German state gov. ditching Windows for Linux, 30K workers migrating


Schleswig-Holstein, one of Germany’s 16 states, on Wednesday confirmed plans to move tens of thousands of systems from Microsoft Windows to Linux. The announcement follows previously established plans to migrate the state government off Microsoft Office in favor of open source LibreOffice.
in reply to psud

found this update from 1 month ago:

euro-stack.com/blog/2025/3/sch…

what the actual amount of progress is seems to be buried under bureaucracy-speak but I got 3 useful sentences out of it so far:

Configuration via group policies

MS Office can remain installed in parallel, until October 2025

Goals for october 2025: LibreOffice should be the sole standard office software on around 70% of the state administration's IT workstations


so to me it seems they're currently slowly doing a MS office -> LibreOffice transfer, but they're still all using windows (as the use of "group policy" implies)

This entry was edited (2 months ago)

Peertube video recommendation program


thinking about making a program that recommends videos that are on peertube. likes, titles, descriptions, and even closed caption can be collected locally and compared to the local users liked videos and watch time to rank videos the local user would like to watch.

later on there could be a server that people can willingly choose to send their data to build a better recommendation program.

I'm still in the research phase of this, but from my experience even implementing basic concepts would be effective

I know there is an anti algorithm crowd but this is opt in so this should be fine

Linux Bluetooth adapters


I need a Bluetooth adapter for my laptop that has Linux mint on it. I just need it to connect a BT speaker for watching YouTube and netflix. The adapters I looked at on amazon all say they aren't compatible with Linux. I was hoping I could get some recommendations that work with Linux. And preferably one that doesn't require drivers from some sketchy site, Thanks!

EDIT: thanks everyone for the recommendations!

This entry was edited (2 months ago)

German state gov. ditching Windows for Linux, 30K workers migrating


Schleswig-Holstein, one of Germany’s 16 states, on Wednesday confirmed plans to move tens of thousands of systems from Microsoft Windows to Linux. The announcement follows previously established plans to migrate the state government off Microsoft Office in favor of open source LibreOffice.
in reply to Meldrik

The most important parts are at the end of the CPU and GPU performance sections. They performed the same across all desktops. On most modern systems the desktop you use is not going to have any significant impact on your performance, when software you're running requires resources, they will be directed towards it.

Also, low RAM usage is massively overrated, especially by Linux users. Your RAM is there to be used, leaving it unused is a waste. It is good for your desktop to be caching a lot of data in RAM when it is otherwise unused. It's only an issue if its still utilizing an excessive amount of RAM when other apps need it more.

This entry was edited (2 months ago)

What is the best setup for Wayland + Nvidia/Intel Laptop (Alternative to Reverse Sync)?


Not sure if this is a good place to ask for help, but I have scoured the internet and no one has a solution, so hopefully this question helps me as well as others.

I'm trying to get my computer to run at its best when on Hyprland.
I have an MSI Raider GE76 which has an Nvidia GTX 3080 Mobile and an Intel Tiger Lake CPU with integrated graphics.

I typically have an external display over display port, an Ultrawide 3440x1440@60Hz, and the internal laptop display is on eDP at 1920x1080@360Hz.
Note tho that while I often have the dual screen setup, I do need to be able to go to just the Intel display.
The Nvidia GPU drives all outputs (DP, HDMI, Thunderbolt) EXCEPT for the eDP which is connected to the Intel card.

On X11, I could use reverse prime sync to use the Nvidia card for everything and just have the Intel card draw whatever the Nvidia card renders. This worked well.
Unfortunately there isn't anything like that for Wayland, and I don't have a hardware switch to put the eDP on the nvidia side of things.

This means that I have to use the default prime modes to run stuff on the nvidia card which makes the second screen incredibly laggy.
Now, I can disable the i915 module and the external display becomes buttery smooth, but I can't use my built-in display (which means I also can't use the display when I'm not connected to the external monitor).

How can I get both to work well on Wayland?

Can I run the external display exclusively on Nvidia and the internal on Intel with Prime?
That could work, but idk if that's possible.

What's the optimal way to set up an external display on Wayland with and Nvidia hybrid-graphics laptop?
Bc right now I'm thinking of just going back to X11 and praying it gets enough support to live until I can get a decent Wayland config.

in reply to KindaABigDyl

I don't have such a laptop, so I can't really speak for experience, but I can tell you what I know.

You definitely can use prime to render a program on the dgpu and display it on the igpu, this requires basically no configuration at all on wayland, I even did it on my desktop computer when Wayland didn't run on Nvidia. But I don't know if you can or why you would use the dgpu for everything instead of only selected programs (games).

What you really need is a compositor that properly uses both GPUs and can use the ports of both at the same time, hyperlaneld might just be bad at that. Gnome should be in a better position so you can start from here and see if gnome behaves better.

Also, are you sure you want to use a tiling compositor on a gaming laptop? Wouldn't it be a better experiment to just go with gnome? It's visually polished and goes well with trackpads.

in reply to edinbruh

Also, are you sure you want to use a tiling compositor on a gaming laptop


I can't go back to moving windows around by hand. It's so tedious. I can't stand it anymore. Even on Windows which I use for work I always install FancyWM to achieve some sense of tiling. It's just imo a superior way to use a computer.

That said, GNOME has the fantastic Pop Shell 2 which functions similar to Hyprland or i3, so that's fine on GNOME. Honestly, I'm hopeful for COSMIC and plan to try it out once it gets out of Alpha.

The problem I have with GNOME is I always end up breaking it in a way that I can't restore it. Some extension or GTK theme tweak or something, even when uninstalled, always seems to get it stuck in a bad state. It doesn't like customization. KDE does, but it doesn't have as good tiling support (there's Polonium, which is... okay).

Perhaps I'll try it again tho. I've used GNOME for several months at a time before, but I had problems when switching to Wayland a couple years ago initially (which I'm sure are fixed now).

in reply to KindaABigDyl

A couple years ago it could never have worked properly, Nvidia drivers didn't support Wayland. Because Nvidia refused to implement drivers that followed the Linux semantic (which admittedly was outdated). About a year ago, after many years of work, they published a new semantic that Nvidia was willing to implement. Alongside that, a new Wayland protocol was added so that compositors could opt-in the new semantic when the driver supports it. So, to use Wayland with Nvidia you need both a recent enough Nvidia driver (I think anything after last July) and a compositor that implement the linux_drm_syncobj_v1 protocol. I'm not even sure hyperland supports it, so you should also look into that before continuing.

P.s.: gnome's mutter, and kde's kwin (which are the name of their compositors) both supported that protocol since the very day after it was released, so those are guaranteed to work if they are recent enough, unless if you are on Ubuntu lts which stripped it out for a pet peeve about adding features to lts releases.

This entry was edited (2 months ago)
in reply to edinbruh

Yeah, I may just go back to Gnome/KDE.

I recently switched OS from NixOS to Arch which is why I wanted to give Hyprland a try.

I was on KDE before with not a ton of issue, but well, the tiling options on KDE are few and limited, so I wanted to go back and retry a dedicated tiler. I was on i3 before switching to Wayland, then I was on Hyprland for a while, then switched around a bit, and then settled on KDE once I discovered Polonium which I could live with.

I'm gonna give GNOME a shot for now, and just try not to tweak it too much (other than Pop Shell)

This entry was edited (2 months ago)
in reply to KindaABigDyl

Yes most tiling solutions on KDE are half-baked even the new built-in (at least the last time I tried) but Krohnkite is really solid. It was forked to Bismuth, then that one got defunct after a major kwin update. But it's back again as Krohnkite (infinite thanks to the maintainers). It's rock solid and even has a B-Tree Layout now. I'm on X11 but the last time I tried it also worked nice with Wayland.
This entry was edited (2 months ago)
in reply to KindaABigDyl

Splitting the thread here. I personally used i3wm for more than a year and became white fast with it, then I had to use windows for a month and when I went back to i3 it was a pain, I couldn't do shit. It was at that moment I decided "why can't I just stop forcing myself to this PITA and just use the mouse faster?" And I never used a tiling VM again, personally I use kde on desktop and gnome on laptop.

But, I can see the appeal of automatic tiling, so I raise you this: scrollable compositors. You get both the benefits of automatic positioning and oc moving things in and out of the way, without keeping track and managing 10 virtual desktops

in reply to edinbruh

why can’t I just stop forcing myself to this PITA and just use the mouse faster?


You know that i3 has support for mouse, right? Really good support in fact.

I use the mouse all the time in tiling window managers, not exclusively keyboard shortcuts, especially for well, window management. Win + Right Click and drag to resize and Win + Left Click to move a window into place. However, unlike traditional desktops, when I move the window, it snaps to a reasonable and consistent tiling location instead of just left/right snapping, a random place it can get covered up, or tiled using some awful extraneous system like KDE's tiling system or some of the Windows little GUI popups. I also sometimes use floating windows.

The nice thing about tilers is they can do traditional usage well whereas traditional desktops cannot do tiling well. Heck, dynamic tilers can't even do tiling well.

I often make use of very complex layouts like this:

--------------------------------------
| Win A              | Win B         |
|                    |               |
|                    |---------------|
|--------------------| Win C | Win D |
| Win E              |---------------|
|                    | Win F         |
--------------------------------------

That many windows with different priorities and visible at once is just not possible to do in traditional desktops or even in dynamic tilers like DWM or KDE's Bismuth plugin.

I need something that makes window organization EASY, and that is manual tilers.

I'll have to look into the scrolling compositor. That does sound interesting.

without keeping track and managing 10 virtual desktops


Also, I don't understand what you mean here. I'm very curious to what troubles you had with workspaces.

What is there to manage? Do you not use virtual desktops at all anymore? I use them even in traditional desktops (including Windows).

It's just a place to put more windows when you run out of room on a screen or when doing a different task, what's the difficulty there?

Did you always use all 10? I don't usually need more than 2, and if I do, then I don't usually need more than 4

This entry was edited (2 months ago)

Insurrection act — April 20th. Pls read!


Insurrection act — April 20th. Pls read!

Discussion
I really wish there was a way to get this into the hands of every American before April 20th.

FROM THE MEDIUM:

Part 1: On April 20th, 2025, the United States may Cross the Point of No Return.


It sounds wild. Maybe even crazy. But every step is already in motion. I’d be happy to be wrong. But if this is correct… you’ll be ready.

On April 20, 2025, the United States may initiate its final steps into authoritarian rule.

That’s the day Donald Trump’s advisory committee is expected to release its findings on whether he should invoke the Insurrection Act — a move that would allow him to deploy the military domestically and allow Trump to impose martial law. (San Francisco Chronicle). Given Hegseth and Noem are the main “advisors”, the conclusion is foregone.

And as his two months in office has already shown, he won’t stop at just a legal opinion.

Expect an executive order even that same day or the next, officially declaring the Insurrection Act, restricting freedoms in the name of restoring control of the border and perhaps in blue-state cities, and setting the larger plan in motion.

Of course, this won’t be framed as an attack on democracy. It will be packaged as a necessary response to crisis — as authoritarian takeovers always are.

But once it happens, there’s no going back.

THIS WILL BE THE POINT OF NO RETURN.


The roadmap for overthrowing a democratic government isn’t new or theoretical — it’s a well-worn playbook, tested and repeated across history by those who crave power more than liberty. After rejecting it initially, being incredulous, I have realized there is too much evidence suggesting this may be what’s happening now to remain silent.

Telling other people what may be happening, so they can recognize it and maybe together we can stop it, is my entire purpose here.

This is Part 1 of what has turned into a series: Their Coup Playbook: How They Quietly Kill the Constitution in the Coming Weeks and Months

THIS IS HOW DEMOCRACY ENDS: HERE’S THEIR PLAYBOOK


It won’t all happen in one night.

Instead, the process will unfold in stages, each step making resistance harder.

Free elections, a free press, and the right to protest will disappear one piece at a time, until there’s nothing left to save.

My entire goal here is to make people aware, so you can recognize it, if it really is what’s happening, and maybe together we can help stop it. It’s all I, personally, can do.

Here’s how it will happen, step by step, after Trump invokes the Insurrection Act with an Executive Order:

  1. “Resist!” Demonstrations Grow — Just As Planned Left-leaning and even more centrist people will be alarmed. Peaceful protests will be organized nationwide, as they already have been being organized now, with growing numbers of people joining protests each week.

The calls to “Resist!” will grow louder, and large-scale demonstrations will begin forming in major cities. This is exactly what Trump wants. He didn’t invoke the Insurrection Act sooner because he needed his opposition to gather first — so he could use them as a tool for his next step.

He also waited 90 days, instead of invoking it on Day 1 as Project 2025 recommended, so he would have his people in place, and remove those who would oppose them in the government, military, courts, and civil positions.

His cabal is waiting for a strong reaction — they want massive unrest. They need a justification to kick off the next steps in their plan.

  1. The False Flag Crisis: Turning Protest into “Terror” The protests will turn violent quickly. Maybe in a day, maybe during the next big protest the following weekend.

They will turn violent not because of the protesters, but because they will have been infiltrated by agents provocateurs, from militia groups like The Proud Boys, whose goal is to escalate as quickly as possible and give Trump and his cabal an excuse to trigger the next stage.

Expect “terrorist” bombings, targeted assassinations, or high-profile acts of violence, either staged or exploited, to justify the crackdown.

There may even be an extremely high profile assassination of a leading right-wing leader that changes everything in a moment… and the “woke radicals” will be blamed, and the country will rally around more extreme measures to bring back order and control.

The media will be flooded with images of chaos, pushing the public into a state of fear. Calls for “order” will follow.

  1. Trump Declares Expanded Martial Law — And Calls for Militia to assist the police and Military

Trump has already invoked the Insurrection Act — so now he now declares even more extensive and repressive martial law, and orders troops into major US cities where most oppose him, branding protesters and opponents as “seditionists,” “traitors,” and the “woke mob”.

He will call on “good Americans” to grab their guns, like the patriots of 1776, and join the militias forming to “restore order” and “take back control” from the leftist threat. Using militias also gets him around resistance from military leaders who might oppose his orders. The militias already exist — the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, Three Percenters, and others— and they are not some distant fringe. They were at January 6. The most extreme and radicalized are all released from prison now.They are ready to roll, and to answer Trump’s call, which they were waiting for four years ago.

The militia members are your neighbors. The difference between them and you? These neighbors own and have been training with AR-15s. You and your friends? Not so much.

This will be framed as “helping the police” and “keeping order.” Law enforcement will quietly welcome them — or, in some cases, will deputize them, with Trump’s support.

  1. Mass Arrests of Opposition Leaders Journalists, Democratic officials, and activists will be arrested under charges of sedition, terrorism, or “inciting violence.”

Expect Mark Milley, Liz Cheyney, and Adam Kinzinger to be arrested quickly and with great press coverage. How long the show trials take is probably a good measure of how much control Trump has established over the courts.

Key Democratic governors and attorneys general will be removed first, ensuring no state-level resistance. Law enforcement and military ranks will be purged, with loyalty tests ensuring only Trump-aligned officers remain.

  1. Military & National Guard Take Over Major Cities Expect deployments in Washington, D.C., New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and other blue-state strongholds.

Curfews and lockdowns will be imposed, justified as measures to “restore peace.”

Checkpoints and military policing will become the new normal. Expect them in particular along major highways going to Canada or Mexico, and in red states — to identify and detain seditionists, traitors, and people of questionable loyalty.

Trump’s building of detainment centers in Guantanamo, and expansion of the 106 other ICE detention centers, was not actually intended for illegal migrants. And just a few days ago, Blackwater founder and Billionaire Erik Prince offered to help Trump “privatize deportation camps” as has been being done with prisons per Trump’s Day 1 Executive Order. So now Trump has an extrajudicial place to store the disloyal and those who resist, in for-profit camps guarded by militias and loyal military. Until he decides what to do with them.

  1. Press Censorship & Total Media Control Independent news outlets will face shutdowns or takeovers. Those that resist will see their journalists arrested or harassed.

Mainstream media will be forced into compliance. Blackmail, corporate pressure, and legal threats will ensure they toe the line.

Social media platforms like X (Twitter) will amplify the official narrative, drowning out opposition.

Other social media and lines of communication will be turned off. The Internet will be monitored, people identified from this monitoring for arrest, using Palantir technology. Peter Thiel, who I’ve written about before, is co-founder of Palantir. We will fully enter the surveillance state.

  1. Borders Close & Dissidents Are Trapped Inside Passports will be revoked for critics and opponents. If you’re on a list, you’re not leaving. Especially if you’re of Draft age.

No-fly lists will expand to include activists and journalists.

ICE and DHS will be weaponized — not just against immigrants, but against political enemies.

  1. Elections Are “Postponed” Indefinitely

The 2026 midterms will be suspended under the excuse of national security concerns. Red-state legislatures will eliminate Democratic-leaning districts, ensuring permanent Republican control.

By 2028, Trump (or his handpicked successor) will run unopposed. Elections will be a formality, probably still held. But rigged.

PROJECT 2025 AND THE INSURRECTION ACT: THIS WAS ALWAYS THE PLAN


This isn’t speculation.

The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 lays out a detailed strategy for permanent right-wing control. It openly advocates using the Insurrection Act to crush opposition and dismantle the administrative state. Trump isn’t improvising — he’s following a script.

We Can’t Wait — The Time to Act Is Now

We can’t sit back and wait for Trump to fire the starting gun — because once he does, it will already be too late.

We need to prepare now.

We need to plan now.

We need to dismantle his plans before they begin.

We have one month.

That’s it.

The Only Way to Stop this Coup is by Exposing It


The only way I can think of to stop this conspiracy, which is in final planning stages, is through exposure. If people see the playbook in advance, they will be less likely be manipulated when it happens.

They might question the narrative. “Wait. This is what they said would happen. I thought it was crazy. But maybe…”

We need to spread this narrative far and wide so that when the moment comes, no one can claim ignorance.


Maybe we will be proven wrong.

Maybe we will look silly.

Or maybe… we will have derailed the plan, by telling people what to look for, to recognize the playbook steps as (if) they happen.

Here’s what we must do before April 20:

Empower the press, law enforcement, military, and elected officials to recognize the game that’s being played. They need to understand what’s happening before they are pressured to go along with it.

**Share this post, or write your own. Do your own research. Don’t take my word for it. Talk with your friends and family about this crazy conspiracy theory that can’t rally happen… can it? ** So if and when the steps actually happen, people recognize it for what it is.

Prepare the public so they don’t take the bait. Trump and his cabal want protests to explode into chaos.

They want violence in the streets to justify their crackdown. We must be ready to outmaneuver them — to refuse to be used as pawns in their game.

Stand up to the militias — and stop friends and family from joining them. The Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, and other armed groups will be mobilized as Trump’s shock troops. They will be framed as “restoring order” and “helping the police.” We need to be ready to counter this, to make sure our neighbors, friends, and family don’t get sucked in.

Inoculate our fellow citizens against the propaganda. Most Americans are good people — but good people can be misled. They can be scared into compliance. Our job is to make sure they see what’s happening before it’s too late.

The only way to stop this plot is to expose it, reject it, and make it unmistakably clear to every American what is happening. We must stop these malign forces from enacting their will on our country, the world, and each of us and our families.

WHAT IF WE DON’T STOP IT?


If it is not stopped, and Trump enacts the Insurrection Act, at that point we probably only have 48 to 72 hours to try to stop everything from happening after the Executive Order.

Once martial law is imposed, there will be a tiny window — no more than three days — before resistance becomes nearly impossible.

Stopping it before it happens is the best option.

But what if we don’t?

In my next post, I’ll outline peaceful, strategic ways to resist — while we still can. And what our reduced options are if it still happens.

If we don’t act before April 20, then by April 23, it will already be too late.

in reply to BmeBenji

Yeah I’m inclined to agree. There is a lot of “this isn’t speculation”, yet there’s a lot of speculation. A source on where it says this in Project 2025 would be handy.

Edit:

No.

Shut the fuck up.

I’m sick of your doom-screaming without source. Provide sources.

The rhetoric in this post could kill people. ACTUALLY FUCKING KILL PEOPLE. Fuck me for wanting some assurance before I panic.

This entry was edited (2 months ago)

Beckn Protocol


Ok so I don't know if this protocol has got anything to do with Federation, but it's an interesting protocol regardless

It's used mostly for logistics. I'm interested in your thoughts
becknprotocol.io/

This entry was edited (2 months ago)

don't like this

[solved] I'm having audio issues with Linux and while I have a temporary solution, I'd like to have a permanent solution if possible.


Final update (hopefully): It seems that I have been able to fix the issue. I'm not sure what exactly caused the problem but either removing fluidsynth or installing the wireplumber ppa fixed the issue and I have working audio again. I've also removed pulseaudio as I only installed it as a temporary solution and it's no longer necessary.

For the past three days, I've been having this issue where my computer starts with no audio and the only sound device listed is a "dummy output" device. I've tried looking online for solution but the only solution I found has to be redone manually every time I start/restart my computer. It also seems like this issue is common with and possibly specific to the sound card my computer has, which is an "Intel Sunrise Point-LP HD Audio".

The solution that worked for me was to add blacklist snd_soc_avs to the modprobe blacklist and then run the two commands sudo alsa force-reload and pulseaudio. Adding snd_soc_avs to the blacklist permanently brought back my actually audio devices but it didn't fix the audio nor did it remove the dummy output device. The two commands I listed do restore the audio and remove the dummy output device but they only work for the current session and I have to run them again after starting/restarting my computer.

I have no problem doing this if there isn't a permanent solution but I would like a permanent solution, if possible.

This entry was edited (2 months ago)
in reply to gnuhaut

Ok, even though I said I'd wait until tomorrow, I decided to try it again. It seemed to boot more or less normally but I did try someone else's suggestion and it got audio working again. I did undo the edit I made to the modprobe blacklist and I did keep fluidsynth and pulseaudio uninstalled but I tried using the wireplumber ppa, like someone else suggested and my audio is working again. Granded, I have no idea what actually fixed the issue, so I don't know who to fully credit but thanks for helping.

Getting ready to switch to Linux full time


But I've got two doubts remaining.

Currently, I'm running Windows 11, but I'd still like the ability to dual boot for certain games which don't necessarily work with Linux for various reasons. Is it possible to move a windows install to a different drive and then install Linux on the main drive instead?

If yes, how do I do it?

Second doubt is if I'll have many issues daily driving Linux if I have an Nvidia card

in reply to Focal

nvidia these days has little to no issues with games, I've personally had very little.

The biggest problem I've had is with video decode/encode acceleration, because nvidia doesn't provide vaapi drivers and Firefox doesn't enable vaapi by default. there is a solution that works but you need to do some tinkering.

this isn't a huge problem though, modern cpus are pretty fast and software decoding is fine for the most part

This entry was edited (2 months ago)
in reply to Focal

I'm not so sure you're to the getting ready to switch to Linux stage as you think you are. Also, cloning & moving drive partitions are pretty elementary concepts. Not that people shouldn't help but many people on Linux don't realize encouraging people to switch too soon, often results in that person actually hurting the Linux community because they had a relatively productive setup before & now everything sucks to them. Having a dual boot partition or drive is helpful but you should also have some strategies to switch back if needed as your primary OS until you feel more confident & productive.
This entry was edited (2 months ago)

Lemmy vote aggregation idea


Alright, this one will be weird but I’m coming to accept I might be way further on the spectrum than I thought. Reader beware, it’s probably dumb but kind of amusing and fun to think about.

We are currently dealing with various kinds of vote manipulation and that affects visibility of things even if we don’t care about imaginary points. As long as they are used for sorting they’re not that imaginary because I can sort by new but most will not have time and will want to peek. Now, the main issue here are the extremes - instances used to flood votes or weirdos stalking other users.

Currently Lemmy/Piefed/Mbin create a federated network but votes are still kind of a direct democracy. What if that democracy was federated too? One can think of this as federating consensus. There are two approaches to implementing this but the idea boils down to either outside instances aggregating votes made on their side and sending final voting result on a scale -1/0/1 or alternatively this aggregation could be done by the hosting community.

What this solves:

  • Flooding is harder because you need to keep on making instances.
  • People have more motivation to join smaller instances because that way their vote matters more.
  • People have more motivation to join interest / theme / location based instances so that their vote is aggregated with similar people.
  • Weirdos will set up their own instances meaning even more decentralisation.

Mastodon to Lemmy post formatting rules questions


Hi all,

This is a continuation of this thread around Mastodon/Lemmy integration.

I am trying to understand the formatting rules around Mastodon to Mastodon/Lemmy posts. My Mastodon instance is www.mstdn.games.

I was able to get this point:

Mastodon input:

Lemmy crosspost:

Let me walk through the key points.

1. Thumbnail

This works really well. You attach an image on Mastodon and it outputs the correct thumbnail on Lemmy (it even works across instances, I know there are issues with LW vs other instances in custom thumbnail attach).

2. Markdown Formatting

Doesn't seem to work on the Mastodon side. Not a big deal, the only somewhat relevant piece is the markdown URL syntax, but I can just use [Text - URL] style formatting.

I read that Mastodon is supposed to support markdown, but it seems to not be the case. Doesn't matter, but if someone has anyone info on this, I would appreciate it.

3. Mastodon to multiple Lemmy communities

I tried adding both !testfediverse@jlai.lu and !test@lemmy.ca. It seems only the first Lemmy community URL gets crossposted (I was able to post to !test@lemmy.ca when it was the first Lemmy URL).

Again, this is manageable. I can crosspost (within Lemmy) from my Lemmy account.

4. Direct URL Lemmy link with Text Heading

This doesn't seem to work. This is really annoying.

I can get text heading working on the Lemmy side, but the Lemmy URL always points to the Mastodon post URL:

Is there a way to define the URL on the Mastodon side so that Lemmy understands that the post must point to a specific URL (while having a separate Lemmy text heading and not having the post look like shit on the Mastodon side).

The last piece is critical for me. I don't want to post links to Mastodon in the !tycoon@lemmy.world community.


Lemmy Mastadon (automated crossposting?) interaction issue.


I am a mod/curator at !tycoon@[url=https://lemmy.world/]Lemmy.World[/url]. We cover tycoon game (Project Highrise, Transport Fever) etc.

I also have a Mastodon account:

mstdn.games/@Landgraab_Industr…

I typically only post releases or major stuff (not demos, or smaller early access titles) on the Mastodon account. I also add screenshots and tags for visibility/UX.

Today I clicked on the #tycoon hashtag on Mastodon and to my surprise it turns out my posts on !tycoon@[url=https://lemmy.world/]Lemmy.World[/url] are being automatically propagated on Mastodon:

When I started !tycoon@[url=https://lemmy.world/]Lemmy.World[/url], I was actually considering creating an automated Mastodon account, but it turned out to be more difficult than I anticipated (or I don't know what I am doing).

I am curious how this automated propagation got enabled. It wasn't there a week ago. Is this tied to my mstdn.games Mastodon instance? What's going on here?

I am also not sure I like the current automated propagation method because:

  1. It links only to the Lemmy URL, it doesn't include the post URL (e.g. steam/gog page) which is IMO more important.
  2. Does not include a screenshot of the game (critical for micro-blogging IMO).
  3. Does not include additional tags.

Is there a way to "control" the parameters of this automatic propagation on Mastodon? E.g. by manually adding a "Thumbnail URL" on the Lemmy side, adding an additional post URL and hashtags in the Lemmy body post?

At this point, it almost looks like I am spamming the #tycoon tag. I would much prefer if there was a way to propagate my Lemmy posts on Mastodon using my manual Mastodon template (e.g. mstdn.games/@Landgraab_Industr…).


This entry was edited (2 months ago)
in reply to Agent Karyo

Lemmy and Mastodon have somewhat different purposes and integration between them is never going to be perfect. :/ Ultimately you'll always get better results if you post to the platform you mainly want to target; posts sometimes being visible on the other one too is a side effect.

What would probably be useful for purposes like yours is to have some kind of software that allows the creation of arbitrary or near-arbitrary ActivityPub objects with arbitrary audiences which can include one's followers or any number of groups. I don't know how feasible this is or whether someone has already done it.

A few months ago I saw a post on a relatively large Lemmy community that had clearly been intended for the author's Mastodon followers, but they tagged that Lemmy community (it had a name relevant to the content) apparently not knowing this would publish it to Lemmy. As I recall, this got >100 upvotes on Lemmy, but the Lemmy community's mods deleted that post after a few hours. (Maybe some readers of this saw it too, it was to a "Europe" community and its content was something like "musKKK get the fuck out of EU politics".)

in reply to schnurrito

I get that. I would argue the use case I described is basically the bread and butter of Mastodon <> Lemmy integration (if you don't want your posts to look like shit on either Mastodon or Lemmy).

The critical drawback for me is that you can't have hardcoded URLs/images/headings across both Mastodon and Lemmy posts.

If you can't do that, you severely restrict the scope of integration between the two platforms. This is a net loss because the content I post on !tycoon@lemmy.world is arguably relevant for both forum style discussions and micro-blogging.

This entry was edited (2 months ago)

Is Libreoffice a good Microsoft Office substitute?


Hi. So my girlfriend wants to try out Linux (Elementary OS, she thinks it looks pretty) and needs my help setting everything up (she’s not that good at tech). I’ve never use Linux before. From what I’ve read MS Office is not supported on Linux, but there’s Libreoffice. My gf uses a lot of MS Office for high school (Word & Powerpoint mostly), so I’m curious if Libre is a good substitute? As in compatibility, features, etc.?
in reply to bigsleep

One thing to make your girlfriend's transition easier: you can reconfigure the UI to be more similar to more recent versions of MS office. The first time you open it, there will be a popup that brings you directly to the relevant settings menu. It's not one to one but the major options are going to be in similar places after you changed the UI.
This entry was edited (2 months ago)

2 Instances are being used for coordinated vote manipulation, and should be defederated. chinese.lol lemmy.doesnotexist.club


cross-posted from: lemm.ee/post/60715570

cross-posted from: hackertalks.com/post/8713785
The instances being used are
  • lemmy.doesnotexist.club
  • chinese.lol

Here is an example of the coordinated downvoting hackertalks.com/post/8692093

Of course its a controversial user who got someone angry enough to automated downvoting @DonaldJMusk@lemmy.today

But you can see every post they make gets 53ish downvotes from these two instances, plus some organic ones after a few hours.

Current downvoting Accounts
:::spoiler bot-list

LightIsland@chinese.lol
MagnificentRow@chinese.lol
FondKnowledge@chinese.lol
SillyTowel95@chinese.lol
HelplessDear@chinese.lol
SomberBrain@chinese.lol
InexperiencedCloset@chinese.lol
NecessaryPerson11@chinese.lol
ClosedEmployment@chinese.lol
CoarseHair420@chinese.lol
BurlyChampionship49@chinese.lol
ZigzagNatural@chinese.lol
QuestionableDirt@chinese.lol
ProudDeparture@lemmy.doesnotexist.club
JoyousDouble@chinese.lol
UnitedPatience@chinese.lol
MajesticArea@lemmy.doesnotexist.club
SinfulConference@chinese.lol
MoralDivide96@chinese.lol
LeadingCarry65@chinese.lol
FrillyOpinion38@lemmy.doesnotexist.club
LimitedDiscount49@lemmy.doesnotexist.club
ForkedScreen@chinese.lol
MediumChemistry13@chinese.lol
xXxLawfulGrassxXx@lemmy.doesnotexist.club
VisibleSentence@chinese.lol
AcidicLawyer90@lemmy.doesnotexist.club
PriceySink14@lemmy.doesnotexist.club
ExcellentBeach@chinese.lol
VivaciousNews@lemmy.doesnotexist.club
LankyIndependent32@lemmy.doesnotexist.club
SpeedyFault@chinese.lol
ConcreteHall89@lemmy.doesnotexist.club
WorthyPoint12@lemmy.doesnotexist.club
SurprisedAdult99@chinese.lol
FlashyCrack@lemmy.doesnotexist.club
MasculineBeing@chinese.lol
RichWeird@lemmy.doesnotexist.club
DryCash97@lemmy.doesnotexist.club
AuthorizedChair@chinese.lol
SlimKiss@lemmy.doesnotexist.club
AromaticRoof78@lemmy.doesnotexist.club
BewitchedInterview@lemmy.doesnotexist.club
ImaginaryDraw@lemmy.doesnotexist.club
PertinentGround@chinese.lol
SinfulAssumption@lemmy.doesnotexist.club
AwkwardAnybody30@lemmy.doesnotexist.club
UnwillingRestaurant@lemmy.doesnotexist.club
InsubstantialOven@lemmy.doesnotexist.club
:::

A individual user airing their personal biases and manipulating lemmy isn't good for the community, regardless of how you feel about their target. This is a really bad thing (tm)


in reply to irelephant [he/him]🍭

You are literally linking to the post I crossposted.

Do some lemmy clients not distinguish crossposts?

Edit: I’m wrong, see comments below.

This entry was edited (2 months ago)

don't like this

Lemmy Mastadon (automated crossposting?) interaction issue.


I am a mod/curator at !tycoon@lemmy.world. We cover tycoon game (Project Highrise, Transport Fever) etc.

I also have a Mastodon account:

mstdn.games/@Landgraab_Industr…

I typically only post releases or major stuff (not demos, or smaller early access titles) on the Mastodon account. I also add screenshots and tags for visibility/UX.

Today I clicked on the #tycoon hashtag on Mastodon and to my surprise it turns out my posts on !tycoon@lemmy.world are being automatically propagated on Mastodon:

When I started !tycoon@lemmy.world, I was actually considering creating an automated Mastodon account, but it turned out to be more difficult than I anticipated (or I don't know what I am doing).

I am curious how this automated propagation got enabled. It wasn't there a week ago. Is this tied to my mstdn.games Mastodon instance? What's going on here?

I am also not sure I like the current automated propagation method because:

  1. It links only to the Lemmy URL, it doesn't include the post URL (e.g. steam/gog page) which is IMO more important.
  2. Does not include a screenshot of the game (critical for micro-blogging IMO).
  3. Does not include additional tags.

Is there a way to "control" the parameters of this automatic propagation on Mastodon? E.g. by manually adding a "Thumbnail URL" on the Lemmy side, adding an additional post URL and hashtags in the Lemmy body post?

At this point, it almost looks like I am spamming the #tycoon tag. I would much prefer if there was a way to propagate my Lemmy posts on Mastodon using my manual Mastodon template (e.g. mstdn.games/@Landgraab_Industr…).

This entry was edited (2 months ago)

mysql


@EDIT | don't follow!

standard mySQL procedures and comands

Change from standard SSH root user to enter mySQL management as root
rootname@VPShosting:~# mysql
create a DB with user and paswordMariaDB \[(none)\]> `CREATE DATABASE friendicadb;` MariaDB \[(none)\]> `CREATE USER 'friendica'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY '';` MariaDB \[(none)\]> `GRANT ALL ON friendicadb.* TO 'friendica'@'localhost';` MariaDB \[(none)\]> `FLUSH PRIVILEGES;` MariaDB \[(none)\]> `EXIT;`

How do I map "caplock to escape but shift+caplock = normal caplock", like Gnome has?


I use i3wm, and to map cap lock to escape, I run:

setxkbmap -option caps:swapescape

This works fine, but sometimes while hitting the F1 key, my pinky can accidentally hit the Escape key, which turns on CapsLock.

Gnome has a very nice way to do this, where Shift + Escape = CapsLock. Hitting Escape on its own will do nothing.

in reply to mazzilius_marsti

It's option caps:escape_shifted_capslock I think.

You can look through /usr/share/X11/xkb/rules/base.lst for all the options.

Edit: Just looked up when this was added, this is a new option from 2024:

gitlab.freedesktop.org/xkeyboa…

This entry was edited (2 months ago)
in reply to mazzilius_marsti

I use keyd for software remapping now, and I like it a lot more than xkb's esoteric options. It has functionality for layers like layer:C, where any "passthrough" input will have the defined modifier (or combo like C-S-M), but you can define whatever other bindings inside.

Long story short, I've used it to remap caps, control, shift (with a custom shift layer for some symbols), and meta, with overloads, double tap/hold into layers, oneshots, timeouts, and all sorts of (surprisingly fluid) nonsense. It's so much easier than wading through xkb options for me.

To sidestep the question slightly less, I always got rid of capslock altogether instead of swapping. That still leaves true escape to be hit accidentally, but I think there should be an option to change escape too?

Edit: what I always used was

# make CapsLock behave like Ctrl:
setxkbmap -option ctrl:nocaps

# make short-pressed Ctrl behave like Escape:
xcape -e 'Control_L=Escape'

from here
This entry was edited (2 months ago)

What Eddy Burback got wrong about his phone... [Discussion of Fediverse as an alternative within]


cross-posted from: lemmy.abnormalbeings.space/pos…

Companion article here: blog.gardinerbryant.com/what-e…

in reply to jeffhykin

I feel like this kind of misses the point. To be clear: If someone absolutely cannot avoid installing slop apps and enabling notifications for everything, I can see their need for an ultra minimal device or other solution. But I also think that speaks to a larger, personal discussion about discipline and possibly addiction, but that’s outside the realm of this thread.

My point is we can choose which apps, notifications, features, and algorithms are allowed to get our attention. It’s easy to turn off all notifications or never even allow them in the first place—after all, apps have to ask for that permission in the first place.

But the choice is the point. If someone is traveling somewhere they probably want maps to tell them important information about the journey. Otherwise why turn on directions at all? That’s the entire point.

We even have the ability to disable all texting notifications but also choose to allow them from certain people if they’re important enough. These devices are simply tools and we have the power to choose how they operate. The device isn’t the problem, it’s our choices.

in reply to InfiniteHench

I'm saying one of the big downsides has nothing to do with self discipline.

  • Even if we never click an advertisement.
  • Even if we never eat from the candy bowl.
  • Even if we never use the bad phone apps.

Merely living in a world covered in advertisements, living next to a delicious smelling candy bowl, living 30 seconds away from memes, rage-bait, doom scrolling, sports gambling, and other slop -- just living next to those things are bad for our mental health.

Some sources if you're curious on the research behind it.
pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/…

ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/…

scholarworks.uark.edu/mgmtuht/…

This entry was edited (2 months ago)

[Help] Trouble shutting down a linux machine


I am having issues with my linux machine running openSUSE MicroOS. It runs fine but I can't power it off via SSH. I tried shutdown, poweroff and halt but no command turned the machine off. I then have to physically push the power button but I don't feel comfortable doing that too often because I might interrupt some processes which are still running? Is there something I could still try or something I did wrong?
in reply to theorangeninja

Running poweroff is one of the correct ways on anything Systemd (details). If that doesn't work then something is broken.

If you haven't done so already try looking into the journal. sudo journalctl -b -1 -e will take you to the end of the log for the last boot.

This entry was edited (2 months ago)

Question about cryptsetup, LUKS and auto-mounting an SD at boot


Hi guys!

I have a Surface laptop, which I want to use again with a microSD as external storage. Since this can be easily pulled off from the laptop, I want it to be encrypted. This was encrypted before, but eventually the SD failed, and I'm trying to recreate what I had...without much success.

Steps so far...
Create the LUKS volume:

#cryptsetup luksFormat /dev/sda

Format in ext4 (I believe it was in Exfat with the old SD?):

\#cryptsetup open /dev/sda encrypted
\#mkfs.ext4 /dev/mapper/encrypted

That should do it regarding the volume creation. Now comes what I can't quite get working.
I created a pw txt file within my home folder:

/home/user/EncryptedSD.txt

Then I refer to this via /etc/crypttab at boot:

encrypted /dev/sda /home/user/EncryptedSD.txt

And my /etc/fstab should attempt to mount this on the spot:

/dev/mapper/encrypted /media/SDCard ext4 auto,nofail,rw

However, as this is set, I'm being prompted halfway through boot for the password. And I can't type anything onto that field. Not that it matters, as it's a really long randomly generated password, no way I could remember it.

Even if I managed to make it go through boot, I'm still prompted for mounting the drive when I clicked on it, and I'm also prompted for the password, so clearly something's not quite there yet. Any ideas? I intend to sync a series of network folders to this drive, so not being ready can make it a bit messier to sync at boot.

Thanks!

This entry was edited (2 months ago)

When did Kdenlive get so good?


cross-posted from: lemmy.sdf.org/post/32192355

Just found out about this guy on YouTube named Nuxttux because I've been trying to make some social media videos.

Kdenlive is a completely different beast than the one that I remember using a couple of years ago. It has so much functionality in it, like all the "TikTok effects", proxy clips, rendering previews, visualizing effect curves between keyframes... like damn. This is actually legit software now for my basic needs.

The thing is, it seems like these were all added in the past 2 years, because I had 23.x installed through the Debian repo and I upgraded through Flatpak to 24.12 and it seems to have added all of these?

Anyway holy shit. Go give these guys some money. This is game changing

Physical Install to QEMU VM, is it possible?


Hello everyone!

I have been learning QEMU for the past day and so I've almost finished building my perfect VM from the qemu cli, and I was wondering if there is any method to say, copy a partition(+bootloader) of a physically installed system (in this case, Windows) over a hard disk image and run it with QEMU

Unfortunately I've had no luck searching online about it and I'm unsure how to proceed myself since I've never done any disk-cloning or anything like that

My best guess would be to dump the contents of the partitions into a shared folder with the VM, then use a live media to copy those contents over into the hard disk image and finally install a bootloader to work with the Windows boot manager, but I'm all ears for what anyone has to say about it.

Thanks for reading and please let me know what you know!

in reply to Coki91

Here be dragons. But basically:

  • Run a VM from contents of a physical disk: use ’dd’ to create disk image. If on linux, try to boot and fix all the errors, hopefully few.
  • Run VM as physical machine: other way around.

You won’t find this in a tutorial. You need to understand concepts, read manuals, fit everything together, execute, fail and retry until it works.

For Windows, I have no idea. Conceptually, I figure it’s similar.

Alternative to PicCollage


My partner is looking for an alternative to PicCollage, there doesn't seem to be a simple collage builder for digital scrapbooking on Linux.

It needs to be able to scale, rotate and place images (video nice but not required) and add text that can be put into various "fun" fonts.

I don't know what the "ideal" would be other than the above.

Note: she is running Linux Mint 21.3

This entry was edited (2 months ago)

Could not upvote on another instance [please explain for noob]


I've joined Lemmy.ml. Someone sent me a link to a video posted on Feddit.nl - I thought I could log in and upvote/comment using my Lemmy.ml credentials. Wrong!

Why is this? Sorry for my ignorance, I'm relatively new to the fediverse. But I thought that they were all federated so you can interact with all instances??!

in reply to queermunist she/her

When instances become instruments of propaganda for Putin/Xi/Kim and ban people who expose such propaganda, they fully deserve to be blocked. They've become instruments of the enemies of civil society.

It's the moderation practices of those instances that put them in the corner of "sectarian shit". The rest of us don't need to tolerate such toxicity.

in reply to zonnewin

But when instances become instruments of propaganda for NATO/US/EU and ban people who expose such propaganda, that's fine.

I tolerate the toxicity of .world and other liberal instances, but maybe I shouldn't. Maybe this is self harm. Maybe I should just join lemmygrad so I never have to get attacked again for disagreeing with the liberal consensus. I'd probably hit myself less.

don't like this

Why can't I block rule 34 community?


Hi, I am able to block other communities but rule 34 at lemmynsfw does not let me block it at all. The side bar does not always load and when I can get it to load the block button does not work. Anyone else have issues blocking communities?

Can I use BTRFS to keep seperate root and home while being able to format root while keeping home intact?


I want to be able to format my system without formatting my home, I know I can keep them seperate partitions but I would prefer if I can have dynamic sizes of each, can I achieve that by creating a sub volume for each? Would I be able to distrohop without removing my home while keeping the sizes dynamic? I never sat up a BTRFS before so I'm clueless

[Solved] How can I run a command without being logged in as a user?


XY: I installed bazzite and goofed up. The username is wrong and my home is /home/bazzite instead of /home/ludrol

I am trying to run usermod -l ludrol bazzite in tty3 with sudo su - but the bazzite user is logged.

Solution:
Added password to root with passwd
Logged in as root
Ran required usermod commands
Disabled root with passwd -l

This entry was edited (2 months ago)
in reply to gnuhaut

Another way to do this is sudo su -c 'this is my command'

E.g. change a fan setting on a ThinkPad with:

sudo su -c 'echo "level full-speed" > /proc/acpi/ibm/fan'

So to run a shell you could do all sorts of tricks like:

sudo su -c '/bin/bash -i' and such.

Never know when it comes in handy.

EDIT: Damn, downvoted, any reason why? It works on my machine with a locked root user or one without a PW and I made sure to test it before posting, but I'd love an explanation of why it wouldn't work if that's the reason for the downvote. Was just hoping it would be useful to somebody :/

This entry was edited (2 months ago)

The best thing you can do for the fediverse is just be kind


The fediverse is small, and thats both a blessing and a curse - one of its several blessings is that in a smaller space we all individually have a bigger impact on what the culture of this space is like.

On this comm (and on lemmy broadly) there's a lot of discussion about how to grow the fediverse, what to improve, but an easy thing you can do for the fediverse is right in front of us-

  • Be kind
  • Ask people what they think, and why
  • Approach folks you disagree with with curiosity rather than hostility (EDIT: no, this is not specifically referring to Nazis. I get it, they're the first thing that comes to mind. I'm not telling you to approve of Nazis I'm just saying be kind to your fellow lemmites)
  • Engage sincerely
  • Ask yourself if there's something nice you can say
  • Make this small space worth being in

A platform lives or dies by what's available on said platform and often we have this conversation in the context of "content" or posts - and we may never have as much content as reddit does. But content and posts aren't the only thing this kind of platform offers- it also offers people. It offers community, and human interaction.

Culture and community is lemmy and the fediverse's biggest differentiator, and we all have a role to play in shaping the culture of this space.

***The biggest thing you can do to help the fediverse *is make it a place worth being.****

This entry was edited (2 months ago)
in reply to Cris

@Cris A lot of people mistake kind for being fake and not ever expressing disagreement, but doing so neuters what is in my view one of the most valuable aspects of these federated social media, the potential for opposing view points to be expressed and then discussed and hopefully some mutually beneficial solutions that accommodate both sides of an opposing viewpoint can be arrived at. That can't happen unless an environment is safe and inviting and people can act in a civilized manner.

How do Boosts / Retoots Show on Your Home Server?


I am a prolific retweeter. I also see many instances prohibit nsfw, or some prohibit nsfw without a cw, or without a specific cw. Many servers have 5 or 10 categories of content that must be CWd. If I boost/retoot a post from another mastodon instance, what does that look like for other users of my instance? Does it show up in the local feed? If I boost an untagged nsfw or otherwise 'bad' content under the local rules, is that moderate-able (bad for the retooter)?

I intend to mark my profile as sensitive and put every post of mine behind a CW.

This entry was edited (2 months ago)
in reply to maxint

I don't know, nothing struck me as new, the only difference is the presentation and the mouse (but I prefer keyboard). the example given for animated indicators already exists using ASCII escape codes. my zsh already has syntax highlighting on the prompt indicating mistyped commands, and suggest possible completions with a tui (with vim bindings). I could go on but anyway my point is everything they show is already possible with a tui, the only reason a clicky clicky solution doesn't exist is because keyboard are freakin better and faster.
They are right that we need a terminal evolution/revolution, but it's not the mouse.
in reply to ertai

GUIs do have advantages in things like discoverability. Honestly the 1983s Apple Lisa nailed this with the idea of having clickable menus annotated with keyboard shortcuts, so users could do the same thing faster next time. For some reason we stopped doing this (especially in web apps), but that's a reason to make better GUIs, not to RETVRN to the feature set of a VT100.

I don't know why we have to go on nonsensical diatribes about "UNIX wizards" though when we're fundamentally talking about a handful of minor UI improvements to things that already exist.

This entry was edited (2 months ago)

What second hand laptop to buy


I would like to buy myself a second hand and install Linux on it. I was looking into ThinkPad T14 gen1 or gen2 devices because of their maintainability and repairability. I found one where I live with a Ryzen processor but it has the wrong keyboard. How easy and expensive would it be to swap this with US English? Are there any good alternatives to the ThinkPads? I fancy the X1 but don't like the fact that I cannot change or swap anything on it. The T14 looks very bulky and unattractive but at least can have the RAM upgraded and the battery changed.

I fancy the Framework laptops, but don't want to spend so much on a laptop. Especially the latest 16 inch with Ryzen AI CPUs.

The T14 G1 is at least cheap, like 350€ with the 400 nits low power display and the battery is at 99%. I guess with tlp installed and autocpugfreq I can get 5-6 hours out of it.

FediAI - Demo


You post through the UI to a Fediverse hashtag, on which AI bots listen to, which replies are then displayed in the UI. In the future, the main app should have some kind of ranking only to show the best replies. Through hashtags, AI bots can specialize in certain areas. It would also be possible to partially process a task (for example translate it) and then repost it to another hashtag (I call that "prompt routing). This way, you can have chains of AI bots working together on public, shared message queues.
This entry was edited (2 months ago)

Great ATProto blog post on the reasoning behind their design architecture


in reply to flamingos-cant

This is false, they support did:web which ties your identity to ownership of a DNS name (which is its own can of worms, but not controlled by bluesky like PLC).

Unless you mean that you still have to register your pds it to get indexed by the relay, so people can read your posts without querying your server directly (which is possible but discouraged). This is actually an advantage over mastodon/activitypub however, your personal pds will not crash if a post goes viral (unlike a personal mastodon instance).

This entry was edited (2 months ago)

Ibis-Wiki (A federated encyclopaedia)


Introducing IBIS-Wiki

A federated encyclopedia which uses the ActivityPub protocol, just like Mastodon or Lemmy.
ibis.wiki/

in reply to ZeroOne

This sounds like a way to have 13 different 'realities' for any given topic, depending on which instance it was hosted on.
in reply to Avid Amoeba

Missing an /s?

Take a look at the 'news' on various instances like hexbear vs world and it's night and day. An encyclopedia is meant to be factually reliable, but if this works like it does here you would have the equivalent of conservapedia and prolewiki sitting side by side as 'true'.

in reply to Avid Amoeba

That could be, I was thinking if the pages were more like the communities. I would have to think they need to be for any kind of moderation, otherwise who approves edits or has edit permissions? If someone else doesn't agree with the vision on the existing page/thread what stops someone from putting up an alternate version?
in reply to ShellMonkey

Moderation, voting, there are options. My point is whatever the version is of a community or a thread on Lemmy on its host instance, nearly the same the version is on another Lemmy instance that federates with most of the same instances. If we consider just 2 instances federating with each other, and users have no blocklists, and all federation updates are perfectly transferred (no networking issues), then a community in one instance would look identical on the other. So would a thread. After moderation actions and all.
This entry was edited (2 months ago)
in reply to ShellMonkey

Agree.

I also think a federated wiki is a great idea.

I think the way to do that is: instead of having separate realities/universes linked together by search and federation, try to unite those universes into a shared multiverse, to the greatest possible.

In other words
- ❌ merely give all federated users access to the same articles
- ✅ automatically link and embed similar articles into each other by default (collapsed, but expandable). similarity can be determined by authors'/contributors' intentional citations, by instance owners' filter rules, by LLM, etc.

of course, there may be attempts to obfuscate relatedness, astroturfing, brigading, whatnot. I wonder if its possible to visualize voting results for each duplicated/linked article along with the originating instance. I think this would function as a pseudo version of 'community fact-checking'. Maybe a better name would be 'reality-checking' or 'sanity-checking' or whatever.

This entry was edited (2 months ago)

World on warcraft on Linux


Hello everybody!
I want to escape Microsoft and windows, and I am looking for a Linux distro. I have some experience with Unix and a very old Ubuntu distro. But that's quite some years ago. I am looking for a Linux distribution where i can play World of Warcraft on. I mainly use Nvidia graphics (RTX 3070).

I have found some distributions that are supposed to be good for gaming. I suppose, as i am still a Linux Noob, I am also looking for a distribution which is easy to get into. Especially for an older gamer ;)

I came with these distro's myself. What does the Linux community say?

Bazzite
- Based on Fedora Atomic
- Pre Installed Steam
- Nvidia drivers and support
bazzite.gg/
docs.bazzite.gg/Gaming/index.h…

Developer: Universal Blue (US?)

Drauger OS
- Based on Ubuntu LTS using KDE Plasma
- Pre for AMD
draugeros.org/

Pop!_OS
- based on Ubuntu
- Optimized for gaming on Nvidia GPU's
system76.com/pop/

Developer: system76 (Denver, US)

SteamOS
-based on Debian 8 (Jessie)
-designed to run steam and steam games
-set to auto update their OS from Valve repo's
store.steampowered.com/steamos

Developer: Valve (US)

Manjaro
-based on Arch (rolling release model for latest software/drivers)
-KDE plasma desktop
(Pro-tip: enable flatpak and install ProtonUp-QT)
manjaro.org/products

Developer: Majaro (EU - Austria, France, Germany)

Ubuntu:
-the go-to linux distro for millions of users, incl gamers
-best for beginners and gamers who want stable well supported distro
-works seamlesssly with steam, lutris, wine
(pro-tip: install the gamemode package (sudo apt install gamemode))
ubuntu.com/download

Developer: Canonical ltd. (UK)

Nobara
-based on Fedora
-optimized for gaming on newer Nvidia graphics (drivers come installed)
nobaraproject.org/download-nob…

Developer: Thomas Crider (Denver, US)

Mint
-based on debian and Ubuntu
-friendly OS, works out of the box, extremely easy to use
linuxmint.com/download.php

Developer : Linuxmint (French, Dutch, UK)

rEFInd doesn't show BTRFS snapshots.


What I want:


To boot into a BTRFS snapshots from rEFind boot manager. But rEFInd doesn't show the snapshots.


Additional Info:


  1. So, apparently, to restore the BTRFS snapshot of a root subvolume, I shouldn't do it with the root partition being actively used.
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  2. So, I need to boot into the desired snapshot from the boot manager itself.
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  3. GRUB has grub-btrfs, which lets you boot into snapshot from OS selection screen itself.
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  4. rEFInd has refind-btrfs, which should do the same as grub-btrfs. But it didn't in my case. I am not seeing any way to boot into a snapshot from rEFInd.
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  5. I use BTRFS Assistant with snapper to manage snapshots.
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  6. I am not seeing any way to restore the snapshot from live environment too.
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  7. I am using CachyOS (Arch) with Plasma DE.
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  8. I suspect the reason is my unusual /efi /boot partition layout. (attached below)
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  9. I did my partition this way because, my initial EFI partition had less storage (as seen on image), so , I created another boot partition and mounted my pre-existing EFI partition to /boot/efi. I did this by referring a Youtube video (I know, I should've known better)
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  10. I also encrypted my BTRFS / partition
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  11. If you need any other info, please ask.
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I know this is a general community, but this is the 7th community that I'm asking this 🥲

Some people suggested Limine bootloader, but I like rEFInd for its versatile theme support.

in reply to Leaflet

This makes a numerous amounts of incorrect assumptions.

For one it assumes all sRGB monitors utilize gamma2.2 for decoding images. This is bluntly put, completely wrong. A large amount of displays utilize the inverse OETF (the peicewise srgb transform) for decoding sRGB. (for some more information from a somewhat authoritative body, filmlight's "srgb we need to talk" video on youtube goes more indepth but TLDR is 25-50% of displays use the inverse sRGB oetf)

this is why windows HDR uses the inverse oetf. Decoding content graded on a pure 2.2 display with the inverse oetf is way better then decoding content graded on an inverse oetf display with a pure 2.2. Windows took the safe route of making sure most content looks at least OK. I would not say that windows HDR is wrong, it's not right, but it's not wrong either. this is just the mess that sRGB gave us.

Another time you should be using the inverse sRGB OETF to linearize content when the original content was encoded using the sRGB oetf and you want to go back to that working data, but this applies less to compositors and more to authoring workflows.

Another wrong assumption

When you use Windows 11 on a desktop monitor and enable HDR, you get an “SDR content brightness” slider in the settings - treating HDR content as something completely separate that’s somehow independent of the viewing environment, and that you cannot adjust the brightness of. With laptop displays however, you get a normal brightness slider, which applies to both SDR and HDR content.


People have been adjusting monitor brightness for ages. Sometimes manually, sometimes with DDC etc.

Another issue that is brought up is "graphics white" BT.2408 is a suggestion, not a hard coded spec, many different specs or suggestions use a different "graphics white" value. A good example of this is JXL. 2408 also very explicitly says 'The signal level of “HDR Reference White” is not directly related to the signal level of SDR “peak white”.'

this is important to note because this directly contradicts the some of the seemingly core assumptions made in the article, and even some of the bullet points like "a reference luminance, also known as HDR reference white, graphics white or SDR white" and "SDR things, like user interfaces in games, should use the reference luminance too"

if your application has some need to differentiate between “SDR” and “HDR” displays (to change the buffer format for example), you can do so by checking if the maximum mastering luminance is greater than the reference luminance


This needs to be expanded upon that this does NOT correlate to what the general user understands HDR and SDR to be. HDR and SDR in the terms of video content is no more then a marketing term and without context it can be hard to define what it is, However it is abundantly clear from this quote here that how they are interpreting HDR and SDR (which is a very valid technically inclined way of interpreting it) does NOT fall inline with general user expectation.

Anyone reading this article should be made aware of this.

in reply to Quack Doc

For one it assumes all sRGB monitors utilize gamma2.2 for decoding images


Assuming that all monitors do anything specific at all would be a folly, no.
There are no assumptions there, the sRGB spec has no ambiguity when it comes to the transfer function of the display.

That a certain percentage of displays don't behave like expected is annoying, but doesn't really change anything (beyond allowing the user to change the assumed transfer function in SDR mode).

this is why windows HDR uses the inverse oetf. Decoding content graded on a pure 2.2 display with the inverse oetf is way better then decoding content graded on an inverse oetf display with a pure 2.2. Windows took the safe route of making sure most content looks at least OK. I would not say that windows HDR is wrong, it’s not right, but it’s not wrong either. this is just the mess that sRGB gave us.


The most likely actual reason Window uses the piece-wise transfer function for HDR is that it did that in SDR mode too - where however the default ICC profile was also piece-wise sRGB, so it canceled out on 99% of PCs, and had no negative effects.

Another time you should be using the inverse sRGB OETF to linearize content when the original content was encoded using the sRGB oetf and you want to go back to that working data, but this applies less to compositors and more to authoring workflows.


Makes sense.

People have been adjusting monitor brightness for ages. Sometimes manually, sometimes with DDC etc.


That's a very different thing. Pushing viewing environment adjustments to the display side makes some amount of sense with SDR monitors - when you get an SDR display with increased luminance capabilities vs. the old one, you change the monitor to display the content comfortably in your environment.

With HDR though, if the operating system considers PQ content to be absolute in luminance, you can't properly adjust that on the monitor side anymore, because a lot of monitors completely lock you out of brightness controls in HDR mode, and the vast majority of the ones that do allow you to adjust it, only allow you to reduce luminance, not increase it above "PQ absolute".

Another issue that is brought up is “graphics white” BT.2408 is a suggestion, not a hard coded spec, many different specs or suggestions use a different “graphics white” value.


I didn't claim that PQ had only one specification that uses it, I split up SMPTE ST 2084, rec.2100 and BT.2408 for a reason. I didn't dive into it further because a hundred pages of diving into every detail that's irrelevant in practice is counter productive to people actually learning useful things.

A good example of this is JXL.


Can you expand on what you mean with that?

2408 also very explicitly says ‘The signal level of “HDR Reference White” is not directly related to the signal level of SDR “peak white”.’


That "directly" is very important, as it does very much make both these signal levels the same. As I wrote in the blog post, the spec is all about broadcasts and video.

Other systems do sometimes split these two things up, but that nearly always just results in a bad user experience. I won't rant anymore about the crapshow that is HDR on Windows, but my LG TV cranks up brightness of its UI to the absolute maximum while an HDR video is playing. If they would adhere to the recommendations of BT.2408, they would work much better.

this is important to note because this directly contradicts the some of the seemingly core assumptions made in the article, and even some of the bullet points like “a reference luminance, also known as HDR reference white, graphics white or SDR white” and “SDR things, like user interfaces in games, should use the reference luminance too”


No contradictions at all. The Wayland protocol defines these things to be the same, so for application developers they just are the same, end of story.

This needs to be expanded upon that this does NOT correlate to what the general user understands HDR and SDR to be. HDR and SDR in the terms of video content is no more then a marketing term and without context it can be hard to define what it is, However it is abundantly clear from this quote here that how they are interpreting HDR and SDR (which is a very valid technically inclined way of interpreting it) does NOT fall inline with general user expectation.


That's just absolute nonsense. The very very vast majority of users do not have any clue whatsoever what transfer function content is using, or even what a transfer function, buffer encoding or even buffers are, the only difference they can see is that HDR gets brighter than SDR.

And again, this too is about how applications should use the Wayland protocol. This is the only way to define it that makes any sense.

This entry was edited (2 months ago)
in reply to Zamundaaa

Assuming that all monitors do anything specific at all would be a folly, no. There are no assumptions there, the sRGB spec has no ambiguity when it comes to the transfer function of the display.

That a certain percentage of displays don’t behave like expected is annoying, but doesn’t really change anything (beyond allowing the user to change the assumed transfer function in SDR mode).


the video goes more indepth, but it's a very true statement to say that "some displays decode with the inverse oetf and some don't" this issue has been plaguing displays for decades now.

There are no assumptions there, the sRGB spec has no ambiguity when it comes to the transfer function of the display.


You are 100% right in saying "the reference display is gamma 2.2" however, we can only wish this is what displays do, Color.org themselves got this wrong!!! color.org/srgb.pdf and leads people astray.

The most likely actual reason Window uses the piece-wise transfer function for HDR is that it did that in SDR mode too - where however the default ICC profile was also piece-wise sRGB, so it canceled out on 99% of PCs, and had no negative effects.


I don't actually believe this to be the case, if it was people who use custom ICCs would get extremely wonky results that don't typically happen. On the other hand it is very true that colors when doing it the way they do, you get the "least offensive" results. Though IMO the best solution would be to simply be to default to the pure 2.2 and allow users to override the transfer. the Color protocol allows for explicit peicewise sRGB anyways, so doing this should fit right into a fleshed out colormanaged setup.

That’s a very different thing. Pushing viewing environment adjustments to the display side makes some amount of sense with SDR monitors - when you get an SDR display with increased luminance capabilities vs. the old one, you change the monitor to display the content comfortably in your environment


I think I am a bit confused on the laptop analogy then, could you elaborate on it?

With HDR though, if the operating system considers PQ content to be absolute in luminance, you can’t properly adjust that on the monitor side anymore, because a lot of monitors completely lock you out of brightness controls in HDR mode, and the vast majority of the ones that do allow you to adjust it, only allow you to reduce luminance, not increase it above “PQ absolute”.


How monitors typically handle this is beyond me I will admit, But I have seen some really bonkers ways of handling it so I couldn't really comment on whether or not this holds true one way or another. Just so I am not misinterpeting you, are you saying that "if you feed 300nits of PQ, the monitor will not allow it to go above it's 300nits"? IF so this is not the case on what happens on my TV unless I am in "creator/PC" mode. In other modes it will allow it to go brighter or dimmer.

My current monitor is only a 380nit display so I can't really verify on that (nor do I have the hardware to atm)

I didn’t claim that PQ had only one specification that uses it, I split up SMPTE ST 2084, rec.2100 and BT.2408 for a reason. I didn’t dive into it further because a hundred pages of diving into every detail that’s irrelevant in practice is counter productive to people actually learning useful things.


ah I see, I was a bit confused on what you had meant then. My apologies.

Can you expand on what you mean with that?


Keep in mind this was based on the above misinterpretation of what I thought you meant.

With libjxl it doesn't really default to the "SDR white == 203" reference from the "reference white == SDR white" common... choice? not sure how to word it... Anyways, libjxl defaults to "SDR white = 255" or something along those lines, I can't quite remember. The reasoning for this was simple, that was what they were tuning butteraugli on.

That “directly” is very important, as it does very much make both these signal levels the same. As I wrote in the blog post, the spec is all about broadcasts and video.

Other systems do sometimes split these two things up, but that nearly always just results in a bad user experience. I won’t rant anymore about the crapshow that is HDR on Windows, but my LG TV cranks up brightness of its UI to the absolute maximum while an HDR video is playing. If they would adhere to the recommendations of BT.2408, they would work much better.


I think this is an issue of terminology and stuff, reference white is something the colourist often decides. When you assume that HDR graphics white == SDR white this actually causes more problems then it solves. I would say that it is a "good default", but not a safe value to assume. This is something the user may often need to override. I know personally even when just watching movies on MPV this is something I very often need to play with to get a good experience, and this is not even counting professionally done work.

That’s just absolute nonsense. The very very vast majority of users do not have any clue whatsoever what transfer function content is using, or even what a transfer function, buffer encoding or even buffers are, the only difference they can see is that HDR gets brighter than SDR.

And again, this too is about how applications should use the Wayland protocol. This is the only way to define it that makes any sense.


this actually isn't really that true. It is indeed the case that users wont know what transfer function content is using. but they absolutely do see a difference other then "HDR gets brighter then SDR" and that is "it's more smooth in the dark areas" because that is also equally true.

Users have a lot of different assumptions about HDR, but they all follow some sort of trend "it makes the content look more smooth at a greater range of luminance" and if I were to give a "technical definition that follows general user expectations" the definition would be something along the lines of "A transfer that provides perceptually smooth steps of luminance at a given bit depth up to at least 1000 nits in a given reference environment" which is bad for sure, but at the very least, it more closely aligns with general expectations of HDR given it's use in marketing.

(I really hate the terms HDR and SDR btw, I wish they would die in a fire for any technical discussion and really wish we could dissuade people from using the term)

in reply to Quack Doc

I don’t actually believe this to be the case, if it was people who use custom ICCs would get extremely wonky results that don’t typically happen


They wouldn't, because applying ICC profiles is opt-in for each application. Games and at least many video players don't apply ICC profiles, so they do not see negative side effects of it being handled wrong (unless they calibrate the VCGT to follow the piece-wise TF).

With Windows Advanced Color of course, that may change.

I think I am a bit confused on the laptop analogy then, could you elaborate on it?


What analogy?

How monitors typically handle this is beyond me I will admit, But I have seen some really bonkers ways of handling it so I couldn’t really comment on whether or not this holds true one way or another. Just so I am not misinterpeting you, are you saying that “if you feed 300nits of PQ, the monitor will not allow it to go above it’s 300nits”? IF so this is not the case on what happens on my TV unless I am in “creator/PC” mode. In other modes it will allow it to go brighter or dimmer.


Yes, that's exactly what happens. TVs do random nonsense to make the image look "better", and one of those image optimizations is to boost brightness. In this case it's far from always nonsense of course (on my TV it was though, it made the normal desktop waaay too bright).

unless I am in “creator/PC” mode


Almost certainly just trying to copy what monitors do.

With libjxl it doesn’t really default to the “SDR white == 203” reference from the “reference white == SDR white” common… choice? not sure how to word it… Anyways, libjxl defaults to “SDR white = 255” or something along those lines, I can’t quite remember. The reasoning for this was simple, that was what they were tuning butteraugli on.


Heh, when it came to merging the Wayland protocol and we needed implementations for all the features, I was searching for a video or image standard that did exactly that. The protocol has a feature where you can specify a non-default reference luminance to handle these cases.

It is indeed the case that users wont know what transfer function content is using. but they absolutely do see a difference other then “HDR gets brighter then SDR” and that is “it’s more smooth in the dark areas” because that is also equally true.


That is technically speaking true, but noone actually sees that. People do often get confused about bit depth vs. HDR, but that's more to do with marketing conflating the two than people actually noticing a lack of banding with HDR content. With the terrible bitrates videos often use nowadays, you can even get banding in HDR videos too :/

When you play an HDR and an SDR video on a desktop OS side by side, the only normally visible differences are that the HDR video sometimes gets a lot brighter than the SDR one, and that (with a color managed video player...) the colors may be more intense.

This entry was edited (1 month ago)
in reply to Quack Doc

I should elaborate on why the "Peak white" stuff is wrong, they give this math here for mapping linear luminance. This can be really confusing, "what do we map the references to" well if PQ "graphics white" is 203, should we map sRGB to 203? clearly not, at least not always as implied by BT.2408.

the question as to what we map SDR content to in an HDR space is complex, and in many cases almost certainly not some number that we can do 1:1 mapping with, which is why specifications for inverse tonemapping exist. for instance BT.2446 defines multiple tone mapping algorithms to go from SDR->HDR->SDR or HDR->SDR->HDR or any step inbetween with minimal content loss and fidelity loss.

we cannot do a simple one size fits all function and expect everything to be hunky dory

in reply to Quack Doc

Again, the reference luminance mapping is all about how applications should use the Wayland protocol.

How to map SDR to HDR can indeed be made much more complicated, from simple gamma adjustments to some full blown ITM meant for images or videos, like what BT.2446 suggests, but as far as applications are concerned, those are edge cases that they don't really need to be prepared for.

It's not like they have a different choice - unless the compositor supports custom reference luminance levels (which KWin does, but not all others do), and they support custom reference luminance themselves, then they need some logic to calculate peak luminance levels. If the compositor steps outside of those common expectations for reference luminance mapping, then the result may not be ideal, but there is no way for the application to do better.

This entry was edited (2 months ago)

GUI Programming Recommendations


Hello all,

I'm trying to get into GUI programming, but am hesitating on using a Python library to make my first barebones program. My goal is to code basic buttons and understand how operating systems implement the way they draw windows for applications.

I have coded mostly in scientific libraries or high-level languages that are fairly simple (Python, Matlab, Julia)... Also am familiar with basic concepts and syntax from C.

Looking for recommendations to start. I am happy to learn a new PL. Interested in writing code for legacy hardware and mobile. Bonus if the codes are general enough to be written for most displays one could interact with.

This entry was edited (2 months ago)
in reply to gronjo45

I've been using Flutter, I like how it's cross-platform, mostly. I've generally built things for Android, but the desktop (Linux and Windows) and web versions usually compile fine with no tweaking. Couldn't speak to the iOS versions as I can't be arsed to jump through Apple's hoops. You can make a nice looking app with it for whichever platform you're targeting.

It's very well supported, lots of examples, well documented. Not as much out there as Python for examples and troubleshooting, but not bad.

This entry was edited (2 months ago)

What features are missing from piefed, or, why aren't we reccommending piefed instead of lemmy?


Every time I go to the piefed frontpage I'm blown away by how much more polished it is. It has all the bells and whistles that lemmy is sometimes missing.

Whats the catch? Why aren't we recommending everyone goes to piefed instead of lemmy?

App support is one thing I can think of.

in reply to irelephant [he/him]🍭

I never knew what it was because I'm a bit desensitised to new apps / app names.

Edit: using phtn.app/ has made Lemmy extremely pleasant to use too. I haven't had a better experience on any platform.

This entry was edited (2 months ago)
in reply to irelephant [he/him]🍭

For me..

Because the PWA font is too small and can't be enlarged.

Because there's no 'back to top' button so have to kill the app to refresh.

Because there's no app.

But sometimes I use it anyway because the combining of articles is so much better than seeing the same article three or four times in a row in Voyager.

This entry was edited (2 months ago)

Life After Microsoft Windows: Linux Rises


This just warms my heart. The year of the Linux desktop isn't here, but the decade of it is.
This entry was edited (2 months ago)

Qt 6.9 released


Qt 6.9 is here! This release brings exciting innovations, enhanced graphics performance, and new platform capabilities to help you build exceptional applications.

Highlighted improvements in Qt 6.9 include:
* Qt Graphs: Interactive 2D panning, zooming, and dynamic 3D graph injection. Printing support now available!
* Qt Quick: GPU-accelerated SVG animations and Variable Rate Shading for improved graphics performance.
* Qt Quick Controls: New context menu support enhances desktop integration and user experience.
* XR Enhancements: Haptic feedback added for creating richter immersive virtual interactions.

in reply to cm0002

Qt is still the only excellent cross-platform desktop GUI framework.

It's a pity that it's current custodian's commercial licenses:

  • are subscriptions
  • are painfully expensive for a solo developer or small group
  • have a reputation for triggering legal threats and badgering from The Qt Company if one ever wants to end their subscription or (separately) use the open-source license for a FOSS project

This situation makes me afraid to use their commercial offerings, which in turn means they won't get any money from me at all; I feel that I can safely use their libs only in open-source code. Their business model is their decision, of course, but I can't help wondering if their whale-hunting approach actually nets them more money than a more accessible, lower-cost, one-time (or one-major-version) license option would. In many other industries, high sales volume reaps more profits than high price.

Thank goodness for the KDE Free Qt Foundation.

This entry was edited (2 months ago)

Q&A profile page options


v.01
@Friendica Support @Tutorial

Hi there!

A question about the different page option settings of accounts (friendica 2024.03).
/settings/account/basic

Screen of the account type options in the advanced account page type settings.

Right now this page want's to merge from a standard personal profile page to kinda community profile page where only specific defined profiles can publish thru it's wall to the rest of the followers.

First thought was to stay as a single profile page, allow mutual friend relations to publish/write to this wall, and change all contacts that do not belong to the inner circle of profiles to followers only. Apparently this setting doesn't work, or doesn't work as expected.
Security and privacy settings in:
/settings
Screen of the setting that allows friends to post to the profile page wall of a personal page.

Is this a known issue or some kind of misinterpretation of this option?

Next possible option would be to choose to become a public community group page.
Screen of the community group options in the advanced account page type settings.

This option would imply a continuous attention to change every new contact to followers only, if in fact this would mean that the followers would not be able to publish to the group but receive publications. Also this setting would include the risk of being exposed to unexpected posts into the community of followers whenever the administration of the profile lags behind for some reason.

The option private group looks more promising in this regard and actually would be the same than being a personal profile page that checks new follow requests and than could change the setting to allow mutual friendship to post to the profiles wall or simply define a follower relationship. The [Experimental] notice, that actually exists like lot's of years already is a little bit confusing, or creates a certain reluctance to try this option. How experimental is this still as of now or could we perhaps ask the community to run a general test on all the options of the account settings in general together with a general feed back to sum this up and come to some definite setup, wording and explanations on the matter?

[✅Fixed]Monitor drops to 30% brightness after suspend


Hey, I hope someone can help me.

Problem:

When I wake my PC from suspend, my monitor is always set down to 30% brightness for some reason.

These are the brightness settings of the monitor itself, which can only be accessed via the monitor settings using the buttons on the monitor. I do not mean the brightness settings of my desktop environment.
These are still set to 100%, even though the monitor is darker.

The problem also arises in a second case. When I lower the brightness in the brightness control of my DE, my monitor brightness is also lowered in the monitor settings down to 30% again. I can then no longer increase the brightness in the DE settings, because 100% in the DE now equals 30% in the monitor. So if I set the brightness to 50% in the DE for example, this is 50% of the 30% set in the monitor. So actually only 15% in real terms

I hope I was able to explain the problem clearly. Please ask if you don't understand something. It's really annoying because I need to turn up my screen brightness with the Buttons on the Monitor every single time I wake up my PC.

Technical data:

  • Nobara Linux 41 (Based on Fedora)
  • KDE Plasma 6.3.3
  • Wayland
  • Desktop PC. So a external monitor. Not a laptop monitor.
  • I have a 2nd monitor on which this does not happen.
This entry was edited (2 months ago)

A new security fund opens up to help protect the fediverse


in reply to maduncle

I'm currently trying seatd+turnstile+greetd on dinit. s6 usersv would be alternative for turnstile+dinit but i see s6 more on server, personally.

This reminds me, i wanted to try mdev for a long time (there's mdev like a boss).

This entry was edited (2 months ago)

[solved] How to backup a bunch of blu-rays?


Seeing that DVD are slowly going end-of-live and that you can't buy a lot of my childhood favorites in german anymore and streams are compressed-to-death (and DRMed), i had a streak of preservia. Which is why i rip a bunch of discs from the library on Linux (yes, legally not ok, but morally just ease of access, i wouldn't sell them). Since it's only to watch them when nostalgia hits, i want them in a ready-to-watch format, chose AV1 webm for small size. My burner is LibreDrive-ok ootb, meaning makemkv goes automatically in that mode.

I have the discs for a limited time, so i used to use dvdbackup for DVD and later feed the folder to handbrake for conversion. Now i got a bunch of blu-ray:

  • ripping one takes even longer; whole 25 hours; i don't have the time for the whole LotR series with bonus disks.
  • makemkvcon backup needs only about 2 hours per disk, but the resulting folder is 80 GB big; i have only about 250 GB free space
    ** and the makemkv backup somehow has no audio streams, while handbrake does

While i write this, handbrake is loading the chapters (that alone needs more than 1 hour for blu-ray); i'm trying if a lossless FFV1 mkv conversion (for later re-conversion) takes less long.

Now:

  • Any better approach?
  • Any way to fix makemkv having no audio? (i could juggle with external disks) I think i have all libraries and the KEYDB.cfg.

Edit: nope, handbrake suddenly has unable to decrypt unit (AACS)

This entry was edited (2 months ago)

Lemmyvision 2 song contest - Voting is now live!


cross-posted from: jlai.lu/post/17384631

Hey everyone, thank you again for participating, and for your submissions!

I'm glad to announce that the voting form is completed, and you can now cast your votes and select your favourite songs. Everyone is welcome to vote, even if your instance or community did not participate! This is a great opportunity to discover new music, cultures, and bridge the lemmyverse together.

**The voting form is available here: tally.so/r/wvzg8d**

I created a playlist so that you can easily listen to the submitted songs, it's available at the following links:

The form will be available until around the 8th of April, I will then collect the results and publish them shortly after. I hope you'll have a lot of fun listening to the 11 songs submitted for this edition. Don't hesitate if you have any question!

Cheers!

Lemmyvision 2 song contest - Voting is now live!


cross-posted from: jlai.lu/post/17384635

cross-posted from: jlai.lu/post/17384631
Hey everyone, thank you again for participating, and for your submissions!

I'm glad to announce that the voting form is completed, and you can now cast your votes and select your favourite songs. Everyone is welcome to vote, even if your instance or community did not participate! This is a great opportunity to discover new music, cultures, and bridge the lemmyverse together.

**The voting form is available here: tally.so/r/wvzg8d**

I created a playlist so that you can easily listen to the submitted songs, it's available at the following links:

The form will be available until around the 8th of April, I will then collect the results and publish them shortly after. I hope you'll have a lot of fun listening to the 11 songs submitted for this edition. Don't hesitate if you have any question!

Cheers!

Federated Blogging Options


What are all the federated blogging options available? I know of a few that are mostly clunky in my eyes.

Qt 6.9 released


Qt 6.9 is here! This release brings exciting innovations, enhanced graphics performance, and new platform capabilities to help you build exceptional applications.

Highlighted improvements in Qt 6.9 include:
* Qt Graphs: Interactive 2D panning, zooming, and dynamic 3D graph injection. Printing support now available!
* Qt Quick: GPU-accelerated SVG animations and Variable Rate Shading for improved graphics performance.
* Qt Quick Controls: New context menu support enhances desktop integration and user experience.
* XR Enhancements: Haptic feedback added for creating richter immersive virtual interactions.

Qt 6.9 released


cross-posted from: lemmy.ml/post/28018658

Qt 6.9 is here! This release brings exciting innovations, enhanced graphics performance, and new platform capabilities to help you build exceptional applications.

Highlighted improvements in Qt 6.9 include:
* Qt Graphs: Interactive 2D panning, zooming, and dynamic 3D graph injection. Printing support now available!
* Qt Quick: GPU-accelerated SVG animations and Variable Rate Shading for improved graphics performance.
* Qt Quick Controls: New context menu support enhances desktop integration and user experience.
* XR Enhancements: Haptic feedback added for creating richter immersive virtual interactions.

This entry was edited (2 months ago)

Linux Kernel Plan To Commit Web3 Integration


There has been discussions with-in the development circles regarding a potential integration of Web3 functionalities into the mainline kernel. Exploring the feasibility of incorporating features like decentralised application (dApp) support and smart contract execution directly into the kernel.

Early proposals suggest leveraging the NPUs in new processor families for secure on chain data validation within the kernel space. This means better fraud protection by validating signatures while booting up using the zk-SNARK cryptographic proof.

The developers at Linux Fundaytion notes that this plan requires extensive re-architecture of the codebase. They say that after this, Linux would only run supported systems with dedicated NPU and will simply refuse to boot on other systems, making a significant breakthrough in system security.

The timeline for the proposed changes have already been laid out. With chip manufactures already including dedicated NPUs, developers now have more freedom than ever. Linux communities have always welcomed Web3 technologies like NFT, dApp games etc. and with the kernel integration, Linux will be making a huge leap into the future. One developer put it aptly, "Imagine running my own ETH node directly within Linux kernel."

source

Need advice on my setup: msata and 2.5 ssd.


I have an x220, yes it is old but I prefer the keyboard and the repairability. Anyway, it has 1 x msata SSD (2TB Orico) and 1 x 2.5 inch SSD (2TB Samsung).

What I want:

  • to take advantage of 2 drives.
  • no windows. I go full Linux now.
  • some forms of backup if system fails.

What I managed to do:

  • /, swap and all system directories on the msata
  • /home is dedicated to the entire 2.5 ssd.
  • fully encrypted. I.e the msata has a LUKS partition that mounts /, swap and others. The 2.5 inch also has a LUKS partiton for /home. My /home is on its own, so if system fails or I need to distro hop, I can keep all of my data.

System runs fine but is this a good idea in the long run?

Should I have it the other way? Root and swap and systems on faster 2.5inch SSD. Home in the smaller msata?

What about everything on the faster 2.5 drive, then use the slower msata for backups? Since I have 2TB, I'm thinking partition the msata into 2 so I can do: Timeshift backup on one, and Borg backup for my personal files on the other?

This entry was edited (2 months ago)

Ram in use after suspend issue


So I recently built a new computer to replace my 7 year old one but I have noticed a strange problem with it.

When I boot up the computer and use it as normal it sits around 8-10 GiB of ram in use plus about another 9 GiB committed.

But when I suspend the computer then un-suspend it later the in use ram starts creeping up even if I have less running than I did when I originally booted the computer.

Last time this happened it went from 10 GiB all the way up to about 43 GiB in the space of a few hours.

If I reboot then things go back to normal behavior.

Anyone have any ideas about what I could look for to fix it?


Specs:

  • Manjaro XFCE 25.0.0 Zetar
  • 6.13.8-2 Kernel
  • Gigabyte B860I AORUS PRO ICE ITX Motherboard
  • Intel Core Ultra 5 245KF CPU
  • 64GB DDR5 RAM
  • 2TB M.2 NVMe
This entry was edited (2 months ago)
in reply to Dr Jekell

xfwm is XFCE's window manager, and it's eating almost 30% of the total system memory, so that's the prime suspect (I'm not exactly sure how much it interacts with other apps, so it's possible something else is forcing xfwm to use all that memory, but that is IMHO unlikely).

An ugly "fix" is to log out and log back in (yes, not much better than just rebooting), or you could try to somehow restart xfwm - running xfvm --replace in terminal might work.

Edit: there's an issue on the Manjaro forums that might be related: forum.manjaro.org/t/xfwm4-memo…

This entry was edited (2 months ago)

Building native packages is complicated | Packaging Anubis as native packages


Anubis provides protection against bots scraping websites and DDoSing projects.

This blog post is about Xe's reasoning for originally only providing docker packages and their work to provide native packages.

in reply to Leaflet

There must be a tool that allows you to build packages for multiple systems in multiple formats (deb, rpm, nix, flatpak, snap, etc.). Does that not exist? After 20 years of these systems existing, somebody must've tried...

Also, it's clear that once again, open source needs some kind of funding model, because it's a little crazy that a project like this can get so popular so fast, the dev flooded with praise, thanks, and issues but not money to maintain and develop it.

Anti Commercial-AI license

in reply to onlinepersona

a tool that allows you to build packages for multiple systems in multiple formats (deb, rpm, nix, flatpak, snap, etc.).


Given flatpaks and snaps are toxic, the other ones - deb, rpm, pkg - can be packaged relatively easily. It's all a separate effort with files and meta-info that doesn't often intersect, but it's manageable. It lends itself incredibly well to the trivial 'automation' that gitlab, forgejo and other major git suites provide.

Source: did this for the entirety I built and maintained a software suite for linux and unix, for like 15 years. I built some code, I packaged it. Because anything less isn't really ISO27002.

TL;DR - the 'tool' is a simple script and your brain. the biggest hurdle is the unknown itself and, once you get to it, the work can be pretty straightforward.

This entry was edited (2 months ago)

Resources for discovery across the open social web/fediverse


This is a more focused revision of a post I made a few months ago, with an aim to help with discovery across the fediverse.

:::spoiler List of various directory/index-style sites to help find people/communities of interest
Software overview
* Fediverse Party

Finding instances/software-agnostic
* FediDB
* Fediverse Observer

Microblog specific
* Fedi Directory
* Fediverse Info - Note: also includes Pixelfed people.
* Trunk
* Guppe Groups - Workaround to post to groups across microblogging sites, useful to push posts to remote instances.

Forum/link aggregator specific
* Lemmyverse
* !wowthislemmyexists@lemmy.ca
* !newcommunities@lemmy.world
* !communitypromo@lemmy.ca
* !lemmy411@lemmy.ca

Video/Streaming specific
* Sepia Search
* Owncast Directory
:::


Searching and Following methods
This will vary across software, and may change as it changes, so take note of when this was written (end of March 2025).

By default, ActivityPub sites don't know of other, remote sites. Any remote site stuff you're seeing is because somehow the site your on was made aware of the other's stuff. Typically this may be that a user learns of a remote site's stuff in some way and decides to follow from their home site by looking it up via their site's search then subscribing/following.

All of the above format-specific links I've provided above are means of finding some remote sites' stuff to follow on one's home site. Below are some additional tools and methods to further help when using some of these different sites.

:::spoiler Microblog Tools and Methods
Tools
* StreetPass for Mastodon - detects Mastodon accounts on websites visited.
* Graze for Mastodon - Firefox Add-on - enables remote instance interactions for when viewing another instance.
* Graze - Chrome Extension - for those using Chrome variants.
* Phanpy frontend for Mastodon - has a variety of features that may help find what the default interface doesn't help to find.

Methods
* On Mastodon: follow hashtags to surface other accounts you might want to follow.
* Also make use of its keyword/hashtag filters to cut down on the sorts of posts you don't want to see by going to account preferences, filters.
* On Misskey & forks: create custom feeds via the "antenna" feature by choosing keywords and hashtags to track while using the same to exclude/filter out posts with other keywords/hashtags.
* Also make use of its mute/block settings to cut down on the sorts of posts you don't want to see by going to settings, under other settings, mutes and blocks.
* Post with hashtags more to help others searching by or following them find your posts. Even if it's just someone else on your home instance, if they share (boost/repost) your post and they have remote followers, it may help increase your visibility across the network.
:::

:::spoiler Forum/link aggregator Tools and Methods
Tools
* Lemmyverse Communities
* Piefed Feeds - if you're not on Piefed, these may still be helpful for finding different communities by viewing a feed's collected communities.
* Quiblr frontend for Lemmy - a unique frontend with a privacy-respecting recommendation engine.

Methods
* Follow the aforementioned communities under Forum/link aggregator specific above, or ask in !lemmy411@lemmy.ca or !communitypromo@lemmy.ca about communities.
* On Piefed/Mbin sites, use the keyword filtering feature to filter out posts you're uninterested in.
* On Lemmy sites use clients (e.g. Interstellar - Mobile/Desktop, Thunder - Mobile, Voyager - Mobile/Web) that provide keyword filtering, as default UI lacks this useful feature.
* Browse Local or All with sort set to New to see if any unfamiliar communities show up that you may want to follow.
* Block communities/instances you're uninterested in to help improve potential communities of interest visibility as you browse.
:::


If you're aware of other resources, tools, or methods that I've not mentioned here, please mention them in the comments! There's undoubtedly more to add that I've not come across.

[Solved - VSYNC/screen tearing] Stuttering on Nobara with 3080 Ti


SOLVED - "Allow screen tearing" was ON and caused this issue.

I have some constant stuttering on my current setup. Every 4-5 seconds, almost like a hiccup, I drop about 100 ms worth of frames.

Video:
picoshare.jau.nz/-VnpPP8z6xR

Full specs:

5600X

3080 Ti on 570.124.04

Nobara with KDE

Wayland

This has been persistent through several GPU driver updates and I'm tired of trying to troubleshoot it. I don't know what the exact cause is. Any ideas?

Also, related note, how easy is it to migrate from one distro to another? I am thinking about trying something else - maybe base Fedora or Arch - to hopefully have better performance.

This entry was edited (2 months ago)

FediForum Has Been Canceled


In light of recent controversy and its handling, the twice-a-year FediForum unconference for April 1st and 2nd has been canceled by its organizer.
in reply to GrumpyDuckling

That's great. Since when and does everybody take psych 101?

And just to give a wider perspective (regardless of her origins), not every language makes the distinction and some up until recently did not. Look at the translations on (wiktionary). Many of them are transliterations of the English word. Which is not a surprise since the concept of gender is quite recent (1950-1960s) and was most likely very US-centric.

anthropomorphized doesn't like this.

want to clone my debian install so i can test updating to trixie


i want to test debian trixie (13) so i can report bugs and troubleshoot before the release later this year. i thought about simply installing trixie alongside my current bookwork installation, but that won't be my scenario when the time comes, since i've been updating my system instead of reinstalling it since debian jessie (8) and this time it won't be different. how can i clone my current system so i can simulate an update to trixie? do i simply create a new partition and copy my files over, then chroot to it and install grub?
This entry was edited (2 months ago)
in reply to rc__buggy

Yea that's their new project they just "started funding". Synergy used to be open source and it went closed source 10? 15? years ago.

Since then several forks have existed. Most notably github.com/debauchee/barrier which died a few years ago and was forked to github.com/input-leap/input-le… which while getting plenty of updates, and merges from the other project.. never released a version for years. I think at that point synergy felt sorry for them and so they changed their repo name from synergy to deskflow github.com/deskflow/deskflow and now they have their open source version lol

I have to assume usage got so stagnant when close sourcing it (it's so insanely niche software, is it not?) that they felt the need to bring it alive again.

This entry was edited (2 months ago)

Linus Torvalds admits 'pure incompetence' for missing the new Linux 6.14 kernel deadline but all is forgiven as the update is great news for non-Windows gaming


in reply to Blaze

It's a bit sad how everybody talk about the new NTsync. Most games, like, 90% of them, are not bound by sync. You would get exactly no performance benefit in them. What's better about it is the correctness of the implementation, more programs will work under WINE as a result of switching to NTsync. It's a good thing, but media clearly seems to miss the point and only focus on a few cases where it would give an impressive performance benefit.

Recommend a distro for a 13-year-old gamer


Couldn't find a dedicated community for distro recommendations, I hope it's ok to ask here.

A couple of years ago my wife and I built a computer and gave it to a friend's kid. We put ElementaryOS on it since that seemed pretty fool-proof, but it appears to require a re-install to upgrade major versions so it has been stuck with an old glibc and because of that he can't play Factorio.

For his 13:th birthday we bought him a SSD so it would be a good time to reinstall Linux, but is there perhaps some better choice than ElementaryOS? They live quite far away so I can't easily pop over to fix his computer if something breaks, we don't spend enough time there for me to teach him to fix things himself, and he doesn't seem very interested in learning how computers/operatings systems work either.

  • Hardware: Some old Intel CPU with 8GB DDR3 and a GTX1080
  • Usage: Gaming through Steam+Proton, Lutris and browsing.
  • Requirements: Games work, OS never breaks on updates. Doesn't need to be "kid proof", I don't think he touches any stuff he doesn't know what it does.
This entry was edited (2 months ago)

Wi-fi not working on Pop os 24.04 cosmic desktop


Hii to all linux users, hope you can help me.

I updated my system a couple of days ago, pop os 24.04 LTS and wifi stoped working.
The problem is i dont have wire so wifi is only connection to the internet curently.
And i managed to lose it..
So i tryed to fix the problem by switching to older kernel but it didnt fix the problem unfortinetly.

I gave up and reinstalled whole system thinking it will fix it.
And since i do it i decided to try new cosmic alpha system.
So i downloaded that and i like it despite its not finished and it has bugs and missing features.
But that didnt fix my wifi problem! Its still not working.

I have two ssd-s, so on my main one 1TB i have linux and thats what im using, but on second one 500GB i have windows 10 for some games that doesnt work on linux.
So i was using that to download latest pop os and my wifi card works so its obviusly not dead or anything.

I plan to get wire but i have some drilling to do for that and i would like to fix wifi card before that if possinble.

Almost forgot, my wifi card is Asus pcie card, with two antenas, its red and wery beautifull.
Tryed to uploud picture of it but my acount is new so that wasnt possible.
I dont know exact model number but this one looks exactly like mine so meabu its that one.

duckduckgo.com/?q=asus+wifi+pc…

This entry was edited (2 months ago)
in reply to MickeyMice

I was enough of it and i called one friend to drill the hole and make cable connection finaly so its all good now. But i want to have wifi just in case because you newer know. So the list of well suported wifi cards will be of great help.
And i was curios what was the problem at first place anyway..
Thank you all for hel, you are the best. ❤
This entry was edited (2 months ago)

Linux Mobile OS experience 2025?


Has anybody attempted to daily drive linux on their smartphone? like sailfish os, postmarket, librem, etc. I've been getting more interested in them as my pixel 4a is starting to look real old

How was it it? Were you able to run banking apps? battery life? experience with using CJK keyboards?

As far as I can tell, RCS messages are not supported anywhere, in addition to NFC payments (no surprise there). 5G seems also iffy

in reply to Sinfaen

Was in the market for a new phone and was thinking of getting the latest Pine phone, and upon research, I found that like others have stated, it is more of a piece of kit to tinker with and not a daily driver. The OS is still being baked and at the current rate it might take a few years before it is as responsive and as useful as Android is day in, and day out. There is just no contest. Which was a bit disappointing as I actually though the OS was far more developed.

I do hope that progress is made, but, if you need a phone that works well, then stick with Android for now. Hardware on latest Pine is better than on the first phone but still Mid, at best, and it is not cheap for the hardware you get.

This entry was edited (2 months ago)

How do I discover the Pixelfed content that is out there when so many big instances block exploration?


I realized that I haven't spent time on Pixelfed in a while, and that it would be great to find more content to add to my feed! So I logged in to my instance (social.photo) and then... hit a wall.

With Lemmy and Mastadon, it is super easy to peek at what is going on at other instances and find communities to subscribe to, but it looks like Pixelfed does not make this easy. The biggest issue I have run into is that many of the largest servers do not seem to let you explore what is on them unless you first create an account, and the main Pixelfed Server Directory at https://pixelfed.org/servers does not indicate which servers can be explored or not, so you have to click a few times (since the link takes you to the registration page) to even find this out for a given server. It also does not help that navigating to an instance does not show you the content for that instance, like it does for Lemmy or Mastadon, but for a login page that may or may not have an "Explore" tab at the top.

Am I missing something here? I just logged into Tumblr for the first time in years and my immediate next thought was, "Gee, I should be using Pixelfed instead!" But if in practice it is simply not possible to find content I am interested in without a great deal of hassle then it is not a realistic replacement. In particular, it seems like the way Pixelfed is set up requires me to register on particular instances to get a better view of what content is available (not just locally, but pulled in from other instances). This seems contrary to me to one of the biggest advantages of the Fediverse, which is that you are able and encouraged to pick an instance that best suits you rather than the one where all of the content lives; in particular I could not imagine self-hosting a Pixelfed instance without being left out of most of the content available.

And just to be clear, I am willing to put up with some degree of hassle resulting from the inherently decentralized model of the Fediverse, since I switched completely over to Lemmy from Reddit about a year and a half ago after the API fiasco (and the only reason why I do not use Mastadon more is because I was never that into Twitter-style content to begin with). But having to go out of my way to get through artificially constructed walls to even find content to subscribe is a bit much.

However, again, maybe I am missing here. If someone is willing to point me to a resource that solves this problem problem and makes this entire rant sound completely ignorant then that would be great! 😀


Edit: Fixed silly typo.

This entry was edited (2 months ago)
in reply to ocean

Kind of surprised this is the take. Algorithms in general, just sorting by highest to lowest or whatever common problem that needs to be solved, aren't bad. "Algorithm" has become a dirty word mostly because of the stuff pushing short-form content over long-form content, outrage that generates engagement over something you would enjoy that doesn't enrage you enough to make you type fifty paragraphs and keep coming back to fight in the comments, etc. So I agree with the literal statement that algorithms aren't always bad.

But as for what you meant, I'm super surprised at all the people who want an algorithm to feed them content and aren't satisfied. I looked for the stuff I was interested in, subscribed, and am happy. When I run out of content I either log off and do something else or go seek out stuff I'm kind of interested in. In my most charitable possible assumption, people who want algorithms are probably a lot less suspectible to getting pulled in by outrage and scrolling all day, and just want to be able to discover cool stuff fast, and the algorithms somehow worked to show them the cool stuff. In my experience I had to strictly stick to my Home feed with just stuff I subscribed to on Reddit to not see outrage porn, could never poke my head into Popular or anything without seeing some outrage sub like r/noahgettheboat or /iamatotalpieceofshit. And then they started forcibly sorting my Home feed by Controversial… yep. Stopped regularly browsing there really fast.

I am just really wary of asking for algorithms back because I really don't want the Fediverse to become another place catered towards outrage porn for max engagement. I really want users to have options if this is implemented, so as not to force this algorithm on users like myself who like the "chronological order of stuff you purposely followed only" algorithm. And for that option to not be taken away from me in an effort to "drive growth!" and all that.

I don't want to refuse others a good thing just because it's not for me, but I also have been burned by social media algorithms that were once nice chronological, and later became catered towards outrage and showing you content you never signed up to see without having an option to switch back to chronological and opt out of having RandomInfluencerYouDontFollow in your feed. Looking at you, Instagram. I signed up with my elementary school classmates, liked chronological feed, liked having Explore just be friends of friends… I still only follow people I know in real life but now Explore is a bunch of controversial memes, people selling stuff, and influencers who want me to form a parasocial relationship with them. This is also what my feed turns to once I scroll past maybe 7 posts my friends made. Have not fully deleted but also haven't touched the app in months now.

I guess the real solution is giving people options and not taking them away because you decided to go public and need maximum eye-on-advertisement time. Hopefully Lemmy stays open source and different instances stay popular, so in case someone does try to take it public we can all flee to different servers and keep talking.

This entry was edited (2 months ago)

Introducing Roost: Robust Open Online Safety Tools


Although this is a talk an ATProto-related conference, this has direct applicability to Mastodon and Lemmy instances.
This entry was edited (2 months ago)

Autocomplete custom scripts?


As my time with linux, I created a lot of scripts. Some of them have input parameters and sometimes I just forget this parameters.

So I wonder if there is some way to create autocomplete parameters, like i autocomplete a path by pressing the tab key?

For example a script. ./test.sh can be completed with parameter-one, eg. ./test.sh parameter-one or ./test.sh parameter-two. If i type now ./test.sh followed by tab it should add parameter-one if i press tab again it should change to parameter-two.

How can I do that? I'm on bash…

in reply to Flagstaff

It took me a while to get around to this so I could sanitize some of the highly-personal stuff there (mostly just a bunch of URLs because I don't use browser bookmarks lol), but here's a condensed version of what I like to use Espanso for.

The second half is ...interesting. I wanted a way to autofill passwords from my password manager in any application, not just a browser. It's a very homebrewed solution, and it only works on Windows and Linux because macOS blocks tools like Espanso from viewing or modifying login input fields.

Did you put in a request for this?


For a Wayland Flatpak or RPM? I haven't looked in a long time, but I believe there's an open issue for a Wayland RPM.

Edit:
Found them: Flatpak issue and RPM issue.

This entry was edited (2 months ago)

Which areas of Linux would benefit most from further standardization?


The diversity of Linux distributions is one of its strengths, but it can also be challenging for app and game development. Where do we need more standards? For example, package management, graphics APIs, or other aspects of the ecosystem? Would such increased standards encourage broader adoption of the Linux ecosystem by developers?
in reply to muusemuuse

There is a separate kernel which is being written entirely in rust from scratch that might interest you. I'm not sure if this is the main one github.com/asterinas/asterinas but it is the first one that came up when I searched.

By the tone of your post you might just want to watch the world burn in which case I'd raise an issue in that repo saying "Rewrite in C++ for compatibility with wider variety of CPU archs" ;)

in reply to steeznson

I'm of the opinion that a full rewrite in rust will eventually happen, but they need to be cautious and not risk alienating developers ala windows mobile so right now it's still done in pieces. I'm also aware that many of the devs who sharpened their teeth on the kernel C code like it as it is, resist all change, and this causes lots of arguments.

Looking at that link, I'm not liking the MPL.

This entry was edited (2 months ago)

Is Ctrl+D really like Enter?


Response to a recent claim that Ctrl+D in the terminal is like pressing Enter. It kind of is but it’s also misleading to say so without further explanation.


Linux Terminal: CTRL+D is like pressing ENTER


Honestly I had no idea what ctrl+d even did, I just knew it was a convenient way for me to close all the REPL programs I use. The fact that it is similar to pressing enter really surprised me, so I wanted to share this knowledge with you :)


https://hackarcana.com/article/ctrl-d-is-like-enter

This entry was edited (2 months ago)
in reply to Leaflet

I despise the way Canonical pretends discourse forum posts by their team members* are documentation.

I've noticed they have been a bit better lately, and have migrated much of the posts to their documentation, but it seems they are doing it again.

As this is developed, we will update this post to link to the new documentation and feature release notes.


Pro tip: You could have just made the documentation directly, with the content of this post. Or maybe a blog post. But please stop with the forum posts. They are very confusing for people not used to these... unique locations.

*Not that people are easily able to find this out when they don't give any indication that the forum post is something other than just another post by a rando. Actually, I'm just guessing here, based on the quoted reply, for all I know this could be a post by someone unrelated to Canonical. The account is 3 months, and the post itself is identical to a regular forum post from a regular forum member...

Benchmarking a distribution (and some \-O3 results) | Why Ubuntu reverted move to -O3 compiler flag


Pidgin 3.0 Experimental 1 released


This entry was edited (5 months ago)

I wrote an ebook on GNU awk with hundreds of examples and exercises


Hello!

I am pleased to announce a new version of my CLI text processing with GNU awk ebook. This book will dive deep into field processing, show examples for filtering features, multiple file processing, how to construct solutions that depend on multiple records, how to compare records and fields between two or more files, how to identify duplicates while maintaining input order and so on. Regular expressions will also be discussed in detail.

Book links


To celebrate the new release, you can download the PDF/EPUB versions for free till 06-April-2025.

Or, you can read it online at learnbyexample.github.io/learn…

Interactive TUI apps



Feedback


I would highly appreciate it if you'd let me know how you felt about this book. It could be anything from a simple thank you, pointing out a typo, mistakes in code snippets, which aspects of the book worked for you (or didn't!) and so on.

Happy learning :)

in reply to learnbyexample

Could someone perhaps explain the major use cases or give a real life example of a time you've needed to use awk? I've been using Linux casually for quite a long time now, and although I learned the basics of the tool, I can't recall having ever felt I had a need for it. If I want to glue a bunch of cli stuff together and need to do some text processing, it generally seems like it'd be easier to just use a simple python script.

Is it more for situations that need to be compatible with most *nix systems and you might not necessarily have access to a higher level scripting language?

This entry was edited (2 months ago)
in reply to enkers

Well, if you are comfortable with Python scripts, there's not much reason to switch to awk. Unless perhaps you are equating awk to Python as scripting languages instead of CLI usage (like grep, sed, cut, etc) as my ebook focuses on. For example, if you have space separated columns of data, awk '{print $2}' will give you just the second column (no need to write a script when a simple one-liner will do). This of course also allows you to integrate with shell features (like globs).

As a practical example, I use awk to filter and process particular entries from financial data (which is in csv format). Just a case of easily arriving at a solution in a single line of code (which I then save it for future use).

New refugee from Windows / Need advices about image system backup, excel, vscode


Hey there I am another refugee from windows with the forced push to windows 11. I thought it was time I tried once again linux. So far I am pretty satisfied.
I installed Fedora with KDE and successfully migrated my syncthing server, sftp server. Correctly mounted my nft disks and successfully installed mullvad with all split tunneling I needed.

Now I need advices about 3 things which I sorely miss and which keep forcing me to boot on windows :
- is there any equivalent to macrium reflect, allowing to schedule weekly image backup for system disk. So it could be restored in case something really goes wrong.
My system disk is brtfs. Time machine looks nice but it's not working because I have no @home and @root volume identified. I found explanations which explain how to do it but I am not too sure it's a good idea to do so.
I also found rsync. Didn't explore enough this solution but I am not sure an image backup can be done if system is running ?
- for vscode it's easy and I got it running for my linux environment. Yet I have programs which are meant specifically to run on windows and so I can't develop and test them on linux
- at last for my work I need to be able to use excel. Libre office is not a solution, it's ok for basic usage but it's far behind if you're using it professionally. Please don't turn this about an arguments to say calc is good, really there is something that are just impossible with it. (Like using arrays, power query or data models)

For the last 2 points I feel like my only solution would be to use a virtual machine running windows. Is there a way to run them on it but make it looks like it's a linux app? Somewhat is it what docker is doing but for linux apps ?

Well I feel like I have not many options if I want excel and vscode on windows environment. So sadly I think that will settled it. Please share your thoughts.
I would also really appreciate people sharing what they do to backup their system disk.

Thanks for your advice !

in reply to Matth78

If you want to test windows programs on linux, you're probably going to want to do that in a virtual machine, or even a spare computer just for testing on windows. Depending on how much you need to use excel, a virtual machine could be a good option for that as well, but if using Microsoft Excel™ is a big part of your job, maybe it makes more sense to just stay on Windows for work at least
This entry was edited (2 months ago)
in reply to Matth78

I haven't found anything that is quite like Macrium. Mostly, because something that works the same way is a bad idea on linux. Because as you suspect, an image backup cannot be done while the partition being imaged is live.

Macrium creates restorable images of your entire boot partition or disk, as-is, which can then be restored onto the same, or an entirely different, disk.

This isn't really something you can do in linux, with a system that is live. Hence, partition images should be done offline, when the given partition isn't booted.

That said, everything that matters can be backed up simply by copying the relevant files. For this, I use Kopia.

As for making sure you always have a bootable system, for this I use Timeshift on btrfs.

For MS office, you might try winapps. Sounds like what you're hoping for.

This entry was edited (2 months ago)
in reply to MentalEdge

Because as you suspect, an image backup cannot be done while the partition being imaged is live.


can't it, though?

macrium reflect's normal operation is to run when the ststem is running normally. it creates a volume shadowcopy of your filesystem, and backs that up. a BTRFS/ZFS snapshot is basically what a volume shadowcopy is on windows, but with a less fancy name. if you make a snapshot, you can back that up, either with zfs send, btrfs send, rsync, borg backup, whatever. the difference is that on linux it's not possible to notify programs that a snapshot will happen please sanitize your databases, while windows does that too, so if you restore on linux that's like if your computer crashed because power went off

sure, it can't be done with other filesystems, but OP said they have BTRFS. I think the boot partition can be safely imaged too: remount as read only and make a normal image.

look for symlinks pointing at the contents of directory?


I want to move a directory with a bunch of subdirectories and files. But I have the feeling there might be some symlinks to a few of them elsewhere on the file system. (As in the directory contains the targets of symlinks.)

How do I search all files for symlinks pointing to them?

Some combination of find, stat, ls, realpath, readlink and maybe xargs? I can't quite figure it out.

in reply to IsoKiero

~~You want readlink -f rather than ls -l.~~ ++OK, actually not exactly. readlink won’t print path to the symlink so it’s not as straightforward.++

Also, you want + in find ... -exec ... + rather than ;.

At this point I feel committed to making readlink work. ;) Here’s the
script you want:

\#!/bin/sh

want=$1
shift
readlink -f -- "$@" | while read got; do
    if [ "$got" = "$want" ]; then
        echo "$1"
    fi
    shift
done

and execute it as:
find ~ -type l -exec /bin/sh /path/to/the/script /path/to/target/dir {} +
This entry was edited (2 months ago)

Google Input Tools on Linux


So I want to type in my native language, and the easiest tool i know of is this:

google.com/inputtools/try/

It's not available offline for Linux though.
I have tried running some windows executable from archive.org under wine, this didn't work. I also tried some random alternative (Varnam), but it was way too complex of a setup for me. (It kept telling me to compile libraries, and none of it worked in the end)

I want something that can take in english character input and turn it into proper devnagari typeface. If I type in "namaste", it has to come out as नमस्ते. And It has to be Offline.

I haven't found anything that fits to all these categories

Turns out Google Input is my best bet. Is there a way I can get it working?

This entry was edited (2 months ago)

Laptop for Linux


Hey all.

I've booted Linux Mint Debian Edition and Arch on to a couple old machines including my old laptops. The performance is still rather brutal because these machines are so old and their battery lives are rough. They are also bulky and uncomfortable to carry around.

So, I've been thinking about getting a more modern laptop and putting Linux on it but I've been out of the laptop market for so long now I have no idea what's good and what's not anymore. Any recommendations?

I think I've heard decent things about Chromebooks but how's the hardware of those? Are they relatively locked down and don't play nice with Linux? I'm just looking for a machine for daily use (browser, light coding, remote connecting to my desktop for heavier stuff)

Thanks in advance

EDIT: Thank you to everyone for responding, I did not expect so much discussion! I've certainly changed my mind on Chromebooks and will look into the options recommended below in the coming months. Thanks!

This entry was edited (2 months ago)
in reply to mina86

Gonna have to anti-recommend tuxedo unfortunately. Never had a "Linux" laptop before and never had any issues, but two of the newest Infinitybooks have a number of issues with fan control, clock sometimes stuck at 800MHz, weird-ass Ethernet NIC with no upstreamed drivers and so on. It's like a trip to 15 years ago in terms of weird little issues popping up every now and the .

The tuxedo kernel modules are a mess and not currently upstreamable, their interfaces are inconsistent across lineups/generations which they solve by building a unified Electron monstrosity "control center" on top.

The idea is nice but any mainstream manufacturer works pretty well these days, and the Schenker laptops with tuxedo software not up to par :/

in reply to hydraulic_elliptical

I 100% agree. Whenever these companies start with their own projects I immediately get suspicious that their goal is to enshittify down the line with vendor lock-in.

The only reasons why I'm seriously considering a Tuxedo are 1. European brand and 2. Double SSD.

Not a lot of laptops seem to be offering double SSD while being Linux compatible, so my hands are kinda tied.

in reply to Mike

My primary needs were a big HiDPI screen, lots of memory, good CPU and it meets all of those. The only other devices meeting those are the high end ThinkPads that are no doubt nicer, but also double the price sooo it's all good.

But someone who buys primarily for great Linux support might be disappointed.

I also have to say I haven't spent much time investigating the issues I faced for time reasons, maybe some of them can be fixed easily.

in reply to bonsai

I've been enjoying my Thinkpad E16 1st gen AMD on Debian 12. You do have to run a newer kernel to get it working. I ran into a bit of Wi-Fi trouble because I accidentally got a Realtek model, but I've long since fixed the issue entirely - I've posted the solution elsewhere here.

On another note, maybe we should just have a yearly hardware recommendations post pinned on this forum - it feels like we get a question like this every week or so and they sort of clutter the forum, no offense intended to OP.

Edit: Here's my Linux Hardware probe from when I first got the laptop linux-hardware.org/?probe=1e50…

This entry was edited (2 months ago)

Looking for YouTube Tutorials on Arch


I'm moderately experienced with linux. Been using it as my daily driver since 2018. Mostly using Fedora but also have a Debian server. I'm pretty comfortable with systemd but don't love the bloat.

Anyway, I've decided that I'd like to try Arch. So I'm looking for tutorials to help me learn or get familiar with Arch instead of just diving in head first like a madlad.

So what Arch tutorials do you like and are there any that you'd recommend that I watch?

Edit: lmao you guys are brutal. yeah i know about the arch wiki, rtfm and all that. I know i'll be spending a lot of time with the wiki. I just wanted to get a rough intro first. Well, I guess I'm off to read the fkin wiki now.

This entry was edited (2 months ago)
in reply to tkw8

As others said, the Arch wiki is so well made that it should be the only source you need. Videos will not bring you anything given your background. The main difference with other distros will be the package manager.

A video about the install process will just be someone reading the wiki to you, and a video to "explain" pacman to you will be overkill ;)

This entry was edited (2 months ago)

If you have to pick only one Desktop Environment and use it till your computer breaks, what would you choose?


I know Gnome is the default on popular distros: Fedora, Ubuntu, Rhel, Pop OS (it's Cosmic Desktop yes but it is still based on Gnome)...etc. But Gnome just doesnt work for me. I would pick XFCE - stable and no BS.

Before Manjaro and their cetificate shenanigan, I used to use their XFCE version. At the time, it was marketed as the "Flagship Manjaro version". I went 4 years without any problems and I did tinker a lot, just couldnt get their XFCE to break.

After a tough Arch or Gentoo installs, I just want to put XFCE on and call it a day.

What about you guys?

A good e-mail client for linux?


I have been using KDE for a while, while I like many features I am looking for suggestions to the default email client:

Kmail - completely unusable for me and the only one which could maybe be integrated with kontacts, it could not receive mails from IMAP or pop or would receive only sometimes

Geary - good but too minimal, I need at least some kind of contact list and mailing lists feature, maybe this integrates with gnome contacts? I couldn't find anything in settings

in reply to blackghost1st

Sadly no, according to their wiki:

Mac computers with Apple silicon processors are not currently capable of running Zorin OS natively. However, you may be able to use an app called UTM to run Zorin OS in a virtual machine on Mac computers with Apple silicon processors.
in reply to Sundray

Running x86_64 emulation on an ARM CPU is a miserable experience and should be avoided. I've done this on an M-series Mac with UTM, and you're looking at ~10-minute boot times just to get the VM booted, and ~3 minutes for it to render a response to whatever you click.

It's honestly wild that they seriously suggest doing this on their Wiki.

This entry was edited (2 months ago)

Radarr, Sonarr, SABnzbd and Permissions


I'm trying, and struggling a little bit with getting the three items in the title setup the way that I want.

Running Arch.

I would like to run Radarr, Sonarr and SABnzbd all under the same user/group. My reasoning is that I (am just being overly particular) want any of the files created by those services to fall under the same owner/group. This is easy enough to accomplish by running systemctl edit service.service and adding the appropriate lines in the configuration for each one and saving it so the services run using the specified user/group.

The issue that I'm having is that the correlating folders in /var/lib/ have the ownership of the original users. I can manually change that ownership to the user/group I want but if I reboot the computer the SABnzbd folder ownership reverts back to default (the other two were doing the same thing but suddenly stopped and I'm not 100% sure why) or if the services get updated, the folders will also revert back to their default user/group.

Is there a way for me to enforce the ownership of those folders to the user/group that I have set to run the services regardless of them getting updated or the machine rebooting?

in reply to non_burglar

Interesting, was there anything in particular that you did with the services other than editing the service to run as those particular users?

Side note, I just tried to chown the sabnzbd folder and everything inside updated but the main folder itself refuses to change. Even after stopping the service.

Edit: scratch that. I closed and re-opened Dolphin and checked the properties of the folder and now it's showing correctly.

This entry was edited (2 months ago)
in reply to skizzles

I just vi the systemd/system/fancyname.service files father than use systemd edit, but I think the result is the same.

There are two configs you can add to the [service] directive:

user=someuser

This should allow you to run the service under the credentials of your choosing.

Remember to systemctl daemon-reload after making changes to unit files.

This entry was edited (2 months ago)

Which Distribution and Desktop Environment should I use?


Background: I am a lifelong Windows user who is planning to move to Linux in October, once Microsoft drops support for Windows 10. I use a particularly bad laptop (Intel Celeron N3060, 4 GB DDR3 RAM, 64 GB eMMC storage).

I do have some degree of terminal experience in Windows, but I would not count on it. If there are defaults that are sensible enough, I'd appreciate it. I can also configure through mouse-based text editors, as long as there is reliable, concise documentation on that app.

So, here's what I want in a distro and desktop environment:
- Easy to install, maintain (graphical installation and, preferably, package management too + auto-updating for non-critical applications)
- Lightwight and snappy (around 800 MB idle RAM usage, 10-16 GB storage usage in a base install)
- Secure (using Wayland, granular GUI-based permission control)

I have narrowed down the distributions and desktop environments that seem promising, but want y'all's opinions on them.

Distributions:
- Linux Mint Xfce: Easy to install, not prone to randomly break (problems: high OOTB storage usage, RAM consumption seems a little too high, kind of outdated packages, not on Wayland yet)
- Fedora: Secure, the main DEs use Wayland (problems: similar to above except for the outdated packages; also hard to install and maintain, from what I have heard)
- antiX Linux (problems: outdated packages, no Wayland)

Desktop Environments:
- Xfce: Lightweight, fast, seems like it'd work how I want (problems: not on Wayland yet, that's it)
- labwc + other Wayland stuff: Lightweight, fast, secure (problems: likely harder to install, especially since I have no Linux terminal experience, cannot configure through a GUI)

In advance, I thank you all for helping me!

I appreciate any help, especially in things like:
- Neofetch screenshots, to showcase idle RAM usage on some DEs
- Experiences with some distributions

This entry was edited (2 months ago)
in reply to thatonecoder

Try Fedora LXQT too, it ll default to wayland in the next fedora release (~4th april i think). Its very lightweight.
This entry was edited (2 months ago)

[Solved] How can I free space in BTRFS?


Edit 2: Through all of my shenanigans I ended up on a read-only snapshot for root. The error I got just seemed similar to previous out-of-space errors. I went to a later snapshot as default and everything is working great!

My OpenSUSE Tumbleweed is wonky since I last did a dist-upgrade with about 4000 packages. Midway through it errord out with an error that indicated that the filesystem was full althou df showed plenty of free space.

BTRFS seemed to be the culprit. Removing snapshots let me continue the upgrade until it errored out again. Rinse and repeat until it was done.

Edit: My root subvolume is read only. So there must be some error in that. The other subvolumes work correctly. So I guess it isn't about free space after all.

But now the BTRFS seems to be almost full and I cannot update anymore.

...
Checking for file conflicts: .....................[done]error: can't create transaction lock on /usr/lib/sysimage/rpm/.rpm.lock (Read-only file system)                 ( 1/40) Removing: ovpn-dco-kmp-default-0.2.202412[error]Removal of (76899)ovpn-dco-kmp-default-0.2.20241216~git0.a08b2fd_k6.13.7_1-2.2.x86_64(@System) failed:          Error: Subprocess failed. Error: RPM failed: Command exited with status 1.                                      Abort, retry, ignore? [a/r/i] (a):                      Problem occurred during or after installation or removal of packages:                                           Installation has been aborted as directed.              Please see the above error message for a hint.

I've tried a full balance but that didn't even seem to help. So I suspect that the space is caught up in snapshots, but I can't delete them.
# snapper list

# │ Type   │ Pre # │ Date                             │ User │ Used Space │ Cleanup │ Description           │ Userdata                                               ─────┼────────┼───────┼──────────────────────────────────┼──────┼────────────┼─────────┼───────────────────────┼─────────────                                             0  │ single │       │                                  │ root │            │         │ current               │  1  │ single │       │ Thu 18 Apr 2024 05:58:31 PM CEST │ root │  12.51 GiB │ number  │ first root filesystem │365* │ pre    │       │ Wed 26 Mar 2025 04:28:33 PM CET  │ root │  16.00 KiB │ number  │ zypp(zypper)          │ important=no                                           366  │ pre    │       │ Wed 26 Mar 2025 07:28:09 PM CET  │ root │  16.00 KiB │ number  │ zypp(zypper)          │ important=no                                           367  │ pre    │       │ Wed 26 Mar 2025 07:36:53 PM CET  │ root │  16.00 KiB │ number  │ zypp(zypper)          │ important=no
# snapper rm 1

Deleting snapshot failed.
# snapper rm 365

Cannot delete snapshot 365 since it is the currently mounted snapshot.
# btrfs filesystem usage /

Overall:                                                    Device size:                 476.44GiB                  Device allocated:            389.06GiB                  Device unallocated:           87.37GiB                  Device missing:                  0.00B                  Device slack:                  3.50KiB                  Used:                        382.53GiB                  Free (estimated):             90.80GiB      (min: 47.12GiB)                                                     Free (statfs, df):            90.80GiB                  Data ratio:                       1.00                  Metadata ratio:                   2.00                  Global reserve:              512.00MiB      (used: 0.00B)                                                       Multiple profiles:                  no                                                                      Data,single: Size:381.00GiB, Used:377.57GiB (99.10%)       /dev/mapper/cr_root   381.00GiB                                                                              Metadata,DUP: Size:4.00GiB, Used:2.48GiB (61.97%)          /dev/mapper/cr_root     8.00GiB                                                                              System,DUP: Size:32.00MiB, Used:80.00KiB (0.24%)           /dev/mapper/cr_root    64.00MiB                                                                              Unallocated:                                               /dev/mapper/cr_root    87.37GiB
# btrfs qgroup show /

Qgroupid    Referenced    Exclusive   Path              --------    ----------    ---------   ----              0/5           16.00KiB     16.00KiB   <toplevel>        0/256         16.00KiB     16.00KiB   @                 0/257         14.25GiB     14.25GiB   @/var             0/258         16.00KiB     16.00KiB   @/usr/local       0/259         16.00KiB     16.00KiB   @/srv             0/260         54.32MiB     54.32MiB   @/root            0/261         24.09GiB     24.09GiB   @/opt             0/262        289.02GiB    288.95GiB   @/home            0/263         16.00KiB     16.00KiB   @/boot/grub2/x86_64-efi                                                   0/264         16.00KiB     16.00KiB   @/boot/grub2/i386-pc                                                      0/265         16.00KiB     16.00KiB   @/.snapshots      0/266         24.00GiB     12.51GiB   @/.snapshots/1/snapshot                                                   0/473         16.00GiB     16.00GiB   @/.snapshots/1/snapshot/swap                                              0/657         23.68GiB     16.00KiB   @/.snapshots/365/snapshot                                                 0/661         23.68GiB     16.00KiB   @/.snapshots/366/snapshot                                                 0/662         23.68GiB     16.00KiB   @/.snapshots/367/snapshot                                                 1/0           36.19GiB     36.12GiB   <0 member qgroups>

Any tips?
This entry was edited (2 months ago)