Tablet PC: Pen-Monitor & Remote Mapping, WINE Pen Pressure & More <partially solved>

Is there someone who is known for routinely helping with scripts that can be mentioned to have a look and potentially help with this on these forums?

My thoughts, when I was catching up from #37 on :)

Jas has been around forever and Ken is new.

@JasKinasis , @kenJackson - any chance you folks can take a look over what Sasha has been doing?

Cheers all, and

Avagudweegend

Wiz
 


Been looking at the minor annoyances, haven't fixed any but:
That's it for "progress" on the matters of this thread. Not much really despite raking the depths of the internet search results.
 
Hello again! Been a while, hasn't it? I haven't given up on switching to Linux, I've just had to go back to windows and continue my work over spending more time on what OS I do my work on. I'd also love to spend the same amount of time daily as I did while I kept this thread active; but alas, this is just a quick update.

First, I some how enabled a tab in the TV menu that I could not access before, and within that menu was the overscan option. The whole TV overscan issue is fixed.

I have not made any progress - not even finding new info/understanding current info more on the glitchy mouse/UI elements going below the panel.

I have re-read the tutorial I was using on the remote remapping. I think I understand it more than I already did. I decided to copy a back-up of what I had when I came back today and edit the file going by the new understanding. Unfortuately I still have not got to the result of the keys actually remapping.

The back-up file:

#!/bin/sh
# /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc
# global xinitrc file, used by all X sessions started by xinit (startx)
# invoke global X session script
#. /etc/X11/Xsession

remote_id=19(
xinput list |
sed -n 's/.*Polostar.id=19.*keyboard.*/\1/p'
)

# To remap the nine shortcut remote keys

mkdir -p /etc/X11/xkb/symbols
cat >/etc/X11/xkb/symbols/custom <<\EOF
xkb_symbols "remote" {
key <AB04> { [ AB05 ] };
key <AD08> { [ DOWN ] };
key <SPCE> { [ AD03 ] };
key <AB05> { [ LCTL, AB01 ] };
key <RTRN> { [ UP ] };
key <AB01> { [ LCTL, AB01 ] };
key <AB07> { [ LCTL ] };
key <AD10> { [ SPCE ] };
key <AD07> { [ LALT ] };
};
EOF

setxkbmap -device 19 -print | sed 's/\(xkb_symbols.*\)"/\1+custom(remote)"/' | xkbcomp -I/etc/X11/xkb -i 19 -synch - $DISPLAY 2>/dev/null

The current file:

#!/bin/sh
# /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc
# global xinitrc file, used by all X sessions started by xinit (startx)
# invoke global X session script
#. /etc/X11/Xsession

remote_id=$(
xinput list |
sed -n 's/.*Polostar.*id=\([0-9]*\).*keyboard.*/\1/p'
)
[ "$remote_id" ] || exit

# To remap the nine shortcut remote keys

mkdir -p /tmp/xkb/symbols
cat >/tmp/xkb/symbols/custom <<\EOF
xkb_symbols "remote" {
key <AB04> { [ AB05 ] };
key <AD08> { [ DOWN ] };
key <SPCE> { [ AD03 ] };
key <AB05> { [ LCTL, AB01 ] };
key <RTRN> { [ UP ] };
key <AB01> { [ LCTL, AB01 ] };
key <AB07> { [ LCTL ] };
key <AD10> { [ SPCE ] };
key <AD07> { [ LALT ] };
};
EOF

setxkbmap -device $remote_id -print | sed 's/\(xkb_symbols.*\)"/\1+custom(remote)"/' | xkbcomp -I/tmp/xkb -i $remote_id -synch - $DISPLAY 2>/dev/null

I have noticed that XP-pen have released a linux driver for my tablet. That's not helpful since I do not need it, but I'm pointing this out as it gives hope for a linux driver for the shortcut remote, which I would 100% use myself just for the easy remapping that would come with it.

Lastly, the reason I decided to boot-up linux mint again was because I checked the wine bug reports and one had a new comment asking for a log for +wintab. I've done a quick search for creating such a log and got nothing, as well as trying to re-find how to create the terminal log I did for the bug report already and cannot re-find it. These were both quick searches, but unfortuately I cannot spend that much time on this right now.

I don't want to keep the bug fixers waiting for long, so I may do brief searches here and there, but I simply must boot up windows and do things on windows currently. C'est la vie.
 
Update on 2 of the problems:

First, I have logged and attached a file for the WINE bug report on pen pressure.

Secondly, on the whole elements under the panel thing. I think the multiple monitors are causing them to bleed into one another some how. Until today I've been using the "displays" UI to drag and drop the monitor placements (it is simply called "displays"). Today I tried the "Nvidia X server settings" UI and the "X server display configuration" tab.

If I disable all but my main monitor there is no bleed. No UI elements going under the panel. This confirms it is to do with the multiple monitors. Furthermore, it isn't just elements going under the panel but desktop icons bleed as well. All my current desktop icons on linux are at the top-left and their names bleed onto the left monitor. e.g. The Medibang WINE shortcut has "Me" on right-hand side on the left monitor and the rest "diBang Paint Pro" on the main monitor.

I would assume this is to do with digital monitor positioning but i cannot change it for some reason. The options for monitor position has: Absolute, right of, above etc. None of the directional options work and so I attempted to change the numbers for the absolute. There is a space to change those numbers yet despite allowing typing, it doesn't save or change anything.

I thought perhaps since all monitors are 1920x1080 and the second (middle) monitor starts at the absolute of +1920+0 that changing it to +1921+0 may nudge the desktop icons off the left monitor fully onto the middle monitor where they are suppose to be. Same with nudging the graphics tablet that sits below the middle minitor down to +1920+1081. These do nothing. They do not save or change. I'm not sure they would fix the problem if they did, but they don't even try.
 
Not much has changed in the rest of 2019 to get me closer to being to use linux as my main system. One thing to note is XP-Pen has continued to work on linux drivers for their tablets. The latest linux driver releases for a lot of their products was on 19 Dec 2019. On that day a ton of linux drivers were updated and others newly released. Nicely recent.

I went through all their listed products on their website in the "download" section under support. 45 products have a windows driver to download; 35 of those 45 also have a linux driver now.

That's only ten XP-Pen products without a linux driver (whether final or experimental). Low and behold: my tablet is one of those 10 still without a linux driver. Not like I'd switch right away since I still don't have an art program that works in linux that I like using. Tried Krita again a few months ago, same annoying GUI issue. It doesn't matter how good the tools of Krita may be, if the GUI annoys the hell out of me I aint using it.

I think it's safe to assume that the XP-Pen brand of hardware will be have full linux support soon .
 
...my tablet is one of those 10 still without a linux driver.

Murphy's Law. :)

Still, there's progress, that is gratifying.

Thanks for keeping us posted.

Wizard
 
1. I think the problem with pen pressure in apps running on wine not connected to wine itself, because I encounter the same problem with both Medibang Pro and Clip Studio running on Kernel Virtual Machine (KVM) with Windows 10.
I'm using KDE Neon based on Ubuntu 16.04 with standart driver and Wacom Bamboo Pen & Touch. The OS currectly identify my tablet and pen pressure works with nattive linux software. KVM identify my tablet as Graphic Tablet USB EvTouch.
Also before september 2019 I used Kubuntu 16.04 and I had no problems with pen pressure in Medibang Pro running on wine. The problem is that then I used an alternative driver and I don't remember it name.
2. Problem with pop-ups and drop-down menus come up on the wrong screen no matter where the main window in my opinion is the wine problem. I think wine can't identify active monitor. Also wine ignore priority setting. So all new windows, pop-ups and drop-down menus displayed on the left screen because the coordinate system is common to all screens and starts from the top left corner of the left screen. I had the same problem with Bioshock Infinite which I didn’t manage to run on the right screen in full screen mode.
3. It's shame that Medibang Pro based on Qt has no native linux version. Maybe It worth to try complaint together?
 
1. I think the problem with pen pressure in apps running on wine not connected to wine itself, because I encounter the same problem with both Medibang Pro and Clip Studio running on Kernel Virtual Machine (KVM) with Windows 10.
I'm using KDE Neon based on Ubuntu 16.04 with standart driver and Wacom Bamboo Pen & Touch. The OS currectly identify my tablet and pen pressure works with nattive linux software. KVM identify my tablet as Graphic Tablet USB EvTouch.
Also before september 2019 I used Kubuntu 16.04 and I had no problems with pen pressure in Medibang Pro running on wine. The problem is that then I used an alternative driver and I don't remember it name.

Hey mrvldmr, I'm glad to see someone else out there in the world wishes for more choice of art programs in Linux :)

It's curious that both our pen pressures work in native linux programs, yet you say it worked through wine at some point but not anymore. Perhaps it is worth to describe this on the WINE bug report here: https://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=40199 . I'm sure information like that can help.

2. Problem with pop-ups and drop-down menus come up on the wrong screen no matter where the main window in my opinion is the wine problem. I think wine can't identify active monitor. Also wine ignore priority setting. So all new windows, pop-ups and drop-down menus displayed on the left screen because the coordinate system is common to all screens and starts from the top left corner of the left screen. I had the same problem with Bioshock Infinite which I didn’t manage to run on the right screen in full screen mode.

Interesting. I wonder if the WINE developers know about this being a general WINE issue? IT certainly is annoying when using a tablet.

3. It's shame that Medibang Pro based on Qt has no native linux version. Maybe It worth to try complaint together?

Maybe. I haven't contacted them requesting a Linux version, but if they did it would be so much easier.

Semi-related, With the valve adding proton into steam, a ton of single-player steam games became available to Linux users, and the most common reason any online multiplayer is the anti-cheat. Mostly Easy Anti-Cheat I've observed (I guess it's just a really popular anti-cheat to use).

I bring this up purely for conjecture: with the ending of support of Windows 7, combined with many non-Linux native games being available through proton on steam, It's certain that a portion of steam gamers will upgrade to windows 10, but others will switch to Linux due to gaming being their only real computer use. As known through this thread, my digital art needs stop me from switching, but if I didn't want to do what I want to do in life, I would've switched already with proton keeping many a game for me.

I'm sure the majority will just upgrade to windows 10, but I'm curious how much of a % increase of Linux steam users are about to happen. This is optimistic and conjecture, but I believe if a large enough portion of steam users used Linux, then more software developers will come out with native Linux support.

I'm not just talking about game devs, but if adobe became convinced to release Linux support, then that would include photoshop, and with photoshop being on Linux, all the other art programs will follow.

I don't necessarily think the increase on steam linux users will be enough yet. I think more online games need to work, their anti-cheat being the wall. I have a steam library of 217 games, and looking through the proton database, 23 do not work (either netively or through proton). That is a huge and very good ratio! But guess what? Two games I'd prefer to be able to play both use Easy Anti-Cheat and the prtondb reports are filled with blaming EAC as the reason why they do not work in Linux. The two games are Dead by Daylight and Hell Let Loose if wondering.

If more anti-cheats worked through proton, then even more steam users will be carefree to switch to linux, and that may, with my total conjecture, convince non-game devs to release linux support. Both software and hardware drivers. Possibly including MediBang.
 
A small update to my previous post. There is a way to make the kernel virtual machine (KVM) recognize pen pressure. To do this, you need to add a new USB device in the virtual machine settings and select a graphics tablet there. After that windows 10 would recognizance your tablet. You can even install drivers and access to all driver settings. But there are two small problems:
1) After starting the virtual machine, the main operating system ceases to recognize the tablet and I don’t know how to solve this problem. But after turning off the virtual machine, the operating system will again see the graphics tablet;
2) Windows 10 because of windows ink workspace does not connect graphics tablet pen with the mouse cursor so the pen movements do not move the cursor. This works great for Microsoft Surface but does not work for users of graphic tablet without display. Fortunately, Medibang and Clipstudio still display a pen circle on the canvas. Disabling windows ink workspace through gpedit.msc did not solve this problem for me and my outdated tablet has no option to disable windows ink workspace in driver setting.
Well after that I remembered why I refused to use Windows as the main operating system. There is nothing more annoying than windows. Microsoft developers seriously think that only "lucky" owners of Microsoft surface use digital pens?
Conclusions. KVM by default recognizes a graphic tablet as a touchpad therefore ignores pen pressure. I think that the problem with WINE has similar roots. It also makes sense to check graphic tablet with VirtualBox. I think it handles hardware differently than KVM and may not have the first problem.
Sasha-Jen, I will not report it yet. I do not think this information is useful for developers. I don’t know why everything worked before. Perhaps the reason is in a different version of the driver or kernel or wine or in something else. then I had a completely different hardware. In particular, then I had a LGA775 motherboard and now I have a AM4 motherboard. Perhaps the report will make sense if I manage to start the old PC and collect logs from there. But I do not know when I will do it.
 
Whoa Nelly do I have an update. As of yet, I have made no concessions with the programmes I use with switching to Linux. Suitable replacements are what I've been going after. The recent activity of this thread got me thinking about it again.

I decided to give Krita a go again this time treating it as what it is to me: an inferior UI experience compared to Medibang. It is purely a personal opinion on my part: I'm sure many a digital artist prefer Krita over Medibang. I do not. So, I downloaded it on windows and... I had to open the manual to even understand what all the different "docker" elements were. Krita has three different elements all for colour selection ya know? Colour wheel with hue/saturation square, colour reference number, and RBG reference number. An element for each. Medibang has one, with two buttons that let you select the other ways.

Anyway, that will be the only example I will give out of several I can complain about. I managed to get the UI "acceptable." Then I though: well, this is it, I have no need for anything else work-related for switching. I can use my keyboard for shortcuts, I don't need the remote nor the buttons on the tablet itself. So I booted up the Linux Mint HDD and poked around, installed the latest ISO from the website and did a clean install on the HDD. Here's what I've been doing:

Monitor Overlap & Panel in Front of Windows

I had the latter problem the last time I tried Linux mint, somehow it has got worse. Yet I had already confirmed from the last time it had something to do with having multiple monitors. Maximising windows on the main screen caused the bottom to be overlapped by the panel; now, the very bottom of the main monitor and the very top of my graphics tablet monitor that I position directly below it overlap each other. Whatever is at the bottom of the main, is duplicated at the top of the other.

I've came across these two pages: https://askubuntu.com/questions/413...full-screen-and-bottom-hides-behind-the-panel & https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=256119

By positioning the panel at the top, maximised windows border it correctly. As to the monitor overlap, terminal commands are what are given in one of those links. I decided to fix it by GUI instead just cus through the Nvidia X Server Settings where I first set up the positions of the monitors.

Indeed, the graphics tablet monitor was not starting at 1920 x 1080 absolute positioning below the main, centre monitor; it was starting at 1920 x 947. The difference being the amount of pixel overlap. Simply manually changing the absolute position to 1920 x 1080 solves it. For the session, despite saving to X config file it gets scrapped on restart. Another one of the "fixed but needs a boot script" solutions.

Edit: Managed to remove Overlap by altering the monitors through the "displays" setting. I remember the first time I attempted Linux Mint Displays was the fist I tried to get my monitors how they should be and I had problems. It was when I tried Nvidia X Server Settings that things worked. I guess a little bit of both is the answer.


Default Sound Output

Default sound output is set to my Blue Yeti, while my headphones (and only output) are plugged on top the desktop. Manually changing it in pulse audio works for the session, but requires all previously open programmes that send sound out to be restarted; they do not auto-switch.

I came across this: https://askubuntu.com/questions/145135/set-default-sound-device-output#145146

And went through the steps. I identified Sink #2 having the active headphone jack and put in the command to make default but again, did not work. Another "solved but need a boot script".


Edit: in the "Hardware" tab of the sound preferences I switched the microphone from Analogue Duplex to Analogue Stereo Input, disabling it as an output. Still to test if it persists on restart. I guess if you don't see a clear way to set "A" as default over "B", then take "B" off the table :p

Virtual Audio

I should had been more precise that "these tutorials" as I am struggling with this again. Firstly, I wasn't sure whether I did the PulseAudio or ALSA solution and took a while to figure out which one I used. The answer is PulseAudio.

I created the virtual output that can be used as the system's default microphone, I created the loopback to that output that allowed me to go into REAPER (my DAW) and set it to ALSA, where my raw mic is the input and the loopback is the output to be used as the default input...

I then get an error that the output can't be used for whatever reason. Worse that I know I had this working before.


Graphics Tablet Pen Mapping

You guessed it, I'm having trouble here again too. There are only two input devices for the pen: A mouse slaved to "Virtual core pointer" and a pen slaved to a Keyboard. I'm sure the mouse is the correct one, and no error is given when running through the command, yet it simply doesn't work. Trying the pen gets an error.

Glitchy mouse Buttons

This mouse I have is 8-ish years old. A few weeks ago it actually started having problems in windows. I think it's finally starting to die. I'll replace it with a mouse that is known to work on Linux with no issue (shouldn't be hard).

Let's see what happens in the near future.
 
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Bad news Linuxers (uh, that probably isn't a word).

I do a warm up before I actually do anything art-related. This warm up is things like curves, straight lines, and basic stuff like that in my art programme. One way I like to do this is to attempt as straight as possible vertical and horizontal lines across my canvas then compare them with a straight line tool for the perfect comparison.

Medibang: click the grid "snap" then start drawing perfect horizontal and vertical lines.

Krita: There's a "guides" docker, nope not that. There is a "grids" docker which has a "snap to grid" checkbox and a rectangular grid option (which is the up and down grid). I click the "snap to grid" checkbox and draw a line. The line is not snapping to anything.

I open up the manual for the guides docker, I open up the manual for the grid docker. Can't see how. There's an "assistant" tool for assisting for perspective points, parallel lines etc. That isn't it.

There is a straight line tool which you can quick-switch while drawing with "V". This is it. So I can shortcut "V", and once I have clicked down then hold shift to change the angle in 15 degree increments. Note: Holding shift before you click won't work. You have to do it in this order. Every time. Have fun undoing a lot by hitting shift prematurely.

There are so many tools in Krita, causing so many UI elements, not intuitive at all where I need the manual to understand it (I want to snip to a up-down & straight-across grid... is it grids? No. Guides? No, assistant since that us used for parallels and perspective vanishing points? No. Straight line tool? Yes! But only in this specific steps of use so have fun doing it fast as a warm-up should).

Medibang has everything thing on the UI. It isn't overly complex, sure, it means it doesn't have as many tools. But it has served me well. I cannot use Linux until I have an art program that works on Linux, with my tablet, and I am comfortable with that art programme.

I have tried Krita several times, and this time being the most in-depth. I did not get beyond activity three of my warm up before coming across the most needlessly complicated steps to make a vertical/horizontal line ever. Even if I tried the straight line tool first, what is it about hitting shift too early even though you have V held down already?

Which means I have to tolerate Windows 10 more which I also don't want to do. I want things to work and stay on Linux Mint. I enjoy trying to solve these problems such as those I described in my last post.

btw, Krita breaks and fully turns white if you want to activate every docker at once. It literally cannot handle itself with all that it gives you. I wanted to do this when figuring out what I needed to see and what could be disabled. Ya know, see everything then cut down from there? Nope, no can do buckaroo.

I think there's a lesson for me to learn here: As much has FOSS deserves to be supported, it doesn't mean it's better than non-FOSS alternatives, and being FOSS is no excuse to be inferior. I cannot sacrifice my work flow just because Krita is FOSS. I have tried to learn. I have given it the fairest shot I can give. It is just so overly complicated. Three different elements for choosing colour, toolbars arbitrarily do not merge with dockers so screw you if you want one of both on the left or right side. All these things that sound like they are the "quick vertical/horizontal line" tool but they ain't.

Perhaps by the end of this year my XP Pen hardware will be settled and I'll only be waiting on a Linux release of an art programme I do enjoy.

I may not forget about the Linux Mint HDD for another 10 months or whatever. Since windows is on a separate SDD, I may just connect them both for the first time. I can continue trying to solve these problems I have with my Linux Mint MATE. I can use Linux Mint when I get back into writing, but as long as my focus is more on art, my only choice right now is Windows 10.

I feel so disappointing coming from my previous post all "I still have problems but I'm having fun attempting to solve them."

It still counts as dual booting even if they are on different physical drives, right? How does duel booting sound so I can continue experiencing Linux?
 
I do declare, that out of all the problems I have right now in Linux Mint, I have fixed all of them that are in my hands. The only thing left in my control to do is the boot scripts for the solutions that only last for the session. But I'm fine to tolerate that for now.

The problems outwith my control are the button mapping of my art hardware (graphics tablet and shortcut remote) and Medibang. As stated previously in this thread, it looks very likely that XP-Pen will release a Linux driver for my hardware very soon. With those drivers should come the ability to configure the hardware easier than the difficulty it has been so far.

As to Medibang, I actually tried it again today. No luck, no change. Can't accept no pen pressure. Even the internet stuff in the programme works. But not pen pressure. I will try it again when I have a driver for my graphics tablet just in case, but I am convinced it is down to either the WINE devs or a dedicated Linux release of Medibang to fix that problem.

I do expect to come across more Linux (mint) problems the more I use it, but I will continue to attempt to fix them as they come. The more experience I get now, the quicker I will switch permanently when both of the out-of-my-hands problems are fixed. The day I install Linux Mint on my SSD, erasing Windows 10, will be a good day for me. I still have to wait unfortunately.
 
Hello for another post.

Perhaps I'm jumping the gun to share this information as I have no idea what to do with it; it's more of an "well, this is interesting" sort of thing. I attempted both Medibang and FireAlpaca through WINE again. What's different this time?

Well, I noticed something very, very subtle. When making a stroke with the stylus and end in an flicking motion there is anti-aliasing at the end of the flick. This proves that there is pen pressure being read in these windows art programs through WINE.

I confirmed this by both doing strokes with the stylus without ending in a flick (halt motion then take the stylus off) as well as doing strokes with the mouse. It was a solid, circular end. It only happens with the stylus and flicking. The start doesn't even do it even if flicking into the stroke.

Why is it only reading a change in pen pressure for a flick-end stroke? I have no idea. If it is being read, why isn't it apply to stroke opacity and size throughout the motion? I do not know. I poked around in the settings of these programmes, both have a "brush environment settings" window which is the only place to do with pen pressure and tablets. No change in these settings affected this phenomenon.

Honestly, I feel this proves it's a WINE problem even more, in which case I am at the mercy of the pen pressure WINE bug entry being solved until I can fully switch to Linux. Just wait for that, and I've been waiting for that for around a year now anyway.
 
G'day Sasha :)

AlternativeTo.net have MyPaint listed as a Krita alternative, have you tried them?

https://alternativeto.net/software/mypaint/

As well as Wacom, it supports some XP-Pen models, I do not know if yours is listed.

Just a thought.

Cheers and

Avagudweegend

Wizard
 
AlternativeTo.net have MyPaint listed as a Krita alternative, have you tried them?

Hey Wiz.

I have looked at Linux alternatives and only tried GIMP and Krita so far. Neither a go. I didn't try MyPaint for some reason (there was a reason...). Well since I'm currently stuck here I decided to give MyPaint a go today.

The UI is good. There is only 2 elements in Medibang I like that isn't there: the brush preview and the quick brush size selector. For the brush preview, MyPaint does have a "scratchpad" that does several things, but it is a basic preview... kinda. Sorta is but isn't at the same time. Something I can accept though.

MyPaint doesn't have actual numbers shown nor manually specified for its tool options (e.g. brush size and opacity). You can change these things only with dragging a bar. Well, I like to sketch with a 8-size brush in Medibang. Not larger, not smaller. I've sorta done a work-around were I went into WINE Medibang and saved a .png of 2 horizontal lines: 1 pixel and 8 pixel brush size. I then opened this image in MyPaint's scratchpad. I now have a reference to match to get my 8-pixel brush size I like.

Sorta... not good there tho. I need to change the size up, compare, down, compare, repeat. Refining it until I match identically. Since I want it to be the 8 pixel size exactly. Definitely a con here.

But, I thought it was good enough to try out and start my warm-up in. Well, it can only open .png, .jpg & "OpenRaster" formats. Oh no! I haven't even heard of OpenRaster until today. I can't save in OpenRaster in Medibang. I have no way of opening my current art files in MyPaint. I could technically start new canvases in it, but...

I opened their manual when I wanted specified brush sizes to see if it is possible and I'm just missing it. The manual is on their github and I looked around. I see a lot of feature requests match what I would want (it doesn't even have a selection tool... remember that the last 2 examples were just about UI. I see they have been working on it for years, the current version being from 2016! It looks promising, albeit a slow development cycle. But, quality I can appreciate over rushed releases.

So, MyPaint is something to keep an eye on. Let's say that. If this is the year of their next release I'll try it out, but starting all over again with the files I routinely use? No thanks. I'm trying to switch to Linux, not start anew here.
 
Oh well, it was worth a shot? :)

My wife Elaine does folk art, and so I understand the particular attention to brush sizes and types.

I'll keep my eyes open and if I see anything I'll report back here to see if you have tried it. Other than that I will watch with interest, and good luck in your mission.

Cheers and

Avagudweegend.

Chris Turner
 
I've got an update on my situation, and overall, I consider this update good news.

I have spent the rest of February solely on Linux using MyPaint no problem. During that time I only tried and played two games on steam: Hearts of Iron IV and Day of the Tentacle. They worked flawlessly. Tonight, 1st March spilling over to the 2nd, I booted up in windows 10 for the first time since, and I am typing this in windows 10 right now. Why?

Well, I'm not sure exactly what caused it, but I can say that I installed Company of Heroes 2, a game listed in my steam library as Linux-ready, and it didn't launch... and I also got the popup warning that my root partition was nearly full. That sounded bad, but I clicked away thinking I have some leeway time to look at the root partition after I looked at the non-launching CoH2.

Well, steam crashed and on trying to reopen it it got the error along the lines of "cannot write recent programmes on root" or similar. I thought "OK, let's restart the system right now as I'm looking at these problems." I got a login loop. It accepted my password then kicked me back to the log in screen.

I booted up windows 10 to search online, and I decided to boot up the USB live mint version and timeshift... which didn't work for some reason. Timeshift said it "completed with errors". Thankfully, I have external backups (yes, plural) of my personal files, so nothing important lost.

The (failed) timeshift took a while (I attempted twice, the most recent and then the 2nd most recent backup), during which I thought about the situation. I think I am going to do a clean reinstall of Windows 10 on the SSD and only use it for gaming (including stripping as much out of it as possible, minimalism is the goal); then do a clean reinstall of Linux mint back onto the HDD and use it for everything else: work, general leisure, and gaming that does work on Linux (so Windows 10 doesn't even have a monopoly on the one thing I will use it for).

As you know, I'm still a Linux newbie despite the massive amount of knowledge I have hovered up. As much as learning Linux is fun, somethings you just want a workaround instead of spending hours, if not days, fixing. Sure, maybe I could get any game working on Linux if I learnt enough, but this workaround I've described is good enough for me. I have just spent weeks happily on Linux Mint exclusively, I loved it, so much that I am happy to make this concession so I can get back as quick as possible to doing the daily things I want to do instead of searching the pits of the internet to solve this problem. Tomorrow (er, today after a sleep) I'll do both reinstalls and configurations.

The only worry I have is: if CoH2 is listed under Linux but doesn't work out-the-box, what other games in my steam library listed under Linux will actually cause problems if and when I decide to try them? YIkes.
 
g'day sasha

timeshift throws a hissy fit if it has less than 1 GB remaining after a restore.

space warnings usually occur when you have only a few hundred MB left.

you said at #5 on page 1 about being on a desktop.

if you have gparted installed, you could post us a screenshot of how your partitions are set up, with a view to enlarging the space available to / that is, root.

or go with your plan.

cheers

wiz
 
Hey Wiz

I've already spend the most part of yesterday reinstalling both OSes (Windows 10 took way longer actually, yikes). Everything is in order again and I deliberately gave a lot of space to root for the mint install: 50GB (actually, I gave a lot of space to all partitions). I'd rather have more than I'd probably ever use than not enough again. During this reinstall I learnt how to properly use a 2nd disk with Linux and created partitions to mount around.

Here's how the two Linux HDDs look now:
5623

Disk with Root

5624

Extra disk.

The extra disk came from an old desktop that was just laying in a cupboard around the house, so thought I'd put it to actual use. The "backup" partition will for personal files, yet another +1 to their safety net. I just still need to actually set it up after partitioning.

I'm quite the conservative space user actually, I don't intend nor expect to fill many of these partitions, let alone use the further unallocated space. It's quite the oxymoron that I like to have a lot of space available yet I routinely go through my files to minimise space use. I do not claim this to be logically at all, it's just how I like it. If there is any logic to it, it's that I keep the directories logical and manageable for myself rather than having a directory that goes 50 sub-directories deep. I just... can't handle that. I can't imagine clicking through 50 folders deep. So it is all categorised nicely (for myself).
 
that's wonderful news sasha, you seem right on top of it :), and the screenshots are ever so useful for us to understand your environment.

It's quite the oxymoron that I like to have a lot of space available yet I routinely go through my files to minimise space use.

i have ocd and i do the same ;). a part of my rationale is that i run multiple linux, and so i can fit 10 or more linux on the one 256 gb ssd.

So it is all categorised nicely (for myself).

way to go

if you have any questions on timeshift, swing over to my thread

https://www.linux.org/threads/timeshift-similar-solutions-safeguard-recover-your-linux.15241/

and we can take a look at them there.

cheers

wizard
 


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