cross-posted from: https://discuss.online/post/34255100

Thought I’d create a distinct thread from the previous one asking about daily use, because I really do want to hear more on people’s pain points. Great to know people are generally sounding pretty positive in those posts who recently switched, but want to know your difficulties as well! This way old and new users can share their thoughts, hopefully to inspire a respectful discussion.

  • biofaust@lemmy.worldEnglish
    28·
    2 days ago

    I miss a task manager-like shortcut to come out to the desktop and easily kill processes freezing the PC.

      • biofaust@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        2 days ago

        Correct me if I am wrong, if I switch away from a fullscreen application, I won’t have it available to be terminated using xkill, right?

        • kiol@discuss.onlineOPEnglish
          4·
          1 day ago

          In that case you would switch back… my thought is to add xkill or similar to a keybinding so it can be called without switching away from the thing.

    • Valmond@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      9·
      2 days ago

      And knowing what’s actually eating cpu cycles. Sometimes 4 threads are at 25% but usage should be like 4-5% per thread.

    • msage@programming.devEnglish
      4·
      1 day ago

      You can always come out of everything to a separate terminal, not sure how many users actually know that.

      It’s not always helpful or even very friendly, but it can save butts.

      Ctrl + Alt + F1 or …F6, sometimes even up to F8. Usually desktop is at F2. Sometimes it’s not. But you can check them any time.

      • Trainguyrom@reddthat.comEnglish
        2·
        17 hours ago

        There was one time years ago I was working on some unholy mess of mods for Transport Fever and the game kept crashing and bringing the whole X session down with it, and instead of just rebooting like a sane person I instead started a new X session on a new terminal session. I think I got up to 4 or 5 dead x sessions before I finally finished sorting out my mods and rebooted to clean it all up

    • ALoafOfBread@lemmy.mlEnglish
      7·
      2 days ago

      Ctrl+alt+t -> xkill -> click window you want to terminate

      But yes I agree that seeing a better GUI of open programs and attached processes would be good to have.

      • biofaust@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        2 days ago

        I had a problem with Unity games on Steam freezing the PC due to fractional scaling. In that case not even the terminal would show up. Also, if I switch away from a fullscreen application, I won’t have it available to be terminated using xkill, right?

        • ALoafOfBread@lemmy.mlEnglish
          3·
          2 days ago

          If you can’t see the terminal, then that’s pretty bad so idk -> if everything goes unresponsive I just slap my monitor in impotent fury and reboot

          If you can see the terminal but not the window, idk if xkill would work. Then you’d need to find the process id and kill it with pkill.

          Like say you’re playing age of empires 2: pgrep aoe (should return all running processes called aoe with their pids > process: aoe2 pid: 69420 …or something like that) then: pkill 69420 > ded

          https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man1/pgrep.1.html

        • hallettj@leminal.spaceEnglish
          2·
          2 days ago

          In case you haven’t tried it, you can run Steam games in native Wayland mode, and get a more stable experience. Especially with fractional scaling. There are two steps:

          1. Install a GE-Proton runner, and configure the game to use it.
          2. Set game launch options to, env DISPLAY="" PROTON_ENABLE_WAYLAND=1 %command%
          • biofaust@lemmy.worldEnglish
            1·
            2 days ago

            I am on Mint. For now. Anyway I am quiet quitting Steam for GOG and Heroic had no problem running Unity games with fractional scaling.

    • drkt@scribe.disroot.orgEnglish
      5·
      1 day ago

      A few select games, Notably Watch Dogs 2 and Fallout: New Vegas, probably because of Proton bugs, occasionally freeze my (Debian+i3wm) desktop. My computer is not frozen, but my desktop session is. I can take my smartphone and SSH into my desktop to kill the game’s process (or Steam, which will take the game with it when it dies).

      I’ve come to enjoy this process because I feel like some kinda movie hacker.

      • Baggie@lemmy.zipEnglish
        1·
        6 hours ago

        How much ram you hauling? I’ve had similar issues when voices of the void sprung a memory leak in an earlier build, completely froze my desktop until I nuked it.

        • drkt@scribe.disroot.orgEnglish
          1·
          6 hours ago

          48G but that’s not. I have plenty left over whenever it happens, and running out of memory has never frozen my desktop.

          • Baggie@lemmy.zipEnglish
            1·
            6 hours ago

            Shit that’s crazy. I guess the syslog might help but I know it won’t give you wine/proton logs, and I’ve not worked out how to get at those myself yet.

      • Durandal@lemmy.todayEnglish
        2·
        1 day ago

        You should be able to switch tty to access the system directly from the pc. If you’re unaware… ctrl alt f3 will switch to another terminal where you can login and access things. Generally your default sessions is in f2 (ymmv) so ctrl alt f2 should return you to your desktop where you left off once you nuke the offending pid.

        • drkt@scribe.disroot.orgEnglish
          1·
          1 day ago

          Yes, I am aware, but my keyboard can’t do that shortcut

          PSA Don’t buy a 60% keyboard for use with Linux…