounds like there's going to be plenty of teething issues, with a number of people not too happy about the decision.'

in the mean time, you can run windows 1.0 applications on windows 10...
what is the point of the system being open source, if we cant even run the apps we want? where is the freedom on it?

yes i can use other distro, but what if all the major ones does the same (the ones which are base for the rest) i'm not planning to support my self.
windows never looked so good.

Ha, that's a STRONG maybe for running older Windows stuff in Windows 10. I mean I've seen many older applications run better with Wine than in Windows 10.

But the point here is, imagine if Windows 10 dropped 32bit support. I'd guess roughly 80% of things would stop working entirely. In the Windows world 64bit native applications were never that wide spread.

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Quoting: Shmerl

Quoting: slaapliedjeThey are doing this only to try to promote their own Snap package management, because no one really wants to use it, and more and more projects are moving to flatpak, or just releasing AppImages (I know Cura does this, I do wish the maintainer of the debian package would update it...)

Granted, it's my understanding that snap is friendlier to commercial packages, vs flatpak is more for running newer / sandboxed open source software. I personally stay away from snap, because it seems about as clean as random android app stores.

I think Flatpak overall has wider backing, and is viewed is a lightweight sandboxing solution. When it comes to such bundling, I usually see Flatpak discussed, almost never Snap. And I doubt their Snap push will help prevent massive migration of gamers from Ubuntu. Canonical really didn't handle this well.

Yup, everyone adopted flatpak except Ubuntu. This is going to end up like Mir, Unity, Upstart, etc. Where they'll bend to the popular vote after a release or two. After they lose all their users to other distributions.

The thing I just don't get... they base off Debian, and I don't see Debian making any moves to drop support for 32bit libraries, hell they still support i386 distributions when most have dropped that.
https://release.debian.org/buster/arch_qualify.html [External Link]

Hell there is still a Debian fork for m68k.

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Quoting: Shmerl

Quoting: slapinDon't panic.

Be calm, pick a better distro ;) Seriously, their proposed solutions are far from optimal.

Here's my thoughts on the actual change;
They are spending no extra development to get the 32bit packages on their 64bit system, since Debian does all the work, and they just fork / rebuild the packages.

They are doing this only to try to promote their own Snap package management, because no one really wants to use it, and more and more projects are moving to flatpak, or just releasing AppImages (I know Cura does this, I do wish the maintainer of the debian package would update it...)

Granted, it's my understanding that snap is friendlier to commercial packages, vs flatpak is more for running newer / sandboxed open source software. I personally stay away from snap, because it seems about as clean as random android app stores.

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Quoting: Shmerl

Quoting: MohandevirValve could up their game and offer a Steamos-Desktop Edition. It's already Debian based and includes a Gnome DE... Both hands on the steering wheel.

Or they can just open source their UI and add it to Debian proper ;)

Isn't it already mostly in Debian proper? Besides maybe the plymouth theme / wallpapers.

I'm a huge supporter of Debian as a desktop / server, whatever.
It really goes like this, use stable with backports (namely kernel / nvidia driver, if you have such hardware, etc.) with the debian-multimedia repo, and you're pretty much set. Then you can wait about a year into stable, then switch to testing, since their release cycles seem to be about every 2 years. Just note that testing gets a bit unstable right after a release, and switch to stable at that point so the couple months of all the new crap coming from experimental and unstable don't break your system.

Coming from someone who has used it since the late 90s :)

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Quoting: Sil_el_motoh yes. i am really hyped.
what a shame you cant test it for us fellow linux-users, but maybe the linux-side of steamvr isn't yet optimized for the index. since i have the vive pro i cannot play on linux any more. the vive 1 worked very well (just one or two games didn't work well)
i am really hoping that the index will work again.

Are you getting that screen tearing with the Vive Pro that I'm getting? That's the only reason it's not working here.

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Quoting: kneekoo

Will you be getting one? I'm still doing my wait and see approach, not that I have any choice since they're not currently shipping to the UK to give it a review.

Judging by the specs, the promising thing is this:
8GB DDR4 RAM (upgradable)

However, it's weird that it doesn't have "ac" wireless. I also wonder if it has any other storage expansion ports, like M.2 or SATA - although M.2 would be more plausible for the console's size. I really don't like eMMC memory, considering we can't easily replace it if/when it fails, and booting off of USB isn't ideal in long-term. So an M.2 slot would be a huge selling point for me, and if it's missing that would be a big demotivator.

All in all, the specs are pretty nice and all I have to do is wait until someone gets their hands on it, tears it down and shows us what expansion options we have. Or I could direct my question directly to Atari and hope for an answer. :D

Not sure about the wireless, but I'm pretty sure I'd read that it does have an M.2 port.
In theory since I backed it, I should be getting mine before Christmas? So I'll be sure to let everyone know if I got ripped off or not :P

Edit: https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/c1a6sk/knowing_that_the_atari_vcs_is_based_on_a_pc/erbtv28?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x [External Link]

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