I’m so sorry. So very sorry.

Tips:

• You will, at some point, fuck something up. Resist the urge to type in whatever console command comes from a Stack Overflow problem that’s similar, though not exact, to your issue.
• Keep a log of changes you make so you can identify what change may have made things worse or not done what you wanted.
• Have a data backup off the machine of anything you can’t bare to lose. Keep it for at least a year in case you lose the original data.
• Be patient with yourself and expect to feel like a noob at computers again.
• Don’t try to make your DE like Windows, embrace the changes and discover better or new ways to set up your desktop.
• Again, be patient and take your time. It’s like riding a bike for the first time.
• Ask Linux communities for help if you have a good, positive source of helpful individuals.
• Have fun!

Monitor ran out of cyan, can’t show image. Please replace with Genuine HP Color Display Cartridge^tm to correct.

I’ll be done using the internet!

I had no idea it looked like this before.

So many Hamas hideouts in one image! /s

Witch!

They turned me into a newt!

I remember when I was a kid messing with Windows 95/98, I had this intuitive feeling of what was happening under the hood.

Especially with 95, since most was DOS, it felt very Hackers to find your way around the system. With 98 we still had some of that since things still required quite a bit of DOS to resolve. After that (consumer) Windows version, the GUI, GPOs, and pre-written batch files replaced all the manual work to investigate and resolve. I remember PNP was a god send for peripherals and drivers in XP, but we definitely lost a bit of that under the hood intrigue and capability along the way!

Come to think of it, I wonder if Linux’s dual dichotomy, and tendency to lean toward more CLI investigation and triage, will save future generations from a final blow to tech literacy brought about from Apple and Microsoft making things just work. Currently, that’s being accelerated by genAI usage and it’s brain liquefying affects. Personally, I’ll be teaching my 6yo how to move around a computer and not just ‘use’ it! I think Linux has made me a better sysadmin at work, also. All around, this Linux thing feels like a good egg!

I had to use a DRM file in /sys and udev script to fix it, wrote a blog about it.

I’ll have to check it out! I had played with udev rules a bit with OctoPi webcams so I’m sure some of it will remind me (read: re-traumatize me) of the fun I had in that years ago!

Also you made me lol to “wine strikes me more as an emulator”. It totes is. The “Wine Is Not an Emulator” name is a joke, the original name was “WINdows Emulator”, which they changed to avoid Microsoft’s lawyers.

Arguably, when this was pointed out in another comment, I felt a twinge of embarrassed. However, your explanation lessens that sting. My understanding was not far off base from what WINE felt like it was!

Thank you for your reply!

I’ll take a look at the logs and see if I can find the error chain at the time of the connect/disconnect loop.

I doubt I would have had the hand-speed to re-enable them through the GUI the way you did.

Never doubt your abilities to ninja this shit to get back to your ideal workflow! That monitor being down those few days really messed up my jive!

Aww thanks!

At the time it was using X11. But changing to Weyland was one of the things I tried. Seemed whatever the fault, it persisted through reboots and those changes. Is there something that both X11 and Weyland check when processing the handshakes?

I was sold on genAI until I realized how capitalism was trying to pervert and monetize the wrong parts of it. Now it just seems like a means to an end. An end I don’t want to participate in.

I posted this in another comment in this same thread, but figure I’d just paste it here for you!

I don’t know how wine works fully, but I know a bit about how Windows works. Based on my use of emulation and VMs, wine strikes me more as an emulator. Windows expects a certain structure and wine sets up a sort of emulated instance of that environment. If I’m correct in my assumptions, wine has to get control information about the monitor from Linux to display the application correctly when it’s being emulated. When I closed Studio 2.0, I believe wine failed to pass this monitor information/control back to Linux. Linux didn’t think it should have the monitor control cause wine never passed it back, so every time the OS detected the monitors, it would essentially say, “no thanks, you should be hanging out with wine right now!” and disable the monitors within Linux. This caused the monitors to basically disconnect. Since wine had closed, there was nothing to take that control back, so the monitor just reappeared on the list of OS hardware to take control of, and would again say, “no thanks,” over and over.

Again, I may be completely off-base and merely speculating, but when I managed to quickly toggle the monitor back to enable and save the configuration, it changed the handling of the monitor to forcefully tell Linux to take it back and use it, which broke the loop. Again, not sure, but it was quite a journey. Glad to have all my monitors back to 100Hz and super glad my graphics card doesn’t need to be replaced!

Thank you for your question!

I appreciate you taking the time to reply!

That is simultaneously ridiculous and amazing. Blindly clicking the buttons to enable the screen definitely proves you’re getting familiar with the OS.

Thank you for the kind words and I completely agree! I feel like I’m more in control and simultaneously more willing to tinker, with my computer when it has these issues, rather than just dumping files and/or reinstalling or something drastic like I would have done in the past. One of my friends from childhood swears that he can’t get into Linux and always ends up going back to Windows. I think he suffers from the same issues I had before I just accepted that I am back to being a complete nub and can only take my cursory knowledge of PC troubleshooting to investigate and fix Linux issues. I accepted my ignorance of the OS and expect to face issues I have to learn how to fix. I think that’s the mindset that a lot of tech-savvy people may need to adopt when moving from Windows to Linux full-time. However, that’s just my personal opinion and what’s worked for me!

Why do you think wine/Bricklink messed it up in the first place?

I don’t know how wine works fully, but I know a bit about how Windows works. Based on my use of emulation and VMs, wine strikes me more as an emulator. Windows expects a certain structure and wine sets up a sort of emulated instance of that environment. If I’m correct in my assumptions, wine has to get control information about the monitor from Linux to display the application correctly when it’s being emulated. When I closed Studio 2.0, I believe wine failed to pass this monitor information/control back to Linux. Linux didn’t think it should have the monitor control cause wine never passed it back, so every time the OS detected the monitors, it would essentially say, “no thanks, you should be hanging out with wine right now!” and disable the monitors within Linux. This caused the monitors to basically disconnect. Since wine had closed, there was nothing to take that control back, so the monitor just reappeared on the list of OS hardware to take control of, and would again say, “no thanks,” over and over.

Again, I may be completely off-base and merely speculating, but when I managed to quickly toggle the monitor back to enable and save the configuration, it changed the handling of the monitor to forcefully tell Linux to take it back and use it, which broke the loop. Again, not sure, but it was quite a journey. Glad to have all my monitors back to 100Hz and super glad my graphics card doesn’t need to be replaced!

Thank you for your question!

So something disabled your monitors and you were able to get them back by quickly enabling them during the brief period of time that they were visible.

That is correct. I don’t remember what online resource I found, but one of them mentioned where to find the kscreen or kwin shared files. There were multiple files: one with just a GUID for the display and one for the type of connection. I noticed that there were combinations where one GUID would be DP-1, HDMI, DP-2, etc. That got me thinking about the whole settings/config files stuff and what led me to watch the actions of the Monitor Configuration screen more closely to understand what was happening.

The monitors should still be listed in the display configuration even if disabled.

But only if they’re plugged in at the time. And plugging them in would blank the other side monitor if connected, and lead to my main monitor flashing and glitching as it kept finding and rejecting the other monitors over and over. They’d constantly disappear and reappear from the configuration screen every time it happened, causing any changes I made to the configuration, which were not applied before they lost the connection, to be lost.

May be worth filing a bug with kde. Seems like a massive oversight if that isn’t the intended behavior.

I may do that. However, outside of my experience with closing a wine app leading to this, I’m not sure if there’s an easy way to reproduce it. Regardless of where I go from here, I am happy it is back to working, and thank you for your comment and questions!

The YT channel Veritassium recently did a video going into more depth about the SSH thing. Was interesting!

I had bought PvZ from PopCap in like 2012. Found that I could install the old EXE from it on Linux. Requires registration with their servers, which no longer exist. This comes as a welcomed surprise!

This is all so fucked up. I can’t with this shit.

Tell that to Israel who showed this wouldn’t diminish their global support!

I use my USAA banking app, my stock app with Charles-Schwabb, and even Bitwarden with biometrics on GOS. It may have been limiting before, but not anymore. They have a sandboxed Google Play integrity whatever, too, do you can turn that shit on for select apps and it alerts you when an app is calling it.

Aurora Store also has the Play Store apps with reduced bloat. I’ve been using GOS on my Pixel 7 since late last year. It has a slight learning curve, but lots of info out there for how and what to change in settings for different apps and permissions. Definitely don’t regret my install!

Maybe even Star Citizen!