UCyborg

November 22, 2021

I turned off KWin's compositing in system settings and got picom to do the compositing instead, I have much smoother desktop now.

Installed it:

# Arch Linux based distros
# May need to update system first if last command doesn't work
sudo pacman -Syu
sudo pacman -S picom

# Debian / Ubuntu based ditros
sudo apt install picom

Copied its default config file to my home .config folder:

# Arch Linux based distros
cp /etc/xdg/picom.conf ~/.config/picom.conf

# Debian / Ubuntu based distros
cp /usr/share/doc/picom/examples/picom.sample.conf ~/.config/picom.conf

Adjusted it to my liking:

#################################
#             Shadows           #
#################################


# Enabled client-side shadows on windows. Note desktop windows
# (windows with '_NET_WM_WINDOW_TYPE_DESKTOP') never get shadow,
# unless explicitly requested using the wintypes option.
#
# shadow = false;
shadow = true;

# The blur radius for shadows, in pixels. (defaults to 12)
# shadow-radius = 12;
shadow-radius = 7;

# The opacity of shadows. (0.0 - 1.0, defaults to 0.75)
# shadow-opacity = .75;

# The left offset for shadows, in pixels. (defaults to -15)
# shadow-offset-x = -15;
shadow-offset-x = -7;

# The top offset for shadows, in pixels. (defaults to -15)
# shadow-offset-y = -15;
shadow-offset-y = -7;

# Avoid drawing shadows on dock/panel windows. This option is deprecated,
# you should use the *wintypes* option in your config file instead.
#
# no-dock-shadow = false;

# Don't draw shadows on drag-and-drop windows. This option is deprecated,
# you should use the *wintypes* option in your config file instead.
#
# no-dnd-shadow = false;

# Red color value of shadow (0.0 - 1.0, defaults to 0).
# shadow-red = 0;

# Green color value of shadow (0.0 - 1.0, defaults to 0).
# shadow-green = 0;

# Blue color value of shadow (0.0 - 1.0, defaults to 0).
# shadow-blue = 0;

# Do not paint shadows on shaped windows. Note shaped windows
# here means windows setting its shape through X Shape extension.
# Those using ARGB background is beyond our control.
# Deprecated, use
#   shadow-exclude = 'bounding_shaped';
# or
#   shadow-exclude = 'bounding_shaped && !rounded_corners';
# instead.
#
# shadow-ignore-shaped = '';

# Specify a list of conditions of windows that should have no shadow.
#
# examples:
#   shadow-exclude = "n:e:Notification";
#
# shadow-exclude = []
shadow-exclude = [
  "name = 'Notification'",
  "class_g = 'Conky'",
  "class_g ?= 'Notify-osd'",
  "class_g = 'Cairo-clock'",
  "_GTK_FRAME_EXTENTS@:c"
];

# Specify a X geometry that describes the region in which shadow should not
# be painted in, such as a dock window region. Use
#    shadow-exclude-reg = "x10+0+0"
# for example, if the 10 pixels on the bottom of the screen should not have shadows painted on.
#
# shadow-exclude-reg = "";

# Crop shadow of a window fully on a particular Xinerama screen to the screen.
# xinerama-shadow-crop = false;


#################################
#           Fading              #
#################################


# Fade windows in/out when opening/closing and when opacity changes,
#  unless no-fading-openclose is used.
#
# fading = false;
fading = true;

# Opacity change between steps while fading in. (0.01 - 1.0, defaults to 0.028)
# fade-in-step = 0.028;
fade-in-step = 0.03;

# Opacity change between steps while fading out. (0.01 - 1.0, defaults to 0.03)
fade-out-step = 0.03;

# The time between steps in fade step, in milliseconds. (> 0, defaults to 10)
# fade-delta = 10;

# Specify a list of conditions of windows that should not be faded.
# fade-exclude = [];

# Do not fade on window open/close.
# no-fading-openclose = false;

# Do not fade destroyed ARGB windows with WM frame. Workaround of bugs in Openbox, Fluxbox, etc.
# no-fading-destroyed-argb = false;


#################################
#   Transparency / Opacity      #
#################################


# Opacity of inactive windows. (0.1 - 1.0, defaults to 1.0)
# inactive-opacity = 1.0;
# inactive-opacity = 0.8;

# Opacity of window titlebars and borders. (0.1 - 1.0, disabled by default)
# frame-opacity = 1.0;
# frame-opacity = 0.7;

# Default opacity for dropdown menus and popup menus. (0.0 - 1.0, defaults to 1.0)
# menu-opacity = 1.0;

# Let inactive opacity set by -i override the '_NET_WM_OPACITY' values of windows.
# inactive-opacity-override = true;
inactive-opacity-override = false;

# Default opacity for active windows. (0.0 - 1.0, defaults to 1.0)
# active-opacity = 1.0;

# Dim inactive windows. (0.0 - 1.0, defaults to 0.0)
# inactive-dim = 0.0;

# Specify a list of conditions of windows that should always be considered focused.
# focus-exclude = [];
focus-exclude = [ "class_g = 'Cairo-clock'" ];

# Use fixed inactive dim value, instead of adjusting according to window opacity.
# inactive-dim-fixed = 1.0;

# Specify a list of opacity rules, in the format `PERCENT:PATTERN`,
# like `50:name *= "Firefox"`. picom-trans is recommended over this.
# Note we don't make any guarantee about possible conflicts with other
# programs that set '_NET_WM_WINDOW_OPACITY' on frame or client windows.
# example:
#    opacity-rule = [ "80:class_g = 'URxvt'" ];
#
# opacity-rule = [];


#################################
#     Background-Blurring       #
#################################


# Parameters for background blurring, see the *BLUR* section for more information.
# blur-method =
# blur-size = 12;
#
# blur-deviation = false;

# Blur background of semi-transparent / ARGB windows.
# Bad in performance, with driver-dependent behavior.
# The name of the switch may change without prior notifications.
#
# blur-background = false;

# Blur background of windows when the window frame is not opaque.
# Implies:
#    blur-background
# Bad in performance, with driver-dependent behavior. The name may change.
#
# blur-background-frame = false;


# Use fixed blur strength rather than adjusting according to window opacity.
# blur-background-fixed = false;


# Specify the blur convolution kernel, with the following format:
# example:
#   blur-kern = "5,5,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1";
#
# blur-kern = '';
blur-kern = "3x3box";


# Exclude conditions for background blur.
# blur-background-exclude = [];
blur-background-exclude = [
  "window_type = 'dock'",
  "window_type = 'desktop'",
  "_GTK_FRAME_EXTENTS@:c"
];

#################################
#       General Settings        #
#################################

# Daemonize process. Fork to background after initialization. Causes issues with certain (badly-written) drivers.
# daemon = false;

# Specify the backend to use: `xrender`, `glx`, or `xr_glx_hybrid`.
# `xrender` is the default one.
#
# backend = "xrender";
backend = "glx";

# Enable/disable VSync.
# vsync = false
vsync = true;

# Enable remote control via D-Bus. See the *D-BUS API* section below for more details.
# dbus = false;

# Try to detect WM windows (a non-override-redirect window with no
# child that has 'WM_STATE') and mark them as active.
#
# mark-wmwin-focused = false;
mark-wmwin-focused = true;

# Mark override-redirect windows that doesn't have a child window with 'WM_STATE' focused.
# mark-ovredir-focused = false;
mark-ovredir-focused = true;

# Try to detect windows with rounded corners and don't consider them
# shaped windows. The accuracy is not very high, unfortunately.
#
# detect-rounded-corners = false;
detect-rounded-corners = true;

# Detect '_NET_WM_OPACITY' on client windows, useful for window managers
# not passing '_NET_WM_OPACITY' of client windows to frame windows.
#
# detect-client-opacity = false;
detect-client-opacity = true;

# Specify refresh rate of the screen. If not specified or 0, picom will
# try detecting this with X RandR extension.
#
# refresh-rate = 60;

# Limit picom to repaint at most once every 1 / 'refresh_rate' second to
# boost performance. This should not be used with
#   vsync drm/opengl/opengl-oml
# as they essentially does sw-opti's job already,
# unless you wish to specify a lower refresh rate than the actual value.
#
# sw-opti =

# Use EWMH '_NET_ACTIVE_WINDOW' to determine currently focused window,
# rather than listening to 'FocusIn'/'FocusOut' event. Might have more accuracy,
# provided that the WM supports it.
#
# use-ewmh-active-win = false;
use-ewmh-active-win = true;

# Unredirect all windows if a full-screen opaque window is detected,
# to maximize performance for full-screen windows. Known to cause flickering
# when redirecting/unredirecting windows.
#
# unredir-if-possible = false;
unredir-if-possible = true;

# Delay before unredirecting the window, in milliseconds. Defaults to 0.
# unredir-if-possible-delay = 0;

# Conditions of windows that shouldn't be considered full-screen for unredirecting screen.
unredir-if-possible-exclude = [
  "class_g %= 'Microsoft-edge-*'",
  "class_g = 'Pale moon'",
  "class_g %= 'Vivaldi-*'",
  "class_g = 'vlc'"
];

# Use 'WM_TRANSIENT_FOR' to group windows, and consider windows
# in the same group focused at the same time.
#
# detect-transient = false;
detect-transient = true;

# Use 'WM_CLIENT_LEADER' to group windows, and consider windows in the same
# group focused at the same time. 'WM_TRANSIENT_FOR' has higher priority if
# detect-transient is enabled, too.
#
# detect-client-leader = false;
detect-client-leader = true;

# Resize damaged region by a specific number of pixels.
# A positive value enlarges it while a negative one shrinks it.
# If the value is positive, those additional pixels will not be actually painted
# to screen, only used in blur calculation, and such. (Due to technical limitations,
# with use-damage, those pixels will still be incorrectly painted to screen.)
# Primarily used to fix the line corruption issues of blur,
# in which case you should use the blur radius value here
# (e.g. with a 3x3 kernel, you should use `--resize-damage 1`,
# with a 5x5 one you use `--resize-damage 2`, and so on).
# May or may not work with *--glx-no-stencil*. Shrinking doesn't function correctly.
#
# resize-damage = 1;

# Specify a list of conditions of windows that should be painted with inverted color.
# Resource-hogging, and is not well tested.
#
# invert-color-include = [];

# GLX backend: Avoid using stencil buffer, useful if you don't have a stencil buffer.
# Might cause incorrect opacity when rendering transparent content (but never
# practically happened) and may not work with blur-background.
# My tests show a 15% performance boost. Recommended.
#
# glx-no-stencil = false;

# GLX backend: Avoid rebinding pixmap on window damage.
# Probably could improve performance on rapid window content changes,
# but is known to break things on some drivers (LLVMpipe, xf86-video-intel, etc.).
# Recommended if it works.
#
# glx-no-rebind-pixmap = false;
glx-no-rebind-pixmap = true;

# Disable the use of damage information.
# This cause the whole screen to be redrawn everytime, instead of the part of the screen
# has actually changed. Potentially degrades the performance, but might fix some artifacts.
# The opposing option is use-damage
#
# no-use-damage = false;
use-damage = true;

# Use X Sync fence to sync clients' draw calls, to make sure all draw
# calls are finished before picom starts drawing. Needed on nvidia-drivers
# with GLX backend for some users.
#
# xrender-sync-fence = false;

# GLX backend: Use specified GLSL fragment shader for rendering window contents.
# See `compton-default-fshader-win.glsl` and `compton-fake-transparency-fshader-win.glsl`
# in the source tree for examples.
#
# glx-fshader-win = '';

# Force all windows to be painted with blending. Useful if you
# have a glx-fshader-win that could turn opaque pixels transparent.
#
# force-win-blend = false;

# Do not use EWMH to detect fullscreen windows.
# Reverts to checking if a window is fullscreen based only on its size and coordinates.
#
# no-ewmh-fullscreen = false;

# Dimming bright windows so their brightness doesn't exceed this set value.
# Brightness of a window is estimated by averaging all pixels in the window,
# so this could comes with a performance hit.
# Setting this to 1.0 disables this behaviour. Requires --use-damage to be disabled. (default: 1.0)
#
# max-brightness = 1.0;

# Make transparent windows clip other windows like non-transparent windows do,
# instead of blending on top of them.
#
# transparent-clipping = false;

# Set the log level. Possible values are:
#  "trace", "debug", "info", "warn", "error"
# in increasing level of importance. Case doesn't matter.
# If using the "TRACE" log level, it's better to log into a file
# using *--log-file*, since it can generate a huge stream of logs.
#
# log-level = "debug";
log-level = "warn";

# Set the log file.
# If *--log-file* is never specified, logs will be written to stderr.
# Otherwise, logs will to written to the given file, though some of the early
# logs might still be written to the stderr.
# When setting this option from the config file, it is recommended to use an absolute path.
#
# log-file = "/path/to/your/log/file";

# Show all X errors (for debugging)
# show-all-xerrors = false;

# Write process ID to a file.
# write-pid-path = "/path/to/your/log/file";

# Window type settings
#
# 'WINDOW_TYPE' is one of the 15 window types defined in EWMH standard:
#     "unknown", "desktop", "dock", "toolbar", "menu", "utility",
#     "splash", "dialog", "normal", "dropdown_menu", "popup_menu",
#     "tooltip", "notification", "combo", and "dnd".
#
# Following per window-type options are available: ::
#
#   fade, shadow:::
#     Controls window-type-specific shadow and fade settings.
#
#   opacity:::
#     Controls default opacity of the window type.
#
#   focus:::
#     Controls whether the window of this type is to be always considered focused.
#     (By default, all window types except "normal" and "dialog" has this on.)
#
#   full-shadow:::
#     Controls whether shadow is drawn under the parts of the window that you
#     normally won't be able to see. Useful when the window has parts of it
#     transparent, and you want shadows in those areas.
#
#   redir-ignore:::
#     Controls whether this type of windows should cause screen to become
#     redirected again after been unredirected. If you have unredir-if-possible
#     set, and doesn't want certain window to cause unnecessary screen redirection,
#     you can set this to `true`.
#
wintypes:
{
# tooltip = { fade = true; shadow = true; opacity = 0.75; focus = true; full-shadow = false; }
  dock = { shadow = false; }
  dnd = { shadow = false; }
# popup_menu = { opacity = 0.8; }
# dropdown_menu = { opacity = 0.8; }
};

~~I actually use refresh-rate = 59 on my system because primary screen uses 59.93 Hz refresh rate and explicitly setting it like that improves mouse responsiveness.~~ Not anymore due choppy rendering. The config is simple, subtle shadows around window borders, fading effect when activating/deactivating windows, VSync, unredirection enabled for fullscreen windows - useful for games so only their own VSync applies if enabled, compositor gets out of the way either way to not have extra input lag, exceptions may be added as desired since some web browsers and video players may be unredirected when in fullscreen mode, therefore the result is screen tearing. xprop WM_CLASS -> click on the application to get its window class name, second string is needed. It's possible to use pattern matching to catch multiple windows with similar class name with one rule, used above to catch windows of different branches of certain Chromium based web browsers that I happen to know about. Vanilla Chromium and Firefox don't seem to need it. Some settings may need adjusting depending on the environment. Config changes apply as soon as the file is saved while picom is running.

For having picom auto-start, I researched how to get systemd to launch it, so I basically turned it into systemd managed service. Running:

systemctl --user --full --force edit picom.service

Will result in ~/.config/systemd/user folder being created if it doesn't exist yet where a text file picom.service will appear with the following content you paste in the editor that opens:

[Unit]
Description=Picom X compositor
Documentation=man:picom(1)
PartOf=graphical-session.target
StartLimitBurst=3
StartLimitIntervalSec=60

[Service]
ExecCondition=sh -c "~/check_x11.sh"
ExecStart=/usr/bin/picom
Restart=on-failure
RestartSec=10

[Install]
WantedBy=graphical-session.target

The above references script check_x11.sh, placed directly in user's home folder, it ensures Picom isn't started when logging into Wayland session since it only supports Xorg / X11:

#!/bin/bash

if [ "$XDG_SESSION_TYPE" == "x11" ]
then
    exit 0
else
    exit 1
fi

Then finally:

# Enable service auto-start and start it now
systemctl --user --now enable picom.service

You may be reading this in the future where the above may already be sufficient and results in picom starting after other services when it's supposed to at login, but otherwise, in case of using KDE desktop environment, it will only work if you have systemd version >= 246 and Plasma >= 5.21 and explicitly enable desktop environment setting to have Plasma services started up by systemd:

kwriteconfig5 --file startkderc --group General --key systemdBoot true

OTHER DESKTOP ENVIRONMENTS MAY NEED DIFFERENT STEPS TO GET IT WORKING PROPERLY WITH SYSTEMD! IT SHOULD ALSO BE ENSURED THAT THE DESKTOP ENVIRONMENT DOESN'T HAVE THEIR OWN COMPOSITOR OR HAVE IT DISABLED. EASIEST METHOD TO AUTO-START IS PROBABLY THROUGH DESKTOP ENVIRONMENT'S GUI FOR ADDING STARTUP ENTRIES, THOUGH THAT DOESN'T PROVIDE FACILITY TO RESTART IT IN ODD CASE OF FAILURE / CRASH.

The file mentioned in the above command is located in ~/.config folder. This desktop's services being managed by systemd is relatively recent development, there's still some room for improvement (Plasma and the systemd boot).

With the above disabled, picom may still be started by systemd by replacing using WantedBy=default.target in service config file under [Install] section. Reload this specific service's config by running:

systemctl --user reenable picom.service

default.target may cause it to start when it's not supposed to (console login?) so it won't be able to do anything and exit (and repeat that 2 more times). Following described procedures alone skips digging deeper into systemd specifics.

November 21, 2021

5 hours ago, Wunderbar98 said:

RetroZilla with msfn.org domain allowed via NoScript still didn't load the printer picture above. Needed to multi-boot to newer OS to view, how handy-dandy.

I have an old account on Imgur. Links 2.25 on Linux displays it fine though, so no JavaScript actually needed. Does RetroZilla have a problem with the image itself? :dubbio: Direct link to test: https://i.imgur.com/Nxe2lmA.jpg (needs TLS 1.2, but so does MSFN if I'm not mistaken). And a smaller one: https://i.imgur.com/Nxe2lmAm.jpg

6 hours ago, Wunderbar98 said:

To you i'm back in the stone age, 19" CRT monitor with 1152 x 864 resolution. Your comment regarding 3840 x 2160 is off the chart. Here a 720p video would not play back smoothly at all, i need 640 x 360.

Heh, I know you're also still rolling with 800 MHz CPU. Hardware was rapidly advancing back then, the box of Asus P4B533 motherboard from 2002 boasts about 3+ GHz support.

Interestingly, I haven't read about anyone here with a computer of the similar specs that my family's first PC had, so 133 MHz Pentium, 16 MB of RAM, 2D only graphics card and a sound card with a proper FM tuner. Those were the times. Wonder what period incorrect software we could find for those specs.

On 11/20/2021 at 7:24 AM, Wunderbar98 said:

Quick searching, not important here, one package is 'ink' (tool for checking the ink level of your local printer), available direct from repository. It's dependency 'libinklevel' supports many printers, including Epson Stylus D92 (@Gansangriff) and HP DeskJet 3550 (@UCyborg). My two printers are not listed as supported (HP 4480, Canon MX310) but the site has disclaimers:
http://libinklevel.sourceforge.net/

Great, that was easy to get going. In Arch world, it's available in AUR, so at least with pamac available out-of-the-box on Manjaro, it's as simple as running:

pamac build ink

On 11/20/2021 at 7:24 AM, Wunderbar98 said:

There are graphic front-ends for at least Gnome and KDE.

Found QInk, though it remains to be seen if there are incompatibilities with Qt5 libraries other than altering path to some #includes since this is Qt4 era program. Seems there's also non-existent #include in the code pointing to presumably local header bundled with the code, but maybe it's auto-generated by a different build procedure than the classic ./configure && make. Qt stuff definitely seems to have some specifics when it comes to building. Might research more at another point in time and possibly learn something new along the way, but otherwise happy with cmd-line ink tool.

November 21, 2021

On 11/12/2021 at 2:54 AM, Wunderbar98 said:

Video acceleration, can't comment, to use YouTube?

It's a nice-to-have since GPUs are naturally good at decoding videos and it frees CPU for other tasks. Some also notice better battery life on laptops and reduced fan noise. Firefox had some VA-API support years ago, then they dropped it because it supposedly wasn't implemented optimally. Still, it made a difference on my low-end laptop (lagging 720p playback vs smooth 720p playback).

Chromium had VA-API support patch available for some time (going back to at least 2016), it seems it made it to upstream in recent time and Firefox also re-implemented it. Can't use it on my desktop since NVIDIA only implements VDPAU in their drivers and VA-API->VDPAU converter library doesn't work. VA-API is most widely supported, but according to Arch Wiki, other non-browser software dealing with videos tend to support VDPAU as well.

Surprised GPU decoding of H.264 4K (3840x2160) 60 FPS videos work here even though vdpauinfo declares 5.1 as max supported level, the mentioned resolution and frame-rate combo is supposed to be 5.2. That wasn't the case few years back when the limit was 4.1 if I remember correctly and there was an error message about unsupported level when trying to play video above that.

19 hours ago, Wunderbar98 said:

RetroZilla can't properly research all sites, such as HP official. Two sources indicated HP DeskJet 3550 from Windows XP onward but if you say Windows 98 then bonus. Maybe i've been too harsh on printer manufacturers or maybe things are slowly improving.

Well, that printer is from another era. Seems there's no support page anymore. I remember reading on their site to get the driver on Windows Update for recent Windows versions few years ago. Vista is the only MS OS that includes driver for this printer out-of-the-box. I found original cartridges still for sale on HP site. Anyway, the close-in photo of the text on the included driver CD:

Off-topic remark, but I'm really not a fan of printing and printers. These days, it's needed here once in a blue moon for some stupid real-life bureaucracy. There's no point in owning a printer for printing once in a blue moon, especially not this kind since apparently cartridges don't react well to being unused for extended periods of time.

But the family wanted a new printer (ended up getting a multi-function device) when catridges for the old one weren't found in a nearby shop and gotta have these things at home when needed rather than having to visit a post-office. So a thing was used for scanning a document or two and printing a thing or two and this time it barely prints, so ended up printing that thing at workplace.

Maybe cleaning cartridges and contacts would help, but I'm almost certain nobody will need to print anything the next year.

November 19, 2021

On 11/13/2021 at 8:41 PM, Wunderbar98 said:

There are users here complaining about poor GNU/Linux performance, then it's discovered they run fully loaded Ubuntu or Mint or use heavy Desktop Environments like Gnome or KDE.

On 11/14/2021 at 9:00 PM, Wunderbar98 said:

I think Xfce may be the closest to the traditional Windows feel, not too heavy, IIRC even has a 'control panel'.

On 11/14/2021 at 9:04 AM, Gansangriff said:

I'd suggest to new Linux users to use the Xfce desktop at first, and if that runs super perfectly smooth and becomes to look "boring" or "eeek, 90s" then try out more ressource-heavy environments like KDE or similar.

I remember this article from 2019 comparing KDE and Xfce on performance front: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonevangelho/2019/10/23/bold-prediction-kde-will-steal-the-lightweight-linux-desktop-crown-in-2020/

22 hours ago, Wunderbar98 said:

Don't blame GNU/Linux, who has already provided a working driver, for a printer Epson and Windows abandoned more than 10 years ago.

I have an old HP printer in the basement (DeskJet 3550) that works all the way from Windows 98 to Windows 10 (64-bit) and Linux, not sure if there's a way to check ink on the latter though.

November 18, 2021

I see number of dislikes. Pretty sure I didn't few days ago.

November 13, 2021

This Aero theme is the closest you'll get to the look of how you could get Firefox to look in the golden age from around 2009 or so. This isn't mentioned, but you must also turn on toolkit.legacyUserProfileCustomizations.stylesheets in about:config page, the chrome folder in the ZIP goes to your profile folder, check it on about:support page.

I haven't looked into what exactly is needed if you only want proper aero in the upper area.

This method doesn't restore rendering of plain web page elements, like buttons, radio boxes, check boxes scroll bars etc. These rendered using OS theme in the old versions, apparently there's still a pref to restore them that way by disabling widget.non-native-theme.enabled and enabling widget.disable-dark-scrollbar.

Setting browser.uidensity to 1 will enable compact mode, which reduces URL/search bar height.

November 11, 2021

On 11/10/2021 at 10:38 AM, jaclaz said:

It must be very comfortable living, when you are rich.

Yes, it is.

November 11, 2021

Linux (the kernel) has been in my life in one way or another for years, obviously quite scalable. It runs on the WRT54GL router (which I don't use anymore) and my smartphone. On my desktop it's mostly for messing around, trying out certain software and there are certain Linux tools that I simply prefer over Windows ones. I love GParted and command line utilities for messing with disks/partitions. I realize things related to desktop didn't get much attention than other parts, Torvalds himself also pointed out something along the lines that he intended Linux for desktop, but didn't quite turned out as well in that department and turned out better for servers and such.

Years ago, I could play Quake Live from Linux distro running on USB while I was waiting for new disk since old was sent in for warranty due to bad sectors. It was somehow launched from the browser, but I don't think it was WebGL, Wikipedia says it used NPAPI plugin, so i suppose that's how they made a client outside the web browser. Pretty cool until id Software dropped support and made it Windows only.

I just often notice someone writes Linux is faster, but don't note the exact specifics, so me being a sucker for anything graphics quickly notices things like elements on web pages not animating smoothly and such. I know itvision.altervista.org covers modern Windows and Android and I don't disagree. I wouldn't call it FUD though. Negative? Yes, but reality is pointless and cruel, so...

November 11, 2021

Yeah, just realized yesterday evening I missed it, was too tired to write that I missed it. Still wondering if there is any other XUL addon supporting browser with such functionality.

Funny thing about XUL addons, despite the possibilities, we got some WebExtensions these days that surpass XUL alternatives. Obviously, this is about extensions interacting with web pages, not messing with UI, eg. (Greasemonkey vs Tampermonkey, KeeFox vs Kee, Stylem vs Stylus etc.).

Guess it makes sense since most people are on Chromium, followed by modern Firefox, at least on Windows.

November 10, 2021

Besides vanilla Firefox (and supposedly Waterfox as well), what Firefox-derived browsers have multi-account container feature, either built-in or as an extension (doesn't matter)?

November 9, 2021

I'd have to get a distro with a bleeding edge kernel if I wanted to test if the bug still exists, but unless something changed since summer, you can break the entire audio subsystem until reboot by telling the HD audio driver to re-initialize.

https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/sound/hd-audio/notes.html

What's also interesting, the current Linux HD audio driver of 2015 did not care about status of jacks. The current one does, I need a registry (on Windows) / config file (on Linux) tweak if anything is to come out of rear speaker/headphone green jack because the sensor is broken and system thinks nothing's plugged there.

Drivers have always been kinda finnicky since they often don't get as much attention than their Windows counterparts. I've always had fun with graphics drivers. Years ago they said ATI/AMD sucks, get NVIDIA, now they say NVIDIA sucks, get AMD. :buehehe: Like I'm changing graphics cards like underwear.

There was also the driver for Realtek RTL8723BE Wi-Fi adapter, quite unstable out-of-the-box years ago, needed disabling its power management, otherwise a kernel panic followed shortly.

Linux distro can probably work as main and only OS for people that don't have certain expectations, there's still a lot to improve in the Linux world.

3 hours ago, Wunderbar98 said:

It's also running Firefox ESR v78.15.0, compiled by Debian without SSE2 requirement. This ESR release is, however, buggy with occasional tab crashes. Suspect there's code base specific to newer processors, even though compiled with non-SSE2 flags.

Do you get SIGILL (run Firefox from terminal to get an error on exit)? Some parts of code may still require it if they generate SSE2 instructions at runtime and those parts weren't rewritten, which would probably be significant effort.

November 9, 2021

50 minutes ago, Mathwiz said:

OK, so it's a board issue rather than a browser issue.

@InterLinked has some Dark Mode thingy in his Iron 70 that adds the black background to quote boxes when he posts.

The forum software accepts HTML formatting in these boxes, so you can post black, brown, red on pink...

1 hour ago, Mathwiz said:

Edit: Adding a code snippet to <profile folder>\chrome\UserContent.css like this:

I might mention Stylem here so you can have these things in the GUI and a toggle to turn them on/off.

November 9, 2021

Should look like this on Win7:

November 6, 2021

I looked through System settings on Manjaro KDE and font anti-aliasing is enabled by default. Turned it off to see what it's like and holy crap, hell no, can't imagine using that setting on regular basis. No, ne, nein, nyet, aniyo, na-ah.

So it's nothing to do with fonts (maybe certain types of fonts are exception, but I wouldn't know for certain), just how they're rendered. Chromium browsers on Linux apparently do follow system settings, so nothing out of the ordinary here (ignoring possible exceptions with niche distros/desktop environments).

But they apparently, at least from outsider perspective, use hardcoded parameters on Windows. Edge with edge://flags/#edge-enhance-text-contrast flag enabled is the exception. Some fonts look worse than others when rendered the Chromium default Windows way and really do cause eye strain for me, though Clean Font Families, which @ArcticFoxie pointed out some time ago, can help a bit. BTW, isn't this very similar to turning off the option in Firefox browsers to use fonts set by the website, if available? Either way, depending on one's tastes, the website may lose a bit of its personality then, at least on typical Chromium browser on Windows, fallback fonts still lack that extra touch that can be achieved following system parameters.

6 hours ago, ArcticFoxie said:

I have to jump through some pretty big hoops to prevent anti-alias fonts in my Win7 installs.

They render okay in Win10.

Shouldn't they appear the same in both systems? Win10 still has ClearType enabled by default and the checkbox to turn it off is still in the ClearType tuner wizard, aka. cttune.exe.

Options are always welcome to tune them to what works for one's vision.

4 hours ago, Sampei.Nihira said:

Hi,

do you use MS Edge in a Linux distro?

I use a little bit of everything (slight exaggeration), even though I do still lean on Pale Moon/Basilisk most of the time. Chromium browsers are interesting for the heavy content, but I avoid plain Google Chrome.

November 6, 2021

I haven't tried installing Windows fonts on my Linux installation yet. Curious of what the results would be since fonts look clear out-of-the-box without any specific tweaking.

November 6, 2021

On 11/4/2021 at 6:19 AM, Mr.Scienceman2000 said:

Also win9x is running top of DOS

What was the role of MS-DOS in Windows 95?

On 11/5/2021 at 9:15 AM, Wunderbar98 said:

An old thread seemed to suggest a manual fix by moving all files off the partition then back, unfortunately this didn't work.

How exactly did you do it? I'd do this sort of thing offline with Robocopy and enabling unbuffered copying. This program first appeared in some extras Resource Kit for XP/Server 2003 I think.

Granted, my disks haven't needed defragging in years, but I had to "defrag" a Linux ISO in order for it to boot since YUMI or one of its extra utilities didn't write it to USB flash drive in contagious chunk and got an error otherwise. Robocopy was the easiest solution.

November 6, 2021

The whole thing could be interpreted as the feature, forum simply accepts plain HTML in these text boxes, there's not something immediate like BBCode, that is used to have defined, restricted set of formatting features, at least that's one of the reasons it was developed for according to my understanding.

Even if you had a locked down browser without developer tools, it could still be done by editing memory, so then the further step would be using a locked down device - you see where this is going.

Who likes severely locked down hardware/software?

November 5, 2021

16 hours ago, ArcticFoxie said:

Test - Global dark style

16 hours ago, ArcticFoxie said:

Test 2 - Global dark style

16 hours ago, ArcticFoxie said:

Test 3 - Force Dark Mode for Web Contents

Edit: I have the impression most users won't encounter this so chance of a fix from a forum-side software is low.

16 hours ago, ArcticFoxie said:

Regarding "Dark Night Mode" extension - you may be interested to know that Chrome-based browsers (Iron is Chrome-based, but I assume you already know that) do not require an extension for that functionality.

Isn't this Chromium 78+ only? He's on Iron 70, which is Chromium 70.

19 hours ago, InterLinked said:

Naturally, I am using Iron 70.

On the other hand, not much effort required to add the code manually, regardless of the browser.

So should the forum software clean it up? :dubbio:

HAX2MAX

November 5, 2021

59 minutes ago, ArcticFoxie said:

I'm just using ".ipsQuote {background: unset !important;}" for now.

Cool, somehow missed "unset" exists. Looks cleaner for this case.

1 hour ago, ArcticFoxie said:

It would be very annoying for everbody to start posting "look at me" posts and everybody having their own background color.

:thumbup

November 5, 2021

1 hour ago, ArcticFoxie said:

Personally, I feel like this is a FLAW &/or BUG in the forum software and wish that a Moderator / Administrator would chime in.

There was a guy that also managed to post "bugged" text in another thread.

1 hour ago, ArcticFoxie said:

I FIX this FLAW on my end using Stylus so I forgot all about it until another member enquired about it.

Are you targetting the element of class ipsQuote where you set background to none?

November 4, 2021

42 minutes ago, InterLinked said:

How's this coming through (with no quoting)?

Normally, but quotes look like this:

The code snippet - the added style, background:

<blockquote class="ipsQuote" data-ipsquote="" data-ipsquote-contentapp="forums" data-ipsquote-contentclass="forums_Topic" data-ipsquote-contentcommentid="1207268" data-ipsquote-contentid="183016" data-ipsquote-contenttype="forums" data-ipsquote-timestamp="1636013935" data-ipsquote-userid="428778" data-ipsquote-username="Mr.Scienceman2000" style="background:rgb(0,9,15);" id="ips_uid_2086_13">

November 4, 2021

@InterLinked
Is there a reason your quoting everyone has grayish text on black background?

October 31, 2021

On 8/16/2021 at 9:55 PM, UCyborg said:

If anyone else finds the text rendering odd, this should help:

https://winaero.com/how-to-enable-enhance-text-contrast-in-microsoft-edge/

Apparently compromises were made in Chromium code dealing with text rendering for cross-platform compatibility and Windows drew the short stick.

MS said they'll contribute this back to Chromium, but I doubt this is happening. Gotta keep Edge distinct from other Chromium variants, eh?

October 31, 2021

What you're seeing here is nothing more than custom drawn frame by the program displaying the help page.

If you want Windows 7 theme on Windows 8.1, try this one:

https://deviantart.com/damonkeyoncrack/art/Aero7-V2-for-Windows-8-8-1-429412929

October 30, 2021

On 10/29/2021 at 4:33 PM, BYTE-ME said:

@ UCyborg. So it sounds like many of the taskbar, startmenu and interface issues can be fixed with 3rd party tools?

Looks like it. Some of these will break with future builds if MS purges the code of the old Explorer/taskbar, which is still there. Win11 will have feature updates like 10 so who knows what will change in the next one.

On 10/29/2021 at 4:33 PM, BYTE-ME said:

Also, I've used OldNewExplorer but not ExplorerPatcher. Yet on the ExplorerPatcher website, isn't that the old style drive grouping shown or am I missing something?

ExplorerPatcher author must have OldNewExplorer installed as old drive grouping certainly doesn't come from ExplorerPatcher.

Out-of-the-box, it's pretty bleak. Sure, there are some useful additions, but they don't make up for omissions. Dumbing down is pretty radical in this one.

Funny someone mentioned KDE. KDE is nowhere near like this.

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Posts posted by UCyborg

KDE + KWin compositor performance on NVIDIA GPU

Multi-boot Windows 9x with current GNU/Linux

Multi-boot Windows 9x with current GNU/Linux

Multi-boot Windows 9x with current GNU/Linux

Youtube is hiding dislike count from videos. Censorship or your benefit? (spoiler it is first one)

Firefox broke aero (intentionaly?)

Minor inconsistencies - The only constant is change

Multi-boot Windows 9x with current GNU/Linux

Mozilla and Firefox has turned into evil and lie to their userbase. Leave it and go for alternatives

Mozilla and Firefox has turned into evil and lie to their userbase. Leave it and go for alternatives

Multi-boot Windows 9x with current GNU/Linux

My Browser Builds (Part 3)

Microsoft Edge Chromium (Updated: July 1st, 2025)

Microsoft Edge Chromium (Updated: July 1st, 2025)

Microsoft Edge Chromium (Updated: July 1st, 2025)

Running Windows 98 in 2020 and beyond...

Bug: Black background quote boxes

Bug: Black background quote boxes

Bug: Black background quote boxes

Bug: Black background quote boxes

Bug: Black background quote boxes

Bug: Black background quote boxes

Microsoft Edge Chromium (Updated: July 1st, 2025)

Hidden "Aero" Theme on Windows 8.1

Windows 11 First Impressions

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