Try New Technology

If you install a Windows application/program through Bottles on Linux then you may need to know where the files are at. Below is the location (at least on Manjaro KDE and I am pretty sure Steam Deck as well):

~/.var/app/com.usebottles.bottles/data/bottles/bottles/Winbox/drive_c/users/

When buying a Seagate Exos hard drive you will need to check the status / turn off EPC before using it in an unRAID server. From my reading, leaving EPC enabled can cause the drives to get a S.M.A.R.T. failure because of too many on/off cycles.

Below are the steps needed to check/disable EPC and prevent this potential problem. They can be found many places on the Internet and I just want them posted here so I can look them up quickly in the future.

• Install SeaChest tools CLI
• Launch Seachest from start menu
• Seachest_PowerControl_x64_windows.exe -s (NOTE: to list drives, make note of PD# of drive you want to flash)
• SeaChest_PowerControl_x64_windows.exe -d PD2 –EPCfeature disable (NOTE: replace PD2 with the number of the drive you want to flash)
• SeaChest_PowerControl_x64_windows.exe -d PD2 –powerBalanceFeature disable
• SeaChest_PowerControl_x64_windows.exe -d PD2 –showEPCSettings (NOTE: All should read 0; this means it is disabled)

If a USB Drive is not able to be formatted or partitioned through the normal methods within Windows, then you may need to use DISKPART to CLEAN the drive. Recently I came across two (2) USB Drives given an “Access is denied.” error when trying to run CLEAN on them.
Below is the solution (ref: Microsoft Tech Community – USB drive cannot be cleaned or partitioned):

• Right-click the Start menu and launch “Command Prompt (Admin)“
• At the command prompt type in “diskpart“
• Type in “list disk“
• Type in “select disk #” (ie “select disk 3” if Disk 3 was the USB drive you are working with)
• If typing in “clean” returns an “Access is denied.” error message then first type in “covert gpt“
• Type in “clean” (this time it should work as expected)
• You can now close the Command Prompt and partition/format the USB Drive like normal.

NOTE: This was all done on a Windows 10 (latest build as of Dec 2023) machine.

Suddenly after an about back in November I noticed the monitors no longer going to sleep. After digging around I found that the System Settings > Power Management > Energy Savings was throwing errors (I think the exact error was “kde power management service not running /usr/lib/org_kde_powerdevil”) about the service not running and therefor the panels would not be interacted with and all of the setting were disabled. Searching over a couple weeks finally came up with a solution thanks to a post on the Arch Linux BBS (ref: [SOLVED] KDE plasma power management not working / starting):

• Edit /usr/lib/systemd/user/plasma-powerdevil.service — I used Kate since it will correct sudo when saving
• Find the “TimeoutSec=” variable (line 10) — I changed mine to “10sec“
• Logoff or Reboot
• System Settings > Power Management > Energy Savings should now be working as expected

NOTE: I ended up applying this fix a few times due to an update seeming breaking things again. It has been “holding” fine with all the updates through December though. More details can be found on the Manjaro forums here.

I was able to get The Thaumaturge October 2023 Steam Next Fest working pretty quickly, even though it was throwing “Microsoft Visual C++ runtime” errors at launch on Manjaro KDE Linux.

• Install The Thaumaturge Demo from Steam
• Install protontricks
• Install ProntonUp-Qt
• Launch Protontricks: “Select the default wineprefix” and click OK
• Select “Install a Windows DLL or component” and click OK
• Selected and install “vcrun2022”
• Then you will also want to select and install “mspatcha”
• Close Protontricks
• Launch ProtonUp-Qt: Install for “Steam” and then click “Add version” to installed “GE-Proton8-16”
• Close ProtonUp-Qt
• Within Steam, Rick-click on “The Thaumaturge Demo” and select “Properties…”
• Click on Compatibility > check “Force the use of a specific Steam Play compatibility tool” and then select “GE-Proton8-16” from the list
• Close the Properties window”
• Play The Thaumaturge Demo

NOTE: Some of the tutorial video that come up will display fine, but then when they repeats it has an issue; this doesn’t impact game play.