--post-date: 2020-12-17
--updated-at: 2020-12-19
--type: blog
    <article>
      <h1>Manjaro Experiment</h1>
      <p>After years on Debian, running i3, I decided to try out a more
      traditional Linux setup, and take a stab at gaming on Linux. I chose
      Manjaro for a few reasons:</p>
      <ul>
        <li>It&#39;s not Debian based (it&#39;s arch btw /s)</li>
        <li>It&#39;s still on Systemd so I won&#39;t lose that familiarity</li>
        <li>For gaming it comes with pretty up to date drivers and setup for
        running Steam games</li>
        <li>It has a KDE installation which is what I wanted to run</li>
      </ul>
      <h2>Why &quot;not Debian&quot;</h2>
      <p>Debian is home for me. I have used it for years on both work machines,
      servers, personal desktop. But it comes with its own quirks. Starters - I
      am running base Debian, not a Debian based system, which generally means
      some packages are out of date. To get around this I run Sid/Unstable.
      This hasn&#39;t been a particular issue, but sometimes there are version
      conflicts and other just nuisances and no real <i>easy</i> way to get
      every package in the proper version configuration. This was a particular
      pain-point with getting Steam (nonfree too which adds another layer of
      configurations) Wine and a few other packages all set up. Plus
      32-bit!</p>
      <h3>i3</h3>
      <p>I have been using i3 as my window manager and without really any other
      desktop environment programs. My login is the typical tty debian login.
      But running i3 and then having windows appear, especially game windows
      which can be tempermental, getting tiled to have to break it out again is
      just a hassle. While I could&#39;ve gone with another Debian base running
      a proper desktop environment + window manager I figured that&#39;d be
      boring and I&#39;d just be trying out the programs and not the Linux,
      which is half the fun.</p>
      <p>That being said. i3 <i>is</i> Linux for me. Being able to just move
      between windows with a macro and every bit of it just being intutive
      (after you&#39;ve learned!) is a productivity booster. Which is why I
      still use it on my work machine, and can&#39;t see myself ever switching
      off.</p>
      <h2>KDE</h2>
      <p>I&#39;ve used Gnome and XFCE as desktop environments before, and
      they&#39;re fine, but I&#39;ve always like the customability,
      flexibility, and polished look of KDE.</p>
      <h3>Setting up KDE for an i3 addict</h3>
      <p>By default KDE isn&#39;t really too hard to &quot;get used to&quot;
      since it feels like any other OS, especially a windows setup. But the
      main thing I needed to change is the <code class=
      'inline'>meta+&lt;key&gt;</code> commands.</p>
      <ul>
        <li>Remapping the Virtual Desktop changes</li>
        <li>Remapping the KWin window focuses</li>
        <li>Remapping the KWin move to desktop</li>
        <li>Installing DMenu</li>
        <li>Shrinking the &quot;start bar&quot; panel</li>
        <li>Removing Pager</li>
        <li>Changing Task Manger to Window List</li>
        <li>Configuring Desktop Layout to &quot;Desktop&quot; (this removes the
        icons)</li>
      </ul>Doing this helped make me feel at home so far, and not have to
      retrain my brain.
      <h3>Some of the key remappings</h3>
      <p>Setting up the KWin window keymapping was really what made me feel at
      home. For the first few hours with it, I felt as limited in my
      productivity as with Windows. KDE and Windows share by default a lot of
      the same keymappings around window manipulation and virtual desktop
      changes. <b>Switch to desktop N</b> setting this as <code class=
      'inline'>meta+&lt;N&gt;</code> where N is the dekstop 1-10 (0). <b>Switch
      to Window to the Left/Right/Up/Down</b> This was one I was nervous
      wouldn&#39;t exist as a keybind. But What was <code class=
      'inline'>meta+alt+&lt;dir&gt;</code> was mapped to without the alt. This
      allowed for the very annoying lack of ability to just jump between
      browser and terminal, or especially two separate terminals. <b>Quit
      Window</b> with <code class='inline'>meta+shift+Q</code>, <b>Tile
      Window</b> command to use the Shift key rather, especially as
      <code class='inline'>meta+&lt;dir&gt;</code> was overwritten by the focus
      switching.</p>
      <h2>Manjaro</h2>
      <p>So I went with KDE Manjaro. Manjaro aims for the gaming desktop
      experience. Arch is new for me, so I feel that would be something to
      adjust to and learn.</p>
      <h2>Gaming</h2>
      <p>It has only been a day with it as I am writing. But I was able to get
      a fair amount of the fighting games I wanted to play work.</p>
      <h2>Proton + Steam</h2>
      <p>So far my main focus has been running the fighting games I noodle
      around on in Steam. To do this I launched Steam and installed the proton
      and setup to run all games, regardless of compatibility. None of the
      games I hoped to run had worked this way. I then opt&#39;d into the beta
      for Proton running the experimental builds, which should generally have
      the more up-to-date tunings for games. With this setup I was able to get
      Soulcalibur VI to work. Battle for the Grid and Dragon Ball FighterZ both
      had launching issues. So I looked around and found <a href=
      "https://github.com/GloriousEggroll/proton-ge-custom/">Proton Ge
      Custom</a> which is a custom fork of Proton that contains custom settings
      and tweeks for various games. One of which is Battle For the Grid which
      is how I found it. Using this I was able to play every game except Dragon
      Ball FighterZ! A callout for Dead or Alive 6 which is performing
      questionably. It can run and isn&#39;t actually too bad, but in windowed
      or borderless it stutters and drops frames.</p>
      <h3>Other issues</h3>
      <p>Even on Windows there are issues with some games and your standard
      configurations. Disabling Steam Overlay and adjusting the Steam Input
      Setting on some games helped get some games working.</p>
      <h2>Conclusion</h2>
      <p>Gaming on Linux is still not great. Its MILES ahead of where it was
      even a few years ago when I setup this PC. And I think it will take some
      adjustment getting a feel for an i3less workflow.</p>
      <h2>Update!</h2>
      <h2>NTFS mounting</h2>
      <p>Update! I got DOA and a few other games to run a bit smoother by
      remounting my NTFS drives properly. I ended up using the following for my
      /etc/fstab configuraiton for my NTFS drives: <code>UUID=&lt;drive-id&gt;
      /mount/path ntfs
      uid=1000,gid=1000,rw,user,exec,async,locale=en_US.utf8,umask=000 0
      0</code> I had noticed that both steam and mount.ntfs was running at
      20-40% CPU while not really doing anything. And then upwards of 80%
      during gameplay.</p>
      <h2>i3 Compatibility</h2>
      <p>As I spend more time using the OS I made a few more adjustments:</p>
      <ul>
        <li>Removed everything except the Clock and System Tray.</li>
        <li>I added KRunner to <code class='inline'>meta+space</code> to ease
        running KDE specific programs that I can&#39;t be bothered to memorize
        the name of</li>
        <li>Back and forth on forcing &quot;No border&quot; on all windows.
        Part of the reason I moved away from i3 was so that I had better
        floating window management. And doing this would basically put me in an
        equally hard to manage system for floating game windows. So until I
        find a plugin that makes small taskbar/borders for the windows I&#39;ll
        be sticking with the default.</li>
        <li>On Manjaro at least: UNINSTALL mesa-demos! <code class=
        'inline'>sudo pacman -R lib32mesa-demos mesa-demos</code> This package
        had the annoying &quot;fire&quot; demo which made dmenu opening firefox
        a pain in the ass.</li>
      </ul>The biggest difference was removing the Application Launcher from
      the main panel. Having it there really felt like a crutch for running
      programs. It is equal I would say to running apps as dmenu via
      <code class='inline'>meta+d</code> vs just <code class=
      'inline'>meta</code> to launch the Application Launcher. However, the
      bulky UI of it, even using just Window List, took away from the look/feel
      I was going for.
    </article>