cross-posted from: https://discuss.online/post/34255100 > Thought I’d create a distinct thread from the previous one asking about daily use, because I really do want to hear more on people’s pain points. Great to know people are generally sounding pretty positive in those posts who recently switched, but want to know your difficulties as well! This way old and new users can share their thoughts, hopefully to inspire a respectful discussion.
Energy management is the part that still complicates things most for me. Rfkill not being managed correctly. Machines that suspend but don’t hibernate, or that hibernate but don’t suspend. Laptops that de-suspend during transport. Batteries that overdrain during suspend. Bluetooth. And most annoying of all, NVidia (insert Torvalds iconic scene).
I can’t get the Windows based firmware updaters for my motorcycle helmet Bluetooth headset and joystick fully running under Wine/Lutris/Whatever. They both use USB and just will not connect.
Also, once a quarter I have to use an archaic Excel sheet that is heavily dependent on some VB Script. This file absolutely will not open correctly in anything other than a locally installed version of Excel because the script needs a real local printer and Open/Libre/Whatever cannot handle the insanity of the VB Script. I have a Windows VM just for this one thing.
It might be worth trying out restic. If you prefer graphical user interfaces, the latest version of Déjà Dup should do the job.
Some companies allow specific Linux distributions (like RHEL) only. Maybe that’s something for your case too? At least there is “Enterprise” in “Red Hat Enterprise Linux” ;-)
The fact Ubuntu now withholds package updates unless you’re paying for their “maintenance and compliance subscription”
Do you happen to use a very old version of Ubuntu? You might want to update the distribution. This might also fix the bug you mentioned.
For your audio quality: Have you installed
pipewire-codec-aptxfrom RPMFusion? Fedora ships without patent encumbered audio and video codecs (and some other software) for legal reasons.Regarding laser cutting: Some fablabs have been using Inkscape and just print the vector graphics to the laser cutter. Have you tried this?
Is it possible that you are using a Linux distribution that still has Pulseaudio instead of Pipewire? That would cause unnecessarily high latency in the audio stack on the machine.
Do you happen to use a distro that excludes patent encumbered codecs? For example, if you were on Fedora, you might want to install
pipewire-codec-aptxfrom RPMFusion?From what I’ve understood, there is a translation table of line thickness to power/speed, that can be configured in the driver.
Audio is a mess. To have low latency in my DAW (Reaper Linux Version), I have to launch it via the command line using pw-jack reaper, otherwise it won’t recognize the audio device or uses ALSA or Pulseaudio both of which have way more latency than JACK
Most modern linux distributions use pipewire, which should have lower latency than ALSA or Pulseaudio, if configured correctly even lower than Jack. You might want to try that instead, especially when updating your linux distro.
GNOME shell’s overview search does almost the same.
Waydroid
I wouldn’t recommend using Waydroid, it basically runs Google Play services and other stuff as root on your machine.
Instead, it would be nice if we had seamless integration of virtual VMs including Android like Qubes OS does this.