What is the most duct-tape thing you've done to Linux? - eviltoast

tell me the most ass over backward shit you do to keep your system chugging?
here’s mine:
sway struggles with my dual monitors, when my screen powers off and back on it causes sway to crash.
system service ‘switch-to-tty1.service’

[Unit]
Description=Switch to tty1 on resume
After=suspend.target

[Service]
Type=simple
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/switch-to-tty1.sh

[Install]
WantedBy=suspend.target

‘switch-to-tty1.service’ executes ‘/usr/local/bin/switch-to-tty1.sh’ and send user to tty1

#!/bin/bash
# Switch to tty1
chvt 1

.bashrc login from tty1 then kicks user to tty2 and logs out tty1.

if [[ "$(tty)" == "/dev/tty1" ]]; then
    chvt 2
    logout
fi

also tty2 is blocked from keyboard inputs (Alt+Ctrl+F2) so its a somewhat secure lock-screen which on sway lock-screen aren’t great.

  • Trainguyrom@reddthat.com
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    2
    ·
    2 months ago

    About a decade ago I was playing a game on Linux and the game crashed and took the entire DE with it. So I went to a different tty and started a fresh x desktop session and started playing again until the game crashed again (I was running a bunch of mods so it would crash every couple of hours or so) and still didn’t feel like rebooting so I went to yet another tty and started yet another x desktop session. I did this about 3 times in total before I finally went “I should probably actually reboot because this has to be making a bigger mess of things”

  • mrvictory1@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    3 months ago

    I ran chmod 777 /dev/uinput so AntiMicroX worked on Wayland. The PC was intented to be used as an HTPC. A Dualshock 3 would be the remote and KDE Plasma Bigscreen would be used to launch Linux native apps ie. Firefox and Android apps via Waydroid, hence the Wayland requirement. AntiMicroX would bind gamepad inputs to arrow keys, enter, ESC, volume up/down, mouse navigation, left/right click etc. The whole setup was duct tape, user unfriendly and it ultimately did not solve the problem that sent me down this rabbit hole: Internet was unstable even with an ethernet cable so it had no advantage over the crappy Android TV stick that had trouble streaming anything but Chromecast. A close contender is having to disable Internet when launching a specific online only game otherwise performance halves. There is also a guide I uploaded to Reddit that describes how to import ringtones from Linux to iOS that has 8 steps and involves rebooting your phone. And another guide to run 2 games at once and stream one of thrm while playing the other locally.

    I have a problem with half working duct tape solıtions.

  • delirious_owl@discuss.online
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    edit-2
    3 months ago

    My control key was broken, but I found that when I used an app and held down the space bar key, the CPU would get abnormally hot.

    So I wrote an Emacs interrupt to interpret a rapid CPU rise as “press the control button”.

    Unfortunately the dev pushed an update that broke space bar heating, which broke my workflow. I opened a bug report about it, though…

  • I_like_cats@lemmy.one
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    3 months ago

    My mother uses some software that runs in the browser for her shop. It can print out receipts and scan items. To do these things it has a small “sattelite” application that runs on the system and interacts with the printer and scanner. This software only runs on Windows and Linux doesn’t have drivers for the scanner.

    When I switched her over to Linux and found this out in the process I wanted to stop, give up and install windows.

    But then I had a stupid idea. I could run the sattelite program in a Windows VM and pass through the USB devices for receipt printer and scanner. The webapp uses requests to localhost:9998 to communicate with the sattelite so I set up a apache server that proxies these requests into the VM. I also prevented the VM from acessing the Interner so Windows doesn’t update and screw everything up.

    And it works. It has been in use for a week now and I’ve heard no complaints. I’m just praying to god it doesn’t break

  • cryoistalline@lemmy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    3 months ago

    I had to use unity game engine for one of my assignments for school, but unity wouldn’t generate files needed for the language server unless I set the code editor to vscode. I fixed this by creating a bash script with the path /usr/bin/code that opens neovim in konsole.

    #!/usr/bin/env bash
    konsole -e "nvim $@"
    
  • data1701d (He/Him)@startrek.website
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    3 months ago

    Building a custom Buildroot Linux for a Pentium 2 laptop that can fit on a CD so I could back up a 2.5" IDE drive to a USB drive, probably.

    On another note, last night, I had to get a Google TV set up on my dorm Wi-Fi, which requires me to either go through a portal to set it up or to go into my account and add the device’s MAC address. The TV (which was brand new and doing OOBE stuff) wouldn’t let me go to settings to get the MAC address without a network connection. Even more infuriating, there was a button in the Google Home app that said “Show MAC address”, but when I pushed it, it would say “Can’t get MAC address.” What I ended up doing to get around that crap was setting up my Debian Thinkpad (which I am writing from now) to share its internet connection over ethernet to finish the setup process so I could get to settings and get the MAC address.

    On one hand, a funny experience, but on the other hand, I’m simultaneously both mad at Google and my dorm internet provider.

    • ReveredOxygen@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      3 months ago

      The Pixel watch has this problem too. However, it randomizes the MAC per network, so that strategy won’t even work. I’ve tried to get it from the debug log but failed I’ve resigned that it won’t be getting connected to the school network

      • Trainguyrom@reddthat.com
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        2 months ago

        What is it with these schools and not just using WPA Enterprise? They already hand out an email to every student so it makes it dead simple to deactivate the account’s PSK upon terming the student

  • Ephera@lemmy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    3 months ago

    I like to use unclutter to hide my mouse pointer after a few seconds without being moved.

    Now, the thing is, it doesn’t just visually hide the cursor, it actually removes it, so UI elements triggered by hovering disappear. Sometimes that’s great, other times it’s infurriating, like when reading a tooltip or menu.

    I mostly use a touchpad, and so I developed a habit to wiggle my finger while I’m intentionally hovering something, so that there was enough mouse movement for unclutter to not remove my pointer.

    Then I found a setting for the jitter threshold of the touchpad. Basically, with the threshold on, it ignores tiny movements, because the hardware reports finger wiggling, even if you hold your finger perfectly still. Which is perfect for me to turn off.

    Now when I have my finger on the touchpad, it automatically wiggles and allows me to read hover elements. If I take my finger off, it stops wiggling and removes the cursor.
    It’s almost like someone designed an OS with touchpads in mind, rather than them being an afterthought.

  • prime_number_314159@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    3 months ago

    I ran out of crtcs, but I wanted another monitor. I widened a virtual display, and drew the left portion of it on one monitor, like regular. Then I had a crown job that would copy chunks of it into the frame buffer of a USB to DVI-d adapter. It could do 5 fps redrawing the whole screen, but I chose things to put there where it wouldn’t matter too much. The only painful thing was arranging the windows on that monitor, with the mouse updating very infrequently, and routinely being drawn 2 or more places in the frame buffer.