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As The Distro Turns, Episode ∞-2
by Evan Leibovitch 21 Jan '26

21 Jan '26

Some people here may have been informed, some entertained, and others may applaud themselves by having avoided my distribution hopping of the last half-year. TL;DR: I did it. I installed CachyOS. And I'm happy with it so far. (But then again I was happy with Kubuntu and Fedora at the time I installed them too...) Recap for anyone keeping score: My hardware is a GMKTec EVO-X2 which uses the AMD "Strix Halo" architecture (Ryzen AI Max+ 395 CPU/NPU/GPU). My core use cases are running local LLMs, video editing/production, and Steam games. In a quest for the best balance of compatibility, stability and performance I have tried - KDE Neon - TuxedoOS - Kubuntu - Bazzite - Fedora - CachyOS (wouldn't install) - Kubuntu LTS - And now, as of this past weekend, CachyOS again Pretty well the only thing these distros had in common was KDE, a must-have in this search. (There's enough to learn about each distro, I don't need to keep relearning a GUI.) The ability to run AI software stacks and apps on this (relatively) bleeding edge hardware requires a distribution which is either officially supported by the software (Kubuntu LTS) or a community capable of providing sufficient unofficial support (everything else). Early on I learned that I would have to make tradeoffs between having current software and having a stable system. Of the distros above it seemed like only Fedora, Kubuntu and CachyOS even had sub-communities that cared about my use cases and hardware. In Fedora's case, the existence of said community enabled/allowed an update to the "linux-firmware" package to break LLM software on my platform and sat on fix for more than three months (because I no longer run it I don't even know if that fix has been released yet). And then there's Kubuntu LTS. Officially supported by AMD, this approach would, one would hope, avoid such severe breakage. It did, at least regarding the AI and video drivers. However, the 6.14 kernel was simply too old to support important features of this new CPU. Furthermore, going from Fedora to Kubuntu LTS was like a step back in time. My video software and kernel were now many releases older. Old Handbrake on Kubuntu would not read the backup of the config file I'd saved from New Handbrake on Fedora. And it seems unconscionable to me that any distro would not make one single decent browser that didn't force snaps upon me. The process of replacing Firefox-the-snap with Firefox-the-deb is well documented, but, as I found out, not particularly stable. I was receiving error messages upon starting Firefox that not even a purge-then-reinstall would fix. Sheesh, I thought I was going to Kubuntu LTS for its stability; yet mere weeks after installation its browser -- one of the components of it that I use the most -- breaks beyond repair. The fallback Falkon browser that's a part of KDE couldn't render any web page made in the last two decades. So enough of this. Then I recalled William Park's recent GTALUG post <https://lists.gtalug.org/archives/list/talk@lists.gtalug.org/thread/WNBZ36R…> about moving from Slackware(!) to CachyOS and having a good experience. I had to re-evaluate -- I had previously avoided CachyOS because of the instability inherent in its rolling release model. But since "stable" distros such as Fedora and Kubuntu had already let me down, why not try CachyOS again? At very least I would be confident that its rapid release cycle would ensure that I had the minimal kernel rev I need (6.18.4) and that fixes in linux-firmware would not be sat on for months. So then I tried again to install CachyOS and discovered why my first attempt had failed. CachyOS has a very unique install-time quirk -- the EFI partition. This is a FAT32-formatted chunk of your storage that is normally mounted under /boot/efi and has to be at least 100MB (maybe 200MB if you're dual-booting with Windows or want to have multiple boot options). *CachyOS won't let you install without an EFI partition of at least 2GB*. This is fine if you're starting with a fresh drive, but will likely require manual resizing (and maybe movement) of partitions if you want to dual-boot or have anything previous that you want to keep. So I rebooted into my favourite PC repair tool, repartitioned so that my EFI area is now 4GB, and CachyOS is finally happy to install. I understand that all this space is needed to accommodate btrfs snapshots into which you may want to boot if you need to rollback due to an update breaking things. In hindsight maybe Fedora -- which also likes btrfs for its filesystems -- would have benefitted from this too. So far, touch wood, all is good. All my hardware and peripherals were recognized and work fine. In fact CachyOS is the first distro I've ever installed that picked the correct audio device immediately. I note that the EFI partition (here mounted as /boot) already has almost 600MB in use. I have not installed Steam or the AI software suite yet but I see that the documentation to do both appears robust. The video software is current, functioning, and for the most part taking advantage of this system hardware. The software maintenance system is ... different, but having to know one's way around dnf, apt, flatpak and snap this system is easy enough to pick up. Things feel "snappier" but I can't quantify it, and I haven't yet investigated if further system specific fine tuning can be done. If there's interest I'll report back on how well the AI and games work once installed as well as any hiccups in day-to-day use. And thanks, WIlliam. PS: Yes I know that Kubuntu LTS 26.04 is coming up in April and will refresh its app releases. It might even ship with kernel 6.20 which doesn't exist yet. But then it will be frozen in time for another two years. Don't want that, not on new hardware whose features have not been fully exploited yet. -- Evan Leibovitch, Toronto Canada @evanleibovitch / @el56

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Minisforum MS S1 Max review
by D. Hugh Redelmeier 20 Jan '26

20 Jan '26

At last month's meeting I briefly mentioned my toy, one of these Mini PCs. This review, from a usually reliable source, gives a nice description https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPjA1Lm4ftY

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Explain SteamOS?
by Giles Orr 20 Jan '26

20 Jan '26

Caveat: I am not a gamer, or at least the games I play are decades old and run fine on any Linux system. So I've never had a need for bleeding edge hardware or the OS to run on it. I'm starting work on a class for TPL called "What is Linux," which may or may not actually be completed or taught. I know SteamOS is used on Valve's hardware (I can read Wikipedia) ... but what about people who want to run recent games but also want to move to Linux? Do they install SteamOS straight onto their hardware? Can it support LibreOffice and other "normal" stuff? Or do they add some large bundle of Steam software on top of their existing OS like Debian or Cachy? Because let's face it, gaming is the critical reason for not leaving Windows for some people. I'd like to be able to at least partially address that issue. As well as I know Linux, I'm pretty clueless about gaming. If I start to get traction on this presentation, I may ask for more advice and/or reviewers. The idea of crowd-sourcing the presentation itself appeals. :-) -- Giles https://www.gilesorr.com/ gilesorr(a)gmail.com

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Dollar Store Karaoke "Microphone"
by Colin McGregor 18 Jan '26

18 Jan '26

My singing voice is such that I figure I should be banned from karaoke. Still for the likes of Zoom calls I did take an interest when I saw a rechargeable "karaoke microphone" (available in white, black, and pink) with Bluetooth for $5 (plus tax) at Dollarama. So, I bought one in black, charged it, and connected it via Bluetooth to my Debian Linux (13, aka Trixie) desktop PC. What initially puzzled me was my PC didn't see the "karaoke microphone" as a microphone, it saw it as a speaker. The idea being I take it that you play whatever background music you want and then sing over top of that. When running the "JuK" MP3 player program I found the "+" / "-" buttons on the "microphone" would let you step forwards / backwards through the audio file collection. Besides the power on/off button, the "+" / "-" buttons there is a button with scissors on it (mute) and one labeled "M" (untested, but I gather it is for "duet" mode), On the bottom of the "microphone" is a microSD card slot (I presume for loading with background music files, I didn't test this). With the microscope was included a very short USB A to USB C cable for recharging the "microphone". As noted, I am not a karaoke person, but while not for me, I can see a place for this. I am used to thinking of karaoke set-ups being big / complex, but one (or more) of these "microphones" plus a small laptop PC and you could be off to the races (assuming you don't need massive volume). Or even one (or more) of these "microphones" with microSD cards plus a booklet of song lyrics and you might have a karaoke system in a large pocket. I can also picture these "microphones" being nightmare fuel for parents on a long road trip with their kids :-) ...

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Dollar Store Webcam...
by Colin McGregor 16 Jan '26

16 Jan '26

Last week I was in Dollarama and saw they had a webcam with a built-in microphone for $5.00 (plus tax) under the name "WORK FROM HOME WITH VIVITAR". I bought it, it works, but... The images from the camera are clear, but the resolution is ... not so good (640 x 480). The connector for the camera is USB 2.0. The built-in microphone has a 3.5 audio plug (which I didn't test). So this means you will need an microphone input connector on you computer to use the microphone, If you want to use this was a computer without a microphone connector (yes, I am looking at you Raspberry Pi computers) you will also need the likes of a USB sound card, or put another way you will need two USB ports to fully support this webcam if your computer doesn't have a microphone jack built in. Also, adding even a low-end USB sound card would more than double the cost of this set-up... The camera base is designed to clip over the top of an LCD monitor, if you want to use this camera on a desktop or on a tripod you will have to jury-rig something. I can see some use cases for a $5 webcam, put it in a somewhat dangerous place where you know the camera might get damaged or destroyed, sure, no great loss if things go to @#$%. Need a back-up webcam in case your good webcam fails, sure it is better than nothing (but not by a lot). Want to dabble with home security systems, or simple robots, yes this could be fine to get started with. As a day-in/day-out video conference webcam with "important" people, NO!!!! As I see it this webcam is a decent value for the $, just so few $ that you should pay attention to the camera's ... limitations. Colin.

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Which video player
by William Park 15 Jan '26

15 Jan '26

Slackware comes with "MPlayer" as default for video player. It's still available on CachyOS, but it doesn't show up on menu. Command only. I'm thinking, it may not be "modern" way. So, I tried - mplayer - mpv - haruna - vlc on CachyOS, and they all play the same. Which one do you use? Or, end up choosing? --William

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Stalwart email server software: anyone know anything?
by Ron 14 Jan '26

14 Jan '26

Has anyone on this list got hands-on experience with Stalwart email server software? https://stalw.art/ It's an entire email stack written in Rust. Replaces Postfix, Dovecot, OpenDKIM, fail-2-ban, Mailman (has a built-in mailing list, no need for the nightmare that is MM anymore), supports CalDAV, CardDAV, WebDAV, JMAP, IMAP, POP3, anti-spam, Sieve, etc. Web site's really fast, even the management console run from inside a Docker container is fast, well designed, well laid out. It's appealing to shed the 1,000+ options for Postfix, even more for Dovecot, plus all the ancillary tools required to run email. On the other hand, Postfix & Dovecot are what I know - and learned at great cost (time & frustration), and are where the jobs are. What brought me to this is, looking for a way to offer contacts & calendar syncing along with email hosting. NextCloud was my first choice, but trying to get the AIO (All In One) to support multiple domains in one instance is not well supported as best I can tell.

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Anyone doing Zoom on Linux
by William Park 13 Jan '26

13 Jan '26

Anyone using Zoom on Linux? What is your camera/speaker/mic setup? All in one, or separate? Background: ----------- I want to use Zoom on my new CachyOS desktop. Zoom package (from vendor site) installs okay, along with its dependencies. Problem is "mic". - I have lots of 3.5mm earphones/mic (from old phones) with single combo plug. Problem is, my desktop has separate "mic" jack. Also, some of 3.5mm jacks are broken. - So, I bought $5 bluetooth speaker from Dollarama, which has speaker and mic. Speaker works with CachyOS, but not mic. - I have old USB "webcam", that is camera only. - Maybe, all I need is USB "headset" (headphones + mic)?

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Debian "testing" -- not bad
by William Park 13 Jan '26

13 Jan '26

(Double posted, so reply to your list) I've been looking for a distro with recent KDE and recent kerne*l*. So, the benchmark was *Kubuntu* 25.10 (v6.4 KDE, v6.17 kernel). 1. Started with *Mint* + "apt install kde-full". Result was comparable to Kubuntu LTS, ie. v5.27 KDE, v6.14 kernel. Makes sense, since Mint is based on Ubuntu LTS. 2. Then, tried *LMDE* + "apt install kde-full". I was surprised to get a rather recent v6.3 KDE with v6.12 kernel. I was expecting an old KDE, even older than Mint version. 3. So, decided to try *Debian* *testing* + KDE. I got v6.5.4 KDE (latest) and v6.17.12 kernel. Not bad. Right now, *Debian testing* is compiling v6.12.62 and v6.18.1 kernels for Raspberry Pi Zero 2W. We'll see how it goes. To those using Debian testing, how would you rate its stability? Is it suitable for daily PC?

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Meeting Reminder
by Alan Heighway 12 Jan '26

12 Jan '26

GTALug Monthly Meeting <https://www.gtalug.org/?p=369> Description: Join us this month for a round table discussion with the general membership, where participants will have the opportunity to share ideas, raise questions, and engage in open dialogue on topics important to our community. Speaker: All of you! Agenda: 1. Discussion 2. Adjournment Date / Time: January 13th, 2025 19:30 EST Location: Online using Nextcloud: https://hub.gtalug.org/call/7m45sf9i *A*lan *H*eighway <http://heighway.ca/> heighway.ca 416-712-5247 VA3WAH / VA3YKZ [image: Please consider the environment before printing]

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