this post was submitted on 16 Dec 2024
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Hello everyone! I know that Linux GUI advanced in last few years but we still lack some good system configuration tools for advanced users or sysadmins. What utilities you miss on Linux? And is there any normal third party alternatives?

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[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 day ago (3 children)
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[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 day ago (1 children)

afterburner. i'm unable to oc my nvidia gpu :(

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 day ago (2 children)

LACT. Though I don't know if it can OC Nvidia, Nvidia support is quite new.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

til about this one, nice. i wish discoverability for linux software was better.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I usually just feed my questions into three different LLMs plus ddg with site:reddit and then check consensus. As good as it gets.

But then last time I've managed to discover DeadBeeF through IRC.

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Setting per game frame limits and undervolting AMD GPUs is a lot more complicated than on Windows

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago

LACT and Mangohud can do that pretty well

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Maybe tangential but this reminded me of how much I hate setting up systemd timers/services. I refuse to accept that creating two files in two different directories and searching online for the default timer and service templates is an okay workflow over simply throwing a cron expression next to the command you want to run and being done with it. Is there really no way we can have a crontab-equivalent that virtually converts into a systemd backend when you don't need the extra power? I feel like an old person that can't accept change but it's been a decade and I'm still angry.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

This is a configuration declaration abstraction issue. Systemd timers and services are more like primitives.

In NixOS, we have an abstraction that allows simple declaration of a service and timer that runs some script.

As an example, I use this to export my paperless for backup daily in a way that is safe (paperless itself cannot run during that time, guaranteed by systemd) and simple:

https://github.com/Atemu/nixos-config/blob/ca0d39eb98c62424208487f973573478268048b4/modules/paperless/module.nix#L59-L95

(Even without NixOS domain knowledge you should be able to follow what's going on here.)

All that's needed in order to cause a systemd timer to be created for this service is to declare the startAt = "daily"; at the bottom.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago

I did this for awhile...

https://github.com/systemd-cron/systemd-cron-next

If I remember whatever chef script I was blowing out mucked up something enough I ended up ditching it and manually rebuilding the timers as sysd units.

Even as someone who likes systemd since trying to teach init is pretty uniquely awful, I still have a load of one a year cron jobs I just use a BSD box for.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 day ago

I've recently gotten into using cockpit. I just wish it was as expansive as openSUSE's yast.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 day ago

My Linux experience has been command line training. Now I avoid GUI stuff like the plague if I can help it.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 day ago (1 children)

A decent GUI LDAP client.

Yes, I know, I can use slapcat and all... But holy hell, I'm tired of writing basic LDAP files to populate a new domain. And, no, I really don't want to spin up a webserver just to run a web based GUI that I NOW have to ensure is locked down.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 day ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 day ago (1 children)

oh... that look tits! Thank you!

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Found this not so long ago and it literally made me sad I don't manage an LDAP anymore!

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Given that windows administration is powershell these days they kind of are similar.

Windows is missing so much in their guis abilities (like copy text) that I wonder what there is you are missing.

Edit: Although this is not an admin function, one thing that bothers me about windows, A LOT is that the file explorer does not show free space while I am in the current directory. Dolphin will do it even for SMB shares. Also you can click the drop down and examine all drives right there instead of have to back to the left and ruining your view in explorer. And don't get me started about how you can't split views in Windows explorer. This is just one everyday task where windows GUI is lacking in features even though it is not an admin tool.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

I would like something to change my monitor output at a system level, for example I could emulate a CRT screen or decide my aspect ratio. Something like RetroArch shaders but in a more high priority level.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 day ago (2 children)

One thing I kind of miss is autohotkeys on windows. It was relatively easy to do things like set keyboard keys to act as mouse keys. I did that once when I was getting over tendonitis.

These days I have a keyboard with mouse keys on it and a trackball also with mouse keys. I can use the middle button on the trackball and scroll with it, but I can't use the middle button on the keyboard and scroll with the trackball, which would be more ergonomic for me. Haven't figured that one out yet.

That said, I mostly don't miss GUI stuff. I use a tiling window manager and command line utilities to do most things on my system. Its kind of primitive I guess, but the benefit is it works exactly the same on remote systems, headless servers, etc.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 day ago

I have replaced autohotkeys with https://github.com/espanso/espanso

It does everything I need it to, although I am not sure if it can do the mouse button things you need

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I have Emacs, and I have my NixOS configuration. That's all the GUI system configuration I need.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Why use NixOS, when you could just use emacs?

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 day ago (1 children)

My Emacs needed a bootloader.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 day ago

That should be our new slogan:

NixOS: Your Emacs' bootloader.

[–] PrefersAwkward 5 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Well KDE had this awesome process management tool, I think it was called ~~System Monitor~~ or something. You could tune process priorities with IO and CPU. They deprecated the tool though, I think because nobody wanted to port it to QT6

EDIT: It's not System Monitor. I can't recall the name, but there used to be an app that let you set niceness / priorities of your processes.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

System Monitor is very much still alive, and I'm pretty sure it is updated to Qt6. I was using it only yesterday on Plasma 6...

[–] PrefersAwkward 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

You're right. I can't recall the other utility's name. System Monitor is fantastic, but I just wish I could set the niceness and all that like you could on the old utility.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

That would indeed be a nice feature. I'm sure they would welcome the suggestion!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)
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[–] AliasAKA 7 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

HWMonitor / cpuID / cpuz. One of the frustrating things is not having good driver level support for certain mbs with system monitoring utilities, so you can’t see fans and some cpu stats (like per ccd temps etc on Ryzen processors). Specifically things like it87 boards

[–] PrefersAwkward 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

HardInfo2 may be interesting to you

[–] AliasAKA 2 points 1 day ago

I’ll check this out, thanks! I really just need to figure out how to build in the driver level stuff for my chipset. Even this I think just pulls from lm-sensors which needs the low level drivers to populate the appropriate files to read from.

[–] FourPacketsOfPeanuts 6 points 1 day ago (2 children)

It seems impossible to set display scaling from the command line. Anything that fixes that would be nice.

[–] user_naa 7 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (3 children)

What is your DE? On KDE Plasma Wayland you can just use kscreen-doctor output.HDMI-A-1.scale.2 to set it to 200%

And it seem like CLI not GUI issue :)

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[–] oshu 3 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I've been using linux for over 25 years and I don't understand this post. One of the strengths of linux is that you don't need a gui to do sysadmin.

[–] Feathercrown 0 points 23 hours ago

And one of the weaknesses is that you require the command line. Choice is good

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I think I'm 30 years in, and I came to mention I haven't used the GUI since ~97.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago

For sysadmin stuff? Or for daily use?

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