this post was submitted on 05 Oct 2024
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What software have you found particularly frustrating or difficult to configure on Linux?

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[–] rekabis@lemmy.ca 3 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago)

I still don’t properly grok Selinux at a fundamental and instinctual level. I understand the need for it, and I work with it to the best of my ability, but I wish there was a resource that could explain it from several different positions.

Irony: my main Linux workstation is OpenSuse

[–] tomsh@lemmy.world 1 points 3 hours ago

Rootless podman, PostgreSQL, redis, nextcloud, nginx, iptables in one....

[–] sue_me_please@awful.systems 2 points 4 hours ago

The hell that was configuring XFree86

[–] christian@lemmy.ml 2 points 5 hours ago

I've been on arch for years, but have recently started pc gaming. Lutris has been surprisingly easy to get working. I have a nintendo switch already and decided I want to try to use the joycons for the computer, don't want to buy gamepads but it gives and alternative to keyboard and mouse. Getting them consistently recognized by bluetooth has been a massive pain, but after searching I've figured out a package that I can install that fixes the issues. In fact, I couldn't find anyone who found a solution to this issue without installing this specific package.

That package is pulseaudio-bluetooth, even though the nintendo joycons do not have an audio jack or capability to receive audio. I've had my audio set up and configured with alsa, and alsa does everything (relating to audio) that I need it to, but pulseaudio-bluetooth requires me to install pulseaudio (duh) and will not work unless I enable the pulseaudio service, which fucks up my alsa config. I've spent a while trying to dick around trying to get pulseaudio to pretend it doesn't exist except for connecting joycons, but there's always some nuisance popping up. I also tried using a different usb bluetooth controller and plugging them into different usb ports. Given up for the moment and will probably just buy another gamepad and hope it works better without needing pulseaudio-bluetooth.

In all honesty I still don't really know what the hell I'm doing on arch, I originally installed it to learn this stuff better but all I've really learned is how to read documentation well enough to get things working by trial-and-error. I've had a stable system for like ten years now though and I'm too comfortable with it to warrant switching to a friendlier distro, but this specific issue is a pain in the ass.

[–] steeznson@lemmy.world 5 points 8 hours ago

I remember being stubborn and trying to setup eduroam at my uni library using only wpa_supplicant for a whole day. Hugely frustrating. Gave up and installed NetworkManager and it just fucking worked... my tech minimalism phase was extremely counterproductive lol

[–] electric_nan@lemmy.ml 4 points 9 hours ago (2 children)

Pretty much everything is frustrating to configure at first. Then I learn it and it's not so bad. Then I don't use it for a few years, and completely forget how! Back to step 1.

[–] quinkin@lemmy.world 2 points 3 hours ago

Initial thought was "I can't think of anything". Then I started scrolling through this thread showering upvoted on all of the repressed memories.

[–] golden_zealot@lemmy.ml 4 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago) (1 children)

I learned this lesson pretty quick when working in IT.

It's not always feasible to document everything as it happens, but I definitely learned to do so if I had the time and means to while I was doing the thing.

Just started at a new company with 0 documentation, they're super psyched that I've actually been writing down all their processes/procedures/configurations etc. as they explain them to me/as I work with them.

[–] electric_nan@lemmy.ml 3 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

I really should learn this habit.

[–] golden_zealot@lemmy.ml 2 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

If you want to get into doing it, I found searching through a lot of note taking applications until I found something I really liked helped me remember to go do it regularly.

For FOSS stuff a lot of people like Joplin, and I could certainly recommend it. Personally though, I really like Obsidian for its backlinking and graph view features, but it's not open source.

Furthermore, just carrying around a notebook and a pen everywhere you go as a habit helps a lot. I got into the habit of doing this by maintaining a personal journal for some time. For writing effective notation on paper which can easily be digitized, I would recommend looking into "bullet journaling" methods, and again, finding a notebook and pen that you really quite like, helps a lot to make the experience enjoyable and develop it as a skill.

[–] electric_nan@lemmy.ml 2 points 7 hours ago

Thanks very much. I'll take a look at your suggestions.

[–] Fuck_u_spez_@sh.itjust.works 1 points 9 hours ago

Newb here who can't seem to fully grasp how permissions work and sometimes carelessly runs services as root. Help...

[–] nyan@sh.itjust.works 5 points 16 hours ago

Configuring captive portal wifi without network manager or any aids beyond what's provided by wpa-supplicant. Eventually I gave up, since it wasn't really that important.

Adjusting freetype so that it works more-or-less the way I want it to, because the maintainers hate anyone who disagrees with their current hinting algorithm and make the setting as opaque as possible. I would prefer it if they allowed me to have hinting on some fonts and exclude only the ones that were designed to be pixel-aligned, but unless something's changed recently, that option isn't even offered.

[–] _spiffy@lemmy.ca 2 points 16 hours ago

I use sway, and for the life of me can not get steam link to display my games. I have tried so many things. If I use flatpak steam it works, but it breaks remote play together, which works fine not flatpak! I can get them both to work with KDE Wayland as well. It's frustrating but also not a huge deal.

[–] LiamMayfair@lemmy.sdf.org 2 points 16 hours ago

X11. Luckily those days are over thanks to Wayland but, Jesus, are X.org config files a fucking, fiddly PITA to configure!

[–] beeng@discuss.tchncs.de 6 points 23 hours ago (2 children)

I still cannot connect to captive portals for public WiFis, eg on train or hotel and I have no idea where the config comes from.

DNS? Resolve.conf? Systemd network manager? WTF?

(Probably for the best though, so I use my phone 5G and not these suss open networks )

[–] mpease@lemmy.world 5 points 15 hours ago

I use this project (https://github.com/FiloSottile/captive-browser) which works most of the time.

Most captive portals work by answering the DNS requests with the captive portal ip. This works only if the correct dns servers are configured and a lot of security features like dnssec, DOH, ... are disabled.

More info from the project author: https://words.filippo.io/captive-browser/

[–] sntx@lemm.ee 1 points 20 hours ago* (last edited 20 hours ago) (1 children)

If you connect to the network and open firefox, it will display a toast to open the corresponding captive portals page. You can then login through that. Given that your VPN isn't blocking unencrypted connections etc.

Extrapolation of partial knowledge warning

I assume the network advertises a captive portals url and identifies you based on your MAC address.

The config is server-side (router).

[–] beeng@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 17 hours ago* (last edited 17 hours ago) (1 children)

I get "limited connection" I think when I try connect or "no internet".

I don't make it to load the portal page...

so maybe I'm not recieving at IP from the network?

[–] PancakeBrock@lemmy.zip 1 points 15 hours ago

I do construction work and travel every week. I've had this problem pop up in the last month when I connect to the hotel wifi. I just open Firefox and type in the default gateway IP and then it takes me to the login page. For whatever reason it stopped opening the page for me.

[–] JackbyDev@programming.dev 1 points 16 hours ago

I was trying to get wine to run something the other day and couldn't figure it out.

[–] luciferofastora@lemmy.zip 7 points 1 day ago

I've had to grapple with pipewire. My old pulseaudio config didn't seem to work and I wanted to migrate to the pw config file format anyway, but I found the pw docs to be highly opaque. You get a thousand solutions for commands online, or tools you can do it visually in, but to apply that config you need to start the tool...

I'm a noob, granted, but there seemed to be a lot of assumed common knowledge that I just don't have. And if I don't even know what I'm missing, it's hard to google for it.

[–] drosophila@lemmy.blahaj.zone 18 points 1 day ago (2 children)

https://xkcd.com/963/

Fortunately I haven't had to open it in a very long time.

[–] allywilson@lemmy.ml 4 points 22 hours ago

Similar here. I used to have 2 screens that if they turned off for powersaving only 1 of them would wake up. So I had a script on the desktop to do a reset and move them correctly.

#!/bin/bash
xrandr --output HDMI2 --off
xrandr --output HDMI2 --auto --same-as HDMI1
xrandr --output HDMI1 --right-of HDMI2
exit
[–] digdilem@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 day ago

Why did we have to learn what modelines were to get a picture on screen?

[–] ronflex@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago

Probably vim. It works fine out of the box but it took me way too long to figure out things like why my terminal colors were never quite right out of the box (had to set it to 256 color mode or what have you). And once I wanted to use some a few plugins the configuration started getting a bit convoluted/confusing. Hoping I have time some day/remember to figure out how to disable that annoying visual paste mode or whatever it is called that sometimes makes using it over SSH a nightmare.

[–] wfh@lemm.ee 18 points 1 day ago (15 children)

Installing Fedora. I had almost nothing to configure, it worked out of the box. How frustrating! I had the whole day planned and now what? Enjoy my free time like a pleb !?!

(/s just in case anyone was wondering)

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[–] aStonedSanta@lemm.ee 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Jellyseer in docker. It won’t accept my jellyfin login. It just spins and spins. But I plan to use it locally. And everyone says you have to sign in initially not local? I don’t know. I’m annoyed with it and gave up for now.

[–] TeryVeneno@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

I think this means it can't actually see your jellyfin instance, you need to use your computer's local network ip instead of localhost if the two containers aren't in the same pod via a docket compose file. I've had this issue before.

[–] aStonedSanta@lemm.ee 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Nah. It’s on the same docker compose file through portainer. And I’ve been using the local ip. I never use local host for some reason lol

[–] TeryVeneno@lemmy.ml 1 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

You probably need to use localhost lol or the name of container set in the docker compose file. Both might work, I forget

[–] aStonedSanta@lemm.ee 1 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

I’ll try name of container. I have tried localhost in my troubleshooting. It loads the login screen fine. But just spins for 3 minutes then errors out at some point just like the IP lol I’ll be working on it when I get home later after this flight and I’ll let you know if I solve my struggles lol

[–] TeryVeneno@lemmy.ml 1 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

Wishing you luck, it's so worth it once it works

[–] aStonedSanta@lemm.ee 1 points 6 hours ago

Container IP sorted me. Out. Woo. Thank you 🙏

[–] KarnaSubarna@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 day ago
  1. Setting up Nvidia runtime for rootless Docker containers in Linux.

  2. Resolving port :53 conflict between AdGuardHome (rootless) docker container and Systemd-Resolved.

[–] delirious_owl@discuss.online 7 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Isn't it always postfix? Not because of the software, but because of other clients and other servers.

[–] superweeniehutjrs@lemmy.world 41 points 2 days ago (8 children)

Multiple versions, paths, and installs of Python. Using pip makes it worse.

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[–] TwistedTurtle@monero.town 8 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Setting up a matrix server was a god damn nightmare for me. I eventually got it working but I hit pretty much every conceivable obstacle along the way. Getting the config file just right, the networking, the federation, the coturn server, getting end users to understand they need to backup their keys....

I'm sure it'd be easier for a Linux pro but I was in way over my head. Only got it working through stubbornness and help from the community.

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