A few weeks ago, I installed linux (Nobara, if you're curious) on my PC and hooked it up to the living room TV to use as a gaming console. I have absolutely no regret. I did it initially because apparently playing games on a shared screen is better for my kid. But I was pleasantly surprised by how smoothly Windows only games run on Linux. The whole experience has been great, and I don't think I'll ever go back. I have an nvidia gpu as well, which apparently does not work very well on Linux. For me, on Nobara, it's been working flawlessly.
The most annoying thing I encountered was the Switch controller support being rather poor. Every button press was somehow interpreted as two different buttons at the same time and I had to figure out which commands to run on Terminal to stop it from happening. Even then, the bluetooth connection on my PC was so bad that I had to stay within 3 feet lest the controller disconnects. I don't really think this is a Linux issue per se, but I recommend people buy a couple of 8bitdo controllers on Amazon which come with USB dongles if they want to go this route.
I will miss games that I can only play with mouse and keyboard, but I think there are enough games out there with controller support that this is not going to be an issue.
The "Nvidia on Linux compatibility" issues are something I wonder if I have side-stepped somehow either by lucky choice of GPUs, or lucky choice of Linux distros.
Was/is this a distro thing, or an actual issue?
Every Nvidia I've used [1] has worked perfectly, from the change for Xfree86 to Xorg, through the Compiz desktop wobbly window craze, to the introduction of GPGPU APIs like CUDA/OpenCL and recently Vulkan.
I do recall once helping a friend setup a Debian and a Ubuntu machine with Nvidia (which I never used before) and it took some figuring-out of how to install non-free drivers, so maybe my choices of Gentoo and Arch (not being as conservative towards non-free licenses as Debian/Ubuntu) always made it a non-issue?
I've also never had any trouble with NVIDIA on the desktop. I think most issues people have are on laptops, which have odd hybrid/dual GPU setups, and which exercise suspend/hibernate much more aggressively.
That's a good point that I hadn't considered. I've never had a laptop with Nvidia, I probably subconsciously avoided those dual GPU setups as they sounded hacky and I never really needed fast 3D on a laptop.
FWIW I have an Asus Zephyrus G14 and the dual graphics cards works pretty well in Linux in hybrid mode. It's pretty cool, certain things (games) run on the dedicated Nvidia GPU. Everything else runs on the built in AMD GPU.
I'm guessing it's because the laptops are popular enough that there's a dedicated group of people that make it work [0].
I'm still on X11, dunno what the story is like with Wayland though.
If you have sufficiently old Nvidia GPUs, eventually drivers and supporting software stops shipping with distros. I have a bunch of older laptops that support in Ubuntu existed for like 10 years ago, but drivers stopped being updated and Ubuntu dropped them from their repos.
We've had open source AMD drivers for... 20ish years now? Meanwhile Nvidia begrudgingly added drivers support in the last year or two. So maybe some recency bias.
> The "Nvidia on Linux compatibility" issues are something I wonder if I have side-stepped somehow either by lucky choice of GPUs, or lucky choice of Linux distros.
It could also be lucky consequence of what games you play and what else you do with your computer.
I was a long-time Nvidia user, and had plenty of problems with their drivers. They ranged from minor annoyances when switching between virtual consoles (which some people never do) to total system freezes when playing a particular game (which some people never play). It would have been be easy for someone else to never encounter these problems.
Since switching to AMD a couple years ago, I have been much happier.
nvidia x11 support has been pretty good for quite some time. It's nvidia wayland support that has been less than stellar. That has gotten better in the last year to year and a half now.
Now, I think it's no big issue so long as you are using a distro that supports up to date drivers. That should be about everyone now as I think even debian stable currently has decent drivers.
I know that Nvidia is integrated into the kernel and that wayland is talking to nvidia through the kernel. I also know that for accelerated rendering, wayland is talking directly to the nvidia drivers (bypassing the kernel? IDK).
But I also know that in the nvidia release notes, they've mentioned changes to improve support and functionality of wayland.
It has more to do with how you're using the cards. I don't see you mention gaming at all, that's where the biggest performance penalty and lack of support is apparent.
I just migrated to linux (Bazzite) in March, I have a RTX 3080. The only issue I ran into was that video stream compression is not supported on linux so I can't run 1440p 165hz with HDR on because my monitor doesn't support HDMI 2.1. Either I need to turn off HDR or lower refresh rate to 120hz.
Definitely better now with their new "opensource" driver.
I still ran in a few snags:
- DKMS can break, e.g I had a kernel bump to 6.18 or 6.19 and the nvidia driver wasn't ready yet so the build failed. A mainline driver will always win this one.
- Suspend almost always works, but sometimes fails on lid close which is of course when you can't see it fail and my laptop battery dies unexpectedly. You'd say use hybrid sleep but that reliably always fails with the nvidia driver too. Both work flawlessly with Nouveau.
Since I don't need the extra perf on this laptop I just use Nouveau to drive the the dGPU + the AMD iGPU most of the time which is powerful enough for my non-desk needs.
Agree on both counts. I use debian unstable and is usually 50/50 on whether the machine will reboot on a working display after a kernel upgrade. Very easy to fix if you have a bit of knowledge, but certainly not ready for the general public.
I don't have a laptop with an nvidia card, but I often suspend the linux gaming machine on my living room, and sometimes it doesn't come back from sleep, while my steam deck never failed to.
dude, the whole Linus sticking his finger up at nvidia meme? Its still real in 2026. The opensource ABI whatever the fuck they call it is trash. I'm absolutely ready to purchase an AMD card next GPU I buy. I don't want to give nvidia anymore money, I'm done. It'll be AMD GPUs from now on no matter the performance diff, purely because they've got a better attitude to supporting non MS deployments.
There's too much TPM/SecureBoot/Enroll key hoops you have to jump through that a lot of distros just haven't bothered with.
If I'm being completely real, I'd be running FreeBSD 15. I just could not get a working nvidia driver going in 15 and get a working X installation. Supposedly 15.1 fixes it, we'll see in June. I've always preferred the BSD design, fs layout, etc, and I would love to have a FreeBSD desktop with a wine 11 install that actually plays games.. the dream!
Nah, nvidia drivers on Linux 2026 is hands down just as easy as AMD. I’ve had no more issues than running an AMD card and everything works flawlessly. They’re 100% right at the absolutely generational improvement in nvidia drivers since they’ve released the open drivers. Linus himself straight up said anyone trying to say this stuff in current year is being super disingenuous twisting his words from ages ago and that he considers nvidia a fantastic partner nowadays. And frankly, anyone unironically trying to use X in 2026 deserves the pain, it’s been officially deprecated for a while now and they maintainers were ultra clear that the only reason to use it now is for compatibility reasons and that you should expect issues if you do. Wayland is so far ahead of X now that anyone still trying to use X is being purposefully obstinate.
> on my PC and hooked it up to the living room TV to use as a gaming console.
This is the way.
I did the same with an ITX AMD APU system. Thankfully well before the AI crunch. Running Debian because I just want it to work. Best keyboard for this setup is the Logitech Wireless Touch K400. Audio is through an older Sony receiver driving two of the floor standing Magnepan mid size speakers with a 10" sealed sub fed by a USB DAC. Mainly for music listening so no surround. The only thing I am missing is a nice wireless game pad.
I have a low power FreeBSD server running a 20TB raid z5 which serves all my media. I don't use any software contraptions like media centers or databases. I just mount file system and open a playlist in media player like god intended. Steam just works, though I haven't really gamed on this other than testing - that is what my desktop beast is for. I had issues with Hulu or whatever streaming thing in Fire Fox but had no trouble with any of them in Chrome. I know you don't get 4k but I don't care.
edit:
> I will miss games that I can only play with mouse and keyboard
When I first setup the PC I had a full wireless KB & mouse, installed Half Life lost coast and played the demo using a TV table as a stand in front of the couch. NOT ideal but would work better with a proper adjustable TV table/tray thing. My friend has one and used it to work from home on his big ass 80+ inch TV.
I have an 8bitdo Pro 2 and it's... kinda okay? 90% of the time it works great, but if I don't have an application running which looks for a controller then the controller gets disconnected and reconnected every 10 seconds or so.
If you haven't tried it, the Steam controller does a pretty good job of playing mouse&keyboard games. The original is probably hard to find now, but allegedly they'll release a new one later this year.
Keyboard & mouse user here. To lessen the pain, I moved to gyro-based gaming. I think 8bitdo has those. I specifically use the Switch joycons. I recommend you just get yourself a good BT dongle.
8Bitdo does have a gyro controller, I have the Ultimate 2. It does have some requirement to configure the gyro though, you have to boot it in `dinput` mode by holding down a button.
I have included a link from my notes, I have not actually tested it much beyond seeing that the gyro does work in steams "configure controller" thing, never got around to correctly mapping any game.
Me too. My weapon of choice is the Dualsense. Lots of great things about it in addition to gyro controls: as of late last year you can pair 4 devices with it. I have one Dualsense and roam between PS5, Bazzite desktop and Steam Deck seamlessly.
If you're asking how it's setup/configured, then Valve ships "Steam Input" that can do a lot of things and one of them is translating gyro data to mouse events.
Some games support gyro directly, but even then AFAIK people prefer Steam Input due to how configurable it is.
Another method for gyro aim is flick stick, using the right stick to control the direction of your aim (on the left/right axis) and gyro for fine tuning and also up/down axis.
With controller sticks you control the 3D camera only indirectly -- by telling the rotation velocity (in very limited range) and for how long to apply it.
With gyro you have 1:1 proportional camera position input, like with mice.
It's more or less about possibility of developing muscle memory. With (linear) gyro/mice you could sharply snap camera to a point you see on screen without much overshoot. You could turn 180 degrees in split second with eyes closed (actually with gyro people often use flick stick for such big rotations, turning instantly -- but that's besides the point)
With controller stick? Well you could try to time that 180 turn takes 1.5 seconds of holding at full deflection -- good luck developing a feeling for all the speeds inbetween zero and full deflection.
I have found that you have to keep it centered in order to keep it from moving/registering input, so it worked very similarly to an analog stick to me. Am I mistaken?
what surprised me is how Proton works under the hood... no emulation at all!
wine translates win API -> Linux. Then DXVK converts DirectX calls into Vulkan in real time, and VKD3D-Proton for DX 12.
so it always native Vulkan.. no wonder performance is even better than in windows!
> no wonder performance is even better than in windows!
Every "benchmark" I've seen from someone claiming a game performs better on Linux via Proton than on Windows was written by someone that doesn't know anything about running benchmarks or how statistics work.
You can get dongles for pretty much any controller you like.. Switch Pro, Wii U, Xbox etc. It's generally more stable than using bluetooth on a controller that supports it, especially if you position the dongle to have clear sight to your couch.
Thanks. Believable - when my kid is glued to a tablet with another kid and they're talking about what they're seeing or doing, it makes me feel much better than when she's doind the same by herself...
Yes, he discusses the Platonic aspects of his theory in a paper, “Ingressing Minds: Causal Patterns Beyond Genetics and Environment in Natural, Synthetic, and Hybrid Embodiments”:
Haven't used skills so far -- do you simply store them in your skills directory and have them automatically get used or do you have to specify one of the skills every time?
Yes regarding directory. They merged the concept of slash commands so I often do /elixir-genius to force it. Or if I just need subagents tell it to use "elixir-expert" or "elixir-qa" in parallel with other appropriate subagents. Also helps to put a mention in the Claude.md file.
His lab's work is the most interesting I've come across in a long while. In the recent interview I linked, he says they have another paper coming out soon with even more wild stuff. He gets more into his ideas about why his methods work in the podcast as well. It's so cool to be tuned in to a candidate for the most impactful bio research of the next 20 years.
I find it hard to believe too, but at the same time, Demis Hassabis has also said that AI will help us "colonize the galaxy" in as little as five years [1]. Maybe Sam Altman was emboldened by Hassabis' statement.
I would not be opposed to living in a future where I can personally live in space. It would be quite fun.
To extend my previous comparison, I believe Altman and Hassabis are the ones in the smoky room passing a joint around the circle. They’re absolutely emboldened by each other but that doesn’t mean they’re tethered to reality.
(my comparison is incomplete though, it doesn’t factor in that these two also have a huge financial incentive to be hyping this stuff up)
Five years wouldn’t be enough time to “colonise” Antarctica, let alone another planet (just one!), and certainly not anything at a larger scale, even if we were visited by aliens tomorrow and they gifted us five hundred spaceships to give us a boost.
> “If that all happens, then it should be an era of maximum human flourishing, where we travel to the stars and colonize the galaxy. I think that will begin to happen in 2030.”
You are confusing "era of maximum human flourishing ... begin to happen" with "have colonized galaxy".
Well, I didn't say I look forward to living in a tiny capsule in space, just that it would be fun to live in a time where that's possible. I'd imagine most people would not venture into space until they can make it comfortable enough.
Seriously. It would be like living on a submarine. But I guess if you don't like sky, mountains, beaches, nature, weather, animals, etc... Like, if you hate the outdoors and spend all your time in windowless rooms with poor air quality? Then OK, maybe space is for you? Also the food is probably going to be extremely monotonous, so that also needs to not matter.
Unless people are envisioning living in magical holodecks all the time, with magical food replicators? But those don't come along automatically with "space", no matter how much Star Trek you've seen...
when white people call me chinese ching chong it's not racism, but when arab people say something about bangladeshi, then of course it's racism? i have a couple guesses as to why you would think this way and it's sad.
You said it was “students” that yelled that. As I mentioned, I had a similar experience in school where another kid mocked my skin color. But these kids aren’t saying that stuff based on some racial ideology. Kids are mean and will pick up on any characteristic to mock other kids. Kids also mocked me for reading during recess. Why should I perceive these instances of childish bullying differently?
The comments by the Arabs, by contrast, is based on a racial ideology. Though I don’t get worked up about it because who cares about a random interaction at the mall? The only thing I’ve ever experienced that I’d call material racism is the social exclusion by Indian people. Because that arises in professional or workplace contexts.
Why are you asking this given what the parent comment described? Are you accusing them of lying or blowing things out of proportion? I'm truly, honestly happy that you have not experienced anything like what the parent comment described. But I grew up in west coast America and I still experienced a lot of casual racism. Park next to someone? They yell, "This ain't China, don't park so close." Walk home from school? Students yell ching chong at me. Shit is messed.
People don’t shout anything at me, racial or otherwise. Certainly not “1 in 20” strangers on the street. So I find OP’s story difficult to believe and likely lacking context.
> Park next to someone? They yell, "This ain't China, don't park so close." Walk home from school? Students yell ching chong at me. Shit is messed.
Is this “racism” or bad manners/people trying to get a rise out of you? Did that guy yell at you because you were Asian, or would he have yelled at you if you were white—just with a different comment? Same for the kids in school—if you were different in another way (fat, skinny, etc) would they have shouted that at you instead?
Do you think you’ve ever been materially prejudiced because you were Asian rather than white?
again, super happy for you. but i feel some people try to go out of their way to convince themselves that racism is not at play even when it clearly is, because it paints a picture where they are somehow "better" than those who experience hatred. the guy who yelled at me to park farther away, when I called him out on what he said, he walked up to me in an imposing manner and said, "so yeah, I can be a little racist, so what are you going to do, mr. china?" I'm not even chinese.
this is just an anecdote, and you don't have to believe what i say. but i think racism (against asians) is very real and many people are affected by it every day.
I assume such events are randomly distributed. So I’m talking about your reaction, not the conduct itself.
What I find odd is the impact of this negative interaction in a parking lot. Do you think the guy wouldn’t have yelled at you had you been white? If not, what’s the real difference between “this isn’t China” and “are you blind?”
your point is racism towards asians does not exist, because these random assholes are being assholes toward random targets and they would basically act the same way to other white people. i disagree. i believe what the grandparent comment described about their partner's experience in rural town america is more or less true. you are free to think they are a liar or an outlier. but when people you have never interacted with call you a chinese ching chong on the street when you're just walking home, you have to admit there is some racial element to their abuse. would they have yelled anything at me if i were just another white dude in their predominantly white neighborhood? somehow i highly doubt that.
no, i don't think these people go about their lives consciously trying to be especially mean to asian people. most of them have probably just internalized certain biases against asians. for the sake of convenience, i and many others have decided to categorize such patterns of behavior as racism.
again, you are free to believe that racism is not real. if you are squarely within that camp, i doubt anything i say will change your mind.
As I already told you (yes, you), I doubt anything I say will change your mind. I do hope one day you will come to see that yelling ching chong at an asian man on the street should be seen as racist if you think a bunch of Arabs were being racists just because they said the word "Bangladeshi."
Please do. I assume your post breaks this guideline:
> Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents, and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data.
Amusingly for this discussion, I started reading 'rayiner about a decade ago (long before this account) specifically because he seemed intelligent but I disagreed with him about issues involving race and the South! Being accused of being 'rayiner is an amazing twist to the story.
Re: your experiences — racists (and bigots in general) are a lot more likely to voice the bigoted things they're thinking, when the target of their vitriol looks like someone who wouldn't fight back against what they're saying. So: women (when the speaker is male and physically larger); old people; people with disabilities; etc. It's the same victim-selection logic that criminals use.
If you're the sort of person who would never expect to get randomly fucked with on the street, then you shouldn't expect to be the target of voiced bigotry, either.
> Did that guy yell at you because you were Asian
Yes, 100% it was because she was Asian.
The small town I grew up in is effectively 100% white (just by coincidence of history); but exists near some major global cities (like the one I live in now) that have a good mix of ethnicities, and especially an increasingly-large percentage of Asian people.
Due to various economic factors, many otherwise-well-to-do people can no longer afford to live in the big cities. This includes many immigrants of other races who originally moved to this country to live in these big cities, and have never visited the rest of the country. These people (including the immigrants) started off just moving to commuter suburbs — but as those shot up in land value as well, people are now increasingly moving to outlying non-cosmopolitan small towns, which do still have lower land values.
And that's shifting the demographics of these small towns.
This wave of demographic shift has not yet reached the town I grew up in.
AFAICT there is a sentiment among people who live there that they don't want "outsiders" — i.e. immigrants / anyone who's not a tenth-generation resident of the country — to move into the town. The sight of such people — especially when those people are "city slickers" doing "tourist" things in the town — enrages them.
So, it's not a prejudice these people have that's specific to any one race of people — but it is a racially-motivated prejudice. It is, essentially, a racial purity mindset — whether the people living there would call it that or not. (I say "racial purity" generally rather than "white supremacist" specifically, because this dynamic exists in provincial small towns in every country that's currently experiencing demographic shift — with the people in those small towns being bigots against any ethnicity other than their own, but especially against whichever ethnicities are increasing in prevalence in the countrie's large cities and beginning to "spill over" into small towns.)
You describe the music you want in text and it generates the whole music with or without lyrics (your choice) a la stable diffusion. You can optionally supply it with your own lyrics. I don't think it counts as "creating music" yet but with inpainting and better tooling, it can probably get to where text to image generation is today in short order.
The most annoying thing I encountered was the Switch controller support being rather poor. Every button press was somehow interpreted as two different buttons at the same time and I had to figure out which commands to run on Terminal to stop it from happening. Even then, the bluetooth connection on my PC was so bad that I had to stay within 3 feet lest the controller disconnects. I don't really think this is a Linux issue per se, but I recommend people buy a couple of 8bitdo controllers on Amazon which come with USB dongles if they want to go this route.
I will miss games that I can only play with mouse and keyboard, but I think there are enough games out there with controller support that this is not going to be an issue.
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