Here is my new GNU/Linux distribution guide about Debian KDE 12, the right GNU/Linux distribution for professional digital painting in 2024! Also about three major problems with GNU/Linux distros that will drive away all professional artists, IMO, and how I got kicked out of the Fedora KDE ecosystem with F40, which imposed Plasma6 and Wayland. I hope it helps other artists here!
It's alive! Though I had given up yesterday, after a few tries today I got NetBSD 10 running. Though booting is still a bit flaky and I am investigating freezes, I may resurrect this one after all. I could replace the Sony VAIO keyboard, but I just like this one's keys much better than the Sony's island keyboard.
@John_Livingston
Une mise à jour récente ?!?
Il y a peut-être un sujet à propos du passage de certaines distributions Linux (#Ubuntu, #Fedora...) à #Wayland au lieu de #X11 pour le rendu graphique...
I finally did it and moved to a more appropriate "home realm" for a #FreeBSD enthusiast. Thanks @stefano for offering this!
Moving followers worked flawlessly, restoring all my settings was pretty quick, but of course all my old toots are left on https://techhub.social/@zirias 🙈
So I guess I'll introduce myself here by writing a little thread, adding a few of my works that someone might find interesting. But first a bit of "who am I":
I'm a "professional" software architect/developer (mostly #dotnet platform in the day job), FreeBSD hobby-admin and ports committer, #C64 fan (and occassionally coder and even musician), and apart from computers also interested in music (playing a few instruments myself), traveling, cooking, sometimes sports, sometimes politics ... but probably won't toot about any non-technical stuff (or, very very rarely).
Let's start with my most recent opensource dev-project:
#qXmoji is an #X11#emoji#keyboard. Although it uses #Qt for its GUI, the mechanism to "type" emojis is pure X11. This means any X11 client can receive them (whether that client can correctly display them is an entirely different issue 🙈) ... not even #XIM awarenesss is needed.
The mechanism to inject fake "emoji keyboard events" is quite hacky and dirty, but it works!
Anyone has an idea why for a few weeks, the #ComposeKey under #X11 on #Debian Unstable (set via "setxkbmap -option compose:menu -option compose:rwin -option compose:rctrl -option compose:ralt") suddenly only works if I release it before pressing the first key of the wanted key combo?
If you see e.g. a "a instead of an ä from me, it's because I was used to already press " before I released the Compose Key. Very annoying and happens far too often. 🤬
Can now select 5 "scale factors" for the size of the emojis, "Tiny" being the same size as default window text (which is normally indeed tiny for emojis)
Auto-stores these settings as well as the window dimensions (not position!)
Functionally the same (just clickable emojis in tabbed groups, display size and wait-time for restoring the X11 keyboard map configurable), but v0.2 has correct README info and build-fixes, so Qt tools are found without fiddling with make variables 🙈 so, use v0.2 😎
Thinking about what to include in #qxmoji v0.5. Many questions in mind...
I'll definitely "outscope" #l10n. Would be nice, but would also mean to import localized emoji names somehow (and, where to find them? 🤔)
For now:
🔹Unify persisting settings. history and window size are persisted on exit, wait time and display scale on every change. Not sure which one is the "better" approach...
🔹Should it be "single instance"? Should it offer an option for a "tray icon"?
🔹Add an "About dialog". Cause that's what you always do. 🙈
🔹Maybe find a way to speed up initial creation of the Emoji buttons?
🔹Anything else ...❓
🔹Add a "single instance" mode (configurable)
🔹Add a "tray icon" (configurable behavior)
🔹Add an "About" dialog
🔹Enforce using Qt's "xcb" platform
🔹Fix detaching on startup, add a flag (-d) to prevent it
Pretty usable as it is I hope ... although one could of course improve a lot (but have you heard of the 80-20-rule?) 🫣
Screenshot from #KDE this time, no particular reason, I'm still running #fvwm here 😎
This brings a lot of improvements and fixes, the most relevant being immediate persistence of settings and watching the settings file for external changes. To make this feasible also for restoring the history, a lot of work went into generating static emoji data that can be used efficiently (e.g. containing a hash table to find an emoji quickly).
BTW, this even works on #NFS, so if you have your home shared and you're running qXmoji on two machines as the same user, the history will auto-update in both instances 🥳
This brings several improvements, mainly in the build system, but the major change is support for localization, with translated Emoji names imported from #Unicode#CLDR. I added a German translation, see screenshot. Once again, I'd appreciate more translations, the process to translate is documented here: https://github.com/Zirias/qxmoji/blob/master/TRANSLATE.md
Today I updated to #Fedora#KDE 40 using dnf. After I log into my main user, I get a black screen (and Discord, which opens automatically). I’ve had this issue before. I’m using a Radeon card, so it’s not that Nvidia issue. And most importantly, the desktop does work with a brand new user, which means it’s something in the user configuration. In journalctl, qt.qpa.wayland: Wayland does not support QWindow:requestActivate() is a recurring error. Is this enough info? Thanks.
Nvm, that's the #X11 variable. The relevant variable here is $WAYLAND_DISPLAY, which is set by default to wayland_1. Anybody has any idea? Or can it be that nobody cares about my problems?
Yesterday, I dusted off an old keyboard and I wanted to figure out how to set the programmable buttons. I found a Medium article with a Venn diagram of tools that worked for X11 and Wayland. If you don't know, those are display servers, which draw graphics on your screen. Well, technically display protocols, but who's counting? Here's my question: Why the EVERLOVING FUCK is my DISPLAY SERVER handling my FUCKING KEYBOARD? #linux#wayland#xorg#x11
Toller Vortrag von Rouven Czerwinski zu #Wayland. Ich habe mich da bisher immer drum gedrückt. Aber im Vortrag wird sehr schön erklärt, was es ist, wieso es entwickelt wird. Warum welche Probleme existieren, etc.
Würde ich allen empfehlen die bisher auch noch auf #X11 sind und sich der Thematik bisher verschlossen haben oder noch Vorurteile oder Halbwissen haben.
I have been using #Wayland most of the time, on all my computers, for the past year or two. It has been a pleasant ride for the most part except my increasing need for screen recording lately. This part has been a pain because software did not catch-up, yet. I will be switching to #X11 again, to get a better feeling on what Wayland powers I might miss-out on by doing so...
Before bed, I want to tell a quick troubleshooting story:
I switched to Wayland!
But DCS: World has a weird frame flickering issue.
I try Proton, doesn't help.
I try different Wine version, doesn't help.
I try messing with DXVK, doesn't help.
It's an NVIDIA driver issue related to XWayland.
I admit defeat and go back to X11.
But: Wine can be run in native Wayland mode!
I find out how to run Wine without XWayland.
It works flawlessly and more performant than ever before!