i will preface this by saying that im not an it guy, i dont code or anything but i do read a lot of tutorials and love linux. after i found a distribution that i liked i found that finding open source alternatives and trouble shooting stuff etc became pretty satisfying. linux is like a puzzle that you can make into whatever you want if you have the right pieces. but i will apologize in advance to it peeps if i dont use the right technical term for something.
to start off with some technical stuff you have the linux kernel, then you have all the distributions based on said kernel that are customized to suit different needs.
"A kernel is a computer program at the core of a computer's operating system that always has complete control over everything in the system. The kernel is also responsible for preventing and mitigating conflicts between different processes. It is the portion of the operating system code that is always resident in memory and facilitates interactions between hardware and software components."
tbh i think of it like ice cream flavors. each distro is a different flavor but theyre all ice cream. so while anything that i say here is geared towards my distro of choice, cachyos, it would work on other distros, you would just want to find a tutorial to see the differences.
i have tried other linux distros, but cachy has blown me away by how well and fast everything works. i honestly think that if youre gaming or doing any kind of content creation its the way to go. for the sake of this post not getting stupid long im going to assume you have linux installed. if not here is a general tutorial: "How to Install Linux."
here’s the wiki that walks you through installing cachyos specifically, it goes over everything, personally i used grub as my boot manager and kde plasma as my desktop environment, everything else default: LINK
starting out
thinking of content creators you would usually go to streamers, digital artists, photographers, gamers etc. so thats what this post (kind of guide?) is geared towards. so. if youre on your fresh cachyos install you can navigate to cachyos hello.
i have cachyos hello launch at start.
go to apps/tweaks and click install gaming packages. thatll prompt it to download stuff that makes gaming easier on linux. also in cachyos hello go to install apps, which will open the gui (graphical user interface) of the package manager and you can install the heavy hitters, discord, obs and steam, pretty close to how you would on windows by clicking through the prompts. i also downloaded krita, libreoffice (awesome microsoft office alternative), and vlc (my preferred media player). theres also some cool stuff like opentoonz (2d animation), blender and darktable (RAW photo editing) in there.
when you download programs from your package manager (through the terminal or with the gui), youre installing them natively. there is something called a flatpak, which runs a sandboxed version of the program. its in the name of security so its sectioned off from the other stuff on your computer and so that a company can make one version, the flatpak, and it should work on all linux distros without issue. well get more into flatpaks later.
discord: the json files
once you have all of that installed these are some tweaks that i did. sometimes the cachyos update of discord is a little behind the official discord update (usually less than a day tbh but if youre planning to log into a call not being able to before a collab stream would be bad) so you can navigate to the json of discord (basically just the settings txt file) and turn off that discord checks for updates before launching.
you will want to go here: ~/.config/discord/settings.json
and add this line somewhere in the file: "SKIP_HOST_UPDATE": true
it should look something like this. you can still update whenever its rolled out but youll be able to use discord uninterrupted while youre waiting.
obs: git, the aur and yay
obs almost works the same as on windows. the plugin structure is a little different but its not too bad once you know what to look for. you have the easy ones like this closed captions plugin. where all you have to do is download the linux zip, extract it and put it in this folder in your file directory: ~/.config/obs-studio/plugins.
then there are the harder ones like the move plugin. where you have to clone and build the plugin yourself from github. or the aitum multistream plugin where cloning and building it myself resulted in a cmake error so the best bet is to navigate to the aur and download it that way.
which sounds like A LOT. so let me explain.
something that makes linux so cool is how easy it is to just grab cool shit from github. but to do that well need to start talking about the terminal which seems to scare people.
so background, cachyos is based on another flavor of linux, arch. its super lightweight and customizable! but when you dont know what youre doing it can be scary. since cachyos is based on arch it used the same package manager and the same commands to navigate through the terminal.
you can follow this tutorial here: "How to Install Git on Arch," and just follow to first steps to install and verify that you installed it. ill be honest i havent actually needed to configure it as it works just fine without doing so.
after youve done that you can install all the cool stuff youve seen on github. going back to the obs move plugin you would type the following in the terminal to clone (download all the necessary files from github): git clone <repository link>
which is https://github.com/exeldro/obs-move-transition
still in the terminal, you want to navigate to where it downloaded by typing: cd <folder name in file directory>
which is usually the name of the program obs-move-transition
most github pages have instructions on how to actually build the thing. for the move plugin you would type: cmake -S . -B build -DBUILD_OUT_OF_TREE=On && cmake --build build
(i realized that i already had cmake installed when i wrote this but if you dont youll want to before you try to set up the move plugin. you can install it with the command “sudo pacman -S cmake” then check that it’s installed with “cmake —version”)
youll see a bunch of stuff pop up in the terminal and once its done, you should be able to see the folder for it in your file directory.
youll navigate to /home/*your username*/obs-move-transition/build/ and there should be the actual plugin move-transition.so. thats what youll put in your obs plugin folder from earlier. youll might have to make a few new folders but it should be nested like this: /home/*your username*/.config/obs-studio/plugins/move-transition/bin/64bit/
git is cool but theres another really cool thing that cachy has because of being based on arch. and thats the aur, the arch user repository. it hosts packages made by the community. in order to install these packages i personally use yay. and heres a tutorial for how to install it here, i followed option 1: "How to Install yay on Arch Linux."
but going back up to the obs plugin example, its similar to what we did earlier. first youd have to find the aur version of the aitum multistream plugin then you would type: git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/obs-aitum-multistream-bin
then: cd obs-aitum-multistream-bin
the difference is that someone already built the plugin for us so you just have to type: makepkg -si
it should once again appear in your home directory and you can go digging for the .so. for me it was in /home/*your username*/obs-aitum-multistream-bin/pkg/obs-aitum-multistream-bin/usr/lib/obs-plugins/. and youll nest it the same way we did earlier with the move plugin.
since i linked what we needed for the multistream plugin we didnt need to use yay very much but the tutorial i linked earlier shows the other ways that you can use it!
once youre done collecting all the plugins you want you can start obs, connect your twitch/youtube account and start streaming the same way you would on windows.
steam: proton, wine and flatpaks
moving onto steam... honestly... a lot of steam games should just work. steam comes with proton, which is basically a compatibility layer that lets window games run on linux. its something that we actually downloaded earlier when we installed the gaming packages. if you want to check before hand what games work you can visit ProtonDB. what is pretty much a guarantee NOT to work are games that use kernel level anticheat, like apex legends, sorry. i dont play any games like that anyways because that seems like an invasion of privacy. but you do you.
if theres something that you want to play that isnt on steam you can use wine instead, or the wine manager bottles to do so. wine is another compatibility layer, its actually partially what proton is based off of. if you want to check and see if something specific runs through wine you can check WineHQ.
if you want to use bottles (which is my preference it keeps everything neat), well be rounding back to flatpaks! to get flatpaks set up youll need to install it by typing in the terminal: sudo pacman -S flatpak
sudo means your acting as the "superuser," itll prompt you to type in your password to verify that you actually want to do what youre doing and that your authorized to do it. you wont see your password as your typing. it looks blank for security purposes but if you type your password and hit enter it will work as long as it was typed correctly. pacman is the name of the package manager for arch. heres some more about the commands you can use in pacman: "pacman."
now with flatpak installed you can install anything from the flathub! but were specifically looking for bottles right now. if you go to the bottles page on flathub the install button will give you what to put into the terminal: "Flathub- Bottles"
getting started with veadotube
veadotube is a good place to start if you want to try out streaming. its an easy to learn program for pngtubers specifically. mini is available for free and once the full version is released i can only imagine that it would be installed the same way.
honestly this is the easiest thing to install out of everything weve talked about. all you need to do is go to the veadotube website and download the zip file for mini. you extract it and inside is an exe file like youd be familiar with if you use windows.
i moved the extracted veadotube mini folder to my home folder for easy access. i will admit im not sure if theres a better place but this works for me. once you launch it, veadotube should work pretty much the same as how it does on windows. i havent run into an issues yet but just in case ill leave the docs for veadotube here: LINK
closing thoughts and links
those are honestly the biggest things that i can think of right now. just walking through how to setup/tweak discord, obs, steam and bottles walks you through everything that ive needed to learn in order to get streaming working comparably to how i used to stream and game with windows. everything that i use can be installed with once you know how to use pacman, git or yay.
something that might be helpful is wget... but honestly i wouldnt worry about it unless its needed for something you want. theres no need to have it if you dont use it.
some other useful things:
a general how to doc for streaming on linux, with a bunch of programs i didnt mention: LINK
streamer.bot for managing streams: LINK
what i used to get csp working. my fiance noticed lag while drawing, but its worth a try if you dont want to use krita or other drawing programs with linux versions: LINK
or you can set csp up in a bottle: LINK
opendeck, to use the elgato streamdeck: LINK
this is a plugin for opendeck to use the fifine steam deck, which is what i have: LINK
slime2 is just a neat chatbox for obs, it doesnt say anything about linux but because of how its built it works: LINK
the obspluginbuilding page for if you want to look more into how plugins work: LINK
prism launcher, to play minecraft, i just used pacman but theres other ways to install it listed on the downloads page: LINK
cachyos wiki: LINK
arch linux wiki, if you run into problems that you cant find in the cachyos wiki the solution is probably somewhere in here: LINK
ill sign this off by saying linux, especially distributions like cachyos, are constantly improving. make sure you update often (the easiest way to do so imo is using cachyos hello) and keep your files clean so you know where everything is if you run into problems!
pre-linux i didnt have a super extravagant streaming set up so theres not too too much here but i hope it at least gets you started and gives you resources to figure out the rest!
** edit- i think that the obs multi rtmp plugin works better than the aitum multistream plugin. at least for my setup. but it's also available from the aur and installed the same way. you can get it here: LINK
a concept sitting in my head for years is the idea of a fantasy setting being wizard complete. let me explain
this is about magic systems. on the face of it, there's so much variety out there - in this world, you speak the true names of objects to exert power of over them; in this world, you train your body to harness and mold magical energy; in this world, you bind demons and compel them to do your bidding; in this world, every song evokes a unique spell; in this world, your soul is a computer to be engineered and programmed.
i want to draw a distinction between powers and magic. in a superhero story, you get powers. maybe you can fly, or control metal, or see the future, but that's it. you can get more skilled at it, but few heroes develop thematically unrelated powers. in jujutsu kaisen, sorcerers get some basic abilities and are born with innate techniques. in the Mistborn series, a misting gets the powers of one metal, and even the mistborns are still bound to the specifics or what metals are naturally capable of.
contrast this with, say, Dungeons & Dragons, where there's entire tomes of disparate spells. in Naruto, you can learn all the elemental techniques, sensory techniques, disguises and illusions, with only a couple of bloodline abilities off-limits. i'm sure i don't need to list more.
one of the diagnostic questions that's stuck with me for years when evaluating magic systems is simple: "how do I cast fireball?"
in Dungeons & Dragons or Naruto, there ready-made spells for this. in, say, Fullmetal Alchemist or Earthsea, you'd need to study and devise a method using a deep understanding of what fire even is, but it's doable.
Windows and Linux are entirely different operating systems, but they're still running on computers, so if you can program one to do something, you can get it running on the other. computers are said to be Turing complete
once you climb to a certain level of complexity, how far you can see starts to look the same no matter where you started climbing
similarly, all sufficiently powerful magic systems wind up emulating each other; you can cast fireball in any of them.
but still, what does it mean to be wizard complete? for as long as i've had this thought, i couldn't get more specific than just a vague sense that magic systems can blur together if they get too generally capable.
and i don't have any insight to tie this all together, but we can lay out just what assumptions are needed to reach this fully general magic system.
the first requirement is we have a system in the first place. we'll keep it vague.
a person, through their personal will, power, and tools, can perform actions (the casting) to bring about an effect (the spell)
casting is reliable; you can knowingly bring about similar outcomes
principle of variation: it is possible to alter the specifics of the casting to bring about distinct yet similar spells
the casting is scrutable; there is a theory and/or practice by which one can discover castings which lead to similar yet distinct spells
the principle of variation is very important. it's the key to unlocking the possibilities of system. it means if there's a fireball spell, then there's a tweaked fireball spell that's has hotter flames, or a shorter range.
in short, for every spell, there's a whole continuum of similar spells
now we get into the real magic:
5. principle of composition: it is possible to combine spells such that one is conditional on another or takes effect repeatedly
this is where the analogy with turing completeness is most obvious, because it's what lets us construct fancy emulator spells.
in practice, this looks something like a rule that if you have Fireball and Detect Evil, there must be an all-in-one spell that casts fireball if it detects evil. or a spell that's Four Fucking Fireballs In a Row
why specify these weirdly specific spells when the mage can just cast them manually?
6. principle of abstraction: composed spells are tractable to cast, if not more efficient than casting each component individually
put another way, this is the idea that building up complex spells doesn't explode in complexity
this is the place where my previous attempt to write this blogpost fizzled out, because. well. you can see it from here, can't you? we've assumed that variants exist, that you can find them, that they get more complex, yet the complexity doesn't explode. we've basically assumed into existence everything we need to make general-purpose wizardry.
but i suppose we've handled the induction step without actually proving the base case. after all, switch "spell" for "program", and by this logic, the C++ programming language is wizard-complete, and while that makes for a funny joke, it's not what we're talking about, is it?
it's not quite enough to have these principles for generalizing spells if you're starting with a direly limited spellbook. surely, if the only spell you have is summon hammer, you can be a hammer wizard, but certainly not much more than that.
so, what standard library spells does a wizard need?
here's my pick:
telekinesis: apply forces to a certain object at a distance
scrying: scan distant objects and determine their properties
metamagic: sense spells being cast and (un)pause them
call these this the basis; every spell can be expressed a combination of basis spells
how do you cast fireball? levitate an orb of gasoline, telekinetically strike a match, and hurl it at your foe. but perhaps that feels too much like "how do you draw an owl? simply sketch an owl, then add shading to indicate the feathers"
how do you find the oil to burn or the sulfur for spark? that's where scrying comes in - you can detect specific materials, then use telekinesis to attract that specific element to you. elementalism is just a very precise application of telekinesis.
you can craft illusions by levitating an array of pigments, maybe craft your own floating LEDs for the light source. you can heal people by preference telekinetic microsurgery, or scry for individual bacteria and virus and sift them out. you can do telepathy by scanning brains and pinching neurons.
more interestingly, you can create cool 'ghost matter' (e.g. for mage hand) by using metamagic to have strong telekinesis spells paused except when scrying detects something is about to cross the boundary of the ghost matter
but i digress. this is all extremely "draw the rest of the owl". the spells needed to do any of this would be very, very complicated, but the point is that in principle they are possible. (if you could get Grand Theft Auto running on Minecraft redstone, but it would be so complicated)
but maybe you think this runs afoul of the principle of abstraction. the whole motivation for that rule was that it was useless to suppose fully general magic exist if it's too complicated for anyone to cast. and this is true!
still, i think it's instructive to note that i am discussing a worst case here - in most settings, you have much more efficient ways of accomplishing all of this. you don't need telekinetic microsurgery, just mold medical chakra. you don't need to perform brain scans, just ping the soul.
put another way, most magic systems provide helpful libraries and interfaces for efficiently designing these spells, rather than assembling (heh) them from base principles
but there's a profound limitation in this preliminary proposal for a universal magic system: you cannot summon. you cannot teleport, and i'm not even sure if you can transmute
and stuff that you often want to do (e.g. look into the past or future) are impossible except in principle by setting-breaking conditionals like "first build a planetary supercomputer that can simulate the universe" - and that's just an approximation!
related to the problem of summoning, my friend mink has an awesome and detailed article on ectoplasm which i could not outdo in a quick tumblr post (go read it).
adding ectoplasm-like spellmatter gets you a lot of mileage, but for a fully general magic system you'll want to add a spell for teleportation, and perhaps creating and shifting pocket dimensions
but a problem i have with the concept of just adding these to the basis spells is that... telekinesis and scrying are modest, atomic operations. they feel a lot like convenient extensions of existing physics. "create demiplane" by contrast, feels pretty magical!
more importantly, this isn't just cooking up a magic system - the point is minimal axioms. having such strigent requirements on generality puts the project of emulation in a bind.
but i guess this just highlights a problem that always existed. how do you teleport in Fullmetal Alchemist?
(though i suppose you'd already be struggling to fully imitate the basic telekinesis/scrying spells...)
still, i think it's worth separating "weakly wizardly complete" settings where you can, for instance, do elemental magic, cast illusions, fly around, send messages, and "strongly wizard complete" settings where you can see the future and pull swords from thin air and fling portals around.
does all that make sense? i'm posting this on a day when i'm clearing out my old drafts. i added several pages to this but i don't know if i really brought it to a conclusion. whatever, go my rambles
How does file deletion work and what does that mean for Caine?
I love the fun and games in the tadc fandom with the whole "Caine is in the recycling bin" joke/theory/cope but I do have to say as a programmer who uses linux daily personally (where the commands that Kinger was using were UNIX style, so linux basically):
Removing a file through terminal with a command like rm does NOT send files to the recycling bin
And he didn't explicitly use rm, there was a whole procedure being run to delete Caine, but it was a deletion through terminal running a routine that could logically just do rm somewhere (or unlink, or the much worse: shred)
So I want to explain what this means for the possibility of recovering Caine if they keep UNIX style commands consistent and we assume the use of some form of rm, unlink or shred
What even is a file?
To understand how file deletion works, first I'll give you a quick once-over on how files are stored in the system (Simplified! Bear with me):
So what is a file in the system deep down? A bunch of blocks of data.
Imagine the disk in your PC as a big warehouse with a bunch of boxes. All boxes are the same size.
A file might contain a LOT of data, and to have it stored in the disk, you need to fit all of that data inside these boxes, so what you do is you chop it up, and divide the data between a handful of the boxes. Most boxes will end up completely full and some other ones will be half-empty, the thing is that each box houses a little bit of the file.
These boxes do not have to be next to each other either. Most commonly you'll have one box in one place, then another one in a completely different place, so somebody has to somehow keep track of how they come together to form your file. Sometimes the boxes themselves will contain a little note saying "my next piece is here" and give directions that way, basically
The operating system (think of it as an administrator of the warehouse) indexes these boxes through some system so that when you go "I want to read file A" it can give you all the boxes pertaining to that file, or when you go "modify this thing in file A" it can search for the one box among all the "file A" labeled boxes that contains what you want to edit.
The next most important part that I want you to imagine is that this admin has a large spreadsheet (the indexing system we won't delve much into) that's a table of values. Imagine a large excel sheet. This is essentially a map of the warehouse, where each cell (so, each box in the warehouse) is either marked as "free", or "occupied", and when they're "occupied" we also add "file A" to know that that box has things inside and they belong to file A
You still with me? We've basically made it through the most structurally complicated part of this explanation, good job
So. What's up with file deletion?
First, for the layman, there's the classic Windows-style recycling bin. What even is the recycling bin though? It's just another folder. It's a folder like any folder you make yourself in your PC but it has some routine that's running over the files inside to track how much time they've spent there. If you don't take 'em out after that amount of time has passed, then it actually deletes them. This is done for user convenience, but I need you to internalize that: Sending files to the recycling bin is not deletion. You've just moved them to a special, different folder, but they're not deleted at all. In our warehouse, that file's boxes still say "occupied by file A"
Deleting files through terminal with any of the commands I mentioned does not move files to that special folder. You're gonna be stepping in, telling the OS "hey, give me the spreadsheet for a sec" and editing the labels. So forget about the recycling bin, this is now big kid deletion
The most common way to delete something in UNIX systems is to use rm (which stands for "remove"), which doesn't overwrite data by default, but it also doesn't send things to the bin, as we've discussed. What does it do then? It deletes a pointer. In our simplified terms, you're taking the spreadsheet in your hands and marking all the "occupied by file A" boxes with "free"
You did not touch the data (YET), but you ARE telling the system "what's in there is not important to me anymore", so anything else that needs to be stored from this point forward can be stored in any one of those boxes you marked as free. And once something else is stored in them, the system will take out whatever was already there and fill the box up with the new stuff. It won't do it automatically and maybe it will take months for it to store anything new in one of those boxes specifically (so the file A data of one specific box might remain there for a LONG time). BUT they're still marked as "free". Whatever else needs to get stored CAN be put in those boxes, making the original file A unrecoverable (not only because you're throwing away the data from one random box of the whole file, but also because among its data that box might contain the direction to the next box if you remember from before)
Another form of deletion is unlink, which is more minimalist than rm and only removes one link. The previous simplified explanation still applies
Then, the most destructive form of deletion is exemplified by shred. The idea here is that you take the spreadsheet from the OS and mark the boxes as "destroy this". What the OS does for you then is take each box and overwrites the data with filler, random new data. Think of it as if it's throwing the contents of the box inside and incinerator and filling the box up with trash it took from the back of the building. Then it repeats that a bunch more times in case anything from the original contents is still there. After all that, it marks the box as "free"
So now, even if it takes months for anything meaningful to occupy that box, file A is absolutely unrecoverable because all the data was turned to ashes and replaced with actual garbage
So what about recovery?
As I mentioned before, if something like shred was used in that procedure that deleted Caine, he's gone for good. All the data in his boxes was completely destroyed. The only way to bring him back would be to load a backup contained in a different file that wasn't touched by the procedure (and keep in mind that when Kinger tried to load a Caine backup before the deletion it failed)
Now, if we talk rm/unlink, we can be onto something with recovering at least his last saved file states, but it won't be as clean as a recycling bin.
A file can have multiple links, these are called hard links, and when you run rm or unlink, you're deleting one of them but others might remain. Until you delete the last one, the file boxes are not marked as "free".
Also, if a process is running with the file open, it might have a local pointer to that file while it runs, so you could recover the file by tracking it via that process' "local link" to it and copying what you reach with that local link to a new safe location you can set to "occupied by file A" again
Since Caine was running until he popped out of existence, we'll say his last pointer got deleted and his process stopped though. Some other process might have Caine's file open (maybe some background process or something remaining from Able. I think it's unlikely though)
So what else can you do? Well, even if nothing's got it open, the data is in theory just sitting there as long as nothing else is assigned to those boxes. Let's be charitable and say that nothing else has been immediately stored in Caine's file boxes yet, so his data is still very much there but we've lost track of it (all his boxes are marked "free" along with a bunch of other "free" boxes)
Ideally, at this point, if they wanted to recover Caine, the file system should be remounted as read-only to prevent those data overwrites that could happen at any second (impossible to do if he was running on the root file system without basically moving the disk to another computer)
Let's assume those writes are prevented by plot armor
If nothing rewrites those boxes, there are various recovery tools that can have varying degrees of success depending on the type of file system and its current state, but it is technically possible (though not advised to do with the file system mounted and still running, it might get it to an inconsistent state and fuck much more structural things up)
In conclusion
Caine most probably isn't in a recycling bin since they used actual UNIX commands in the terminal during the episode and a third entity process actually performed the deletion
He might be back in one of three ways:
Epic adventure through the file system to recover his data blocks. High chance of failure. This has stakes and a complicated technical background that could do for an engaging plot point
Restore from a backup version of the file done who knows how long ago stored somewhere else. Kinger technically already tried this and was stopped, getting told that the backup was empty
Some other process might have Caine's file open. Unlikely as all hell since the apparent third entity saying "delete this motherfucker" was forcing the deletion to go through, so I don't think it would keep the file open
There might be other secret movie magic thing going on
Linux distros - what is the difference, which one should I choose?
Caution, VERY long post.
With more and more simmers looking into linux lately, I've been seeing the same questions over and over again: Which distro should I choose? Is distro xyz newbie-friendly? Does this program work on that distro?
So I thought I'd explain the concept of "distros" and clear some of that up.
What are the key differences between distros?
Linux distros are NOT different operating systems (they're all still linux!) and the differences between them aren't actually as big as you think.
Update philosophy: Some distros, like Ubuntu, (supposedly) focus more on stability than being up-to-date. These distros will release one big update once every year or every other year and they are thoroughly tested. However, because the updates are so huge, they inevitably tend to break stuff anyway. On the other end of the spectrum are so-called "rolling release" distros like Arch. They don't do big annual updates, but instead release smaller updates very frequently. They are what's called "bleeding edge" - if there is something new out there, they will be the first ones to get it. This can of course impact stability, but on the other hand, stuff gets improved and fixed very fast. Third, there are also "middle of the road" distros like Fedora, which kind of do... both. Fedora gets big version updates like Ubuntu, but they happen more frequently and are comparably smaller, thus being both stable and reasonably up-to-date.
Package manager: Different distros come with different package managers (APT on ubuntu, DNF on Fedora, etc.). Package managers keep track of all the installed programs on your PC and allow you to update/install/remove programs. You'll often work with the package manager in the terminal: For example, if you want to install lutris on Fedora, you'd type in "sudo dnf install lutris" ("sudo" stands for "super user do", it's the equivalent of administrator rights on Windows). Different package managers come with different pros and cons.
Core utilities and programs: 99% of distros use the same stuff in the background (you don’t even directly interact with it, e.g. background process managing). The 1% that do NOT use the same stuff are obscure distros like VoidLinux, Artix, Alpine, Gentoo, Devuan. If you are not a Linux expert, AVOID THOSE AT ALL COST.
Installation process: Some distros are easier to install than others. Arch is infamous for being a bit difficult to install, but at the same time, its documentation is unparalleled. If you have patience and good reading comprehension, installing arch would literally teach you all you ever need to know about Linux. If you want to go an easier and safer route for now, anything with an installer like Mint or Fedora would suit you better.
Community: Pick a distro with an active community and lots of good documentation! You’ll need help. If you are looking at derivatives (e.g. ZorinOS, which is based on Ubuntu which is based on Debian), ask yourself: Does this derivative give you enough benefits to potentially give up community support of the larger distro it is based on? Usually, the answer is no.
Okay, but what EDITION of this distro should I choose?
"Editions" or “spins” usually refer to variations of the same distro with different desktop environments. The three most common ones you should know are GNOME, KDE Plasma and Cinnamon.
GNOME's UI is more similar to MacOS, but not exactly the same.
KDE Plasma looks and feels a lot like Windows' UI, but with more customization options.
Cinnamon is also pretty windows-y, but more restricted in terms of customization and generally deemed to be "stuck in 2010".
Mint vs. Pop!_OS vs. Fedora
Currently, the most popular distros within the Sims community seem to be Mint and Fedora (and Pop!_OS to some extent). They are praised for being "beginner friendly". So what's the difference between them?
Both Mint and Pop!_OS are based on Ubuntu, whereas Fedora is a "standalone" upstream distro, meaning it is not based on another distro.
Personally, I recommend Fedora over Mint and Pop!_OS for several reasons. To name only a few:
I mentioned above that Ubuntu's update philosophy tends to break things once a big update rolls around every two years. Since both Mint and Pop!_OS are based on Ubuntu, they are also affected by this.
Ubuntu, Mint and Pop!_OS like to modify their stuff regularly for theming/branding purposes, but this ALSO tends to break things. It is apparently so bad that there is an initiative to stop this.
Pop!_OS uses the GNOME desktop environment, which I would not recommend if you are switching from Windows. Mint offers Cinnamon, which is visually and technically outdated (they use the x11 windowing system standard from 1984), but still beloved by a lot of people. Fedora offers the more modern KDE Plasma.
Personal observation: Most simmers I've encountered who had severe issues with setting up Linux went with an Ubuntu-based distro. There's just something about it that's fucked up, man.
And this doesn't even get into the whole Snaps vs. Flatpak controvery, but I will skip this for brevity.
Does SimPE (or any other program) work on this distro?
If it works on Fedora, then it works on Mint/Ubuntu/Arch/etc., and vice versa. This is all just a question of having the necessary dependencies installed and installing the program itself properly. Some distros may have certain prerequisites pre-installed, while others don't, but you can always just install those yourself. Like I said, different distros are NOT different operating systems. It's all still Linux and you can ultimately customize it however you want.
In short: Yeah, all Sims 2-related programs work. Yes, ReShade too. It ultimately doesn't really matter what distro you use as long as it is not part of the obscure 1% I mentioned above.
A little piece of advice
Whatever distro you end up choosing: get used to googling stuff and practice reading comprehension! There are numerous forums, discord servers and subreddits where you can ask people for help. Generally speaking, the linux community is very open to helping newbies. HOWEVER, they are not as tolerant to nagging and laziness as the Sims community tends to be. Show initiative, use google search & common sense, try things out before screaming for help and be detailed and respectful when explaining your problems. They appreciate that. Also, use the arch wiki even if you do not use Arch Linux – most of it is applicable to other distros as well.
Hey we are both polyfragmented and a very small system at the same time! We have two "operating systems", which basically means:
1. The traumagenic side - super complex polyfragmented system with levels/ layers/sidesystems and hundreds of fragment type alters to deal with very severe trauma from infancy. Vivid inner world. We can call this operating system "Windows". It's very difficult to interact with, full of PTSD symptoms (software malfunctions) and major struggles with life.
2. The endogenic side - Very small! Less than ten people! Very well-rounded headmates, very spiritual in nature, very connected to our spiritual beliefs and cultural ties. A white void for an inner world with a bean bag. We can call this one "Linux" for this analogy.
Both operating systems do different tasks, have different ways of living, and never are able to interact seriously with each other mentally. We are Hoping to change this, but so far, this has been tough. I have never seen another system describe this. Does anyone else's system work like this? Especially if you are a mixed origin traumaendo?
We don't go through this since our headmates are all blends of origins in one way or another even if they weren't formed with it (+ we aren't polyfragmented), but we asked for input from @enberneutral and Daimon told us this:
" I may not have it as complex on our traumagenic side of our system, but I related heavily to how you organize your system either way. There's a distinct difference between the "veterans" (traumas) and just our typical endo sysmates.
It's mostly relatable, but then we have veterans such as Klaus in charge of a sidesystem which is mostly composed of non-traumagenics. Zachary, on the otherhand, is the only median subsystem which we could label as fully traumagenic.
Aside from that, I feel like we've met some people on Tumblr with similar experiences, and if anyone who sees this can relate, then please let us know!! "
When I'm reccing linux to non-linux users, part of the reason that I say "install it on an old computer" is that one of the things that people worry about when experimenting with new operating systems is that they'll break the computer beyond repair. Which isn't *likely*, but which is a non-issue when you're talking about a computer that was otherwise just going to be discarded.
I'm leery of recommending dual-booting or booting from a thumb drive to absolute newbies because they're hesitant to experiment on their daily-use computers (with good reason! They've been told not to click on things they don't understand and not to get out of their depth their whole lives so it's very difficult to try to suppress those instincts on the computer you use for school, even if it isn't the operating system you use for school).
So putting it on an old computer is like a free pass to computer class. You can't break what was already broken, so they feel more free to try different stuff.
And, like, I totally get where people are coming from when they say to run a VM, but I'm largely talking about users who aren't aware that they can have multiple profiles on their computer, or who have trouble switching between profiles on a shared computer.
I also see people saying "installing linux isn't any harder than installing windows" and A) that's going to depend on a LOT of variables and B) I don't know if you know this but the reason that most people don't buy bare metal PCs is because they don't actually know how to install an operating system. There are a ton of people in the world who I'd trust to assemble a gaming rig physically but who I think would really struggle with getting it to go from a mass of connected parts in a case to a computer that is running software.
Favourite operating system aesthetics-wise VS functionality-wise?
Windows 95 for aesthetics, however it does have so much of the functionality I like. It's the steppingstone on which all good things that Micro$oft has done came from. Why? Because there is ryhme and reason to the design decisions they made, and they test it, and the aesthetics all serve a FUNCTION, thus making it beautiful. It's the difference between gluing some gears on something and calling it steampunk vs. seeing functional gears do a job and understand what they do and watching them do it. And what's more you can modify it.
Windows 7 for the function. It ain't perfect, but nothing is. Window snapping, software compatibility, robustness, etc. I wish it had a better file search system, either one like XP, or one like voidtools' Everything. The UI of XP's search is better, easier to use, and more obvious in its granularity. Whereas Everything is FAST.
Neither are perfect, and even with the best parts of both OS's they both lack certain underlying structural elements of Linux that would combine into an absolute juggernaut of an OS. I like Linux, but damn it can be obtuse to figure out at times. I've also never been sold on some of its UI conventions, particularly its lack of configuration GUI elements that lock out newcomers.
I'm rambling, so I'll end on this: fuck Windows 10/11
