WinBoat is a new Linux app to run Windows apps with "seamless integration"


in reply to RmDebArc_5

Listen, I only need to know one thing: can it run Paint.\NET?

Because pretty much all my needs are met but

GOOD GOD THE SELECTION FOR GENERAL-USE RASTER EDITING SOFTWARE ON LINUX IS BALLS.


(inb4 anyone says anything: Krita = painting not editing; GIMP = sucks balls; PhotoGIMP = sucks less balls; Pinta sucks balls ever since they switched to GTK4; and pretty much all other options are MS Paint equivalents so also all suck balls.)

This entry was edited (2 hours ago)

The state of Linux phones in 2025


Linux phones are still behind android and iPhone, but the gap shrank a surprising amount while I wasn’t looking. These are damn near usable day to day phones now! But there are still a few things that need done and I was wondering what everyone’s thoughts on these were:

1 - tap to pay. I don’t see how this can practically be done. Like, at all.

2 - android auto/apple CarPlay emulation. A Linux phones could theoretically emulate one of these protocols and display a separate session on the head unit of a car. But I dont see any kind of project out there that already does this in an open-source kind of way. The closest I can find are some shady dongles on amazon that give wireless CarPlay to head units that normally require USB cables. It can be done, but I don't see it being done in our community.

3 - voice assistants. wether done on device or phoning into our home servers and having requests processed there, this should be doable and integrated with convenient shortcuts. Home assistant has some things like this, and there’s good-old Mycroft blowing around out there still. Siri is used every day by plenty of people and she sucks. If that’s the benchmark I think our community can easily meet that.

I started looking at Linux phones again because I loathe what apple is doing to this UI now and android has some interesting foldables but now that google is forcing Gemini into everything and you can’t turn it off, killing third party ROMS, and getting somehow even MORE invasive, that whole ecosystem seems like it’s about to march right off a cliff so its not an option anymore for me.

This entry was edited (22 hours ago)

Backing up iPhone and Macbook Air


Hello,

I am trying to help my girlfriend backup her iPhone and Macbook.

I am a bit unfamiliar with the Apple ecosystem, and she's still not very familiar with the technical aspects of it.

With my android and PC, it seems a bit more straightforward. Certain programs or services will backup everything, and I can restore it all exactly as it was at that time.

But the Apple webpage for iCloud Backup lists a bunch of things it backs up, meaning, it doesn't backup everything?

I'm trying to figure out the best way to make backups of her phone and laptop so she can restore them exactly as they were when each backup was made.

Do iPhones and Macs have this type of option? Backing up everything, like taking an image of them at that point, including all apps, all files, all settings, every little thing, and then using that to restore them at a later date if needed?

Thank you for taking the time to read my post.

Any direction or guidance you might be able to provide is greatly appreciated.

I'll update with any solutions or options for your opinions if I'm able to find any.

in reply to vimmiewimmie

If you have the iCloud storage available, you can do iCloud backups. It will backup all the data from the phone, but not the apps themselves. (Those apps will auto-install after a restore, though.)

As for the Macbook, the usual way is an external USB drive and TimeMachine (which should be preinstalled). You can also take a complete backup of the iPhone using macOS's Finder (the phone should popup there as a "drive" once connected via cable) and then backup everything to a HDD/SSD via TimeMachine.

Do I fit into any subculture?


wondering if I fit into any subculture since I have some American friends who are around my age and they know which subculture they belong to, and typically hang out with other people of their subculture, so I feel like an odd one out being a sort of chameleon, but the one who doesn't have a tribe. I like drawing weird art, like colourful monsters that are Mario inspired. I’m also into emulation, PC gaming + hardware, tattoo design, 3D modelling and making mods for games. I’m a tomboy and never wear makeup. Dry sense of humour. Fashion, my wardrobe consists of tracksuits and trainers, sometimes a cap or fabric coats with a plaid pattern on them. I’ll sometimes wear gold jewellery like bracelets. I don’t do anything with my hair besides keeping it neck length and curly. I’m a big fan of music and that consists of UK garage (Todd Edwards and Klaus Veen are my favourites), deep house and DnB. I’d love to go to music festivals and just go completely wild but I don't have any friends who are into this stuff and sometimes when I'm talking with my friends I can't relate much lol

TL;DR The friends I have are a lot different to me and they know what subculture they belong in, so most of their friends are like that too. I’m just curious and wondering what mine is if any so I can better find more people like me?

This entry was edited (1 day ago)

ChimeraOS dev announced Kazeta, a new Linux OS aimed at recreating a classic console experience


Linux Tablet?


Hi Linux nerds,

I've started up classes recently, and with being a recent convert and all, was a little curious to hear if anyone had any recommendations for a tablet capable of handling the workload of a student and that runs linux. I'm a bit of a neophyte when it comes to hardware (especially tablets, I've never had one in my life), though I've got enough experience to run Fedora on my PC.

My needs are pretty simple, I just need to be able to run libreoffice and take notes on the machine during lectures. Any insights as to where I should be looking?

in reply to orenj

I currently run a ThinkPad Yoga L13 Yoga G4. Works wonders with EndeavourOS+KDE Plasma. I study engineering and I both take notes with Xournal++ and the integrated pen (other wacom compatible pens work too) and run heavy workloads like code compiling and a crap ton of MATLAB. There are some quirks specific to Linux, for example acpi does not recognize when the device is folded into tablet mode (but on Windows it works). I worked around it with two widgets with which I manually turn the tablet mode on and off. Other stuff also, I wrote a blog postt on it if anyone is interested.

For all my bachelor I used a ThinkPad Yoga 370, but the dual core processor couldn't really hold up to my computation workloads. Everything worked out of the box, always Arch Linux and I tried both Gnome and Plasma in my time with it.

This entry was edited (12 hours ago)

ffmpeg from apt or flatpak, do I need both? debian 13.0


flatpak should be newer than apt, correct if wrong.

I first installed FFmpeg extension with extra codecs from flatpak, executed a ffmpeg command that returned: command not found.

I then thought the flatpak package, as the name states, is an extension that needs the apt version to be installed to work, so I executed sudo apt install ffmpeg and after downloading, the command worked.

Should I get rid of flatpak's ffmpeg? Am I gaining functions with this package?

ffmpeg -version returns
ffmpeg version 7.1.1-1+b1 Copyright (c) 2000-2025 the FFmpeg developers built with gcc 14 (Debian 14.2.0-19)

in reply to arsus5478

You cannot run flatpak application by simply calling the binary.

Coming to your question, I suggest you to install ffmpeg directly from your Debian repo, this way you can get hardware acceleration or device specific benefits for encoding/decoding/transcoding.

You can keep the flatpak version if it is needed by some other flatpak applications. Normally one won't interfere with the other.

Nvidia driver issues...


Well guys! I did it! Linux mint on my desktop! Finally! Everything seemed like it was going swimmingly save for some minor issues. But then I ran into one: I did use stability matrix to make furry porn (very bad furry porn, don't ask) but when I tried to run it, it kept telling me it had issues with python and cuda and other stuff. I wondered if the problem was just python libraries or my nvidia drivers. I did manage to get a workaround, but it simply wouldn't use my GPU... in fact, I think I am having a super hard time seeing if I am even using it properly.

Speaking of drivers I tried to install the latest one, but that caused a problem. I use multiple monitors (because of course I do). Three in fact, but only one ended up working with the other two entirely unrecognized. And I still wasn't able to use my GPU to get stability matrix (or even stability forge without that) and my games still can't run on max graphics settings. I've been looking around for some help on this and trying to work on it all day, with limited success. It is basically the only major thing going wrong with my transition from windows to linux.

Any help here?

Software Freedom Day 2025 - New Jersey


cross-posted from: lemmy.sdf.org/post/41246302

We're having an event for Software Freedom Day. It is a world-wide event, and we are having one right here at Montclair State University in New Jersey.

September 20th, 2025 from 11am-4pm

We'll have talks about what free software is, and why it's important for everyone. What kind of software is available for your existing computer, and how you can use Free Software to use your computer past the date that the manufacturer wants to keep updating it. There will be a talk on self hosting, so that you can run services that reduce or replace your reliance on outside big tech companies, and keep better control of your data. Talks about Wikipedia and Open Source are proposed. There will also be a talk on Social Networking with free software called "Mastodon and the Fediverse" that will show how you can network with people without giving your data to big tech, and without the algorithms that don't work in your best interest.

Here a link for more information:

softwarefreedom.neocities.org/

We'll be happy to discuss any details.

This entry was edited (3 days ago)
in reply to Karna

Look during my distro hops I tried cosmic. I didn't get the allure. Maybe for a dead simple touch screen but it's too basic. The settings are basic, it lacks depth. I wasn't a fan of the gnome like interface I guess even if you take that out. The best feature was the tiling. Beyond that I just wasn't feeling the locked down UI and brain dead simple settings. KDE is too deep and has too many menus. Mint does it best. Little depth, little options, not enough to fuck things up too bad but still allow you to make it yours.
in reply to Karna

This.

I haven't tried Cosmic yet, but for me it's the opposite: I feel GNOME (and KDE) is needlessly complex / bloated. Give me a simple tiling window manager that's efficient, quick and always reliable. No real need for menus or fancy animated toolbar widgets, just snappy instant response to my keypresses.

UX is as varied as people's tastes, and they also might evolve with the times.

This entry was edited (12 hours ago)
in reply to OhVenus_Baby

Mint does it best


I guess you mean Cinnamon, Linux Mint is the distro (and it also comes with MATE and XFCE variants).

Cinnamon started as a fork of GNOME 3, for a while Linux Mint was shipping GNOME 3 + MGSE (Mint GNOME Shell Extensions).. GNOME is configurable through extensions, but due to frictions with the GNOME team it made more sense to fork.

This entry was edited (12 hours ago)

WTH is happening at the GNOME Foundation ?! - Linux Weekly News




WTH is happening at the GNOME Foundation ?! - Linux Weekly News


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Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
00:32 Sponsor: TuxCare
01:45 GNOME Executive Director steps down
04:41 AI used for backporting patches to the Linux kernel
07:02 GhostBSD launches Gerschwin Desktop, a Mac OS clone
09:06 Bazaar app store is available on Flathub
10:37 Firefox adds web apps backs, sort of
12:21 Vivaldi says no to AI
14:04 Google will block sideloading of unverified apps
16:07 Another Asahi dev leaves the project
17:44 Wikipedia editors reject AI
20:00 Sponsor: Tuxedo Computers

Links:

GNOME Executive Director steps down
blogs.gnome.org/aday/2025/08/2…

AI used for backporting patches to the Linux kernel
phoronix.com/news/AI-Help-Back…

GhostBSD launches Gerschwin Desktop, a Mac OS clone
github.com/gershwin-desktop/ge…

Bazaar app store is available on Flathub
omgubuntu.co.uk/2025/08/bazaar…

Firefox adds web apps backs, sort of
omgubuntu.co.uk/2025/08/firefo…

Vivaldi says no to AI
vivaldi.com/blog/keep-explorin…

Google will block sideloading of unverified apps
arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/0…

Another Asahi dev leaves the project
rosenzweig.io/blog/asahi-gpu-p…

Wikipedia editors reject AI
webpronews.com/wikipedia-edito…


Announcement of LibreOffice 25.8.1


Thanks and farewell to Steven Deobald


Steven Deobald has been in the post of GNOME Foundation Executive Director for the past four months, during which time he has made major contributions to both the Foundation and the wider GNOME project. Sadly, Steven will be leaving the Foundation this week. The Foundation Board is extremely grateful to Steven and wish him the very best for his future endeavors.

The Executive Director role is extremely diverse and it is hard to list all of Steven’s contributions since he has been in post. However, particular highlights include:

  • energetic engagement with the GNOME community, including weekly updates focused on the Foundation’s support of GNOME development, and attention to topics of importance to our contributors, such as Pride Month and Disability Pride
  • the creation of a new donations platform, which included both a new website, detailed evaluation of payment processors, and a strategy for distributing donations to GNOME development
  • a focus on partner outreach, including attending UN Open Source Week, adding postmarketOS to our Advisory board, and the creation of a new Advisory Board Matrix channel, alongside many conversations with partner organisations
  • internal policy and documentation work, particularly around spending and finances
  • the addition of new tooling to augment policies and documentation, such as an internal Foundation Handbook and vault.gnome.org
  • assistance with the board, including recruiting a new treasurer and vice-treasurer

We are extremely grateful to Steven for all this and more. Despite these many positive achievements, Steven and the board have come to the conclusion that Steven is not the right fit for the Executive Director role at this time. We are therefore bidding Steven a fond farewell.

I know that some members of the GNOME community will be disappointed by this decision. I can assure everyone that it wasn’t one that we took lightly, and had to consider from different perspectives.

The good news is that Steven has left the Foundation with a strong platform on which to build, and we have an energetic and engaged board which is already working to fill in the gaps left by his departure. I’m confident that the Foundation can continue on the positive trajectory started by Steven, with a strong community-based executive taking the reins.

To this end, the board held its regular annual meeting this week, and appointed new directors to key positions. I’ve taken over the president’s role from Rob McQueen, who has now joined Arun Raghavan as one of two Vice-Presidents. The Executive Committee has been expanded with the inclusion of Arun and Maria Majadas (who is our new Chair). We have also bolstered the Finance Committee, and are looking to create new groups for fundraising and communications.

Steven has been very helpful in working on a smooth transition, and our staff are continuing to work as normal, so Foundation operations won’t be affected by these management changes. In the near future we’ll be pushing forward with the fundraising plans that Steven has set out, and are hopeful about being able to provide more financial support for the GNOME project as a result. If you want to help us with that, please get in touch.

Should you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to reach out to president@gnome.org.

On behalf of the GNOME Foundation Board of Directors,

– Allan

Syncthing setup that is suitable for a battery powered Linux device


Hi guys, I recently installed Linux mint on a spare laptop I had to check if I can daily drive this and since I run Syncthing Windows setup on this device before and I essentially want to replicate that setup here which means Syncthing starts up automatically on login but with the condition that the device should be connected to ac power and if it gets disconnected kill the process right away. I could easily have this in Windows setup and also in Syncthing-fork for Android with a simple toggle. How can I replicate this Linux mint as well?
in reply to hobbsc

Involuntary. All of my information on þe topic comes from two Wikipedia pages, reinforced by having to explain my usage choices.

Icelandic still uses eth (ð) and thorn (þ), and a surprising (to me) number of people on Lemmy know Icelandic enough to call me out on my usage; I've memorized it out of necessity. For example, þe phasing-out of ð was accelerated by King Alfred the Great. Þat's all I know about Alfy, þough.

This Week in Plasma: Saved clipboard items and tablet touch rings


Welcome to a new issue of This Week in Plasma!

This week saw huge improvements to the Plasma clipboard, KRunner, and drawing tablet support — not to mention a bunch of UI improvements in Discover, and plenty more, too! So without further ado…

Notable New Features


Plasma’s clipboard now lets you mark entries as favorites, and they’ll be permanently saved so you can always access them easily! This is very useful when you find yourself pasting the same common text snippets all the time. The feature request was 22 years old; this may be a new record for oldest request ever implemented in KDE! (Kendrick Ha, link)

Image 2: Starred /saved clipboard items

Plasma now lets you configure touch rings on your drawing tablet! (Joshua Goins, link)

Discover now lets you install hardware drivers that are offered in your operating system’s package repos! (Evan Maddock, link)

KRunner and KRunner-powered searches can now find global shortcuts! (Fushan Wen, link)

Image 3: Global shortcuts/actions in KRunner

Notable UI Improvements

Plasma 6.5.0


KRunner and KRunner-powered searches now use fuzzy matching for applications. (Harald Sitter, link)

Image 4: Fuzzy match in KRunner for “Thunderbirb” Improved the way Discover presents error messages to be a bit more user-friendly and compliant with KDE’s Human Interface Guidelines. (Oliver Beard and Nate Graham, link 1 and link 2)

Discover now lets you write a review for apps that don’t have any reviews yet. (Nate Graham, link)

On operating systems using RPM-OSTree (like Fedora Kinoite), there’s no longer an awkward red icon used in the sidebar and other places you’d expect black or white icons. (Justin Zobel, link)

KDE Gear 25.12.0


Opening a disk in KDE Partition Manager from its entry in Plasma’s Disks & Devices widget no longer mounts the disk, which is annoying since you’ll then have to unmount it in the app before you can do anything with it. (Joshua Goins, link 1 and link 2)

Notable Bug Fixes

Plasma 6.4.5


Fixed a critical issue that could cause the text of a sticky note on a panel to be permanently lost if that panel was cloned and then later deleted. This work also changes handling for deleted notes’ underlying data files: now they’re moved to the trash, rather than being deleted immediately. Should be a lot safer now! (Niccolò Venerandi, link 1 and link 2)

Fixed a very common KWin crash when changing display settings that was accidentally introduced recently. (David Edmundson, link)

Made a few strings in job progress notifications translatable. (Victor Ryzhykh, link)

Fixed an issue that could allow buttons with long text to overflow from System Monitor’s process killer dialog when the window was very very small. (Nate Graham, Link)

Fixed an issue in the time zone chooser map that would cause it to not zoom to the right location when changing the time zone using one of the comboboxes. (Kai Uwe Broulik, link)

The warnings shown by System Settings’ Fonts page in response to various conditions will now be shown when you adjust all the fonts at once, not only when you adjust one at a time. (Nate Graham, link)

Plasma 6.5.0


Fixed a case where Plasma could crash while you were configuring the weather widget. (Bogdan Onofriichuk, link)

Fixed an issue that could cause System Settings to crash while quitting when certain pages were open. (David Redondo, link)

Plasma is now better at remembering if you wanted Bluetooth on or off on login. (Nicolas Fella, link)

Panels in Auto-Hide, Dodge Windows, and Windows Go Below modes will now respect the opacity setting. (Niccolò Venerandi, link)

Frameworks 6.18


Fixed an issue that caused Plasma to crash when dragging files from Dolphin to the desktop or vice versa when the system was set up with certain types of mounts. (David Edmundson, link)

Other bug information of note:



Notable in Performance & Technical

Plasma 6.5.0


Implemented support for “overlay planes” on single-output setups, which have the potential to significantly reduce GPU and power usage for compatible apps displaying full-screen content. Note that NVIDIA GPUs are currently opted out because of unresolved driver issues. (Xaver Hugl, link)

Implemented support for drag-and-drop to and from popups created by Firefox extensions, and presumably other popups implemented with the same xdg_popup system, too. (Vlad Zahorodnii, link)

Fixed an issue that would cause V-Sync to be inappropriately disabled in certain games using the SDL library. (Xaver Hugl, link)

Undetermined release date


The annotating feature in Spectacle has been extracted into a re-usable library so that it can also be used in other apps in the future! Such integration is still in progress (as is working out a release schedule for the git repo that the library lives in now), but you’ll hear about it once it’s ready! (Noah Davis and Carl Schwan, link)

How You Can Help


KDE has become important in the world, and your time and contributions have helped us get there. As we grow, we need your support to keep KDE sustainable.

You can help KDE by becoming an active community member and getting involved somehow. Each contributor makes a huge difference in KDE — you are not a number or a cog in a machine! You don’t have to be a programmer, either; many other opportunities exist, too.

You can also help us by making a donation! A monetary contribution of any size will help us cover operational costs, salaries, travel expenses for contributors, and in general just keep KDE bringing Free Software to the world.

To get a new Plasma feature or a bugfix mentioned here, feel free to push a commit to the relevant merge request on invent.kde.org.

This entry was edited (3 days ago)
in reply to MazonnaCara89

  • Plasma now lets you configure touch rings on your drawing tablet! (Joshua Goins, link) -> screenshot

I am not a graphics designer, but i have a graphics tablet with such a touch ring. Wanted to use it for some photo editing and this really bugged me in the past. Finally its solved and hopefully the ring can be used to change brush size or zoom in and out in example.

Need some opinions on my next Laptop and Linux Distro


Hi, im searching for a new Laptop and i was tempted to buy the framework 13.. BUT..

Usually i would search for a used or refurbished Laptop to give it a second life u know. And after it broke down in like 4-6 years usually, i would buy a new used one again.

So my first question is: Is the framework 13 really worth my money for the repairability and upgradability in comparison?

My prefered Laptops are the Surface like ones 2in1 with a stand and detachable keyboard...

But im okay with it to switch to a normal laptop Formfactor.

I would prefere 16:9 or 16:10 for multimedia but im used to a 3:2 so it would be kinda okay for me to stick with it.

How good can i implement linux on some surface like laptop?

I switched from win10 to linux Mint on my desktop this year. But i think im going to switch to another distro, because i need the ASHA-protocoll as fast as possible. Maybe not that important on my desktop but definetly on my next Laptop.

Someone switched from surface like laptop to FW13?

Im not a coder. More like a gamer with og cheat codes in gtaSA on a cracked Version of the game, which runs in deamon-tools as an ISO, lol.

Main use would be Multimedia and some gaming, if possible.

Another use would be AI.. but as far as i know linux doesnt support the build in NPU of the FW13 yet. Maybe ai tinker in a few years then?

And im something like a crypto bro i would say. So how good are crypto tools implemented in linux? Some cold wallet support for exampel.

Which distro would serve my needs the most?

Is there a better choice for me than FW13 ?

So all in all im hopelessly lost and cant decide shit ^^

My only hope is to ask some Linux OGs to help me out on dis.

plz halp.

This entry was edited (4 days ago)
in reply to tj0m0

A few days ago I posted about the same thing, I wanted a Mac-like laptop but running x86 so I could run Linux properly and not through hacks. 80% of the people in the comments suggested the Framework, and for a moment I was close to getting one. But I don't think I would be fully happy with its clunkiness to be honest. Modularized stuff are clunky we like it or not. Yes, much better for repairability, but DELL also offers me two years on site support even here in Greece, so...

At the end, I bought this DELL. It's coming with Linux, so I know it's 100% compatible, and I paid only 765 euros on it (after removing VAT, since I bought it also for work). That's half the price of a Framework, with a slicker design, and it's fast-enough (15,200 passmark cpu points). The only compromise I had to make was that the touchpad was off-center, as it's a large laptop. Other than that, it ticks all my boxes as per my post the other day.


The impossibility of finding a Linux laptop that I like


I'm a Linux user since 1998 (my main desktop PC runs Debian), however I do have a couple of Macs around because I love their hardware (not so much the software though). In fact, I have three old MacBook Airs (mid-2011, 2012, 2015), all running Linux. The moment I got them, I erased MacOS and installed Linux pronto!

But my main laptop is a MacBook Air M1 with MacOS because it's much faster than these older Intel-based MacBook Airs. Modern web browsing and video editing requires a lot of processing power.

So, I want to move to have my main laptop running Linux too. I DON'T want to install Asahi Linux on my M1, because I don't consider it a proper solution for my needs (I want to run Resolve, you see, and most foss apps that I use would need recompiling). Also, I don't like that Asahi is dependent on MacOS to exist, because you can't boot with a usb to install it.

My issue is that I can't find ANYTHING on the PC market that is as slick or full featured as a MacBook Air (minus its limited ports). What I need is this:

  1. Screen no larger than 13.3" inches, Full HD at least, preferably good color gamut (but not a must). I still need the laptop to be portable though. Basically, I'm not even asking for HDR, as the MacBook Air features.
  2. Keyboard to have backlight, without the numpad (I hate these laptops where the touchpad is off center).
  3. The touchpad needs to be glass or of equivalent feel. The Apple touchpads slide/glide with ease. I find every PC touchpad I've used so far to be "sticky". My finger on some Chromebooks and Dell/Lenovo laptops is doing a "grrrkkk, grrrkkkk" when I slide my finger! There's something special about Apple's touchpads, I dunno.
  4. Intel 13th+ gen CPU, with passmark points over 17,000 on multi-threading. My M1 scores about 12,000 points, and it's 5 years old. So obviously I'd need something faster than what I have now.
  5. Intel GPU (no AMD or Nvidia please, I need Intel's superior video decoding abilities). On a Mac that isn't a problem, because Apple does support these 10bit 4:2:2 codecs I need, with hardware acceleration. But on the PC side, only Intel provides good support for these without headaches (only the newest nvidias support that, but I don't want to use Nvidia for too many reasons -- AMD is a disaster on that video front btw). I don't play 3D games.
  6. I need speakers that sound good. Every single PC laptop I've tried, had the worst sound ever. I need it to be hear-able on YouTube and not sound as if you're listening via a can. I bought a Thinkpad x280 a few months ago and I can't use it because its speakers are so bad! DELL (from 5 years ago that I tried) aren't better either.
  7. I need a (supported) fingerprint reader!
  8. 32 GB of RAM.
  9. 1 TB of storage.
  10. Below a $1800 price tag. That's the price I can get with a MacBook Air for all that.

Now, you might think that "well, it seems that you just want a new MacBook", but that's not true. I want a PC laptop so I can run Debian Linux instead of MacOS. But I need it to be a laptop that is "proper" by my own standards. The quality of the interaction between my palms, fingers, eyes and PC laptops IS NOT the same as with any Apple laptop I've ever used. The reason people buy Apple hardware is NOT because "MacOSX is lickable" (as it was suggested many years ago by Jobs). I've actually researched the "why". It's because the INTERACTION of your senses and the laptop's design/quality FITS. It's like a glove for one another. It's difficult to explain but I know it now to be true. It was never MacOSX itself (although MacOSX's gui smoothness helps the overall experience).

So the question is: am I missing that special, Linux-compatible, PC laptop somewhere? If you know that such a laptop exists, please reply with a link. I'll buy it in a heartbeat.

This is a serious post btw. I spent the whole weekend trying to find that mythical PC laptop, and I can't. I'm frustrated.

EDIT: I might end up with the Framework 13. Not 100% what I'm after, but probably the best solution right now.

EDIT 2: I bought a DELL 5640 16" laptop, 32 GB RAM, i7 cpu, that comes with Linux pre-installed (so I know it's compatible). It ticks all my boxes except the size and the trackpad being off center. Oh well.


This entry was edited (3 days ago)
in reply to tj0m0

Is the framework 13 really worth my money for the repairability and upgradability in comparison?


Depends on what you upgrade for, and what you need in the first place.

If you upgrade mainly for more CPU and GPU power, in my opinion that's a hard sell. The new mainboards from Framework are hella expensive!

If you need a dGPU in a small form factor laptop, Framework just doesn't offer that. Same for touch or built-in tablet support.

If you're ok with the built-in GPU and upgrade for better display, for better battery, and a better but perhaps not the absolute latest and best APU, yes, it's worth it.

When I bought the FW13, a year later or so they brought out a new 120Hz higher resolution display. The first display being 60Hz was my only big annoyance with it, having a 120Hz monitor for comparison... So I just bought the new display, and swapping it only took literal 5 minutes.

Similar story with the hinges, I wanted ones with more resistance, so I just bought stronger ones for 25€ and easily replaced them.

If the battery gets worse, or they bring out a new one with decently improved capacity, I can similarly replace it in 5 minutes.

No glue, no 10 types of special screws, just the screw driver that was shipped with the laptop, and basically zero risk of breaking anything when making modifications.

You'll have to know yourself if these tradeoffs are worth it to you... but after my old HP Envy's display broke and even finding the correct replacement part was a challenge, let alone replacing it, I'm quite happy with the FW13.

Switching to Linux - A comprehensive guide


I’ve been seeing a lot of people wanting to switch to GNU/Linux(shortly just Linux) recently, owing to various reasons including Windows 10 EOL, forced integration of AI tools, screenshot spying, bloatware, etc. and I thought I’d make a comprehensive guide based on my experience.

Please feel free to correct me when I’m mistaken.

Step 1-A:

To dual boot with Windows or not:

Decide how much you rely specifically on Windows based apps.

For most apps, there are open source and/or free alternatives.

  • M$ Office → LibreOffice.
  • Edge → LibreWolf, Ungoogled-chromium/Trivalent.
  • Outlook → BetterBird, and a shout-out to the new Tuta Mail client.
  • Photoshop → Krita, GIMP
  • Premiere Pro → Davinci Resolve, Kdenlive

There are also workarounds to run Windows apps on Linux using a VM(Virtual Machine) or containers, which you’ll have to experiment or look up others’ experiences.

→ A few multiplayer games with invasive kernel-level anti-cheat(like Valorant, LoL, Apex, Destiny2, Rainbox Six Siege, Fortnite, some Battlefield ones) will not run on Linux.

Check if it’s the case with the game you play on ProtonDB.

Edit: As some people have pointed out, AreWeAntiCheatYet website is also a good resource on multiplayer gaming on Linux.

Steam with its Proton support will just run majority of games otherwise.

98% of my 500+ games library on Steam just works.

→ For those who use Epic Games, your library will work through Lutris or Heroic.

  • Heroic will have a library of all your games and each one will have its own prefix, I think.
  • Lutris just has one prefix for Epic games and all the games in its library and runs like the Windows equivalent.

→ Those sailing high seas can still use Lutris/Heroic/Bottles to run stuff. IYKYK. Make sure to play around with winetricks and change runners if things don’t work.
There’s a slight learning curve if you’re using Lutris and stuff on your own.
Get the relevant community’s help when needed.

I personally dual boot two different Linux distros, one of which is to run stuff from the high seas.

Step 1-B:

(Skip to Step 2 if you don’t want Windows.)

If you don’t have alternatives or if VM/containers don’t run the apps you use properly, you will have to stick to dual booting Linux with Windows.

If you do, try to install Linux on a separate HDD/SSD. If you don’t have a spare drive, you can still install Linux in the same drive as Windows, but Windows has a history of breaking dual boot configurations and Linux’s bootloader. In this scenario, all you just need is to keep a USB drive with your distro’s ISO handy so you can live boot, open CLI and fix the bootloader.

Also, after installation, don’t try to run games directly from external NTFS drive on Linux. You’ll have issues.

You can always continue to copy/run files from an NTFS drive on Linux. But since NTFS is windows’ proprietary filesystem, expect it to corrupt it. It can be easily be fixed by chkdsk(disk Error checking) on Windows. So, don’t panic about this.

If you don’t need to use your external drive on Windows at all, convert it to ext4 and safely use it on Linux.

If you want to use your external drive on both Windows and Linux without corruption, exFAT supposedly works better, but exFAT doesn’t have journaling and similar features. So, a power cut during file transfer might cause data loss.(?)

I started out dual booting with Windows myself as I was scared if some things wouldn’t work, but gradually, I’ve been able to ditch Windows completely.

Step 1-C:

If you’re using the same drive for dual booting, you’ll have to make some space on it for Linux to use.
Windows can make it harder sometimes, so you might end up using some 3-rd party partion manager tools to force it, if it wouldn’t allow you.

→ Also, disable Hibernation, turn off Virtual Memory in Advanced System Settings and set paging size to 0. You can turn it back on after installing Linux.

→ To make some space, go to Disk Management and shrink your Windows volume based on your choosing. You should ideally be able to get as much free space as you see in Properties of your C Drive.
If this doesn’t work, then try a reputable 3-rd party partition manager to shrink it.

→ Once shrunk, you’d see unallocated space of your chosen size. This is where we’re going to install Linux.

Step 2-A:

Picking a distribution. There are a lot to pick from.

The three big parent ones are Debian, Fedora and Arch and many other distributions are built on top of them. There’s also OpenSuse, which supports RPM packages that is typically used on Fedora.
There are also a lot more independent distros like Gentoo, Void, Nix, Qubes of which I’m not much familiar with. You can explore those communities if interested.

Debian is a fixed release distro. Fedora is semi-rolling, and Arch & OpenSuse Tumbleweed are rolling/bleeding-edge.
- Debian(Slow to update but supposedly stable) → Ubuntu(has unfriendly snap) → Mint(most popular and friendly).
I’d not recommend Ubuntu based on my experience. But if you want to, go ahead.

  • Fedora(Natively, it has only FOSS packages by default and requires a bit of really simple initial config for proprietary Nvidia driver and codecs- refer RPM Fusion).

Fedora derivatives like Nobara/Bazzite usually have Nvidia driver and proprietary codecs already installed. Make sure to choose their ISO file that has Nvidia support.

  • Only try regular Arch install if you have enough time and patience.
    [If you’re a novice, avoid AUR if possible since they are all user submitted packages there.]

Otherwise, try Cachy-OS that is Arch-based. It has a GUI package manager.

SteamOS, also Arch-based, is typically not recommended for Desktop systems, I think.

  • OpenSuse Tumbleweed is also rolling distro like Arch. Has a nice installer and a GUI package manager.
    This is what I’m currently using after a lot of distro hopping, along with another Fedora based distro.

Most of these are regular traditional distros except Bazzite.
Bazzite is an image-based or an atomic distribution, which is supposedly hard to break. The core of it is untouched and applications can then be installed using Flatpak/Containers.
If packages are installed natively, they will be layered on top of the image.
If something goes wrong after an update, it can be rolled back to the previous working image.

Note: Regular Fedora based distros offer the ability to switch to 2 previous kernel versions during boot.

There are also other atomic distros like Kinoite(Fedora KDE in atomic form), Silverblue(Fedora Gnome in atomic form), Secureblue(if you take security very seriously), Aurora, etc.

At first, you may pick a distro that’s not for you.
In which case, always have a back up of your important data elsewhere and be ready to install another distro that you’d like to try.

Step 2-B:

Picking a Desktop Environment (also Display Server and Window Manager/Compositor).
TLDR note: Only worry about choosing Desktop Environment. Ignore others if needed.

Desktop Environment is how an OS looks like and all that you can customize with the GUI.

A lot of distros support KDE & Gnome by default.

There’s Cinnamon used in Mint.

XFCE is a lightweight DE.

Cosmic DE(still in alpha) is based on Rust(memory-safe).

Optional reading:

These DE typically have their own Window Manager(X11) or Compositor(Wayland).
I’ve never strayed away from the default stacking managers that most Desktop Environments provide.
But feel free to explore others out there if you’re into it.
Popular tiling managers are i3 on X11 and Sway on Wayland.

Now, Display Server is the simply the underlying protocol coordinating input/output. There are only two that exists. Xorg’s X11 and Wayland.
X11 is the legacy display server that is used by many distros, but slowly being phased out.

Wayland is the newer display server that is supposedly more secure with GUI isolation(which X11 lacks) and supports features like HDR.
Applications that are developed to run for X11 run on Wayland too using compatibility layers like x-Wayland.

  • Cinnamon on Mint works well on X11 from last I used it and Wayland is only experimental.
    If you’re choosing Mint, you’ll probably be sticking to X11 for now.
  • KDE and Gnome, both have wayland support. Gnome is soon phasing out X11.
  • Xfce has recently introduced wayland support.

→ On most DE, both Wayland and X11 can be used by switching over in the Login Screen.

Speaking of login screen, there’s the Display Manager. If you’re asked to pick anything in some distros, just use SDDM(for plasma), GDM(for gnome), lightDM(for others).

Step 3-A:

Now, time to get the distro ISO file from their legit websites.
Some of them support torrent downloads too.

Distros like Fedora package different environments as spins.
So, there will be Fedora KDE, Fedora Workstation(Gnome), Fedora Cosmic, and so on.

Mint’s native ISO will have Cinnamon bundled.
It also has a separate XFCE version and LMDE version(derived from Debian instead of Ubuntu).

In other cases, if you have an Nvidia card, make sure to select the Nvidia version of the ISO if they offer you that way.

Step 3-B:

Preparing a USB drive with Ventoy:

Before anyone asks, Rufus is great, but only works on Windows and you’ll have to format an ISO with it everytime you want to use a different one and you’re only limited to one ISO at a time.

Ventoy on the other hand, has cross-compatibility. It is a one time installation. You can just drag and drop or copy & paste multiple distro ISOs in it as long as you have the space in the USB drive.

Avoid Balena Etcher. I’ve seen people have issues with it.

Ventoy should have both GUI and CLI method to install. Check their site.

Step 3-C:

Meddling with BIOS:

BIOS/UEFI can be accessed during the startup of a system usually with F2/Delete/F12.

  • SecureBoot(a Microsoft feature) has to be turned off before installation.

Note: If you’re not dual-booting or don’t need Mircosoft’s secureboot, you can continue to leave it disabled after installation too.

If you want it however, it can be turned on again after installation.
If turned on, a secureboot key for your linux distro has to be registered.
You’ll have to create a keypair using ‘mokutil’ and register this with a password.
Check your distro documentation regarding how to do this.

Exception:
From what I recall, Nobara does not support SecureBoot.

  • Fast boot can be turned off too.
  • SATA mode should preferably be in AHCI.
  • Boot order can be changed and the installation USB can be prioritized to boot first too.
    This step can also be done by accessing the boot menu, typically by spamming F8 or F10 on startup.

Step 4-A:

Installation & Partitioning:

  • If you’re using auto-partitioning,

→ choose the unallocated free space if you’re dual booting on same drive.
Distro installations will usually have options like ‘Install alongside Windows’.

→ Choose the windows drive otherwise if you’re getting rid of Windows. The installer will format the drive and install over it.

Note:
You can also choose to encrypt your disk partition with a password with LUKS during installation.

Ignore the following if you’re using auto-partitioning.

  • If you’re manually partitioning, you’ll typically have to create:

/boot/efi (EFI partition type – vfat filesystem) of about 300 MB to 600 MB space for boot loader.

/boot partition(linux extended boot - ext4) of about 1 GB to 2 GB size to store kernel images.

/ partition(Linux root x86_64 partition type – either ext4 or btrfs or one of your choosing), with the much of the rest of your free space.

/swap partition (Linux swap partition type – swap filesystem) with anywhere from 2 to 4 to 8 GB of size.

This is similar to the paging file and acts as extended Memory. This is optional, but good to have.

Note: I suspect most distros have fully started using GPT instead of legacy MBR even for EFI partition. So, hopefully, no one has any issues with that.

→ For your root filesystem, you can use the standard ext4 filesystem which has journaling features.

There’s also the popular Btrfs, which has Copy-on-Write feature that supposedly helps with better snapshots of system.

→ Additional Note: Timeshift backup program doesn’t work well with Btrfs on Fedora because of how the root volume is labeled there. I think the root is labeled as @ instead of /. Look into it if you want to use Timeshift on Fedora.

Nobara fixes this by default. So, you can use Timeshift in it.

OpenSuse distros have btrfs+snapper integration for backup.

→ Troubleshooting note for btrfs users:

Lately, during power cut or forced shutdown, Btrfs partition got corrupted due to a bug in the Linux Kernel(anywhere between 6.10 to 6.15, I think).

To fix this, use the command:

btrfs rescue zero-log <insert root partition address>.

Eg.

btrfs rescue zero-log /dev/nvme0n1p3

OR

btrfs rescue zero-log /dev/sda3

Your root partition can be found by using the command ‘lsblk’.

Edit:
Troubleshooting note:

  • Try to use USB 3.0 or USB-C ports for live boot or live-install. Avoid USB hubs.
  • On USB 2.0, live-install can be slow since it has to load stuff from USB to RAM.
  • If you have any issues with graphics, try the legacy graphics/ basic graphics mode while choosing to install.

Intermediate/Expert users:

You can also do this temporarily.
Press 'E' during boot loader menu and edit kernel entry(line that starts with linux or kernel and may end with splash) to add nomodeset.
So, it should look like:

linux /boot/vmlinuz... nomodeset quiet splash

  • Those who have other issues during install, make sure you downloaded the file fully or copied the file into the USB fully.
    This can be confirmed by comparing the checksum of the file on the website to the one on the USB.

Step 4-B:

Post-install and Troubleshooting notes:

→ For those who ditched Windows completely, make sure to back up your data and convert your external drives’ Filesystem to ext4 too for Linux-only use.

→ For most apps, you can try to find a flatpak version(preferably verified ones).
Some apps like Steam, Lutris, gamescope and OBS are recommended to be installed natively.

*Avoid Snap packages if you use Ubuntu.

→ In some distros, you have to manually add Flathub repository and use flatpak apps that are then integrated with your Desktop Environment’s AppStore.

To be safe, you can also check for a tick sign or a verified signature of the developer of your flatpak application.
Distros like Mint have an option to just show you only verified apps.

Fedora has an extra repository of its own managed Flatpak applications. I avoided this and just directly used apps from Flathub though.

→ Remember to always update your system additionally after a kernel/GPU driver update, if you are using flatpak applications.
This is so that the Flatpak runtimes(like Freedesktop stuff and other application platforms) will get updated and only then most flatpak apps will continue to work.
Some distros take care of this during a regular update itself. But keep an eye out for this one.

→ Some distros like base Fedora only comes with FOSS apps. Install proprietary Nvidia driver and codecs separately by following the RPM-fusion site.
(If you’re using Fedora derivatives like Nobara/Bazzite, you don’t even have to do the following.
If you’re intimidated by it, just use a Fedora derivative.)

It involves installation of two RPM repos: free and non-free. Then, a few lines in the commandline to install Nvidia driver and ffmpeg codecs.

Those with AMD GPU can just install the proprietary codecs.

//
For people who don’t want to read too much into the simple, one-time procedure can just follow this (as shown in RPM fusion site):

For Nvidia driver, type:

sudo dnf install akmod-nvidia

For optional CUDA support, type:

sudo dnf install xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-cuda

For Video acceleration support, type:

sudo dnf install nvidia-vaapi-driver libva-utils vdpauinfo

For Codecs, type:

sudo dnf swap ffmpeg-free ffmpeg –allowerasing

For additonal codecs:

sudo dnf update @multimedia --setopt="install_weak_deps=False" --exclude=PackageKit-gstreamer-plugin

//

→ Screensharing with audio is still problematic with Discord even though it claims to have been fixed.
Vesktop had fixed this a year ago or even before Discord even tried.

→ Some mkv files with eac3 audio may have issues with VLC.
Haruna player, with its innate mpv stuff, manages to play those.

→ If Steam doesn’t launch the first time, type:

__GL_CONSTANT_FRAME_RATE_HINT=3 steam

→ For rolling & semi-rolling distros, the latest Nvidia drivers should have solved a lot of its issues.

If anyone still finds a blank screen after waking from sleep, try getting into TTY by pressing Ctrl+Alt+F3, followed by Ctrl+Alt+F2(or F1) to get back into your Graphical UI.

→ CachyOS and OpenSUSE has great GUI installers that allows one to choose packages during and after installation.
Arch users are on their own with the Wiki.

→ Other distro users can still make use of the Arch Wiki in most cases. It’s very helpful.
Case in point:

Arch has a guide to disable HSP/HFP of a Bluetooth headset by creating a file in .config folder in home(~) directory.
I had to do this so that I can just use my external mic and avoid my Bluetooth headset going to poor quality audio codec when it uses BT microphone.

→ If anyone suddenly miss their Wifi/Bluetooth device and not even detected with ‘rfkill’ command, then you might be overloading your USB ports that it doesn’t get enough power.

You might see a code “usb error -110” when you check your journalctl log or when you use the command :

journalctl -b 0 -p err.

In this case, just unplug all your devices and powercycle your motherboard, i.e. you have to press your power button for 10-15 seconds.
After that, your Wifi/BT device will be detected again.

→ Most distros have good enough firewall like ufw or Firewalld.
One can also install OpenSnitch or Safing Portmaster if your distro supports it and have fine-grained control of your system.

→ If printing, local filesharing and geolocation are not needed,
packages like ‘cups’, ‘samba’ and * ‘geoclue’ can be removed or *masked(disabled).

This entry was edited (2 days ago)

How do I check the wifi connection in Whonix?


Skip the flavour text by going to the bold text

In my sky high arrogance I thought 'I have never let Linux grace my devices, how hard can Qubes/Whonix truly be?' and I learned my lesson within minutes.

So I come here before you, humbly and beaten by 0s and 1s, to ask for your help.

How do I open a window where it neatly lists available connections and, if so, my current connection?

Usually when I am connected, it has a wifi symbol on the top right where the rest of my panels are. It disappeared.

I tried searching on the internet for answers. My mental capacity is basically non-existent, otherwise I wouldn't be here (probably).

Please. I just want to connect my device via wifi. I do not own an ethernet cable.

Thank you.

This entry was edited (5 days ago)
in reply to eee (they/them)

You title says whonix, but the text mentions QubesOS. Which one? This distinction is very important.

Edit: in QubesOS the networking is handled by the sys-net qube. If the networking icon does not show up in the tray make sure the sys-net qube is started. If it is, check what programs are available for the sys-net qube in the start menu (hopefully some networking software is available. But I dont have QubesOS in front of me so I cannot check) otherwise try and start a terminal in sys-net and run the command nmtui

This entry was edited (5 days ago)
in reply to ∞🏳️‍⚧️Edie [it/its, she/her, fae/faer, love/loves, null/void, des/pair, none/use name]

Believe me, I wish I could tell you what I've done :') I wanted to get Whonix, but I think the website eventually led me to QubesOS? All I can say is that at startup it shows the Qubes symbol, so it's likely I got that.

When I try to start sys-net it can't start and says that the Qube sys-net has shut down. I'll provide the error message in a moment if I can't get it up with your other suggestion. Thanks!

eta:

Cannot connect to qrexec agent for 120 seconds.

When I want to check the logs, some other qubes cannot start. Bizarre. I even tried creating a qube without the offending qubes (sys-net etc.) yet it still fails.

This entry was edited (4 days ago)

Review of the Star Labs Starbook7: thanks i hate it


Hey, folks. I wanted to share my findings about the Star Labs StarBook 7 (AKA mk7 AKA mark vii). I've been daily driving this laptop for about 6 months.

Hardware


  • Intel® Core™ Ultra 7 165H × 22
  • 32.0 GiB memory
  • 1TB storage


Display


I have historically been against hidpi displays for laptop because they just don't work 100% of the time on Linux. No matter how many brittle workarounds I've applied, hidpi displays have always hurt more than helped.

However, the StarBook 7 laptop absolutely nailed the display resolution. 3840x2160 is perfect for 2x integer scaling. When I ran Arch, I never ran into an app that was tiny or blurry. From Bitwarden to Claws Mail to Reaper. I'm happy to report everything worked fine. The ONLY app I was able to find that looked blurry was Cambalache for GNOME dev. All of this with ZERO workarounds, ZERO tweaks. It Just Works.

This has been the best hidpi support I've experienced. However, it's still not as good as running standard dpi. Despite the apps not being blurry, some apps like Bitwarden would forget the size of the window when I closed the app. This means, sometimes, some apps, would start in a tiny, little window, and I would have to grab a corner to stretch it out. Annoying.

When I switched to Guix Linux. UUff. This was bad. Almost all non-wayland apps did not respect GNOME's integer scaling. And when I got GTK apps working, QT apps were still broken.

So even though the Starbook 7 has the best hidpi support I've ever experienced, I will gladly take a more stable system, with less workarounds, and a larger amount of supported software over a slightly crisper screen.

Keyboard


The display was the best part of the laptop. The keyboard might be the worst.

This is easily the worst keyboard I've ever used anywhere, by far.

The keyboard is backlit, which is nice. The keys themselves feel a little light and wobbly, not great, but fine.

However, the actual output signals coming out of the keyboard hardware are trash. VERY often a key signal is sent more than once. The space bar in particular VERY often emits two spaces. But this happens with other keys too. I thought I just had to get used to typing on this keyboard, but no, it's not me, it's the keyboard.

The other trash thing about the keyboard is the placement of "home", "pgup", "pgdn", "end", and the freaking ~~print screen~~ sysrq key. This vertical row of keys is not very visible in the product pics on the website. But the placement of the ~~print screen~~ sysrq key in particular is HORRIBLE because it's right next to the right arrow key. And since the arrow keys blend together (another bad layout choice), I very frequently press the ~~print screen~~ sysrq key on accident.

And other thing. I keep saying ~~print screen~~ sysrq because there is no print screen key on this laptop. If you press the sysrq key, you may be fooled into thinking it's print screen. Do not be fooled. It actually sends a totally different keyboard event signal. This means you loose the ability to use GNOME's built-in screenshot tool. I never found a way to fix this.

The keyboard is so bad, that sometimes it interferes with entering my password. I frequently have to toggle the switch to view the password in plaintext that way I can see when the keyboard doubled up a character.

Other things


Cons:
- About 1 out of 30 times I startup the computer, Linux fails to boot. Like the laptop doesn't even try to boot the kernel. It gets stuck on the boot screen. There are no errors. I just have to force power off and try again.
- There is no fwupd support on non-official distros (Ubuntu is official).
- The laptop has BRIGHT ASS pure blue LED lights on the side and right in front of your face. The front facing LED in particular is horrible at night.
- The headphone jack is absolute trash, specifically the mic input. It is extremely noisy. Unusable even with software tweaks.
- Laptop is heavy.
- Laptop gets HOT, fans frequently need to go on.
- Battery life is abysmal
- Shits expensive

Meh:
- The trackpad is all right. It clicks.
- Coreboot is cool for being open source... but I didn't really notice any performance gains compared to the other big, bloated, firmwares.

Pros:
- Port selection is good.
- No barrel jack for power, just plain ol' USB-C
- The camera is decent.
- Wifi works.
- Bluetooth works...

in reply to paequ2

Thanks for the review!

I wouldn't attribute the hidpi experience to the hardware too much. Wayland support has been catching up and most things work out of the box now, especially on GNOME/Plasma.

Question, what prompted you to buy this laptop in the first place? I've never heard of it.

edit: Ah, I see it has open source firmware, that's cool

This entry was edited (5 days ago)
in reply to PotatoesFall

most things work out of the box now, especially on GNOME/Plasma


I don't want my system to work 67% of the time. If my wifi card worked most of the time, I wouldn't be happy. I'd like a 100% working system. This isn't my first experience with HiDPI. I owned a Framework and returned it because it required fractional scaling and too many of the apps I use were either blurry or tiny. For me personally, that's a dealbreaker. I understand other people would make that trade off though.

I 100% always attribute hidpi experience to the hardware. It's a bad choice hardware manufacturers make.

  • Should we only include a hidpi display? Something that we know before hand will definitely cause issues?
  • Should the hidpi display be some weird resolution that will require fractional scaling? Something that again has a huge and well known history of not working well?

It's easier for 1 hardware manufacturer to pick a Linux-compatible display, rather than expecting millions of individual devs around the world to update their apps to the latest GTK/QT/Wayland frameworks.

Even if you're pro-HiDPI displays, you should totally blame the laptop manufacturers for not picking a display resolution that allows integer scaling. You're missing out. It's a way better experience.

what prompted you to buy this laptop in the first place


I wanted to buy a Linux laptop because I thought it would be more compatible with Linux. I tried System76, but didn't like the build quality. I've previously used Dell XPS 13 and Lenovo X1 Carbon, both of which I like (and have excellent Linux support (and offer standard dpi displays)). Coreboot was another reason, I like that it's open source. I also thought Coreboot would boot the laptop faster since it has less bloat, but that didn't really pan out.

This entry was edited (5 days ago)
in reply to paequ2

What I'm saying is that integer scaling is no longer required. I've been using non-integer scaling on laptops for the last three ish years on Plasma, and I've seen the number of apps that can't handle it go from a few to almost none. I'm not missing out, I'm living the dream 😁

That being said you make a good point. With (good) fractional scaling support on linux being very recent and only working properly on certain desktops, some resolutions are not optimal. I imagine 1440p and such isn't great. A linux laptop should at least provide a warning.

in reply to paequ2

Sorry you hate it. Thanks for being honest.

I avoid all of those kinds of devices because the price in no way reflects the mediocre hardware that we'll be getting.

When we can get 4070 Lenovo laptops at Walmart for $1,0000, it just doesn't make sense to be spending a comparable price on something without a fucking GPU.

We're lining the pockets of businessmen at that point. And don't be fooled: it's all business at the end of the day.

This entry was edited (2 days ago)

[Solved] My OpenSUSE Tumbleweed install broke and I can't rollback


Update #1


I fixed my boot issue, but now I have to fix the issue with snapper not working right.

The boot issue: Something—I don't know what—added a removable drive to fstab, and the error was that drive couldn't be mounted at boot. I have two guesses:

  1. I formatted a microSD card using YaST Paritioner sometime before doing the distro upgrade.
  2. The drive might have been mounted during the distro upgrade, though I don't think it was.

At any rate, I commented out that line in fstab and it booted right up.

Mullvad is working fine when I boot normally. I guess it was only broken when booting a snapshot from before I upgraded it.

Update #2


I also fixed /.snapshots by adding it to fstab. Now it gets mounted on every boot, and this version of fstab will be in all future snapshots. I just took a manual snapshot for good measure.


I don't know which action caused the issue, so I'm going to list everything I did. I'm new to OpenSUSE Tumbleweed, and I haven't used Linux since like Linux Mint 17.

  1. I disabled KWallet because I got tired of typing in a password every time my desktop launched just for wifi passwords. I decided to just let Linux store them in plain text since my whole system is encrypted with LUKS.
  2. I did a distro update. (zypper dup) After that succeeded, I logged off and back on.
  3. I noticed Mullvad had a new version. They don't officially support OpenSUSE, so I downloaded the new RPM. I ran rpm -e mullvad-vpn to remove the old one. That might have been a mistake since my notes say I used zypper to install it the first time. I installed the new one with zypper. It launched and connected just fine.
  4. I had some trouble getting network settings to store/retrieve my wifi password, so I decided to reboot my system since I changed so much stuff.
  5. It wouldn't boot. I see a few "BIOS" and "ACPI" errors.
  6. Time to try out Snapper! I reboot and choose the most recent snapshot from before tonight.
  7. It boots, but when I try snapper rollback I get IO error (.snapshots is not a btrfs subvolume)
  8. I get the same error trying to open the YaST snapshot viewer.
  9. I check btrfs, and I see @/.snapshots plus a bunch of numbered snapshots, of course.
  10. I check fstab, but I don't see an entry mounting anything on /.snapshots.
  11. I do see a directory at /.snapshots, but it appears just be an empty directory.

Mullvad seems broken with this snapshot. I can't connect to the internet. The mullvad-daemon won't start, so I think the killswitch is active. I've had to type all this on my phone.

What can I do to fix this? I just want to rollback to this good snapshot, and then I can worry about fixing Mullvad when the filesystem isn't read-only.

One month. That's how long it took me to break my system. ☹️

This entry was edited (5 days ago)
in reply to terminhell

Fdroid apps have mirrors for its own repo but you never know which server is used and why it is slow.

On droidify, you can choose one yourself. Choose one closer to you so It balances out load to main server.

  • Tap and hold the f-droid repo
  • Press edit
  • On the address dropdown
  • Choose a different mirror.

Find one closer to you and check if they're updated as same as official mirror:
marzzzello.gitlab.io/mirror-mo…

You'll have to re-sync the repo, so the app verifications won't fail. Sometimes it may also require an app restart.

(solved, thanks guys!) "No key available with this passphrase" despite it being the correct passphrase


Edit: Turns out you guys were right, I entered the setup password wrong for LUKs. I got this new Logitech keyboard I got for a gift and I type around 170wpm, but I've been having issues with it kind of lagging keys for some reason. What I did was I opened up a notepad and typed in my password a bunch of times and noticed whenever I would type something such as "stain" for example, it would come out at "stani" despite me looking at the keyboard and knowing that wasn't what I was typing. So I encrypted my drive with the wrong password, but figured out how to decrypt it that way. Thanks for the help doods!

Hello! I have a external drive I've encrypted with LUKs that has irreplaceable backups of mine, and for some reason no matter which PC I try it won't unlock despite it being the correct password. It doesn't give me anything else in the terminal other than what I put in the title.

I recently just backed up everything onto the external drive from my computer cause I was distro hopping. It's worked fine on my PC, I saved the password so I was able to mount it no problem before, but now it won't mount on any other PC I try. It isn't the end of the world since I can just try and copy old data from my computers drive before the format since I haven't downloaded anything yet that could overwrite anything important, but I'd still like to be able to get this external drive unlocked. As I've said, irreplaceable files of mine are on it so I'm hoping to get it working. Thank you!

This entry was edited (5 days ago)
in reply to helpmyusernamewontfi

I once had a similar issue, caused by the keyboard layout in the os installer (when I defined the password) being different from the keyboard layout used for unlocking the drive. I quickly leaned to type my password in qwerty on my azerty keyboard and all is fine now.

Another similar thing I'm thinking about is trying with caps lock, as you may have had it on when defining the password

Built myself a eGPU enclosure


I recently got a little tablet laptop, and learned that over thunderbolt you could plug in a GPU with a little dock board.

My desktop had a liquid cooled GPU so it became a whole thing to get it out and dockable.

I always wanted to mess with 2020 aluminum extrusion so this was my chance.

Its been a couple weeks work at this point and I'm in the home stretch. I have it running now so its just about tidying up and finding a good way to mount the acrylic panels after doing a final coolant flush

I also wanted to say thank you to all the comments from my last post when i first got my mitre saw for this project. it really made me be cautious when making my cuts, I always took my time clamping my pieces down and then going through the motion of making the cut with the saw powered off before making the cut leminal.space/post/24432635


Acquired a sliding mitre saw


Recently I got a little tablet laptop which led me down the path of eGPU's, which led me down the path of aluminum extrusion which led me to looking for a mitre saw. Now that I have it and have been learning more about what it can do I'm super excited!


This entry was edited (1 week ago)

CHECK DETAILS


Session is a FOSS messenger focused on privacy. No phone numbers, decentralized servers, and full end-to-end encryption. Perfect for anyone tired of surveillance-hungry chat apps. Secure, anonymous, open-source.

🔗 GitHub: SESSION - GITHUB

This entry was edited (6 days ago)

Exclusive: US contractors in Gaza pursued MEE journalist before his killing


Mohamed Salama's source was interrogated at GHF aid centre about the reporter's identity and whereabouts days before he was killed at Nasser hospital

I am a mother of four children in Gaza, struggling to keep them alive


Hello dear friends ,
I never thought I would write something like this, but I am a desperate mother reaching out to other mothers who might understand my pain.

My name is Raghad, I am a mother of four little boys: Osama (10), Anas (7), Abdulrahman (5, he has Down syndrome), and baby Mohammad (2). Before the war, I was a science teacher, and my children had dreams just like any child in the world. But everything changed when our home was destroyed, and we were forced to flee under constant bombing.

We lost family members, our home, and everything we owned. Now, my children and I live in a fragile tent with no clean water, no food, and no safety. Every day is a fight against hunger and cold. My little Abdulrahman, who once loved going to a special center for children with Down syndrome, now has nothing. He is regressing, becoming weaker, and it breaks my heart as a mother to watch him suffer and not be able to help.

The worst pain is hearing my children cry at night from hunger, and I have nothing to give them. The prices of food are impossible even a small bag of flour costs hundreds of dollars. Sometimes we go days without proper meals. I feel helpless, like I am failing them, but I refuse to give up.

I know most of you are mothers too, and you understand how unbearable it is to watch your children suffer. I am sharing my story here because I desperately need help to keep them alive, to feed them, and to give them a chance at a future.

Thank you for reading my story, and thank you for your prayers, or kindness you can give. From one mother to another, I am begging for your compassion.

❤️ With love,
Raghad & my four little boys

Dissecting the Apple M1 GPU, the end


In 2020, Apple released the M1 with a custom GPU. We got to work reverse-engineering the hardware and porting Linux. Today, you can run Linux on a range of M1 and M2 Macs, with almost all hardware working: wireless, audio, and full graphics acceleration.

Our story begins in December 2020, when Hector Martin kicked off Asahi Linux. I was working for Collabora working on Panfrost, the open source Mesa3D driver for Arm Mali GPUs. Hector put out a public call for guidance from upstream open source maintainers, and I bit. I just intended to give some quick pointers. Instead, I bought myself a Christmas present and got to work. In between my university coursework and Collabora work, I poked at the shader instruction set.

One thing led to another. Within a few weeks, I drew a triangle.

In 3D graphics, once you can draw a triangle, you can do anything.

Pretty soon, I started work on a shader compiler. After my final exams that semester, I took a few days off from Collabora to bring up an OpenGL driver capable of spinning gears with my new compiler.

Over the next year, I kept reverse-engineering and improving the driver until it could run 3D games on macOS.

Meanwhile, Asahi Lina wrote a kernel driver for the Apple GPU. My userspace OpenGL driver ran on macOS, leaving her kernel driver as the missing piece for an open source graphics stack. In December 2022, we shipped graphics acceleration in Asahi Linux.

In January 2023, I started my final semester in my Computer Science program at the University of Toronto. For years I juggled my courses with my part-time job and my hobby driver. I faced the same question as my peers: what will I do after graduation?

Maybe Panfrost? I started reverse-engineering of the Mali Midgard GPU back in 2017, when I was still in high school. That led to an internship at Collabora in 2019 once I graduated, turning into my job throughout four years of university. During that time, Panfrost grew from a kid’s pet project based on blackbox reverse-engineering, to a professional driver engineered by a team with Arm’s backing and hardware documentation. I did what I set out to do, and the project succeeded beyond my dreams. It was time to move on.

What did I want to do next?
- Finish what I started with the M1. Ship a great driver.
- Bring full, conformant OpenGL drivers to the M1. Apple’s drivers are not conformant, but we should strive for the industry standard.
- Bring full, conformant Vulkan to Apple platforms, disproving the myth that Vulkan isn’t suitable for Apple hardware.
- Bring Proton gaming to Asahi Linux. Thanks to Valve’s work for the Steam Deck, Windows games can run better on Linux than even on Windows. Why not reap those benefits on the M1?

Panfrost was my challenge until we “won”. My next challenge? Gaming on Linux on M1.

Once I finished my coursework, I started full-time on gaming on Linux. Within a month, we shipped OpenGL 3.1 on Asahi Linux. A few weeks later, we passed official conformance for OpenGL ES 3.1. That put us at feature parity with Panfrost. I wanted to go further.

OpenGL (ES) 3.2 requires geometry shaders, a legacy feature not supported by either Arm or Apple hardware. The proprietary OpenGL drivers emulate geometry shaders with compute, but there was no open source prior art to borrow. Even though multiple Mesa drivers need geometry/tessellation emulation, nobody did the work to get there.

My early progress on OpenGL was fast thanks to the mature common code in Mesa. It was time to pay it forward. Over the rest of the year, I implemented geometry/tessellation shader emulation. And also the rest of the owl. In January 2024, I passed conformance for the full OpenGL 4.6 specification, finishing up OpenGL.

Vulkan wasn’t too bad, either. I polished the OpenGL driver for a few months, but once I started typing a Vulkan driver, I passed 1.3 conformance in a few weeks.

What remained was wiring up the geometry/tessellation emulation to my shiny new Vulkan driver, since those are required for Direct3D. Et voilà, Proton games.

Along the way, Karol Herbst passed OpenCL 3.0 conformance on the M1, running my compiler atop his “rusticl” frontend.

Meanwhile, when the Vulkan 1.4 specification was published, we were ready and shipped a conformant implementation on the same day.

After that, I implemented sparse texture support, unlocking Direct3D 12 via Proton.

…Now what?
- Ship a great driver? Check.
- Conformant OpenGL 4.6, OpenGL ES 3.2, and OpenCL 3.0? Check.
- Conformant Vulkan 1.4? Check.
- Proton gaming? Check.

That’s a wrap.

We’ve succeeded beyond my dreams. The challenges I chased, I have tackled. The drivers are fully upstream in Mesa. Performance isn’t too bad. With the Vulkan on Apple myth busted, conformant Vulkan is now coming to macOS via LunarG’s KosmicKrisp project building on my work.

Satisfied, I am now stepping away from the Apple ecosystem. My friends in the Asahi Linux orbit will carry the torch from here. As for me?

This entry was edited (6 days ago)

BOSS RC-5 and Linux compatability?


I am looking into getting a BOSS RC-5 looping pedal for my guitar, and I am curious if anyone has any experience with using it with Linux?

It makes use of this BOSS Tone Studio to allow adding additional backing tracks, but it is only officially supported for Windows and macOS. I could not find many examples of people using it on Linux, but for the most part any discussion I could find was in the context of their amplifiers.

I wonder if it should be straightforward to run it through Wine? As far as I can tell, you only need to set it up as a storage medium and connect it to your machine, although you can't just drag the files directly onto it.

It is not a deal breaker for me if I can't get it working, but it would certainly be a benefit if I could.

BOSS RC-5 and Linux compatability?


cross-posted from: lemmy.ml/post/35272958

I am looking into getting a BOSS RC-5 looping pedal for my guitar, and I am curious if anyone has any experience with using it with Linux?

It makes use of this BOSS Tone Studio to allow adding additional backing tracks, but it is only officially supported for Windows and macOS. I could not find many examples of people using it on Linux, but for the most part any discussion I could find was in the context of their amplifiers.

I wonder if it should be straightforward to run it through Wine? As far as I can tell, you only need to set it up as a storage medium and connect it to your machine, although you can't just drag the files directly onto it.

It is not a deal breaker for me if I can't get it working, but it would certainly be a benefit if I could.

tmux + nvim + lf integration guidance?


I've recently been getting into really picking and choosing how my computer is set up and what software I use to do certain tasks. Specifically, replacing GUIs (dolphin, [insert gui text editor here ig]) with CLIs (lf, nvim). That and learning how to leverage bash scripting to really have control over my computer.

The thing is, using tmux, nvim, and lf together has proved cumbersome because I have no idea how to integrate them. I can technically do whatever I need to do, but it certainly isn't the fast CLI-ninja experience I was hoping for.

I've gone through each of their manuals and understand them on their own well enough, but with integrating them I'm drawing a blank.

So, Linux enthusiasts in this corner of the internet, do you have any guidance on setting up proper integration between CLI-based file managers, neovim, and tmux? I'm also open to suggestions for new software or a different file manager.

Edit: after making this post I got to searching again and damn cfiles looking pretty good....
Edit2: nvm it's not in nixpkgs... damn...

This entry was edited (1 week ago)
in reply to drspawndisaster

You've just entered a rabbit hole that will push the boundaries of your control on your system.
Now, I'm not 100% sure that I've correctly understand what you're looking for. If you're after a file manager for nvim or tmux, then I would second yazi for your terminal as previously mentioned. Or you could go bare bone and use the command line straight with the help of some features like zsh and its competition, call to past arguments, zmv (and glob expression)...
For nvim, you can use the default tree explorer for basic usage. More advanced features can be found with telescope for example. I personaly opted for fzf-lua. Both can be used in other plugins as well to make things very easy and powerful. Just to cite a few, I'm using fzf-lua with obsidian (which, despite the name, doesn't require the tool of the same name) and snacks.
in reply to drspawndisaster

Specifically, replacing GUIs (dolphin, [insert gui text editor here ig]) with CLIs (lf, nvim)


I really do wonder if þis is a natural evolution, and what distinguishes þe people who follow þis paþ.

I've gone so far down it, I've dipped into setups where I boot only into þe console, and never start X. I don't stay long, because web browsing still sucks pretty hard, alþough tools like chawan get preeetty close. And þen þere are times I want to play Factorio, or do someþing in Gimp or Inkscape... so I'm resigned to running X and herbstluftwm and just having a bunch of terminals and þe odd browser or game.

Point is, I'm not some edge case - a surprising number of people end up rejecting GUIs, or end up using mostly CLI or TUIs, and I wonder what it is about us which causes us to follow þe path of þe terminal.

For me it was a confluence of being tired of þe GUI bloat, but also an increasing hatred of having to move my hand away from þe home row just to move a cursor with a mouse. Reduced memory use, more free CPU, less electricity... þe more I did it, þe better þe results.

Is þat it? Is it a gateway drug to efficiency?

sshPilot, your handy SSH connection manager hits new version


You might remember my earlier post about the first version of sshPilot.

Well, the app has come a long way since then. It’s now a full-featured, stable SSH connection manager with a built-in terminal, so I thought I’d show you where it’s at now.

You might ask, “Why would I need this if I’m already comfortable with the command line?”

Fair question. sshPilot isn’t here to replace your terminal, it’s here to make it better. In fact it's a terminal itself, with a sidebat you can easily toggle on and off. It keeps your connections organized, makes it easy to change your port forwarding rules, stores your keys and passwords securely, and lets you jump between multiple sessions without losing focus.

sshPilot is designed to be simple, intuitive, and keyboard-friendly. You can switch between servers and terminal tabs effortlessly using keyboard shortcuts. Fire up the app and just press enter to connect to the first host. Use Control+L to quickly switch between servers.

Here’s what it offers:

  • Import and save standard ~/.ssh/config entries
  • Full support for local, remote, and dynamic port forwarding
  • Securely stores passwords and private key passphrases (nothing is saved as explain text)
  • Manage files on your remote machines via SFTP
  • SSH key generation and transfer
  • SCP support
  • Option to open connections in your default terminal instead of the built-in one
  • Native GNOME look and feel with light and dark themes
  • Toggleable sidebar
  • Run local or remote commands with ease

You can grab the DEB or RPM packages from the project page on GitHub.

The feedback I got here on the first release was incredibly helpful, so I’m looking forward to hearing from you again. Your ideas and suggestions are always welcome.

This entry was edited (1 week ago)

Phone switching back to default launcher... Would force-stopping it be safe ?


I have an Honor phone (not rooted) and I dislike the default launcher, so I installed a new one. It worked, but even after switching the default in the settings, the settings kept changing themselves after a while to return to the default launcher. This happened with both Foss-ify's Launcher and Kiss Launcher, so it doesn't seem to be due to a failure of the selected launcher.

Next thing I intended to try was force stop Honor Home, but I'm a bit worried about doing that, because what if the phone still starts refusing to launch the installed launcher but can't find the old one either and doesn't launch anything? Will I find myself unable to open any apps (including the settings to revert this) if that happens?

Debian, encrypted boot, how to increase password attempts?


Since Debian 13 (Trixie), when using the default FDE which uses grub to decrypt the luks partition, I have a single attempt

When the password is mistyped there is a long pause (over 10 seconds) and then the error appears.

I already tried increasing the max tries, which seems to be set to 1 when a keyfile is used.

The config/script seems to be in /usr/share/initramfs-tools/scripts/local-top/cryptroot.

I copied that to /etc/initramfs-tools/scripts/local-top/cryptroot and replaced the value CRYPTTAB_OPTION_tries=1 with 10 using find/replace (ansible stuff).

I think this has no effect though and doing so (might be a different issue) breaks boot entirely 💀

More info:
- by default when legacy boot (BIOS) is available, Debian will install grub to the MBR. This is where it happens
- when forcing or prioritizing legacy boot and using GPT, debian somehow boots from a 300MB efi partition, the same happens though, one attempt

This entry was edited (1 week ago)
in reply to frongt

As it's a bootloader, it should make almost no difference which distribution was used to install it. (I'm not sure if Debian patches their GRUB.) I just used Arch as an example, as it is famous for being up to date. And, no matter where it's installed from, if you've made changes to GRUB's configuration, you'll have to copy it over to the live distribution to keep your changes.

Yes, Debian Sid might be more familiar for Debian users, but that's it.

Edit:
You said "get the grub debs from Debian sid", but installing Sid packages on non-Sid systems isn't something that you should do.

This entry was edited (1 week ago)
in reply to communism

I meant the following:
1. Find out the Debian package is too old
2. Create Arch Live USB
3. Boot Arch Live USB
4. Copy GRUB config from the Debian install to the current Arch live system
5. Install the up-to-date GRUB while in the Arch environment

The bootloader installer package is distro dependent, the bootloader the package installs isn't. You can boot Debian no matter if the GRUB is installed from Debian stable, Debian Sid, Arch, Fedora or even FreeBSD. Otherwise, dual booting wouldn't work.

Like I said, I've done that before, though with SystemD Boot instead of GRUB, which was a bit simpler due to how the bootloader is configured.

Swapping storage between an Intel laptop and an AMD mini PC


I have a laptop with an Intel i5-1335 CPU and I'm about to receive a mini PC with a Ryzen 8845HS, which is going to be my main computer now. If I just install the SSD M.2 of the laptop on the mini PC, is there any software I need to install that was not installed when first installed Linux on the SSD while being in the laptop? Or something that I need to change in the configuration concerning the new architecture? is it OK to do that? In other words, can Linux deal with the change without any issue or misconfiguration? Just trying to see if I can avoid the work of installing Linux from zero and all the software that I already have on the laptop. I'm using Debian Trixie.
This entry was edited (1 week ago)
in reply to corvus

Haven't tried swapping completely different CPU brands, but if you have set up CPU microcode, you might want to uninstall that before swapping over.

For graphics cards, Intel and AMD drivers can exist side by side so you should be able to install the AMD ones before transplanting it over.

Other than that, it should be fine. And worst case you can always swap back!

Is there a tablet with a laptop grade processor that will run Linux well?


I really want my primary mobile computer to be a tablet mainly because I genuinely like the form factor. My current Linux laptop is dying and I thought I'd just buy the newest Lenovo Thinkpad Surface clone but Lenovo seems to have discontinued it because I couldn't find a 2025 version anywhere, same with HP and Dell's Surface clones. And most of the Windows tablets I could find online have dinky Intel N processors instead of Core.

Can anyone recommend a high end tablet that runs Linux well? Failing that, how bad is the Surface really with Linux as the only OS?

in reply to HiddenLayer555

I just went through this with Dell xps 2 in 1 and surface pro 8 with mint and other OSes. Linux just is not fully ready for touchscreen it's 90 percent there but for instance the last 10 percent is text boxes when clicking won't spawn the keyboard, the keyboard regardless of input app is clunky, not phone grade speed, it's possible but you my as well stick with a small 10 to 13 inch laptop. The folio is janky at best, using the slate solo is odd to hold and gets hot. Battery sucks. I tweaked and spent so much time wanting it to work. It just isn't ready yet.

UI regression in KDE Arianna - How can I back up and restore specific version of Flatpak package?


All I could find is how to make a list, and reinstall flatpaks from that list, as well as backup app data, however all of that assumes I want to do updates.

Meanwhile what I want is akin to extracting APK of a stable version of some app, backing it up and using it for years to come. For example that's how I joined these 2 screenshots, using JointPics from 2014 which isn't even on Play Store anymore, and targets API so low that it has to be installed via ADB. (Yeah, I am too dumb for GIMP)

As for the regression, you can see. On left is older Flatpak, on right is version from Arch repo. The Flatpak I originally installed as a hotfix for update that broke it completely at one point on Arch.
You can see the older version nicely fits the screen, splitting up text into columns.
Meanwhile the new version just does smaller page in middle of screen that doesn't even work properly with Breeze Dark theme, causing different background for text sections.

The only improvement is ability to flip pages rather than use arrows, but that's minimum.
Well, and maybe the progress keeping got fixed, but I didn't test that much.

Don't pay attention to the taskbar. I wish it could flip to vertical with different screen orientation. Yeah, the icons' clickability is a dice roll of what you tap.

in reply to u/lukmly013 💾 (lemmy.sdf.org)

If you already have the correct version of the flatpak installed, you can try flatpak build-bundle.

flatpak build-bundle LOCATION FILENAME NAME where
- LOCATION is the path of the repo on disk. Run flatpak info -l org.kde.arianna, and copy the part before /app
- FILENAME is the output file name, preferably .flatpak. Eg: arianna.flatpak
- NAME is the name of the app, here org.kde.arianna

The generated file can be installed with a double-click, or with flatpak install <file>

This is the equivalent of an Android .apk. It contains the app but depends on a runtime. If you want to install it in a few years, odds are the runtime will no longer be available. You can backup the runtime the same way with the --runtime option.

flatpak build-bundle --runtime LOCATION FILENAME NAME where
- LOCATION same as earlier
- FILENAME eg arianna-runtime.flatpak
- NAME is the name of the runtime, which you can get with flatpak info --show-runtime org.kde.arianna

This takes a while, for some reason. Maybe it's compressing stuff?

The runtime is installed the same way as the app: double click or flatpak install.


Note: I only did this once, and not specifically on Arianna. Hope it works.

Adding Plasma Discover to Bazzite via Systemd Sysext


Instructions to add Plasma Discover package manager back into Bazzite using a Systemd Sys-Ext. Based on Travier's Fedora Sys-Ext work at travier.github.io/fedora-sysex… and relies on his base images on quay.

I'm really excited about the application of SysExts to bridge the gap many perceive in adopting atomic distros! This seemed like a fantastic solution to adding this tool back for those who want it, without the overhead of package layering

in reply to gnuplusmatt

The issue with them right now is there's no update mechanism. If you use something as a system extension that depends on a library in the image, and that library gets updated, you could have an unbootable system or at the very least a non-functioning application until you can update your system extension manually.

Ideally that update mechanism needs to be a part of bootc so if your system extension is part of your boot process it can be updated ahead of time before the image is loaded.

We've looked at it since it's inception and it's something we really want, it's just nowhere near ready yet.

This entry was edited (1 week ago)
in reply to Luffy

I've never had issues with Discover on Fedora KDE and then even when I moved to Kinoite. I didnt have any issues using it on my Bazzite machine. I wanted it back, I also wanted to see if it was something I could do with a SysExt, which as I said is something I'm excited about, as I have started using them to add stuff on my Kinoite work machine.

It doesn't take Bazaar away, it just puts the items back for anyone who wants it. Spoiled for choice

nvidia 470 on debian trixie (kernel 6.12). any ideas?


the context is: the 470 legacy driver doesn't compile on the linux 6.12 kernel. because of that, debian decided to officially drop support to that driver. i tried installing the driver myself using nvidia's official installer, but the installation indeed fails during the module compilation stage.

this means i am stuck with nouveau. it got better since i last tested it on bookworm, but one major pain in the ass is that nouveau has no support for performance levels for my card and it runs at the lowest clock bc of that (~400 megahertz instead of its max ~900 mhz).

this causes a noticeable performance hit, even for desktop usage, but it's good enough for work. waching full hd 60 fps video is a bit painful, but it's possible. but gaming, which was possible, got way worse. even a lightweight game like celeste got frustrating to play due to stuttering.

i guess i'll have to deal with it and maybe this is the cue to buy another graphics card and never buy nvidia again, but i'm thinking about what my options would be here:

  1. downgrade to bookworm. not easy to do, would only delay the problem.
  2. install an older kernel and use only that. not sure how, the official repos only have the 6.12 kernel. i could get the older kernel from the bookworm backports and pin it to prevent any updates, but mixing repos from different versions makes me uneasy.
  3. patch the driver. there are a few patches floating around that make nvidia's driver compile on the 6.12 kernel. applying the patch by hand is annoying and i would have to re-apply it at every kernel update.
  4. cope.

any ideas?


edit

and it runs at the lowest clock bc of that (~400 megahertz instead of its max ~900 mhz).


that was a mistake. i was reading the clock off of my onboard video chip, which also happens to be nvidia. the onboard chip is at .../dri/0; my graphics card is at .../dri/1. nouveau seems to support reclocking for my card, but i'm trying to change the clock and the video signal goes crazy when i do it

This entry was edited (1 week ago)
in reply to beleza pura

Nouveau supports manual reclocking for Tesla, Fermi and Kepler GPU-s. You said that you have a GT 710, so it should be supported. There is a guide on how to manually reclock it --> github.com/polkaulfield/nouvea….
This entry was edited (1 week ago)
in reply to PigeonEnjoyer

you're right. i thought my card didn't support it because i might have misread the feature matrix. adding to the confusion, /dri/0 is my onboard video (which also happens to be nvidia) and that's where i got the 400 mhz number from

still, i just tried it reclocking seems to drive the video signal crazy

edit: yeah it's definitely unsupported, the display turns completely into scrambled eggs. i'll try a newer kernel just in case

edit 2: tried it on the 6.16 kernel (i have an opensuse tumbleweed installation laying around) just in case it had some development on that front compares to 6.12 (debian's version) and it's still a mess. so reclocking for my card is definitely a no-no on nouveau

This entry was edited (1 week ago)
in reply to beleza pura

I gave it some thought, I think that you are getting slowdowns because of some kind of a bug and not due to slow speed of the GPU.

I have actually daily-driven a MacBook Pro 15-inch 2009 with a GeForce 9600M GT and even at 279 Mhz core, it was usable on Manjaro KDE, animations were a bit laggy, but nothing compared to what you are describing.

I still remember trying kernel 6.7 or 6.8 and immediately seeing MUCH worse performance with constant lags. I have only consistently used kernels 6.1, 6.6 and 6.12 on Manjaro on that machine, all of them with decent experience. I would try some other kernel if that's possible, but considering that you have tried 6.12 and 6.16 at this point, I am not too hopeful.

To the dismay of sweaty 'movement kids,' Battlefield 6 is nerfing Call of Duty sliding and jumping to maintain a 'traditional Battlefield experience'


DICE is yet to give clarity on map sizes, comment section is the usual dumpster fire.

Whats a good Resource on Learning 6502 Assembly, for someone who has little to no experience Programming?


I've had the idea to try and learn how to Program 6502 Assembly for my Commodore PET, but I'm a little lost on what the best source is on learning this stuff, especially for a beginner who is yet unfamiliar with its full Architecture and Quirks!

Thus far I've tried looking at Books from the PETs Period, but those do expect quite a bit of pre-knowledge in Computing, which for me includes a tiny bit of Python and Commodore Basic...

My new (to me) Thinkpad T61P is refusing to boot my USB with Fedora 42 on it.


I'm sorry to put a tech support post here, but I don't see a Thinkpad community on here.

(Shocker.)

Details:


Immediately after hitting the Plymouth boot screen (Fedora logo with the spinny but under it) the laptop shuts off completely.

Both batteries I got with it appear to be dead, the HDD boots a broken copy of Windows, I even have a port replicator with it!

I'm not sure if maybe it's my USB, (both laptop and USB are thrifted) or something else.

The only OS I've attempted is Fedora, should I flash a Windows (shudder) install disk and see if that makes a difference?

Thanks, best regards, someone with a Value Village addiction and a Linux obsession.

Palestinian Boys Allege Sexual Assault, Torture by Israeli Jailers


Mahmoud, age 17, said that his Israeli abductors "began hurling insults, cursing at us, and accusing us of being with Hamas."

"They stripped us of our clothes and took us to Kerem Shalom, completely naked, with nothing," he continued. "There, the beatings and torture began."

"The Israeli women soldiers beat us. They stripped us and 'played' here, and here, and there," Mahmoud said, indicating his genitals. "They beat us with sticks. Got on us while we were lying on the ground. We were handcuffed like that and naked."

Mahmoud said his captors wanted to humiliate him and other teenage boys in custody, accusing the troops of taking nude photos of them and sending female soldiers to mock and touch his body—an especially shameful ordeal for Muslims.

in reply to ordnance_qf_17_pounder

Avoid lenovo. Their build quality went to crap and they're easily the least repairable laptop on the market these days.

I've had to repair 4 lenovos within the last few years. Cheap parts and the laptops all had their keyboards plastic rivited to the top shell of the chassis, making it impossible to replace without buying a new chassis. One of the laptops had to have two motherboard replacements before it was usable.

Their all-in-one doesn't have a frame around the LCD panel, and they didn't put access doors in the back panel. So if you want to upgrade the ram or ssd you have a 70% chance of breaking the screen.

This entry was edited (1 week ago)

File permissions change when transfering between external drives and laptop


File permissions change when transfering between external drives and laptop

I noticed a few years ago that when I transfer files back and forth between my laptop and my external drive all the files that I have transfered have changed permissions.

I format all my external drives as exFAT so I can use larger files.

Why does this happen?

Is there a better way to keep the file permissions intact when transfering files back and forth between external drives?

The test file: Fantastic Fungi (2019).mkv

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

This is what the file permssions looks like before I transfer it to my external hard drive

ls -l

-rw-r--r-- 1 user user 577761580 May 2 2024 'Fantastic Fungi (2019).mkv'

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

This is what the file permssions looks like after I transfer it back to my laptop

ls -l

-rwxr-xr-x 1 user user 577761580 May 2 2024 'Fantastic Fungi (2019).mkv'

When I right click file permissions dialogue box. The "Allow this file to run as a program" is ticked.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

The way have overcome this is to run a simple one liner to reset the permissions for directories and files.

Open a terminal in the directory of the folders and files you want to change

All directories will be 775. All files will be 664

find . -type d -exec chmod 0755 {} \;

find . -type f -exec chmod 0644 {} \;

Directory permission 0755 is similar to “drwxr-xr-x”

File permission 0644 is equal to “-rw-r–-r–-“.

-type d = directories

-type f = files

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

in reply to infjarchninja

exfat or fat32 is great for interoperability between linux and windows but has limited functionality under linux.

If you're using your external drive only under linux, I suggest switching to a filesystem that works better with unix like permissions and special bits.

Also, like others, depending on your use-case I would suggest something with journaling like ext3 or ext4. If you happen to power of your system while writing something to that drive, the fs does not get corrupted/can automatically recover.

For backups with rollback maybe a FS with copy on write and automatic compression like btrfs or zfs would be better.

With btrfs borg backups allows you to create incremental backups of btrfs subvolumes. I use it to backup my home, etc and /subvolumes on my "backup server" (old pc with two raid1 hdds).

I have a friend who administeres backups for his company (afaik ~100-200GB delta per week) and he swears by zfs. I found btrfs simpler though.

The impossibility of finding a Linux laptop that I like


I'm a Linux user since 1998 (my main desktop PC runs Debian), however I do have a couple of Macs around because I love their hardware (not so much the software though). In fact, I have three old MacBook Airs (mid-2011, 2012, 2015), all running Linux. The moment I got them, I erased MacOS and installed Linux pronto!

But my main laptop is a MacBook Air M1 with MacOS because it's much faster than these older Intel-based MacBook Airs. Modern web browsing and video editing requires a lot of processing power.

So, I want to move to have my main laptop running Linux too. I DON'T want to install Asahi Linux on my M1, because I don't consider it a proper solution for my needs (I want to run Resolve, you see, and most foss apps that I use would need recompiling). Also, I don't like that Asahi is dependent on MacOS to exist, because you can't boot with a usb to install it.

My issue is that I can't find ANYTHING on the PC market that is as slick or full featured as a MacBook Air (minus its limited ports). What I need is this:

  1. Screen no larger than 13.3" inches, Full HD at least, preferably good color gamut (but not a must). I still need the laptop to be portable though. Basically, I'm not even asking for HDR, as the MacBook Air features.
  2. Keyboard to have backlight, without the numpad (I hate these laptops where the touchpad is off center).
  3. The touchpad needs to be glass or of equivalent feel. The Apple touchpads slide/glide with ease. I find every PC touchpad I've used so far to be "sticky". My finger on some Chromebooks and Dell/Lenovo laptops is doing a "grrrkkk, grrrkkkk" when I slide my finger! There's something special about Apple's touchpads, I dunno.
  4. Intel 13th+ gen CPU, with passmark points over 17,000 on multi-threading. My M1 scores about 12,000 points, and it's 5 years old. So obviously I'd need something faster than what I have now.
  5. Intel GPU (no AMD or Nvidia please, I need Intel's superior video decoding abilities). On a Mac that isn't a problem, because Apple does support these 10bit 4:2:2 codecs I need, with hardware acceleration. But on the PC side, only Intel provides good support for these without headaches (only the newest nvidias support that, but I don't want to use Nvidia for too many reasons -- AMD is a disaster on that video front btw). I don't play 3D games.
  6. I need speakers that sound good. Every single PC laptop I've tried, had the worst sound ever. I need it to be hear-able on YouTube and not sound as if you're listening via a can. I bought a Thinkpad x280 a few months ago and I can't use it because its speakers are so bad! DELL (from 5 years ago that I tried) aren't better either.
  7. I need a (supported) fingerprint reader!
  8. 32 GB of RAM.
  9. 1 TB of storage.
  10. Below a $1800 price tag. That's the price I can get with a MacBook Air for all that.

Now, you might think that "well, it seems that you just want a new MacBook", but that's not true. I want a PC laptop so I can run Debian Linux instead of MacOS. But I need it to be a laptop that is "proper" by my own standards. The quality of the interaction between my palms, fingers, eyes and PC laptops IS NOT the same as with any Apple laptop I've ever used. The reason people buy Apple hardware is NOT because "MacOSX is lickable" (as it was suggested many years ago by Jobs). I've actually researched the "why". It's because the INTERACTION of your senses and the laptop's design/quality FITS. It's like a glove for one another. It's difficult to explain but I know it now to be true. It was never MacOSX itself (although MacOSX's gui smoothness helps the overall experience).

So the question is: am I missing that special, Linux-compatible, PC laptop somewhere? If you know that such a laptop exists, please reply with a link. I'll buy it in a heartbeat.

This is a serious post btw. I spent the whole weekend trying to find that mythical PC laptop, and I can't. I'm frustrated.

EDIT: I might end up with the Framework 13. Not 100% what I'm after, but probably the best solution right now.

EDIT 2: I bought a DELL 5640 16" laptop, 32 GB RAM, i7 cpu, that comes with Linux pre-installed (so I know it's compatible). It ticks all my boxes except the size and the trackpad being off center. Oh well.

This entry was edited (3 days ago)
in reply to Eugenia

On the off chance that you’re still reading responses to this post:

I repair electronics, everything from automotive to industrial to audio to computers and phones. Not just screwdriver work either, bga rework and microscopic trace repair. I’m speaking from years of hands in experience with lots of computers, tablets, phones, amplifiers, plcs, ecus, and anything else you can think of plus countless hours of exercise helping people figure out what to buy, weather to repair, what to change and how a failure happened.

Get the mac.

You are describing the choice as being between the linux support level and the quality of other laptops. One is constantly improving, currently only falling short of your expectations due to requiring the existence of the computers native os and requiring you to maybe compile some stuff, the other begins below your expectations and cannot meet them. No one’s gonna push a free update that fixes the fit and finish or shitty trackpad of a computer.

Get the hardware you need.

Also, macs are secretly extremely repairable. People don’t like that they can’t just get in there and fuck around with a jewelers screwdriver and guitar pick, but it’s easy to find a qualified shop around you to fix whatever’s wrong with the computer. There’s always tons of replacement parts available, first party support docs (for shops that can prove they are real businesses) and third party info of all kinds.

v. 01 | upgrade cycle friendica 2023.05 -> 2024.12-1


update step by step from:
2023.05 | release notes | friendica forum notes

to:

2023.12 | release notes | friendica forum notes
2024.03 | release notes | friendica forum notes
2024.08 | release notes | friendica forum notes
2024.12-1 | release notes | friendica forum notes

round about 14 forum pages with few followers each and a total of 18 profiles with contacts in the activityPub and diaspora community and some RSS subscriptions.
No other specific conectors are enabled.

Installed addons/apps:
blockbot, calc, impressum, js_upload, notifyall, nsfw, pageheader, phpmailer, qcomment, rendertime, showmore_dyn, startpage

DB backups amount to ~180MiB and the image file storage folder on ftp around ~400MiB.

Friendica stable | 'Giant Rhubarb' 2023.05 - 1518
PHP Version 8.1.2-1ubuntu2.14
VPS server | Ubuntu 22.04 LTS
4 Core CPU, 8 GB Ram with 300GB NVME Disk - unlimited traffic
hosted by @ raroun 👍


Notes:
This instances right now seems to work well.
Sometimes this profile here has some strange hickups like when following up the link of a post from this server in a stream view a message "Not Found |The requested item doesn't exist or has been deleted." Also right now profiles from contacts, for example @ hoergen or @ feb don't show up in the contact list but they are displayed as followed in the profile contact page.

I am going to Gaza with the flotilla.


Hi everyone.

I'm a member of the flotilla and preparing to leave for Gaza soon hopefully. A lot hanging on logistics and other things still but I will know more the coming days.

youtube.com/@actpal3456

action_for_palestine@tankie.tube

We will set sail in September. I hope to be be able to update a bit on these channels and setting up new accounts for this purpose.

Any tips, shares and discussions are welcomed and I hope to be be able to update on the journey a bit here.

Official updates will be made from official accounts but this will be my personal experience and as a backup for when other communications no longer are available.

Palestine will be free!

Does it get better?


I've tried switching to Linux from Windows 10 twice now. The first time went wonderfully (on Mint) until I found out that secure boot was stuck in the enabled mode and I had to completely reinstall my bios. This was absolutely necessary as everything was unbelievably slow, especially gaming (on a decent laptop). I understand this is totally my fault as almost every Linux guide says to make sure secure boot is disabled. After fighting with that for literal days, I finally reinstalled Linux mint. WiFi was suddenly completely nonfunctional, no networks were detected, and none of the proposed solutions I saw online worked. I have very little experience with Linux and other complicated tech nerd stuff besides that which comes with tinkering with computers occasionally. I do however have a great deal of patience and stubbornness. I spent maybe a week or 2 just working on this first attempt at making Mint work, until I ran out of patience. After coming back to it a month or 2 later, I decided to try Pop!_OS. Once again, it went incredibly at the start. Because I fixed the secure boot situation, I could now game better than I ever could when I had windows installed. Very few compatibility issues showed up that I couldn't conquer.
Suddenly, I try playing Enter the Gungeon after having already played it a couple of times. Nothing out of the ordinary, I had done this before. Suddenly the entire computer freezes and I can still hear just fine. I restart my computer and... no sound. Nothing from any possible source, not Discord, not Firefox, not even the media I have downloaded. I look up the problem, I see several people have had it before, and only a couple ever got a solution. I try EVERY proposed solution on any forum with even similar issues, and still nothing. I have been fighting with my computer for 3 or 4 hours now.
I've heard Linux praised for feeling like it is *your* computer that is subject to your will. I'd disagree right now, because it feels like there are spirits in my laptop trying to intentionally fuck me over every time I start enjoying the Linux experience.
Does it get better? Am I crazy? Am I haunted? How is this anyone's ideal experience?

edit: I'm on an MSI Thin GF63. Nvidia GPU, Intel CPU. Compatibility seemed fine WHILE this latest attempt was working, up until my sound got fucked. I have a hard time imagining if that could be related to anything besides my sound card and drivers, but I'm nowhere near savvy when it comes to Linux. I'm now installing Bazzite as some of you guys recommended so I can ease myself into this whole Linux thing. I'll give another update if this fixes it :3

edit edit: It's still happening. I can see the "Alder Lake PCH-P high definition audio controller" in my audio config GUI apps and I can see the meter moving when audio is playing. Still, nothing is played. I am not dual-booting. Ive seen people have had issues with this card before, but seemingly the only solution (that I've yet to try) is to buy a whole new laptop. I don't have the money to do that currently. If someone is particularly tech savvy I am willing to hear out proposed solutions, but know that I have tried nearly everything online even remotely related to broken audio on Linux. My computer is haunted and I'll need a proper qualified exorcist it seems.
note: it works with Bluetooth headphones. I haven't had a chance to test it with wired headphones but I will continue to give (near)real-time updates.

This entry was edited (1 week ago)
in reply to Cattypat

Driver support will always potentially be an issue unless you buy laptops that are built for Linux, or are well vetted. This is because Microsoft has near total market control and Linux support is usually reverse engineered later if the drivers source is never shared.

Same thing for gaming -- gaming support on Linux is mostly a bunch of ad hock hacks, because those games were never made to run on Linux in the first place.

So, if you want to commit to Linux, make it an informed choice. You will need to make some sacrifices. Or you could always just dip your toes and only use Linux for running a server or hosting a website.

bluetuith - A TUI based Bluetooth manager v0.2.5-rc1 is released


Hello Lemmy,

With this release, bluetuith now has initial cross-platform support, and works on Windows. Windows specific instructions are here, tl;dr install haraltd and bluetuith together.

There are no new features introduced, only other optimisations and bug fixes for Linux.

I hope you enjoy this release, and any feedback is appreciated.

General Information


Bluetuith is a TUI based bluetooth manager for Linux, that aims to be an alternative to most bluetooth managers, and can perform bluetooth based operations like:

  • Connection to and general management of bluetooth devices, with device information like battery percentage, RSSI etc. displayed, if the information is available. More detailed information about a device can be viewed by selecting the 'Info' option in the menu or by clicking the 'i' key.
  • Bluetooth adapter management, with toggleable power, discoverability, pairablilty and scanning modes.
  • Transfer and receive files via the OBEX protocol, with an interactive file picker to choose and select multiple files.
  • Handle both PANU and DUN based networking for each bluetooth device
  • Control media playback on the currently connected device, with a media player popup that displays playback information and controls.
in reply to

TLDR: If you're using Element X or SchildiChat Next, update them outside the official F-Droid repo:

SchildiChat via SpiritCroc repo: s2.spiritcroc.de/fdroid/repo/

ElementX via Github: github.com/element-hq/element-…

PostmarketOS rant / plea for help


cross-posted from the Linux phones community as nobody there knew

Has anyone actually successfully installed PostmarketOS on an old device recently? I've had a long struggle through trying to prepare a Nexus 7 (2012) and the result seems to be a dead device before I even got to actually installing PostmarketOS.

The rough steps I followed are listed here:
- Create backups
- Get SBK
- Build and prepare U-Boot
- Actually flashing U-Boot seems to be where things went wrong
- Running ./run_bootloader.sh -s T30 -t ./bct/grouper.bct -b ../re-crypt/repart-block.bin or ./run_bootloader.sh -s T30 -t ./bct/grouper.bct -b ../generated-wheelie-blobs/AndroidRoot/blob.bin from fusee-tools hung on waiting for bootloader to initialize
- Running ./run_bootloader.sh -s T30 -t ./bct/grouper.bct -b ../u-boot/u-boot-dtb-tegra.bin failed like this
- skipping that step and running ./utils/nvflash_v1.13.87205 --resume --rawdevicewrite 0 1024 ../re-crypt/repart-block.bin hung on [resume mode]
- Consulting a different version of the docs and running ./wheelie --blob ./generated-wheelie-blobs/AndroidRoot/blob.bin seemed to work so I ran ./nvflash --resume --rawdevicewrite 0 1024 ./re-crypt/repart-block.bin which also seemed to work
- I then powered off as instructed and the device has been completely unresponsive since

I've tried connecting to a charger, disconnecting and reconnecting the battery, and every combination of holding down buttons but it appears to be completely dead. Any suggestions as to what I did wrong or anything I might be able to do now? Obviously it's not the end of the world to have lost a 13 year old tablet that was just gathering dust, but at the moment I'm not feeling positive about ever trying this again on another device!

Looking for a NAS with good iOS photo sync


After a lot of work, and a lot of trying, I couldn’t find FOSS software that properly syncs my family’s photos in the background (tried Immich, still not good enough despite the new beta timeline, kinda worked in 1.136, got kinda broken on 1.138, tried Nextcloud, but still haven’t gotten new photos to sync in the background. Ente is waaaay too complicated, with waaaay too many moving parts that can break). Given all of this, I gotta choose some prebuilt nas that can properly sync. I don’t like synology but apparently their background sync is ok. What about Qnap and Ugreen? Are they ok?
in reply to First_Thunder

I was using PhotoSync quite successfully until I’ve switched to iCloud.

Nowadays, my MacBook is configured to always download all photo originals. And my Photo Library is then backed up to my NAS using CCC. This allows easy restore in case something goes wrong, as I can either restore the whole library or open the backup library and pull out what’s needed. If that fails, there’s also osxphotos to work with the library.

Bazzite has gained nearly 10k users in 3 months while other Fedora Atomic distros remain fairly stagnant


Generated via github.com/ublue-os/countme

10k added users since last post. Here are upstream Fedora numbers only

This entry was edited (1 week ago)

Can APT and dpkg be normally used on Arch? I just found out they're in the official repos now.


<> $ pacman -Si apt Repository : extra Name : apt Version : 3.1.4-1 Description : Command-line package manager used on Debian-based systems Architecture : x86_64 URL : https://salsa.debian.org/apt-team/apt Licenses : BSD-3-Clause GPL-2.0-only GPL-2.0-or-later MIT Groups : None Provides : None Depends On : systemd-libs libseccomp perl xxhash dpkg gnutls bzip2 sequoia-sqv xz gcc-libs lz4 bash zlib zstd db libgcrypt glibc Optional Deps : None Conflicts With : None Replaces : None Download Size : 2.63 MiB Installed Size : 8.24 MiB Packager : Alexander Epaneshnikov <alex19ep@archlinux.org> Build Date : Mon 11 Aug 2025 08:52:43 PM CEST Validated By : SHA-256 Sum Signature

archlinux.org/packages/extra/x…

[SOLVED] how to increase the /home partition


Hello!
I have a /home partition that is almost full, and there is another partition nearby with a lot of free space. I would like to reduce the size of this neighboring partition and add the freed space to /home. I would like to do this safely, without using a Live USB or bootable flash drive. Is this possible?

upd:
gparted just worked(through a live usb stick)! Sometimes I try to use symlinks, but not this time 😀
Thanks everyone!

This entry was edited (1 week ago)
in reply to stupid_asshole69 [none/use name]

NAME        MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINTS
sda           8:0    1  14.7G  0 disk 
└─sda1        8:1    1  14.7G  0 part /run/media/username/T72ER3G
nvme0n1     259:0    0 476.9G  0 disk 
├─nvme0n1p1 259:1    0     1G  0 part /boot/efi
├─nvme0n1p2 259:2    0    50G  0 part /home
└─nvme0n1p3 259:3    0 425.9G  0 part /var/lib/containers/storage/overlay
This entry was edited (1 week ago)
in reply to Entertain529

AMD GPUs are officially supported in the Linux kernel and Mesa. They pretty much just work out of the box with minimal setup on a fresh distro install.

NVidia GPUs often require out-of-tree proprietary drivers to work with full performance; these drivers are often a pain to install and update. Supposedly, things are getting less terrible now, but NVidia is still overall more likely to cause you pain than AMD.

Intel Arc dGPUs, like AMD, have decent native kernel and Mesa support from what I can tell, but tend to have worse performance than AMD. However, I hear they’re ridiculously good for video encoding!

This entry was edited (1 week ago)

[SOLVED] on debian 13 xfce, what appearance style do I need so the title bar doubles its width?


I use a small notebook so it comes in handy to double the title bar to have space to increase the title font to 16 or 18

On debian 12.11 this was the case, but I don't remember how I configured it or what style I used. The style I now use on debian 13 is adwaita

This entry was edited (1 week ago)