Xocel

It won't let me edit my original post in this thread back on page 8 to add the Arch-based instructions for getting native voice chat to work along with notifications. But here's how to get Second Life going, and voice and notifications to work for Arch Linux (and arch Linux based instructions). These instructions were of course used after a fresh install using the guided installer where I used Gnome3 as the desktop environment and recommended drivers (figured I'd mention that just in case Gnome grabs any extra dependencies). Arch based (Arch Linux, Endeavour OS, Garuda Linux, Manjaro) Running the viewer: First, before the viewer will even run you need to install a few dependencies. sudo pacman -S glu gtk2 Voice chat: Before you can install all of these you will need to enable multilib repository, and have the AUR helper yay installed and set up (these are enabled and set up by default on Manjaro and Endeavour OS I believe). sudo pacman -S gst-plugins-bad gst-plugins-base gst-plugins-good gst-plugins-ugly lib32-gst-plugins-base lib32-gst-plugins-good lib32-libpulse lib32-alsa-plugins lib32-alsa-lib libstdc++5 libidn11 lib32-libidn11 yay -S lib32-libstdc++5 lib32-libstdc++28 Notifications: In order for notifications to work you will need to install the following using yay. yay -S growl-for-linux-git

Guilty. I'm a Linux gamer. And as you can see I'd had it running over an hour before I took that screenshot and had played a few games and stuff. It is typically using around 500-something MB of RAM after a cold boot, as is typical of KDE. The gaming thing was probably evident by Steam icon being one of my quick launches toward the bottom.

Ahahah. TDD123, I can agree gnome can be a bit on the heavy side ram-usage wise. At the moment I am using KDE Plasma, but I have used gnome extensively as well as cinnamon and XFCE. What happens is I get bored of one after a good while goes by so I move to a different desktop environment to change things up a bit.

I'm not a developer either, and yet I do know what those commands I pasted are doing. I haven't written a single program in my life. And none of these commands are actually doing the work of a programmer or writing any programs. But rather, they are using a command line interface to actually run programs. Most of these commands are basically telling a program to run which will download and install things off the internet. The different distributions of Linux each have a different program to do this (e.g. apt, dnf, eopkg, zypper). These programs are called package managers, and Windows and Mac has package managers too. I'm just running them by command line just like normal people (who aren't programmers) used to do in the DOS days. This command line route is how I prefer to install things regardless of if I'm on Windows, Mac, or Linux. For example installing Firefox on all three of them would be a similar command for me. Windows: winget install firefox Mac OS: brew install firefox Linux: sudo apt install firefox You do not need to be a programmer to run command line programs. And in the above examples you are saving yourself a lot of time and being more secure. You don't need to open up a web browser and look for some random website (which may or may not be the right site to download something), download a .exe, .dmg, or .deb file, click it to install, then remove the .exe or whatnot sitting around on your system. Instead the command line based program does the downloading, installing, and cleaning up after. Even if you are using Windows or Mac I suggest learning at least some basic command line usage. The command line is here to stay, and will always be more powerful than clicking around on stuff.

As somebody who is using a Radeon GPU, yes I do notice quite a difference. Firestorm runs at about 10 to 20 more FPS on the average for me than running it on Windows 10 on the same hardware. This is for the following reasons: Second Life viewers (including Firestorm) use OpenGL. Microsoft (who makes windows) and AMD (who make Radeon) treat OpenGL as a second class citizen it seems. Last time I tried to use the Radeon Adrenaline software on Windows to record it would not even allow me to record a game if it used OpenGL instead of DirectX or Vulkan. The Radeon drivers are open source, and are included in the Linux kernel itself. It being open source means this "unofficial" version of the driver (worked on by Linux foundation, not AMD), along with the open source OpenGL stack that works with it (Mesa) has had numerous volunteers working on it and cleaning up the code to make it run better. For Nvidia folks you may not notice as much of a difference, Nvidia does not open source their drivers so you can only use the Linux driver from them. But at least the main OS won't treat OpenGL as a second class citizen, so you may still notice some improvement.

With all the people bringing up the other (better) option of Linux, and the concern of voice chat issues I thought I'd add to this thread by posting instructions on how to get both voice and notifications to work for Firestorm on different distributions. These instructions are also in the pics section on my profile if anyone needs. The instructions are for using the native Linux version for SLvoice, not the WINE one. Here goes: Debian/Ubuntu based (Debian, Ubuntu, Pop!_OS, Linux Mint, Elementary OS, Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Lubuntu, Zorin OS etc.) Voice: In order to get voice chat to work, there are 32-bit dependencies. Open a terminal and type in the following set of commands: sudo dpkg --add-architecture i386 sudo apt update sudo apt install sudo apt install libidn11:i386 libstdc++6:i386 gstreamer1.0-pulseaudio:i386 Notifications: In order for notifications to show up when enabled you need to install Growl for Linux with the following: sudo apt install growl-for-linux Fedora Voice: In order to get voice chat to work on Fedora, you will need to install some 32-bit dependencies that voice chat relies on. Before doing these steps you may require the RPM Fusion repositories enabled sudo dnf install libstdc++.i686 libidn1.34.i686 libidn2.i686 gstreamer1-plugins-bad-free.i686 gstreamer1-plugins-bad-free-extras.i686 gstreamer1-plugins-base.i686 gstreamer1-plugins-good.i686 gstreamer1-plugins-good-extras.i686 gstreamer1-plugins-ugly.i686 gstreamer1-plugins-ugly-free.i686 Notifications: For notifications, you will need to install Growl for Linux: sudo dnf copr enable xenithorb/growl-for-linux -y sudo dnf install growl-for-linux growl-for-linux-display-notify -y These instructions work as of Fedora 34. OpenSUSE Tumbleweed Voice: In order to get Firestorm voice chat to work on OpenSUSE tumbleweed some 32-bit dependencies need to be installed, along with a symlink to direct it to the correct version of libidn (Firestorm tries to look for an old version that doesn't exist on Tumbleweed). This may also require the packman repository to be enabled before these commands work. sudo zypper install libidn12-32bit libidn2-0-32bit libstdc++6-32bit gstreamer-plugins-bad-32bit gstreamer-plugins-base-32bit gstreamer-plugins-ugly-32bit alsa-plugins-pulse-32bit sudo ln -s /lib/libidn.so.12 /lib/libidn.so.11 Notifications: Growl for Linux also needs to be installed for notifications to work. wget https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/utilities/openSUSE_Factory/x86_64/growl-for-linux-0.7.0-4.102.x86_64.rpm sudo zypper install ./growl-for-linux-0.7.0-4.102.x86_64.rpm Solus OS Voice: Solus OS is a nice Linux OS that's indended entirely for desktop use, and is beginner friendly for most things. Some pieces of Firestorm will need extra set up before they work. As with Tumbleweed there is no libidn.so.11, so link that to libidn.so.12 and it will work without issue. Voice chat needs these commands typed in to work: sudo eopkg install pulseaudio-32bit alsa-plugins-32bit alsa-lib-32bit libstdc++-32bit libidn2-32bit libidn-32bit gst-plugins-good gst-plugins-base-32bit gstreamer-1.0-32bit sudo ln -s /usr/lib32/libidn.so.12 /usr/lib32/libidn.so.11 Notifications: Growl notifications needs to be built from source code, using these commands to grab the developer tools to build it, then grab the pieces needed to make the program, then build and install it: sudo eopkg install -c system.devel sudo eopkg install linux-current-headers openssl-devel curl-devel libgtk-2-devel sqlite3-devel dbus-glib-devel libnotify-devel wget https://github.com/mattn/growl-for-linux/releases/download/0.8.5/growl-for-linux-0.8.5.tar.gz tar xvzf growl-for-linux-0.8.5.tar.gz cd growl-for-linux-0.8.5 ./configure make sudo make install

I'm not sure if my section about growl caused confusion or not. But just in case, I'm not talking about the in-viewer notifications you received when someone IM's or pays you or whatnot. I'm specifically talking about the feature shown in this screenshot: If the above option is enabled and you have growl installed you will get notifications from IM's and stuff on your native desktop notification system when you have Firestorm minimized. I find this helps me see when I get IM's if I have my viewer minimized while I'm playing games or doing other things. I don't know if "growl" itself is 32-bit or not. I do know that it's an older notification thing that doesn't come in some of the newer distros, or is not in the default repositories for a number of distros, or in some cases must be built from source since no repository has it for that particular distro (Solus OS falls into this category). As it's not in the default Fedora repos, the need to add the xenithorb copr is there.

In order to get voice chat to work on Fedora, you will need to install some 32-bit dependencies that voice chat relies on. sudo dnf install libstdc++.i686 libidn1.34.i686 libidn2.i686 gstreamer1-plugins-bad-free.i686 gstreamer1-plugins-bad-free-extras.i686 gstreamer1-plugins-base.i686 gstreamer1-plugins-good.i686 gstreamer1-plugins-good-extras.i686 gstreamer1-plugins-ugly.i686 gstreamer1-plugins-ugly-free.i686 For notifications, you will need to install Growl for Linux: sudo dnf copr enable xenithorb/growl-for-linux -y sudo dnf install growl-for-linux growl-for-linux-display-notify -y These instructions work as of Fedora 34. I also have instructions in the picks section of my profile page for getting voice chat and notifications to work various other distributions of Linux, including some of the more exotic ones (OpenSUSE Tumbleweed, Solus OS) and of course instructions for the typical standard Debian/Ubuntu based ones, if anyone needs help with any of the other Linux's. Only thing I'm missing I think is the Arch based ones, but I plan to get around to adding a section for that at some point when I get a chance to tinker around with their software packages 🙂