Correct way to configure tc rules?


OS: Ubuntu 24.04

I have searched this for a while and seems i can't get my search terms right.

Back when ifuo/down system worked custom scripts were put under '/etc/network/if-up.d' etc. Now ubuntu uses netplan. But where to put custom script? That would handle tc rules in my case.
/etc/networkd-dispatcher/routable.d was told by internet but that just trows error during boot; ERROR:Unknown state for interface.

in reply to Juntti

Ahh I see, I didn't know what tc was and assumed it was a typo and ignored it. I searched for a bit for your specific problem and didn't come up with much other than this:

You could also try

/usr/lib/networkd-dispatcher/routable.d/

Looks like you can also specify the scripts directoy with -S flag

manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/n…

My other thought is: maybe the location for the scripts is correct, but you're having another issue thats causing the unknown state error?

This entry was edited (1 month ago)

my new experiences with KDE Plasma and GNOME!


I haven’t tried Linux in a while and only really played around with XFCE and Cinnamon and reviving my old laptops, but I’ve just tried KDE Plasma and GNOME for a bit and DAMN they look good. Modern looking and not the weird Mica effect that Windows has. Very clean!

They both look great and I wouldn’t say one looks better than the other, just preference probably, just that GNOME looks more bubbly + rounded + bit like MacOS in a good way and Plasma looks more blocky + similar to Win10 taskbar

The touchscreen buts still appear to need a bit of work, on both Plasma and GNOME I made it freeze. For Plasma I opened the launcher button and tried to use the onscreen keyboard, and it kept on opening and closing very quickly, for GNOME I did the three finger swipe up gesture and everything became unresponsive. Also, Bluetooth weirdly doesn’t work on KDE but does on GNOME. Huh. Maybe just my device?

I really want to switch soon, maybe during the holidays I’ll get round to it 😁

edit: I think it’s pretty crazy that a relatively small team (compared to the likes of Microsoft) can offer such a good UI and overall user experience! That’s insane! The people who help make the distros are doing very good work and I wish them the best of luck! Hopefully the weird quirks and compatibility issues will iron out and Linux becomes mainsteam 😁

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

also one annoying thing is that normally on windows, since my laptop is one of those flexy 2-in-1s, it auto-rotates depending on how you put it (like “tent mode” or “book mode”). On both KDE Plasma and GNOME, it doesn’t work. I guess my specific device isn’t supported? I can live with that though, I can rotate the screen manually and don’t realistically rotate the screen all too often.
This entry was edited (1 month ago)

Email client recommendations ?


Hi, I tried using an email client over a year ago, and after trying almost all of them in the span of a week I gave up in frustration. Would anyone have a recommendation ? For an email client :
- That is actively maintained
- That is not controlled by a company that could pull a Mozilla on it (Thunderbird)
- That doesn't need 77 dependencies and 450 GB (WTF KMail 😭 )
- That is reasonably fast and light and not too bloated (I just want to read emails, I don't need a full app suite...)
- That supports POP
- That supports writing HTML messages (sorry Claws, I really liked you but occasionally I kinda need to write formatted messages to preserve other people's sanity 😅 )
- That supports reading HTML messages without showing the HTML version as attachments so that every single email has the paperclip icon and I can't tell which messages have real attachments (Sylpheed I think ?)
- That supports MailDir format for portability (why isn't it the default everywhere already instead of weird non-portable formats ? 😭 )
- If possible, that doesn't have an interface that's so awful it's a pain to find anything (Thunderbird)

I also tested Geary and another one but I don't remember much about it... I can't find out whether Geary does support POP and maildir, its documentation page is... well it's a list 8 lines long, but on a page called "Documentation" so it's technically counts as documentation I guess ? 😅
wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Geary/Docu…

Any recommendation would be greatly appreciated !

in reply to 🏴 hamid the villain [he/him] 🏴

Lmao that's what ChatGPT recommended after I ranted about all the email clients I had tried 😂

fetchmail/getmail6 to fetch the mails via POP3 in maildir format + a local roundcube server + CLI tool to still be able to read mails outside home
but I thought I might be a bit overkill 😅

This entry was edited (1 month ago)
in reply to IngeniousRocks (They/She)

Barely a week later and I had to do the thing. My partner uses LMDE and Nvidia 535 is the newest version in their repos, but we need nvidia 565+ for Kingdom Hearts 3.

Installing from the website wasn't as hard as I remember.

  1. Blacklist Nouveau.
  2. As root, without an X server running, run the nvidia*.run file from the website
  3. Follow the prompts.
  4. Verify your initramfs rebuilt correctly before rebooting.
  5. Reboot and enjoy your actually current driver.
This entry was edited (1 month ago)
in reply to MonkderVierte

It's not too bad once you get used to it. It's still a lot of "throw this color here, check results, looks shit, change color, rinse and repeat." QT theming is pretty similar.

I had just taken days to perfectly set up my homemade theme last distro, matching QT and GTK, only to find out I didn't like the distro. I gave up after that and just slapped Gruvbox Dark on everything.

When in doubt and the work to theme gets too much: Gruvbox, Dracula, Tomorrow/Tomorrow Night, or Solarized will cover just about everything.

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

Yes, I’ve also read about problems with dual-boot systems after Windows updates, which is why I’ve refused to use Windows too often to make the updates worthwhile.


Sometimes Windows just overwrites GRUB (or whatever you use on your system) bootloader. But it's relatively easy to fix using your distro's installation media. Just in case this happens you need to refer to your distro's documentation or community forums to fix it.

I do recommend however in the future to not put Windows and Linux on the same disk, but have 2, each for respective OS. That way, there's no way Windows will touch your Linux bootloader on the other disk, and you can still allow GRUB (or other bootloader) to chain-load Windows boot manager from the other disk.

This entry was edited (1 month ago)

Exploiting Undefined Behavior in C/C++ Programs for Optimization: A Study on the Performance Impact


A thorough examination of the performance effects of using undefined behaviour in compiler optimizations.

Method:
1. Modifying clang to not use UB where this is possible
2. Run a large suite of benchmarks on different architectures, compare results for modified and unmodified clang
3. Do statistics on the results
4. Examine performance deviations
5. Discuss factors which could bias results.

Very good science!

Result in short:

Only on ARM and if no link-time optimization is used, a systematic small positive performance effect can be seen. For Intel and AMD CPUs, there are no systematic improvements.

Average effects are typically below 2%, which is the typical effect of system and measurement noise. Often, effects are even negative. In some cases, benchmarks show large differences, and many of these can be fixed by simple modifications to the compiler or program.

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

For me, this result is also not too surprising:

  1. If allowing / using Undefined Behavior (UB) would allow for systematically better optimizations, Rust programs would be systematically slower than C or C++ programs, since Rust does not allow UB. But this is not the case. Rather, sometimes Rust programs are faster, and sometimes C/CC++ programs. A good example is the Debian Benchmark Game Comparison.
  2. Now, one could argue that in the cases where C/C++ programs turned out to be faster than Rust programs, that at least im these cases exploiting UB gave an advantage. But, if you examine these programs im ythr Debian benchmark game (or in other places), this is not the case either. They do not rely on clever compiler optimizations based on assumptioms around UB. Instead, they make heavy use of compiler and SIMD intrinsics, manual vectorization, inline assembly, manual loop unrolling, and in general micro-managing what the CPU does. In fact, these implementations are long and complex and not at all idiomatic C/C++ code.
  3. Thirdly, one could say that while these benchmark examples are not idiomatic C code, one at times needs that specific capability to fall back to things like inline assembly, and that this is a characteristic capability of C snd C++.

Well, Rust supports inline assembly as well, though it is rarely used.

This entry was edited (1 month ago)

Why doesn't the Linux subreddit leave Reddit already?


It's kind of ironic to me that Linux is all for free and open source, but still uses a proprietary platform, and a horrible one at that. Before the fediverse, I'd understand, but now, there is no excuse whatsoever.

I understand that we can't just get up and leave everything proprietary behind all at once, since we have iPhones and Android phones. We all use proprietary software of some form, but I am of the mindset of using the least amount of proprietary possible.

I will ALWAYS look for FOSS first. I also want to make it as hard as possible for any corporation to track me. They'll probably still be able to track me, but I'm not going without a fight.

I could say the same about the Linux kernel using GitHub, but I understand how massive of an undertaking it would be to move the whole kernel to another platform. I'm sure there are other factors, too. Anyway, I just wanted to start a discussion and hear people's thoughts.
Thank you

Permissions issue setting up Plex


Hey all, I'm stumped for the first time since adopting Linux. I can't get Plex to see any of my folders and I cannot just move my movies to plexmediaserver because I don't have the permissions.

I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around the permissions commands and I'm not sure what the simplest way to set up my Plex library is. Has anyone been through this process that can help me out?

in reply to lilpatchy2eyes

I remember running into this as well. It's because Plex installs itself with its own user. So post-install, you need to add the Plex account to your user Group and restart the service.

sudo usermod -a -G plex
sudo service plexmediaserver restart

Two commands and bam! You're in business.

ref: askubuntu.com/questions/458547…

This entry was edited (1 month ago)

What kind of mindset do you need to be succesful starting and continuing to use Linux.


We all have opinions on how to procedurally get someone started using Linux. To mixed effect. I wonder if we could be more successful if we paid closer attention to the machine between the seat and the keyboard. What mindsets can we instill in people that would increase the likelihood they stick with it? How would we go about instilling said mindsets?

I have my own opinions I will share later. I don't want to direct the conversation.

in reply to wuphysics87

Back in the mid 2000s, we (my company) were on Windows, including three Windows 2000 Server licences. And we needed to upgrade. But it wasn't sustainable for the small company to pay for all these licences, when a free option was available.

So we slowly moved all applications over to cross-platform alternatives, Outlook to Thunderbird (called Firebird in those days), office to OpenOffice (now LibreOffice), Internet Explorer to Firefox, Corel Draw to Gimp, Company software like accounting to a XAMPP stack etc.

Once this was established and running well, we just changed the underlying platform from Windows to Ubuntu/Gnome, cursed for a few days and went on with our lives. And it worked for the past 20 years and counting. Now I am cursing, when I am forced to use Windows and can't find my butt using it.

So the mindset, if you want, was that of methodical planning and going slow, step by step. This is likely different if you're a gamer, or you need some very specialised apps, but for me, this was not the case. The games that I play, like Sudoku and Solitaire, work on any platform.

This entry was edited (1 month ago)
in reply to wuphysics87

i guess convenience seekers can have linux these days. ppl don't care for the os, only for "the programs" they "need". i was agnostic to e.g. office suites (i hate em from the bottom of my heart) long before i considered trying a switch. that helped, i guess. a feature, that can only be reprocessed with a certain version of licensed software is fundamentally bullshit.

i wish people hadn't told me abt dual boot but using wine properly (or running a vm?). for windows will fuck up your boot section and that's very scary the first time, alone.

the only problem i see, is the upcoming dependency on copilot ... just leave those ppl be.

instead teach the willing some fundamentals:

  • piping ps through grep and use kill is not intuitive for the windows user.
  • the packaging system the distro comes with (idc, just call it 'the appstore').
  • show them software, there are ppl who arent aware, how e-mail works, and that you can have "your outlook in thunderbird or whatever"
  • show them how to find solutions, and teach them how to read the shell commands they'll find. (+ the jokes abt rm .. they dont need to understand it all, but be sceptical before running any 3 lines found on the net.)
  • ...
  • really, its usually abt games. they come from steam. they got proton. teach ppl how to use steam! (and only after that tell them not to buy software that doesn't run on linux natively!)
This entry was edited (1 month ago)

What was your first Linux distribution?


I'm new to #Lemmy and making myself feel at home by posting a bit!

My first Linux distribution was elementary OS in early March 2020. Since then, I’ve tried Manjaro, Arch Linux, Fedora, went back to Manjaro, and since early January 2023, I’ve landed on Debian as my home in the #Linux world.

What was your first Linux distro?

I recently got a fancy wireless Steelseries headset, and since I'm probably going to switch to Linux in the future I'm a bit worried about the continued functionality of it in a non-Windows setting.


It's an Arctis Nova 7. It's intended to be used with a program called Steelseries GG that manages EQ profiles for the headset, as well as spatial audio, with some proprietary thing called Sonar. It also includes a mixer for managing multiple audio sources. I find the whole thing to be pretty nifty. But what I'm worried about is losing this functionality if/when I move from Windows to Linux, apparently that specific program doesn't have Linux support. Does anyone have any experience with this or something similar?

Thank you


About two weeks ago, I posted my frustrations with Linux, and how it seemed unstable and breaks too easily. At the time, that had been my experience every time I tried Linux over the last 20 years.

But I made an effort to persist, tried some other distros, and found my happy place!

Thank you to the people who sent me on the path of "atomic" distros, and mentioning the likes of Bazzite, Bluefin, and Aurora (All from the Universal Blue group).

The last two weeks have been pure Linux joy on my daily-driver (Framework laptop), with only a few problem-solving expeditions.

I was looking for stability, and got it!

As a Windows user since the 90s, it's such a breath of fresh air to use an OS that's clean and designed to serve me (and not the corporation in charge!).

And I've also replaced windows on the minipc hooked up to our family room TV, and will also replace Windows that I've got on a lesser used desktop.

It's exciting to see just how far Linux has come, and even though I'll likely need to learn some terminal commands, I don't feel it's necessary for most people to even get into that.

The GUI in both KDE and Gnome already offer more than Windows. And I'll never have to see those goddamn pop-ups and banners about Office 365, OneDrive, or Xbox, at least not outside a VM!)

Freeeeeedom!

Thanks again!

in reply to Orvorn

Do you think Aurora is a good choice for beginners? A friend of mine wants to switch and I'm still looking for a good match.

It should be immutable, use KDE, have Nvidia drivers pre-installed (or a easy UI for installing them), not be maintained by a single maintainer and should not have non-OS applications like Steam pre-installed.

Aurora so far seems to be the best choice.

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

After reading this, I'm kinda curious how it compares to JetBrains. It's becoming more and more VSCode like and I'm not a fan.

Does Kate support or have plugins for renaming symbols, presenting documentation, formatting files, showing code diagnostics beyond syntax errors (for example code smells or so), have AI integration (explain this, rewrite this, replace this with prompt output, ...), specific framework integrations (reactjs, django, actix, ...), and stuff like expanding macros in C/C++ and Rust?

Anti Commercial-AI license

in reply to onlinepersona

renaming symbols, presenting documentation, formatting files,


Yes, these are supported via the Language Server Protocol (LSP). I've mostly been using it with the Rust LSP server (rust-analyzer) and well, it typically works, but sometimes you have to tell it to restart the LSP server and stuff (which isn't a huge ordeal, but don't expect everything to always work as well as in a full-fledged IDE).
I believe, for formatting, there's also some non-LSP support.

showing code diagnostics beyond syntax errors (for example code smells or so),


This is supported in principle via LSP, too, but it depends on the specific LSP server, how much info it provides. The Rust compiler gives out relatively much on its own, which is passed on by the LSP server, but you can apparently also configure it to use the linter on save.

have AI integration (explain this, rewrite this, replace this with prompt output, …),


Not out of the box. There's a way to define "External Tools", which basically allows you to run commands and pass arguments to them and then use their output. For example, you should be able to define an External Tool, where you can select some text, then press your keyboard shortcut for that tool, so it sends the selected text to that tool and then it takes the command output and inserts it instead of the selected text.
While this is a powerful concept, I don't know, if you hit limitations at some point.

specific framework integrations (reactjs, django, actix, …),


Nope, except where this might be covered by LSP. But there's no obvious way to just install additional plugins, for example. You get about thirty built-in plugins and that's it.

and stuff like expanding macros in C/C++ and Rust?


Well, expanding macros is also possible with the Rust LSP server. Don't know about other languages.

This entry was edited (1 month ago)

I have used Windows all my life, and I have some questions.


Basically the forced shift to the enshittified Windows 11 in october has me eyeing the fence a lot. But all I know about Linux is 1: it's a cantankerous beast that can smell your fear and lack of computer skills and 2: that's apparently not true any more? Making the change has slowly become a more real possibility for me, though I'm pretty much a fairly casual PC-user, I don't do much more than play games. So I wrote down some questions I had about Linux.

Will my ability to play games be significantly affected compared to Windows?

Can I mod games as freely and as easily as I do on Windows?

If a program has no Linux version, is it unusable, or are there workarounds?

Can Linux run programs that rely on frameworks like .NET or other Windows-specific libraries?

How do OS updates work in Linux? Is there a "Linux Update" program like what Windows has?

How does digital security work on Linux? Is it more vulnerable due to being open source? Is there integrated antivirus software, or will I have to source that myself?

Are GPU drivers reliable on Linux?

Can Linux (in the case of a misconfiguration or serious failure) potentially damage hardware?

And also, what distro might be best for me?

in reply to ssillyssadass

Will my ability to play games be significantly affected compared to Windows?


Depends. Single player games are basically a non-issue. Multiplayer games however? The major anti-cheat systems support linux but it's up to the Devs. They can (and many do) disable support for it regardless if it runs well on linux.

Can I mod games as freely and as easily as I do on Windows?


I'm not going to say "yes", because modding can be dodgy, but in my experience I have never had any difference.

If a program has no Linux version, is it unusable, or are there workarounds?


Could you narrow it down to some programs? The only answer here is "It depends".

Can Linux run programs that rely on frameworks like .NET or other Windows-specific libraries?


Depends on the framework, but .NET is open source and supported on Linux

How does digital security work on Linux? Is it more vulnerable due to being open source? Is there integrated antivirus software, or will I have to source that myself?


Ehhhhhh.....yes but no. OpenSource does mean you loose security through obscurity. But it also means you have a large community of people auditing the code for said vulnerabilities. The decentralized nature of the Linux ecosystem also means bugs can be fixed faster.

Ultimately it doesn't matter. The same rules apply as Windows. Keep your system updated, don't be an idiot, and you've solved most security issues.

Are GPU drivers reliable on Linux?


AMD? Generally yes.

NVIDIA? .....better than it was a few years ago. Best to ask around about your specific model

Can Linux (in the case of a misconfiguration or serious failure) potentially damage hardware?


Theoretically but that's true of all software (including windows). You'll be fine, don't sweat this.

How do OS updates work in Linux? Is there a "Linux Update" program like what Windows has?


You click the "Update" button in your Distros "App Store" (it's not an app store but....essentially the same thing) or type in the upgrade command into a Command Line. Then you walk away for a few minutes, brew a cuppa, comment on the weather, and then get back to it. Occasionally you might need to restart but it's not too common.

Now....there's a lot more complexity here that I almost wrote up, but for someone new? This is all you need to know.

And also, what distro might be best for me?


"Just tell me what to use": That would be Linux Mint Cinnamon Edition. It's simple, it has everything you'll want, it looks nice.

If you want some other options that are popular with beginners you can look at:

  • Ubuntu
  • Kubuntu
  • PopOS!
  • ZorinOS

Watch some videos on them and decide which one looks like the one you would like to use. Just focus on the UI because that's the only real important thing you'd need to worry about right now. You can go into the more advanced options when you have a good foundation.

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

I'm a newcomer to Linux (only about a year in), but here's what I've got so far:

Will my ability to play games be significantly affected compared to Windows?


Mine wasn't at all. Valve has done a lot of work to make this seamless so that more games can be played on the Steam Deck. Check the Proton DB to see what your games look like.

Can I mod games as freely and as easily as I do on Windows?


I have very little experience with this, but probably. Linux users tend to be tinkerers.

If a program has no Linux version, is it unusable, or are there workarounds?

Can Linux run programs that rely on frameworks like .NET or other Windows-specific libraries?


Same answer for both: There's Wine, and a whole bunch of setup scripts that can get even stuff like Adobe Creative Suite working with it. Worst case scenario, there's VirtualBox for the one or two apps you might need to run Windows for. But I find that the open source options, while they might have a learning curve, tend to be substantially better than either of those options.

How do OS updates work in Linux? Is there a "Linux Update" program like what Windows has?


More or less, but you can pick and choose what updates you want to install and when. Most distros have a package manager that'll let you update the kernel, the drivers, the middleware, the desktop environment, all your apps, and even the package manager itself on your schedule, from one interface. You can also just ignore it and never update anything, though I wouldn't recommend that.

How does digital security work on Linux?


Very well. It's much more locked-down by default, for one thing.

Is it more vulnerable due to being open source?


Quite the opposite. Open source projects are well known for being less vulnerable out of the box; Linux in particular is used by huge companies as a lightweight server OS, so it has a lot of highly-paid people committing security fixes back down to the open source project.

Is there integrated antivirus software, or will I have to source that myself?


Antivirus is a bandaid on Windows, provided because the OS was written with certain naive assumptions that let attackers get access they shouldn't have. On Linux, those assumptions were not made. No application can be installed without your root password, for instance; downloaded files can't even be executed without specifically making them executable; and access to edit system files is restricted by a very robust permissions system.

All of that, plus Linux's much lower market share, also means that no malware authors are really wasting their time trying to write Linux malware. The attack vector just isn't worth the extra effort.

So no, there's no integrated antivirus; but for most users in most situations, it's not needed at all.

Are GPU drivers reliable on Linux?


Your mileage may vary significantly, but anecdotally it seems like most architectures from AMD and Nvidia have good support.

Can Linux (in the case of a misconfiguration or serious failure) potentially damage hardware?


Maybe, but like with Windows, I assume you have to really go out of your way to do so.

And also, what distro might be best for me?


I've only used Ubuntu and Mint. Mint has so far been the easiest and most user-friendly of the two. It's also regularly touted as the best for newcomers.

This entry was edited (1 month ago)

I switched from macos to Linux because it can't stop babying users and being unnecessarily restrictive


I tried running a 2nd instance of Roblox simultaneously on macos 15 with another account but this shows up, if my mac can handle it then why can't it just let me do it? If I have two copies of an app like Roblox in separate User/Applications folders, macos moves them to the /Applications/ folder.

Sometimes it won't run apps claiming to be corrupted, so I then have to do sudo xattr -cr /Applications/someapp.app in the terminal and they run perfectly fine. It always nags me if I download apps from anywhere but mac app store. Some of these messages can only be gotten rid of by disabling system integrity protection, but then macos blocks you from running MAS apps due to having "permissive security".

I don't daily drive macOS anymore, I switched to Linux on my M1 mac where I can do whatever the hell I want.

in reply to ptu

There are many different signals the OS sends to applications which are kinda like "Can you kill yourself?" or "Please kill yourself" or "I will kill you" to close it. In computer teminology, there is "close", "terminate" and "kill" types of signals. These are used so that applications can have time to perform closing tasks (like saving) when neceassary and if they misbehave, just "kill" it.

Now both windows and linux have these types of signals. In fact every OS has it.

I beleive this is the reason this meme exists:
When the user tries to shut a app in windows (throught close button or task manager) windows will wait and not give any option to immediately kill the app. Hence some apps don't close even after using end task. Only if the app freezes for some time will it give the option for force quit, ~~no other way~~ (edit: it exists). In linux, its the same as windows and limux waits for app to close. But the difference is that option to kill is available anytime in linux and basically gives the user full control. Although kill option in linux may be hidden as a way for users not to use it unless necassary as applications may not like it.

Shutdown process of both OS is same, they wait for all apps to shut by semding "please close" signal and if they misbehave, option to "shutdown anyways" will be shown to the user, basically killing all apps.

The meme is not correct and is just a steorotype of different OSes. This steorotype comes from how people normally experinece different OS culture and practices. Both OSes have same process of managing apps. Both OSes will wait for process to close if it freezes and give option to user to force quit.
SIGKILL in the meme is coreect only for the right panel of the meme and the left panel is actually a SIGTERM (or something else which means "please close", don't remember)

The only thing the meme should emphasis is how the user is given full control to do in linux (even deleting the kernel) while windows is careful to not let users do something stupid.

Edit: Killing apps in windows can be done on demand through cmd using taskkill command

This entry was edited (1 month ago)

OpenMandriva Lx 6.0 Rock The Spring Release – OpenMandriva


Happy Easter holidays!
we made fruitful use of this time to provide you a nice surprise.

The independent, community controlled distribution OpenMandriva Lx 6.0 fixed point release (as opposed to the rolling release branch), is out right now.

in reply to CAVOK

Mandriva is gone, but there's a couple of projects carrying its legacy. OpenMandriva is one of them, obviously. Mandrake was my first distro too, so I have a soft spot for it.

From my perspective, OpenMandriva's biggest strengths are that it's independent, non-derivative, community driven, and based in Europe. Unfortunately it's also small, but the people behind it seemingly do a lot with very little, so the community is passionate about the project.

Personally I'm just happy that there are smaller, non-corporate distros still out there providing alternatives. And OMLx seems like a pretty solid distro at that.

For their selling pitch, you can check their FAQ.

This entry was edited (1 month ago)

I switched from Manjaro to CachyOS and OMG!


I first started using Manjaro after being on Debian/Ubuntu derivatives for years. Mint used to be my daily driver, then LMDE for a while. After struggling with Endeavour OS, through 2 or 3 breaking updates requiring a reinstall I made Manjaro with KDE Plasma my home for several years.

Manjaro was stable and, I thought blazing fast, compared to Mint. Everything just worked and was cutting edge. I thought my distro hopping days were over and I found the one that works for me.

Recently I've been reading about Cachy OS and decided to give it a whirl on my test Dell Latitude. Turns out that, I had no idea how fast and lean Linux could be on that off-lease business laptop! I know have it installed on my main Laptop and it's leaps and bounds faster than Manjaro, has none of the bloat and just works! I know it's early, but I think I have found a new home! I have timeshift set up just in case, so I'll see how stable it is over the next few months, but so far I am impressed.

Highly recommend everyone who's into Arch and rolling release to try it.

Unknown parent

lemmy - Link to source

Peter G

While I don't have much in a way of hard data, it feels much snappier. Also, it seems to utilize less ram. I believe the difference lies in the Cachy's repo. A lot of the apps I use daily are not installable from Manjaro repos and so I had to use flatpaks and AppImages. AUR was also a hit or miss for me. Catchy, on the other hand had most of the apps I use in it's repo. Things like Tutanota desktop client and Zen browser as an example.

[meta] is your post discussion or user support?


i get a little annoyed at posts that start with broad statements like "is linux actually ready for the average user?" but then it's just someone asking for help to fix a problem they have with their sources.list or whatever. it's not a massive problem, but it's misleading and it feels borderline inflammatory sometimes

please tell when you're asking for help

ty

how could this idea work withthe fediverse


A revolution is supposed to change things. Looking at things today, the only revolutionary idea left is to make society reflect the best of us instead of the worst. Most people prefer kindness and love. But lacking these values allows others to thrive in our world. They spend their time deceiving and exploiting the rest of us, people trying to enjoy life and things that bring joy and love. We can't do that by spending all our time dealing with the sad creepy weirdos ruining everyone's lives. So they're been able to shape the world. The only revolution left is to build something to undo what they've done. We need a force for love in the world.

This begins with anyone who thinks it's silly to to expect love to play a major role in society and our future. They have to question who taught them how the world works. They have to wonder why they think that way – because the power of love is not a revolutionary concept. Something else convinced them.

Education is designed by politicians also responsible for war; news comes from corporations whose purpose is exploitation of anyone and thing possible. No wonder people think a more loving world seems like fantasy. Everything seems designed to make us think so.

The internet makes it undeniable that knowledge and tech are fueling hate, greed, ignorance in every heart, every family, community, country. What's not so obvious is how to teach people what's wrong: that knowledge should not be controlled by politicians and the rich.

If we want a revolution to actually change things, it means we need to liberate knowledge from politicians and the rich. A goal like that depends on people understanding why people don't understand it. So instead, we could hope the state of the world's enough to convince people what's wrong.

To literally free knowledge, we have to free the people responsible for it, every individual and group, all the research universities, all focused globally on the same goal: to save the future. What's more loving than that?

The key to a revolution based on love in the world is to build something free of the people who disagree, the hateful, greedy, ignorant, whatever. That's possible with the internet, where we can work together to organize ourselves, our knowledge, our resources.

The first, most important step in the only revolution we have left is to create our own democratic corporation. The only way we can confront the multinationals exploiting us is with our own. The concept of democorporation coordinates all people and groups worldwide, anyone free to share their knowledge how to build this future. It begins with whatever individuals, corporations, institutions of knowledge who don't require liberating to help. They can help free the others, they can set the foundation so Democorporation can challenge the multinational corporations pillaging the planet and threatening the future.

Democorporation can only begin in as a social network because that's how the people can best support it. Participation, data, advertising can help funding. But more importantly is to be democratic. People need this network to vote and express how to build their future. With online users, volunteers, donors, employees and investors all expressing their perspectives, they offer the most balanced democracy and leadership possible.

When we have a social network that we own, uniting the world in our own democracy, we achieve the goal of any great revolution: we establish our own republic. Interepublic has the benefit of a corporation being able to limit, exclude and fire people who don't want it to succeed. That overcomes the problem of real world countries: we're all stuck with people who want our governments to fail, who want others to suffer. As antidotes to the hate in society, Interepublic and Democorporation become outlets of love for the world. That's what we're missing, and it's all we need to change history.

This revolution is global resistance against everything dividing us and everyone exploiting us. It is the “rebellion of people coming together”. Interepublic and Democorporation use the internet to create leverage that's never been available before. But only if people agree love is necessary to fix what's wrong. Nothing else will bring us together.

That sounds good until you remember there is no planning how to capture love. You just express it and hope your love is reciprocated...but this isn't a teenager working up the courage to call his first love. This is the world, and all these ideas and plans that express my love only work if people understand the love I've already poured into it.

To make this revolution truly new, truly revolutionary, it begins with something as intimate and personal as love, one stranger to another. So when I profess my love for the world, I risk the worst kind of heartbreak imaginable. Maybe that risk is proof enough? To trust who I am, my motivation, I have to be honest even it's humiliating for me. That's how to explain what it took for me to do this. No one happy with the world would.

Because here's the thing...I do not want to do this. I think it's inhuman and inhumane to be put in a position like this. It is a constant fight against myself, doing what's right while ruining my life. I'm losing because the world keeps getting worse, so I feel sick with guilt and torture more ideas out of myself.

And I can't describe this inner conflict without describing my the kind of sad life that makes someone do this. If I loved myself enough, I would never be in this position. It is a living nightmare. Doing this means I love the world more than myself...too bad it feels like such an abusive relationship.

Think about it: someone's not gonna spend their life on this, decades of trial and error, if they've experienced the best of the world, love, family. My life began in stress. Now that I accomplished my goal, I'm left psychologically devastated by it. I'm in a place of responsibility no one should be. And worst of all it seems to piss people off that I even tried?

Your reaction decides if this love is reciprocated. If it is we create a love story like no other. And if not, I can hope failure and tragedy might do a better job of finding help than if I'm alive. A win-win for the world, just not for me...what's more loving than that?

For me personally, my love for the world would be reciprocated by freeing me from this stress and responsibility. Maybe the most revolutionary thing here is that I want nothing to do with politics or business. This is a first step in an ongoing process to remove myself from this insanely stressful situation, and it's quite elaborate.

The most genius thing I did was to create a story/fantasy/metaphor/game that lets me help without being directly involved. Two birds, one stone. If I can make it entertaining, I can earn money and raise attention. Four birds, one stone.

To put this in context, I've set up a political-economic-societal plan, but I also imagined a metaphorical story to promote knowledge the way religions promotes belief. It's a modern mythology, and it's for people how can't understand the liberation of knowledge. The goals for the real world and the fantasy story are the same: a search for a more loving world. And they begin the same: with your choice what happens to me.

Our world is built on the same choice we make whether to help others or not. If people form this bond with me and help me survive what's coming, those bonds, the knot of love and connection form the foundation for this revolution and the loving world it would create.

Love would be the seed for everything that grows from here, so Interepublic and Democorporation are literally born and grow shaped by love. And the world gains what it's missing most, a force to fight for the best of us against the worst.

don't like this

in reply to nebhelo

Please rewrite this or at least add a tl;dr and change the thread title to something more descriptive. I'm sure you have a great idea somewhere in there but I've had to stop reading after a couple of paragraphs that just sounded preachy and got nowhere.
This entry was edited (1 month ago)

Btw, I use Arch (via EndeavourOS*)


Hopefully this kind of post isn't too tired, but I figure it's my turn:

Finally decided to, after absolutely refusing to upgrade to 11, make the jump from Win10 to Linux! Been hopping around distros a bit and landed on EndeavourOS last night and I'm really enjoying it so far.

It's definitely tinkery and took me like 2 hours just to get my push to talk working in Discord (mostly due to my own lack of knowledge), but I love the level of control of everything you have (was on Pop!_OS before ~~🤮~~, edit: no hate, just wasn't for me!)

There's definitely never been a better time to switch and I'm very excited for when I inevitably brick my shit and come back here for help, so thanks in advance everyone! 😀

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

Yea im about to switch myself. Been looking at suggestions and stuff, probably gonna start with Mint myself.

Many different sources advise putting it on a flashdrive first and loading from there, to start. Make sure I like it.

But the end goal, eventually, would be to remove windows from the comp entirely, right? Eventually installing my chosen distro as the OS on the computer itself? Does that sound about right?

in reply to BlueFootedPetey

For me, I've been throwing distros on a spare SSD so I could test run in a proper install, but I'm sure a thumbdrive would be fine. Just keep in mind that you might get some hangs and things will be slower due to the speed of the drive, rather than the inefficiencies of the OS you end up on. If you want to test out specific programs or games or something, you can always do what I did and put them on a separate faster storage drive (I'm on SATA SSD for my OS right now, but am putting other things on NVME).

As I mentioned elsewhere, I still have my Windows on another drive so I can boot to it if I need to, but I honestly haven't needed to even once since switching, so I'll probably end up just switching to VM only for anything that requires Windows fairly soon here.

The transition has been much simpler and smoother than I ever had imagined.

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

Thanks for such a detailed explanations. That's what I meant, I would love to avoid official drivers headache that causes you to avoid recommend Nvidia. Still there are some things that you cannot avoid it. Things I have in mind are better than AMD / Intel GPU with Mesa:
- Blender
- ML / AI / CUDA and so on
- DaVinci Resolve (and other creative stuff like Blender above)
- RayTracing
- DLSS (FSR is catching up but this is #1)
I would love the Nvidia support just to be stable.

for the encoding and decoding I would choose Intel.
For gaming AMD as I'm currently right now with Bazzite.

in reply to Psyhackological

At least the situation will get better.

Nouveau's kernel driver is a horrible mess, so I'm looking forward to Nova, if it ever gets ready.

For older (pre-about-RTX 2000-series) cards, the kernel driver had to do a lot, and Nouveau had to reverse engineer most things. Now, Nvidia has moved most of the proprietary magic into something called the GSP (GPU System Processor), which is a small processor (RISC-V, IIRC) which does many things the kernel driver did previously, like reclocking. This, in addition to the official open kernel drivers should make developing a new FOSS Nvidia driver a lot easier. RedHat's Nova (and I think Nvidia's open driver) only support cards with a GSP for this reason.

NVK is very impressive for such a new unofficia Nvidia driver in my opinion. If I remember correctly, they said that they'll focus more on optimization now that it's conformant.

When/if Nova is ready, it will finally be possible to use a Rust graphics driver stack on Linux outside of Asahi.

If you have any questions remaining, just ask.

Edit:
So the closed source GSP firmware blob has 3 "good" points:
1. The closed source parts are limited to inside the GPU.
2. It moves a lot of work away from the kernel driver.
3. It allows open source drivers to support HDMI 2.1 & later.

The HDMI Forum decided some time ago that HDMI was too open. Now, for the newer versions, the license doesn't allow open source implementations. Nvidia gets around this with proprietary GSP firmware inside the GPU (even with official open source drivers, not sure about Nouveau) and Intel with GPU firmware or an internal adapter, depending on the GPU (if I've understood correctly). Only AMD doesn't support the newest HDMI version.

This entry was edited (1 month ago)

Decentralization Scoring System (v1.3)


This scoring system evaluates how decentralized and self-hostable a platform is, based on four core metrics.

📊 Scoring Metrics (Total: 100 Points)

MetricWeightDescription
Top Provider User Share30Measures how many users are on the largest instance. Full points if <20%; 0 if >80%.
Top Provider Content Share30Measures how much content is hosted by the largest instance. Full points if <20%; 0 if >80%.
Ease of Self-Hosting: Server20Technical ease of running your own backend. Full points for simple setup with good docs.
Ease of Self-Hosting: User Interface20Availability and usability of clients. Full points for accessible, FOSS, multi-platform clients.

📋 Example Breakdown (Estimates)

PlatformScoreVisualization
📧 Email95🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
🐹 Lemmy79🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
🐘 Mastodon74🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
🟣 PeerTube94🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
🖼 Pixelfed42🟧🟧🟧🟧🟧🟧🟧🟧
🔵 Bluesky14🟥🟥🟥
🟥 Reddit3🟥

📧 Email


  • Top Provider User Share: Google ≈ 17% → Score: 30/30
  • Top Provider Content Share: Google handles ≈ 17% of mail → Score: 30/30
  • Self-Hosting: Server: Easy (Can leverage hundreds of email hosting options) → Score: 16/20
  • Self-Hosting: Client: Easy (Thunderbird, K-9, etc.) → Score: 19/20

Total: 95/100


🐹 Lemmy


  • Top Provider User Share: lemmy.world ≈ 37% → Score: 21.5/30
  • Top Provider Content Share: lemmy.world hosts ≈ 37% content → Score: 21.5/30
  • Self-Hosting: Server: Easy (Docker, low resource) → Score: 18/20
  • Self-Hosting: Client: Good FOSS apps, web UI → Score: 18/20

Total: 79/100


🐘 Mastodon


  • Top Provider User Share: mastodon.social ≈ 40% → Score: 20/30
  • Top Provider Content Share: mastodon.social ≈ 45–50% content → Score: 20/30
  • Self-Hosting: Server: Docker setup, moderate difficulty → Score: 15/20
  • Self-Hosting: Client: Strong ecosystem (Tusky, web, etc.) → Score: 19/20

Total: 74/100


🟣 PeerTube


  • Top Provider User Share: wirtube.de ≈ 14% → Score: 30/30
  • Top Provider Content Share: Approximately 14% → Score: 30/30
  • Self-Hosting: Server: Docker, active community, moderate resources → Score: 16/20
  • Self-Hosting: Client: Web-first UI, FOSS, some mobile options → Score: 18/20

Total: 94/100


🖼 Pixelfed


  • Top Provider User Share: pixelfed.social ≈ 71% → Score: 4.5/30
  • Top Provider Content Share: Approximately 71% → Score: 4.5/30
  • Self-Hosting: Server: Laravel-based, Docker available, some config needed → Score: 15/20
  • Self-Hosting: Client: Web UI, FOSS, mobile apps in progress → Score: 18/20

Total: 42/100


🔵 Bluesky


  • Top Provider User Share: bsky.social ≈ 99% → Score: 0/30
  • Top Provider Content Share: Nearly all content on bsky.social → Score: 0/30
  • Self-Hosting: Server: PDS hosting possible but very niche and poorly documented → Score: 4/20
  • Self-Hosting: Client: Mostly official client; some 3rd party → Score: 10/20

Total: 14/100


🟠 Reddit


  • Top Provider User Share: Reddit hosts 100% of user accounts → Score: 0/30
  • Top Provider Content Share: Reddit hosts all user-generated content → Score: 0/30
  • Self-Hosting: Server: Not self-hostable (proprietary platform) → Score: 0/20
  • Self-Hosting: Client: Some unofficial clients available → Score: 3/20

Total: 3/100


How Scores are Calculated

🧑‍🤝‍🧑 How User/Content Share Scores Work


This measures how many users are on the largest provider (or instance).

  • No provider > 20%: If no provider has more than 20%, it gets full 30 points.
  • Between 20% and 80%: Anything in between is scored on a linear scale.
  • > 80%: If a provider has more than 80%, it gets 0 points.


📊 Formula:


Score = 30 × (1 - (TopProviderShare - 20) / 60)
…but only if TopProviderShare is between 20% and 80%.
If below 20%, full 30. If above 80%, zero.

📌 Example:


If one provider has 40% of all users:
Score = 30 × (1 - (40 - 20) / 60) = 30 × (1 - 0.43) = 17.1 points

🖥️ How Ease of Self-Hosting Scores Work


These scores measure how easy it is for individuals or communities to run their own servers or use clients.

This looks at how technically easy it is to run your own backend (e.g., email server, Mastodon server) or User Interface (e.g., web-interface or mobile-app)

  • Very Easy: One-command or setup wizard, great documentation → 18–20 points
  • Moderate: Docker or manual setup, some config, active community support → 13–17 points
  • Hard: Complex setup, needs regular updates or custom config, poor documentation → 6–12 points
  • Very Hard or Proprietary: Little to no self-hosting support, undocumented → 0–5 points

📚 Sources



Footnotes


This is a work in progress and may contain mistakes. If you have ideas or suggestions for improvement, feel free to let me know.

Source: github.com/NoBadDays/decentral…

in reply to AnonomousWolf

Then please update your category name to reflect that. Right now it says "Self-Hosting" which to the majority of readers means hosting it yourself, whatever the reason may be: privacy, configurability or just being safe from future enshittification.

As far as I know most Lemmy instances leverages paid-for or freemium services to have their instances work easily/properly


Yes but you can't compare a whole lemmy instance to an account on an email server that you share with others. The fair comparison would be hosting a lemmy instance to hosting your own email server and creating an account on Proton Mail to creating an account (or a community) on lemmy.world.

This entry was edited (1 month ago)

How to get people to use Mastodon?


cross-posted from: lemm.ee/post/56496251

I'd like to add to suggest a couple of things regarding Mastodon and user onboarding/retention.

The Server Selection Problem^TM^


The single biggest problem with Mastodon adoption is the fact people see talk about a server and give up. As such, servers need to be removed from the conversation and onboarding process. A server still needs to be selected for a new user, however, which raises the question: How should we select a server for a new user?

The obvious solution is to simply direct users to mastodon.social, which is actually what Mastodon already does to a certain extent. The issue with this is that the Fediverse is meant to be decentralized. As such, it's counterproductive to funnel people towards a single server. This causes maintenance bottlenecks and privacy/data-protection concerns.

Mastodon's landing page.

As such, there needs to be some sort of method that ranks servers based on a few factors in order to select the optimal server for any given user, while keeping the decentralized nature of the Fediverse in mind.

Why any server?


First, it's important to answer the question of why would any given user pick any given server.

Generally speaking, the server isn't a big deal, as in, any server allows users to interact with the whole of the network in its full capacity.

All servers are Mastodon, after all.

However, there are differences. The most significant ones are, I'd say: location, uptime, and language.

A user benefits from being registered to a server that's geographically close to them, as that leads to a better connection. Additionally, servers with high uptime and stability are preferred, as users may have different times they use the server and nobody likes to try and access a server and see that it's down for any number of reasons. Finally, users need to be able to understand the language the server is in (obviously).

I believe these three factors should be at the forefront of the decision-making process for deciding what server to be suggested to any given user on sign-up.

Auto-selector


With that, comes the solution: a server auto-selector. A game I play, DCSS, actually does something similar for online play.

DCSS server selection
(I have my location turned off and there are very few servers, as you can see, so listing them is trivial.)

This isn't exactly a novel scientific breakthrough, but I think it's a significant notion for helping the onboarding process for new Mastodon users.

A server auto-selector should filter servers to suggest by following these steps:
- Detect the user's system language.
- Detect the user's location.
- Calculate the server's uptime score.
- Pseudo-rank user-count.

I believe the first two points are self-explanatory. Being that Mastodon (and the Fediverse, in general) stands firmly against data-harvesting, location data should probably not be mandatorily collected. It should be easy to either ask the user for some vague information or simply allow them to skip this step entirely, even if it might affect the user experience. Additionally, there's the issue that many servers don't make it known where they're hosted. Ideally, this could change to facilitate server selection for the users, but there's always the point that, if a server doesn't say where it's hosted, it gets pulled down by the algorithm, which in turn encourages divulging that kind of information; this might a problem solved by the solution, if you get my meaning.

What I mean by uptime score is simply an evaluation of the server's uptime history. For example, it's not good policy to direct users towards servers that are often unavailable, it might be disadvantageous to direct users to servers with too-frequent downtime for maintenance, and so on. As such, the server auto-selector should calculate a sort of "score" for any server that fits the first two points. I can't say how this should be calculated, exactly, but I'm sure some computer-knowers out there can come up with a less-than-terrible methodology for this.

The last point is something that I think should be taken into account as well, regarding the user-count of the servers. As I mentioned, we can't funnel users towards a single server, but another issue is that we should actually encourage user dispersion over many servers. The outlined method might already do this to a sufficient extent, but I suggest doing some sort of randomization of filtered servers based on user-count. I think it's wrong to simply plug a new user into the least-populated server around, but I do think that over-populated servers, in a relative sense, should be discouraged by the server-selector.

Worst case scenario, a random server that passes the uptime score point can be selected for any new user.

The onboarding experience


Basically, this should be as simple as possible. The more questions need to be answered, the worse.

I think a simple "Join Mastodon" button is the best. Just a big blue button in the middle of the homepage.

Server selection should start as soon as the new user accesses the joinmastodon website, and clicking the button simply redirects the user to the sign-up process for that server.

I believe this approach would increase adoption of Mastodon by streamlining the server selection process, as well as help the continuous decentralization of the Fediverse.

The Feed Problem


Another significant issue with Mastodon is the feed and community/discovery aspects.

Creating a new Mastodon account yields... Nothing. An empty feed!

New account, empty feed.

This is absolutely terrible and ruins user retention. I've had several people tell me that this first-experience emptiness completely turned them off from Mastodon. It's not intuitive, and it needs to be corrected.

A simple solution


Mastodon does have feeds, but they're all tucked away in the Explore and Live Feeds tabs.

I think the single biggest change that Mastodon can make, as far as this goes, is to shift the Explore->Posts feed to the Home tab. Just do it like Twitter or Bluesky, make the discovery feed the first thing a new user encounters.

That, by itself, should make a difference in terms of user retention.


Maybe I'm delusional and severely underestimating how doable this is, but I really believe Mastodon needs to change the way it deals with new users if we want it to actually grow into a strong social media, keyword social (it needs people).

Thoughts?

in reply to JemandInChapinero

There's a new server planned relatively locally to me and it's capitalising on the terrifying plunge into fascism that all the Big Socials now have as their badge of dishonour. People have never been "happy"
to be on Facebook but the local focus in a pretty leftie inner city area is a good idea. If people know people irl on Fedi they will maybe have an easier time.
This entry was edited (1 month ago)

Is KDE actually good or it is overrated? Or I was just unlucky because of prebuilt distros?


Hello folks. I use many distro from Debian to Fedora to OpenSuse and Arch. I also use many window managers like i3, dwm and qtile. On desktop environment, I use XFCE the most. Currently, I am looking to try something new, hence KDE.

I am looking for something with a beautiful UI and works out of the box. So, something on the same spectrum as XFCE but more pretty.

So, I tried out the distros with preinstalled KDE: Fedora KDE, Manjaro KDE, Kubuntu.

The good: KDE is beautiful and very easy to use. I actually enjoy using my computer more.

The bad: it crashes.. a lot even when I turn off all the animations. My system is not that slow: AMD 7 Pro with 64 GB of RAM. Some examples:

  • Logging in, KDE hangs for 30 seconds. Even when I finally see the desktop, I would need to wait a further 10 seconds to finally able to interact, i.e. click and open stuff.
  • After resume suspend, system would hang and there is nothing I can do except for a forced reboot.
  • Browsing the web with only 3 tabs opened, KDE also hang.

As much as I hate GNOME, everything just works. I installed the GNOME flavors of above distros and never experience any hiccups.

If KDE works for you, do you use a preinstalled distro and which one? How about if you install KDE from scratch, like Arch?

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

KDE Manjaro running on 4 or 5 of my machines, pure stability. It sounds like a hardware issue.

Here are my suggestions to diagnose this.

Option 1. Setup an ssh server, connect from a second computer (or phone via Termux), execute $journalctl -fe, and observe the journal from your second device when the crash occurs. That should help pinpoint the issue.

Option 2. If you don't have a second device, use a non-gui tty, access via Ctrl+Alt+F1. (Usually terminals are available F1 thru F6). Once again execute $journalctl -fe and observe it during the crash.

Tbh option 2 may just be easier especially if you have minimal knowledge of ssh. Good luck, ping me back if you find this helpful and would like more perspective, and apologies if this doesn't help you.

If the entire computer crashes, boot into a terminal and browse journalctl history of previous boots, sorry I don't have these commands off the top of my head but if you need them and ask I will get them for you.

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

KDE just works on my machine, which is lower specs than yours. I've never had it crash. I use Endeavor OS, so it came with it by default (which was part of the reason I chose it).

Edit: I don't do much tweaking of the KDE settings other than the main color scheme. I also have never had an issue with waking from sleep on Endeavor (but I recall in years past that was an issue with most distros I tried and unrelated to KDE since I was less a fan of its style back then and didn't use KDE). My set up is a normal desktop PC that I use daily for everything, including gaming.

This entry was edited (1 month ago)
in reply to sparkle_matrix_x0x

EFI
83:boot(e4fs)
8e:lvm(e4fs)
bf:zfs

This is just for /dev/sda or so, and implies non-redundant root disks because mirroring is done by the hypervisor. I've been 20 years doing virtualization, and I'm really starting to forget the last vestiges of my mdadm fdisk layout.

So many people in this thread have no idea why you'd want separate allocation for /home and /tmp and others. Are we missing proper mentorship?

This entry was edited (1 month ago)

Kodi on Wayland losing focus


Hi, I've just replaced my "HTPC" and done a fresh install of Debian on it.
There's a strange issue with Kodi and the focus under Wayland: after some time Kodi (running in full screen) loses focus so I cannot navigate it with the TV remote anymore, but I have to switch back to Kodi using ALT+TAB on the keyboard.
I'm not sure of when this happens, basically I power on the TV on the next day and Kodi has lost focus, the PC is always on.
Since something like this had never happened before on the old PC (running Mint), I tried switching to xorg instead of Wayland and the problem disappeared.
Desktop environment is KDE, Kodi is installed via official flatpak. No standard keyboard or mouse are connected to the PC, only a wireless keyboard with touchpad which is pratically always powered off, so it is impossible that someone is switching focus by mistake.
Does anyone have any clue?
This entry was edited (1 month ago)

Any fediverse like discord clones?


I'm wondering if anyone made a fediverse like (aka multiple instances talking to eachother) for discord?

I know matrix exists, but it's only rooms instead of servers with channels, etc...

in reply to RustyNova

it's only rooms instead of servers with channels..


Literally the same thing but with different names. I use Matrix with Element, and it is exactly the same as Discord. Laid out the same, functionally the same (actually better since it encrypts everything), and even the UI is identical.

This entry was edited (1 month ago)
in reply to 🇰 🌀 🇱 🇦 🇳 🇦 🇰 🇮

From a chat standpoint, the two are near identical - yes - but Matrix lacks the "voice/video calls as persistent rooms" feature that Discord has. This was planned a while back, but has recently been pushed on the backburner^[1]^ as they work on Element Call.

Early on Matrix was sort of being built up as an IRC/Discord alternative, but recently they've pivoted more towards a WA/Telegram/Slack alternative as most of their financial support comes from European governments and companies looking for strong and secure internal communication solutions they can manage themselves.

So, TL;DR you probably won't see the exact Discord like features you want land in the spec any time soon as they're not being funded.

So that means, right now:

  • No persistent voice/video rooms (but they are on the roadmap!)
  • No push-to-talk or "game friendly" settings like voice auto-detection (also not really on the roadmap)

Having said all that, Matrix is brilliant and I highly encourage people to check it out. I use a Matrix <-> Signal bridge for most of my comms with my friends, and we voice chat on Mumble. Not ideal, but you get to avoid Discord and you get a very similar experience! Bonus points for Mumble as it's super lightweight.

~[1] It's not really on the backburner so much as it's something that will have to be worked on after the new VOIP stack - Element Call - is integrated in the wider Matrix ecosystem.~

This entry was edited (1 month ago)

First draft woes


cross-posted from: lemmy.world/post/28546756

So I’ve completed the cosine similarity function, which means the script is now recommending videos in a raw way. Below is just a ranking of videos that match my watch history (all three are most likely videos I’ve already watched):

2: {shortUUID: "saKY2TWfwNYgPUQFkE4xsi", similarity: 0.4955}
3: {shortUUID: "kk7x8GAs7gNvkzaPs6EPiU", similarity: 0.4099}
4: {shortUUID: "uXeAyVfX1WEzqSPsDxtH3p", similarity: 0.2829}

Getting to this point made me realize: there’s no such thing as a simple algorithm—just simple ways to collect data. The code currently has issues with collecting data properly, so that’s something that needs fixing. Hopefully, once the data collection in this script is improved, it can be reused for future Fediverse algorithms.

There are countless ways to process the data. Cosine similarity is a simple concept and easy to implement in code, but it has a flaw: content you’ve already watched tends to rank higher than anything new. So a basic "pick the highest cosine similarity" approach probably isn’t ideal. It either needs logic to remove already-watched videos, or to bias toward videos lower down in the ranking. But filtering out watched videos isn’t perfect either—people do like to rewatch things.

The algorithm currently just looks at how much time you spent watching unique segments of a video, then assigns a value in seconds to all the words in the title, description, and tags, and sums that over all videos.

The algorithm is actually okay—subjectively, it’s better than just sorting by date. I picked a few videos at random from the top 300 ranked by cosine similarity , and there was content interesting enough to watch for more than 30 seconds, and some that was just too weird for me. Here are a few examples:

Some of these links are across different instances because no single PeerTube instance has all the videos. I loaded metadata for over 6,000 videos across five instances during testing.

The question is: should the algorithm be scoped to a single instance (only looking at content on the user’s home instance), or should it recommend from any instance and take you there?

funny thing to note is that there might be a linux pipeline in this algo

watty doesn't like this.

in reply to Cattail

I think it needs to work across instances, since we're concerned wit the Fediverse and federation is one of the defining mechanics. Also when I have a look at my subscriptions, they come from a variety of instances. So I don't think a single instance feature would be of any use for me.

Sure. And with the cosine similarity, you'd obviously need to suppress already watched videos. Obviously I watched them and the algorithm knows, but I'd like it to recommend new videos to me.

This entry was edited (1 month ago)

Is this video a legitimate way to get Linux on LineageOS via Termux or is there a better recent method?


youtu.be/hKypVQuA7yk

Please and thank you

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

LineageOS 22.2 (on FP4) does not seem to have that option yet.
At least, it is not listed in the developer options.
You can find it if you tap on the search button within developer options (or just general settings, as that also includes results from developer options) and type "terminal" or "linux".
The (Experimental) Run Linux terminal on Android result shows up.
But after you tap on that, you see that toggle is greyed out. Can't be enabled.

I am interested in getting that to work, so any help is appreciated.
There is hopefully some ADB command or something that forcefully enables Linux environment.

in reply to atmorous

Depends what you mean by "Linux" here.

It's probably not the kernel itself, so do you mean

  • a terminal e.g. a working shell where you can run commands e.g. `ls | wc -l' ?
  • headless containers, e.g. services like Immich accessed elsewhere?
  • a window manager e.g. KDE or Gnome?
  • a software with a visual interface, or GUI, e.g. GCompris?

Based on that then one can answer if Termux is sufficient (or "legitimate") or if something else is needed.

PS: You can read some of my notes on termux on different Android devices at fabien.benetou.fr/Tools/Androi…

in reply to Geodad

Virtual memory is different from swap memory.

Swap memory is used when you run out of physical memory, so the memory is extended to your storage.

Virtual memory is an abstraction that lies between programs using memory and the physical memory in the device. It can be something like compression and memory-mapped files, like mentioned.

And yes, some swap is still useful, up to something like 4G for larger systems.

And if you want to hibernate to disk, you may need as much swap as your physical memory. But maybe that’s changed. I haven’t done that in years.

This entry was edited (1 month ago)

Help


So, im IP banned from lemmy.world? Or is this cloudflare or smth locking me out? How do I proceed?

I have wanted to leave .world for a while, probably in favour of dbzero, but I would still at least like to delete my account and/or download some data beforehand?

I don't think I did anything wrong, and believe it is a cloudflare thing, but how will I contact the mods, if I cant open their front page to find their emails? Anyways. Any help is appreciated.

Also, sorry if this is the wrong community, but its the only one I know that maybe can help?

Edit 1: I can access the instance if I use a VPN, but I still dont know what to do. This kinda confirms it is cloudflare, but how can I get off their "naughty list"?

Edit the last: it seems to have solved itself after some time. I just used tgis instance for a while, and now its working again.

This entry was edited (1 month ago)

don't like this

Bluetooth speaker has no sound | Ubuntu 24.04 and Fedora 41/42


UPDATE: After hours and dozens of fixes it simple does not work. The Boss Katana Mini X seems to be completely incompatible with Linux. I'm gonna install Windows again on my Surface. W11 works like dogshit on it but at least I can use it to connect to my guitar amp.

Leaving the thread open in case a solution does eventually appear.

OP:


I'm having an issue with a BT speaker, well Guitar amp. actually. (BOSS Katana Mini X)

Device is a Microsoft Surface Pro 7.

It connects, but it wont play any sound at all. I'm now at the point where I'm considering installing W11 on that Surface again just so I can connect it to my amp to play some guitar with backing tracks and whatnot. I hate using my phone for this.

  • Speaker is chosen as the output device.
  • Tried to switch to PipeWire
  • Installed Blueman and a Pulse Audio interface
  • Also tried this on Fedora 41(GNOME)
  • Bluetooth earbuds from JBL works fine and get normal sound
  • I have installed the kernel for Surface devices, but I also tested this BEFORE installing that and there has been no difference on both Ubuntu and Fedora.

What I notice is there's only two configs I can chose from on the settings for the amp as an output device, instead of the long list I have on other devices. Possible cause?

This entry was edited (1 month ago)

Do you use other federated software besides Lemmy (e.g. Mastodon/Pixelfed/etc.), if so which?


in reply to ALostInquirer

Mastodon is my go-to "shout in the void about my goings-on" platform.

Pixelfed is where I post my original photography and artwork.

Bookwyrm is for my book nerdery, mostly.

Edit: Oh and I have a Matrix account but despite the fact that I mentioned it to literally all of my friends, nobody uses it. I keep it around in case someone actually wants to send me private messages because Mastodon is kinda badly suited for that.

This entry was edited (1 month ago)

Looking for app menu groups solution


Edit: This worked for me in Zorin! Thanks for the ideas & discussion in the replies! zdnet.com/article/how-to-creat…


Hi, I'm looking to switch to Linux full-time on my desktop. Aside from my NAS, I'm pretty unfamiliar with Linux in general.

On Windows, I have apps pinned to the Start menu grid, with apps in groups/folders for easy access. I don't pin anything to the taskbar or leave icons on the desktop. For the apps I care about most - and there's around 40 of them - they're available with just 3 clicks maximum. I can reorder them and put them in groups (or pull them out of groups) anytime.

Here's what that looked like (note the top row): i.imgur.com/Y9PmYoG.png

On Zorin OS (Ubuntu-based) via Gnome, I haven't had any such luck. ArcMenu is great but offers no app group support. This also a feature that doesn't seem to be in very strong demand in general. I can use the Gnome menu editor (Alacarte, rebranded as "Main Menu" in Zorin) to hide the default categories & make my own. This would be a perfectly suitable solution... but doing so requires multiple steps per app - no copying & pasting, no drag & drop, each one has to be created on a per-category basis. The amount of effort is considerable. I don't mind doing it once of course, but if I decide to reorganize, it'll require all of that effort all over again.

I'm fully happy with Gnome, I'm looking for a productivity-first DE and the only issue is this app menu situation which is a hard deal breaker. I guess I just have three questions:

  1. Are there alternative menus I can check out which might be able to solve this?
  2. I doubt this, but: Is there an easier menu-category editor I could use? Something that allows for at least moving/copying between categories, so I can grab an app from All Apps or something and put it where I want it. Choosing a unique name, finding an icon, copying the terminal command, etc. is a ton of work just to stay organized.
  3. Would using a different DE offer the flexibility I'm looking for in this situation? I'm willing to switch DEs or even distros to fix this - it's seriously the crux of my workflow.

If this is the wrong community to post this, please point me in the right direction and I'll post there. Thanks in advance, I've been trying to find a fix for this for several hours and I'm not sure where to look for an answer.

This entry was edited (1 month ago)
Unknown parent

lemmy - Link to source

Amphy

Thanks for the info! I'm already using ArcMenu, which is great - but as mentioned, it lacks app grouping support of any kind... not unless I want to go through the effort of editing categories. Doing that is a solution, but requires so much time and effort that it isn't really the solution.

A friend is recommending switching DEs or distros, would Plasma get the job done?

Non-English Keyboard Input on KDE


Has anyone successfully typed either European accented characters or Japanese Kanas on their physical keyboard?

For the longest time, I've been trying to get non-English characters to appear on my system. Specifically European accented characters. I've read about the compose key, but I could never make it work somehow.

I've also tried to make the Kanas to appear using the Japanese keyboard, but that too doesn't work.

I'm using mostly KDE system, on many different distros. As for the keyboard, it's almost always standard US QWERTY without the numpad, varying between various laptops (mostly Thinkpads) and USB keyboards. For the Japanese, it's a Thinkpad W530 (should also apply to X230, T430, and T530).

I've been using Linux for quite a while now. I'm familiar with most inner working of the system, but this the one thing I can never wrap my head around!

in reply to pastermil

Has anyone successfully typed either European accented characters or Japanese Kanas on their physical keyboard?


For the Latin extended characters, I've used AltGr, Compose, probably at some point the GTK control-shift-u thing. I've also used various emacs text input methods to do so. I don't speak Japanese.

I don't use KDE, but it looks like you can set it up to bind Compose at a per-user level once you've logged into your account.

userbase.kde.org/Tutorials/Com…

EDIT: "Motörhead" --- that was typed using the Compose key, which on this laptop I have replacing the Right Alt key. On this system, which is Debian, I do it systemwide by editing /etc/default/keyboard, and adding:

XKBOPTIONS="compose:ralt,terminate:ctrl_alt_bksp,ctrl:swapcaps"

That swaps Left Control and Caps Lock, sets Right Alt to be Compose and...hmm, actually, I should check whether Control-Alt-Backspace still functions to kill Wayland, or if that stopped working when I moved off X11.

Then I ran # dpkg-reconfigure keyboard-configuration.

But if you're on a non-Debian-based distro, things may work differently.

This entry was edited (1 month ago)

BotKit 0.2.0 released


Is there an easy way to filter all terminal commands that contain a --help flag?


Or is there maybe a way to set the pager for all help related queries to some command? I'm using bat and would like to pipe all --help through | bat --language=help by default for the syntax highlighting and colored output... Or if you know a lower effort way to color the output of --help let me know.
in reply to 𞋴𝛂𝛋𝛆

There's no particularly smart way to accomplish this in the exact way that you want. I don't like the solution which searches your $PATH because now you're adding latency to search your entire $PATH for every command to add this functionality. It's a singularly better solution to tell the CLI what you want versus the CLI attempting (using logic) to figure it out.

The easiest solution here is to create your own command which calls the target application with --help;

\#!/bin/bash
$1 --help | bat --language=help

Then run it;
$ script_name docker

and it will run docker --help | bat --language=help. If you use this solution a lot you can try to use bash function which you call at the end of commands if they error;
helpfunc() {
  $1 --help | bat --language=help
}

trap 'helpfunc' ERR

But now you have to run logic to truncate previous commands to only return the first word of a command from history and it becomes a real PITA...
This entry was edited (1 month ago)

Is there a federated Strava alternative?


Strava is an absolute nightmare to use. My feed is absolutely chock full of ads and dog-walkers. Don't get me wrong, I'm very happy they're taking a 0.2 mile walk around their block and logging their progress, but I don't need to see it. Nike, TrainerRoad, Zwift, Peloton all have giant ads every time their users upload an activity. And I don't understand it because it's not an ad-supported network. Like I would happily pay to have all this shit hidden. It would be extremely simple for Strava to fix this, which would just be to provide me with a simple filter for what type of activities I'd like to see. The fact that they haven't done so, a long time ago, leads me to believe that they simply don't want to, for whatever reason. Plus they've already begun to enshittify by breaking integrations with third parties.

Are there any good options for this?

E: to be clear, I'm asking about the social aspect of Strava.

This entry was edited (1 month ago)

CachyOS vs arch


Sensitive content

in reply to sparkle_matrix_x0x

Less packages really doesn't mean much in terms of how easy the system will be to manage. If anything, I'd say a distro with more, but pre installed packages is easier to manage because the maintainers will make sure that those packages will be as easy to work with and upgrade as possible.

That said, I'm definitely not going to stop you from trying Arch though. You can even get similar (or better) optimizations by using the ALHP repos and a kernel like linux-tkg or linux-cachyos for example, although the difference really is negligible in most cases.

This entry was edited (1 month ago)

Does anyone know of any MipsLE/Mips64LE systems in the wild?


MIPS seems to be quite widely supported (about as much as PPC64LE) despite that I'm not able to find anything that uses MIPSLE/MIPS64LE. Are they only supported for QEMU or is there anything that still uses it? Do you know of anything to play around with Linux for MIPSLE/MIPS64LE that isn't emulation?
in reply to Lorem Ipsum dolor sit amet

And now that I have made the post I got some search results:
1. Routers apparently still use MIPS
2. linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/MIPS-HOWTO-… has some MIPS systems you can run Linux on.

If you want to share anything about MIPS though please feel free to comment, I would interest me greatly what the rest of you have to say.

This entry was edited (1 month ago)

Linux equivalents of SketchyVim, for vim modal editing in any text box?


macOS has a bunch of apps which can do so, including SketchyVim. Basically you would have all the vim modes motions and operators, inside any text box in the OS / in any app. I just did some looking up and asked LLMs, but didn't find any linux equivalents of that. Ideally they would work on wayland and have app or window class exceptions.

Linux equivalents of SketchyVim, for vim modal editing in any text box?


macOS has a bunch of apps which can do so, including SketchyVim. Basically you would have all the vim modes motions and operators, inside any text box in the OS / in any app. I just did some looking up and asked LLMs, but didn't find any linux equivalents of that. Ideally they would work on wayland and have app or window class exceptions.

Need advice on a one pc home


Hi, so I want to building a pc for a home server (?) or NAS. I dont really know whats the most appropriate term but what I intend to build is a one pc for my household. currently my requirement is one work 'pc' capable of heavy 3d modeling one light work pc. two 4k gaming tvs. (they most likely wont be used at the same time)

my knowledge of technical stuff is bretty basic so please be patient with me.

before, i used my steam deck to stream my work pc using parsec but i thought i just want to jump all in on linux and using vm to use more niche 3d softwares.

my budget is flexible as long as i dont need to use enterprise hardware. also i heard nvidia is not good for linux so i'd like to confirm if that is still the case as im thinking of using 5090 if not, i hope amd releases an equivalent capable card or if any according my quick research suggest.

as for linux, the only distro (?) i ever used is the steam deck one and i love it. im not a programmer or even remotely capable one so i'd like to avoid anything that has to be manually typing commands at terminal but im open to surface level tinkering.

thank you for your time

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

It's actually very simple:

monitors-on:

#! /bin/bash

hyprctl keyword monitor DP-1, 2560x1440@144, 0x0, 1

hyprctl keyword monitor DP-3, 2560x1440@144, 2560x0, 1

hyprctl keyword monitor HDMI-A-1, disable

monitors-off is basically same thing but reversed:

#! /bin/bash

hyprctl keyword monitor DP-1, disable

hyprctl keyword monitor DP-3, disable

hyprctl keyword monitor HDMI-A-1, 0x0@60, 1

es-de

I'm still working out some kinks with audio so I don't wanna go down the rabbit hole hell that is pactl and pavucontrol in this post. But that's more of a universal Linux gripe I have than distro specific.

Obviously you'll need to tweak the script to what your specific setup is. The first numbers are x & y axis and the second is refresh rate. This is just an example. It's also Wayland only but you can do this in x11 no problem

As far as "remotely" switching, I just assigned the scripts to keybinds in the hyprland config file. Super easy.

This entry was edited (1 month ago)

How to use Java in Flatpak VSCodium [TUTORIAL]


After hours of trying understand how to set up VSCodium with Java extension, i found a solution so here it is, idiotproof (i hope) tutorial for future me and others like me ;)

Flatpak VSCodium with java extension

Via Terminal


  1. Install VSCodium:


flatpak install com.vscodium.codium

  1. Install "Extension Pack for Java" extension for VSCodium:


flatpak run com.vscodium.codium --install-extension vscjava.vscode-java-pack

  1. Install flatpak openjdk extension. (In this case openjdk21):


flatpak install flathub org.freedesktop.Sdk.Extension.openjdk21

  1. Add two new environment to use flatpak openjdk extension in VSCodium:


flatpak override --user --env=JAVA_HOME=/usr/lib/sdk/openjdk21 com.vscodium.codium && flatpak override --user --env=PATH=/usr/lib/sdk/openjdk21/bin:/app/bin:/usr/bin com.vscodium.codium

  1. Restart VSCodium:


flatpak kill com.vscodium.codium && flatpak run com.vscodium.codium

  1. Done.


Via Graphical interface


  1. Install "VSCodium":
    1. Go to app store and search for "VSCodium".
    2. Make sure it's flatpak versionn.
    3. Click Install button and after downloading open the app.


  2. Install "Extension Pack for Java" extension in VSCodium:
    1. Go to Extensions pannel (on the left).
    2. Search for "Extension Pack for Java".
    3. Click Install button.
    4. Close "VSCodium".


  3. Install flatpak openjdk extension. (In this case openjdk21):
    1. Search for "Terminal" app and open it.
    2. Paste command below:



flatpak install flathub org.freedesktop.Sdk.Extension.openjdk21
3. Click `Enter`.
4. Close "Terminal".

4. Install "Flatseal":
1. Go to app store and search for "Flatseal".
2. Click Install button and after downloading open the app.
5. Allow VSCodium to use flatpak openjdk extension:
1. Search for "VSCodium" in Flatseal.
2. Go to Environment.
3. Click + button (to the right from Variables) and paste:
PATH=/usr/lib/sdk/openjdk21/bin:/app/bin:/usr/bin
4. Click `+` once again and paste:
JAVA_HOME=/usr/lib/sdk/openjdk21

  1. Restart VSCodium

PS

There is formatting issue with markdown but it's on lemmy side i think

in reply to serpent0763

This is overly complicated. Just install Java then run

flatpak --user override --env="FLATPAK_ENABLE_SDK_EXT=openjdk" com.vscodium.codium

Note this works for all other SDKs too. It works especially well for programming languages like Rust that have their own package manager.

Doesn't work so well for languages like C/C++ where you use your distro package manager to install dependencies. In those cases it's easier to install VSCodium inside a container where you do have access to a distro package manager.

This entry was edited (1 month ago)

[Deleted]


[Deleted]
This entry was edited (1 month ago)
in reply to ERROR: UserNotFound

When you have a network with centralized moderation / censorship like Lemmy or Bluesky, you don't have a network, you have another fucking Facebook.
in reply to ERROR: UserNotFound

Good to see another instance defederate from ML. Now if only more of the non-tankie communities moved off ML (it's slowly happening).
This entry was edited (1 month ago)

creating a USB gadget


I want to create a USB gadget with a raspberry pi zero 2W. I'm starting with imitating a webcam I already have to see how much of this I can figure out. I've used the online documentation and a couple AI bots to get this far quickly, but I'm hung up on a ln command. It's telling me "ln: failed to create symbolic link 'configs/c.1/uvc.usb0': No such file or directory" when trying to create the link. This makes no sense to me though. I'm trying to create the link, of course it doesn't exist yet. That's what that command is supposed to do.

I've confirmed this problem in alpine linux and raspbian lite.

Below is the little script I have so far just to create the device:

\#!/bin/bash
modprobe libcomposite
cd /sys/kernel/config/usb_gadget/
mkdir -p fauxcam
cd fauxcam
echo 0x046d > idVendor  # Logitech Vendor ID
echo 0x094b > idProduct # Brio 105 Product ID
echo 0x0200 > bcdUSB
echo 0x9914 > bcdDevice
mkdir -p strings/0x409
echo "111111111111" > strings/0x409/serialnumber
echo "Brio 105" > strings/0x409/product
mkdir -p configs/c.1/strings/0x409
echo "UVC Configuration" > configs/c.1/strings/0x409/configuration
echo 250 > configs/c.1/MaxPower
mkdir -p functions/uvc.usb0
ln -s functions/uvc.usb0 configs/c.1/
echo "usb0" > UDC
in reply to dafta

Edit: OK, I looked at the docs, and they sure do make a broken symlink there. I still think it's worth a try to create a non-broken link, maybe the docs are wrong. I would expect they would put a little note there, that yes, you really do want to create a broken symlink (if so, why not a regular file?), but then again its kernel docs and those aren't the most friendly.

I also thought you were OP for some reason, sorry.

Edit2: If you look at the file listing later in the docs, you can see this:

./configs/c.1/ncm.usb0 -> ../../../../usb_gadget/g1/functions/ncm.usb0

Which does look like a real non-broken symlink, so I maintain the docs are wrong and you're not supposed to make a broken symlink.

Original comment, silightly edited:

You misunderstand. I suspect OP cannot create the symlink, because it would be a broken symlink, not because the symlink is relative. Maybe you cannot create broken symlinks in the sysfs for some reason.

I was just trying to explain that a relative symlink is relative to the directory in which it resides. The target to the symlink should point to ../../functions/uvc.usb0 if you want it to point to something that exists. The ln command in OP's listing would result in a broken symlink, since the specified path is not relative to the c.1 directory. It is relative to the working directory, but that's wrong, that's not what ln expects you to put there.

Maybe it needs to be a correct symlink, maybe that will solve the problem.

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

Yeah he really didn't handle it well
Edit:
Here's a link to the thread
github.com/kovidgoyal/kitty/is…
This entry was edited (1 month ago)

Can't update to Fedora Silverblue 42


I am trying to update from Silverblue 41 to 42 (fully updated) but run into issues when attempting to update from both the software app and from CLI.

The problem using the software app is the same as what is described by this other user, who is using Fedora Workstation not Silverblue like I am:

discussion.fedoraproject.org/t…

When I click the download button, it looks like it's downloading multiple files since the progress bar goes from 0 to 100 several times, and then it gets up to 95% then suddenly returns to the download button. This happens in about 30 seconds.

Using the CLI method, I run the following command:

rpm-ostree rebase fedora:fedora/42/x86_64/silverblue

and get the following errors:

error: Could not depsolve transaction; 1 problem detected: Problem: conflicting requests - package dnf5-plugin-automatic-5.2.12.0-2.fc42.x86_64 from updates requires libcurl-full(x86-64), but none of the providers can be installed - package dnf5-plugin-automatic-5.2.12.0-1.fc42.x86_64 from fedora requires libcurl-full(x86-64), but none of the providers can be installed - package dnf5-plugin-automatic-5.2.12.0-2.fc42.x86_64 from updates-archive requires libcurl-full(x86-64), but none of the providers can be installed - package libcurl-minimal-8.11.1-4.fc42.x86_64 from @System conflicts with libcurl(x86-64) provided by libcurl-8.11.1-4.fc42.x86_64 from fedora

SOLUTION: Uninstalled layered packages in dnf-automatic, libreoffice, and rpmfusion and then restarted. Rebase command successfully completed thereafter.

This entry was edited (1 month ago)

Repartition again plus Printer


Hey again.

Thank you again for all of the help with the dual boot and repartition a few weeks back. I am running Linux Mint.

I repartitioned the Linux side to about 25 GB and over the last few weeks just downloading updates,
I guess it has filled up. It tells me there is only 75 MB left. Is that normal or can I free up room again?

Also, the printer no longer prints. It just hangs when I try to print. It shows up correctly as the HP Deskjet 3510 but won’t print. Any tips on how to fix?

in reply to L3ft_F13ld!

I have --- at one point or another, I'm pretty sure that I've tried every Linux virtual terminal program out there that's been packaged for major distros in the past twenty years --- but it was some time back, and I don't remember specifics. For me, time to start and text throughput was a pretty dominant factor, and urxvt (for X11) or foot (for Wayland) ranked highly there.
This entry was edited (1 month ago)

The Social Network That Can't Sell Out: Understanding Mastodon vs. Bluesky


in reply to roofuskit

People prefer to drown than pick option which is not corporate bullshit.
Bluesky won because it's centralized, and people don't have to decide over instance.
in reply to naught101

As a user of both Mastodon and Lemmy, I think there are inherit differences between the formats that make Lemmy easily a capable replacement for Reddit, but Mastodon not at all a replacement for Twitter.

To get into specifics, Lemmy is more meme and news based, and as long as there are a few thousand users using it and some percentage of those posting content...it largely scratches the same itch.

Twitter was very much an active global conversation forum. It was nicknamed the hell site for a reason because if someone took issue with or was very amused by something you posted and you became "the main character" of Twitter for even an instant (something I experienced only very slightly) it was electrifying and even sort of scary at times.

In addition, the people that were active on there were very active, and it felt at times like you could talk to anyone who had been twitterized...which was a lot of people including prominent politicians, celebrities, and even experts of certain fields.

It was just an entirely different thing altogether. Mastodon is like many of the Twitter alternatives that have popped up from time to time. It's largely kinda the same with regards to functionality (though not having quote tweets is completely ridiculous IMO) but the engagement of it is very low, and the place largely feels very inactive. It feels like you're talking to dead feeds posted in syndication and there's nobody on the other end.

It's not the same as Twitter, and I doubt that Bluesky will even be the same as Twitter. Honestly, maybe all of that's a good thing. But the virality and the engagement and the discovery and everything on Mastodon is way turned down versus Twitter. Twitter was like the crack cocaine of social media...fast, cheap, addictive, and terrible for you. Mastodon is like a cup of tea by comparison.

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

I agree on the global forum aspect of Twitter being the reason it was exciting for public figures and journalists, but you get waaay more genuine interactions from normal (techy) people on Mastodon. It may feel a bit dead when you start out because there is no algorithm to feed you content, but after a while of using it you get a lot of interesting opinions and feedback on things you post.
in reply to khaleer

I think it's "the algorithm", people basically just want to be force-fed "content" – look how successful TikTok is, largely because it has an algorithm that very quickly narrows down user habits and provides endless distraction.

Mastodon and fediverse alternatives by comparison have very simple feeds and ways to surface content, it simply doesn't "hook" people the same way, and that's competition.

On one hand we should probably be doing away with "the algorithm" for reasons not enumerated here for brevity, but on the other hand maybe the fediverse should build something to accommodate this demand, otherwise the non-fedi sites will.

This entry was edited (1 month ago)

Muyal_Hix doesn't like this.

[SOLVED] Installing Linux distro without breaking Windows install


Solution:
When I formatted all my drives to install Linux on one and Windows on the other, I kept both connected and they share EFI boot partition as a result. Every time I reinstall Linux it formats the drive and therefore deletes the Windows's EFI Boot as well. One way is to fix this is to reinstall Windows while disconnecting the drive you have Linux on. Or you can move the boot files if you don't want to do that.

I used this guide:
forums.tomshardware.com/thread…

OP:


Currently dual booting as I need Windows for a few tasks and ganes Linux just won’t do. Since setting everything up I’ve reinstalled Linux twice, both times I’ve lost the ability to boot into windows and have needed to reinstall it.

Disk doesn’t show at all in Grub, tried all kinds of things but it just doesn’t show as a bootable OS. It doesn’t show in the boot options in the BIOS or the boot menu for my motherboard. Drive shows up and all the files are still on it. So my guess is the Windows bootloader somehow installs on the same disk that I have Linux on.

I run Linux(Fedora) and Windows on two separate drives.

Windows take forever to install. Anything I can do now to prevent this from happening if I need to reinstall Linux or if I wanna to some distro hopping?

Just to be clear, everything is working right now. But I want to prevent having to reinstall Windows every time I change distro or reinstall my Linux OS

This entry was edited (1 month ago)

USB formatting on Bazzite (SOLVED)


Hello ladies and gentlemen as a brand new user (installed yesterday on new computer) of Linux in general and Bazzite specifically. I had a bootable USB I was going to use for a different distro before I decided on using Bazzite with another USB.

I decided to use the first one to move my meme collection to the new computer but when I deleted the partition and reallocated it with the highlighted option (the one that is not ms-dos I can not remember the specific name) the drive now seems to have disappeared. When I plug it in now it does not auto detect anything and for the life of me I can not find any drives through Dolphin.

If anyone can tell me how I fucked it up and/or how to find it/ fix it I would be grateful. I can always do it in Windows since I have to set up the old one to access the memes anyway but I would like to know how to do it here for the future. Thanks in advance.

This entry was edited (1 month ago)

For me, it's going to be Fediverse or nothing


So I’ve tried Mastodon, Pixelfed and didn’t like them. Mastodon is nice if you wanna ”tweet”, but that’s not for me. Pixelfed was dead.

I quit Meta because of tech bro fascism, and hated Twitter even before it was X because, let’s face it - nobody has ever changed their opinion on anything because of a Twitter conversation (I know I’m exaggerating, to get my point across). I was in Reddit for a few weeks, and the conversations there seem mostly friendly and constructive, but I decided I don’t want to have anything to do with social media corporations. Besides, I noticed I could scroll endlessly. And that’s not good for me.

Lemmy seems nice. There are still some topics I’m interested in that don’t have active communities, and I’m still learning on how to have my feed from multiple instances. But still, this is the way to go for me.

Against algorithms, against fascism, for free internet. Thanks for coming to my boring Ted talk and have a nice day.

in reply to ArtificialHoldings

The problem with Matrix to me is that it is simply too unstable. I can open it up on any device and half the messages won't load or are corrupted. Media won't show at all. In contrast Lemmy has been super reliable and "just works", so going from reddit to lemmy was no problem at all. And the communities are great too.

I just want working voice chat and group chats.

The entire streaming i don't really care about. There are other apps for that.

But yeah as it is I'm probably better off using discord until the enshittification is so bad no one wants to use it anymore.

This entry was edited (1 month ago)

Weird stuttering on fresh Fedora 42 GNOME install


EDIT:
This has worked, thanks for help:
LD_PRELOAD="" VK_LOADER_LAYERS_ENABLE=VK_LAYER_MANGOHUD_overlay_x86_64 %command% --skip-launcher --vulkan

Hi, so I've been using Fedora 41 GNOME since release with no issues at all and I've decided to do a new fresh install of Fedora 42 yesterday.

Everything seemed to run well but I've encountered this issue in games that after around 30min I get this weird stutter. Until then everything runs smoothly.

As you can see in the video the stutter only occurs during mouse movement or during camera movement with keyboard. Once the camera moves on it's own and just tracks the character the frametimes are perfectly flat so it does not seem like the fault is on the game but somethings off with the system compositor?

This happens with or without VSync, I've tried with and without VRR, I've tried chaning game settings and also different Proton versions... only thing that helps is to restart the game but then I'll have to do it once again in about 30min.

My suspicion is on the new triple buffering in new GNOME 48 but I have no idea how to turn it off to test.

Any suggestions?

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

Is this launching games through Steam? I had a similar issue launching games through Steam using gamescope and had to set some launch options. Unfortunately I am at work and can't remember what those launch options are but when I get back home I will add them.

Edit launch options:
LD_PRELOAD="" gamescope -ef -W 3840 -H 2160 -r 144 --hdr-enabled --adaptive-sync --mangoapp -- gamemoderun %command%

As others have mentioned I think it was the "LD_PRELOAD=" that actually fixed the issue

This entry was edited (1 month ago)

[Solved, sort of] Keyboard doesn't work after logging in. Fedora


Update: Issue disappeared without doing anything. After just letting my computer sit turned off for a few hours I started it back up to troubleshoot. Now it works again. Something happened to break it and then to unfuck it again without any input from me. Something is unstable and I’m gonna try to figure it out.

Started my PC up today, logged in like normal, but my keyboard wont work after logging in.
Except for the calculator button. None of the keys will actually do anything. But logging in works normally.

Worked fine last night, no updates have run or anything. Where to start diagnosing this? In a way where I won’t need a keyboard?

Fedora 42 KDE

Edit: Keyboard works fine in a live environment on the USB I used to install yesterday. Tried a different keyboard on my main install, and that didn’t work either. So it’s not the keyboard itself at least

This entry was edited (1 month ago)
Unknown parent

lemmy - Link to source

Parptarf

Already checked the i put and that looks to be right.
No slow keys enabled in settings and no response holding down keys for up to 15 seconds.

My keyboard can both use a dongle and BT. But I can’t find it on BT. Other keyboard is the same model, which isn’t ideal but it was worth testing out.

Also, mouse still works. And I’m logged into here on my browser so I can copy commands and stuff.

This entry was edited (1 month ago)
Unknown parent

lemmy - Link to source

Parptarf

Tried turning stuff on, then off, then reset to default. Nothing.

Nothing, except function keys for volume etc. and the calculator keys work when I’m logged in. I can log out and write my password normally.

I can get to a console from the login screen, which tells me to login. But I get incorrect credentials even though they are correct.

This entry was edited (1 month ago)

Decentralization Scoring System


🧮 Decentralization Scoring System (v1.0)


This scoring system evaluates how decentralized and self-hostable a platform is, based on four core metrics.

📊 Scoring Metrics (Total: 100 Points)


Top Provider User Share (30 points): Measures how many users are on the largest instance. Full points if <10%; 0 if >80%.
Top Provider Content Share (30 points): Measures how much content is hosted by the largest instance. Full points if <10%; 0 if >80%.
Ease of Self-Hosting: Server (20 points): Technical ease of running your own backend. Full points for Docker/simple setup with good docs.
Ease of Self-Hosting: User Interface (20 points): Availability and usability of clients. Full points for accessible, FOSS, multi-platform clients.


📋 Example Breakdown (Estimates)

📧 Email (2025)


  • Top Provider User Share: Apple ≈ 53.67% → Score: 4.5/30
  • Top Provider Content Share: Apple likely handles >50% of mail → Score: 4.5/30
  • Self-Hosting: Server: Easy (Leverage email hosting services) → Score: 18/20
  • Self-Hosting: Client: Easy (Thunderbird, K-9, etc.) → Score: 18/20

Total: 45/100


🐹 Lemmy (2025)


  • Top Provider User Share: lemmy.world ≈ 37.17% → Score: 12/30
  • Top Provider Content Share: lemmy.world likely hosts ~37% content → Score: 12/30
  • Self-Hosting: Server: Easy (Docker, low resource) → Score: 18/20
  • Self-Hosting: Client: Good FOSS apps, web UI → Score: 18/20

Total: 60/100


🐘 Mastodon (2025)


  • Top Provider User Share: mastodon.social ≈ 42.7% → Score: 11/30
  • Top Provider Content Share: mastodon.social ≈ 45–50% content → Score: 10/30
  • Self-Hosting: Server: Docker setup, moderate difficulty → Score: 15/20
  • Self-Hosting: Client: Strong ecosystem (Tusky, web, etc.) → Score: 19/20

Total: 55/100


🔵 Bluesky (2025)


  • Top Provider User Share: bsky.social ≈ ~90%+ (very centralized) → Score: 0/30
  • Top Provider Content Share: Nearly all content on bsky.social → Score: 0/30
  • Self-Hosting: Server: PDS hosting possible but very niche → Score: 4/20
  • Self-Hosting: Client: Mostly official client; some 3rd party → Score: 10/20

Total: 14/100


🟥 Reddit (2025)


  • Top Provider User Share: Reddit ≈ 48.4% → Score: 0/30
  • Top Provider Content Share: Reddit hosts a significant portion of user-generated content → Score: 0/30
  • Self-Hosting: Server: Not self-hostable (proprietary platform) → Score: 0/20
  • Self-Hosting: Client: Some unofficial clients available → Score: 3/20

Total: 3/100


How Scores are Calculated

🧑‍🤝‍🧑 How User/Content Share Scores Work


This measures how many users are on the largest provider (or instance).

  • 100% (one provider): If one provider has all the users, it gets 0 points.
  • No provider > 10%: If no provider has more than 10%, it gets full 30 points.
  • Between 10% and 80%: Anything in between is scored on a linear scale.
  • > 80%: If a provider has more than 80%, it gets 0 points.


📊 Formula:


Score = 30 × (1 - (TopProviderShare - 10%) / 70%)
…but only if TopProviderShare is between 10% and 80%.
If below 10%, full 30. If above 80%, zero.

📌 Example:


If one provider has 40% of all users:
Score = 30 × (1 - (40 - 10) / 70) = 30 × (1 - 0.43) = 17.1 points

🖥️ How Ease of Self-Hosting Scores Work


These scores measure how easy it is for individuals or communities to run their own servers or use clients.

This looks at how technically easy it is to run your own backend (e.g., email server, Mastodon server) or User Interface (e.g., web-interface or mobile-app)

  • Very Easy: One-command Docker, low resources, great documentation → 18–20 points
  • Moderate: Docker or manual setup, some config, active community support → 13–17 points
  • Hard: Complex setup, needs regular updates or custom config (e.g. DNS, spam) → 6–12 points
  • Very Hard or Proprietary: Little to no self-hosting support, undocumented → 0–5 points


PS.


This is Version 1.0 so there are likely flaws and mistakes in it, feel free to help create the best version we can I've put it on github.com/NoBadDays/decentral…

in reply to AnonomousWolf

in reply to anothermember

Based on my brief searches yes, but I haven't looked into the example data in great detail.

If you have a good data point for me I can update the examples.

don't like this

in reply to AnonomousWolf

No data I'm afraid but it just doesn't ring true to me, unless there are vast regional differences. It sticks out to me as much as if you'd said that Bing is the largest search engine; I've barely heard of Apple email but almost everyone I know uses Gmail except me, including Apple users I know.
This entry was edited (1 month ago)
in reply to AnonomousWolf

One metric you might want to add is the network effect: how much of a difference does it make to the user experience to join a large instance (or the same instance most of your friends are on) compared to a small or self-hosted one? (Or in other words—does the nature of the platform software potentially incentivize consolidation?)
This entry was edited (1 month ago)

[SOLVED] Power Profile not working on Arch with KDE. Tried everything.


My laptop does support this feature since it was working on Fedora KDE. But jumping over to arch, it seems not to work at all.

1. power-profiles-daemon.service is enabled and running.

● power-profiles-daemon.service - Power Profiles daemon
     Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/power-profiles-daemon.service; enabled; preset: disabled)
     Active: active (running) since <time>; 12min ago
 Invocation: 4f20b3d144584a759b4a6c5ea14aa739
   Main PID: 608 (power-profiles-)
      Tasks: 4 (limit: 6850)
     Memory: 1.6M (peak: 2.8M)
        CPU: 81ms
     CGroup: /system.slice/power-profiles-daemon.service
             └─608 /usr/lib/power-profiles-daemon

Apr 18 11:14:52 berserk-arch systemd[1]: Starting Power Profiles daemon...
Apr 18 11:14:52 berserk-arch systemd[1]: Started Power Profiles daemon.

2. plasma-powerdevil.service is static and running.

● plasma-powerdevil.service - Powerdevil
     Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/user/plasma-powerdevil.service; static)
     Active: active (running) since <time>; 12min ago
 Invocation: 7d72f24a0e5e4a74889a3895b91eb51c
   Main PID: 1074 (org_kde_powerde)
      Tasks: 9 (limit: 6850)
     Memory: 10.6M (peak: 11.4M)
        CPU: 1.391s
     CGroup: /user.slice/user-1000.slice/user@1000.service/background.slice/plasma-powerdevil.service
             └─1074 /usr/lib/org_kde_powerdevil

3. upower.service is enabled and running.

● upower.service - Daemon for power management
     Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/upower.service; enabled; preset: disabled)
     Active: active (running) since <time>; 12min ago
 Invocation: 7aa43a43146346e383c961ce12cc9ded
       Docs: man:upowerd(8)
   Main PID: 540 (upowerd)
      Tasks: 4 (limit: 6850)
     Memory: 5.1M (peak: 5.9M)
        CPU: 251ms
     CGroup: /system.slice/upower.service
             └─540 /usr/lib/upowerd

I've already tried to to put
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="amd_pstate=active"

as a kernel argument that doesn't seem to do anything as well. I can't figure it out. The power management settings work tho. Any idea what's wrong? Thanks.
This entry was edited (1 month ago)

Canonical Releases Ubuntu 25.04 Plucky Puffin | Canonical


Why do you use the distro you use?


Title is quite self-explanatory, reason I wonder is because every now and then I think to myself "maybe distro X is good, maybe I should try it at some point", but then I think a bit more and realise it kind of doesn't make a difference - the only thing I feel kinda matters is rolling vs non-rolling release patterns.

My guiding principles when choosing distro are that I run arch on my desktop because it's what I'm used to (and AUR is nice to have), and Debian on servers because some people said it's good and I the non-rolling release gives me peace of mind that I don't have to update very often. But I could switch both of these out and I really don't think it would make a difference at all.

in reply to aleq

I use OpenSUSE Tumbleweed because it focuses more on KDE than GNOME, is quite stable, and has snapshots to roll back to in case something does go wrong. I don't want to mess with my OS, I just want it to work reliably. I do use Debian on some devices (like my server) but the software (especially in terms of GUI apps) is very outdated and it doesn't come with the other features of OpenSUSE out of the box.
This entry was edited (1 month ago)
in reply to aleq

I wanted a mainstream but not Ubuntu, and one that was preferably offered with KDE Plasma pre-packaged.

So I ended up deciding between Debian and Fedora, and what tipped me to Fedora was thinking: Well SELinux sounds neat, quite close to what I learned about Mandatory Access Control in the lectures, and besides, maybe it will be useful in my work knowing one that is close to RHEL.

Now I work in a network team that has been using Debian for 30 years, lol. Kind of ironic, but I don't regret it, now I just know both.

And fighting SELinux was kind of fun too. I modified my local policies so that systemd can run screen because I wanted to create a Minecraft service to which I could connect as admin, even if it was started by systemd.

This entry was edited (1 month ago)

Hi, I need in-person help from a computer whiz-can travel


Hello!

So, I live on a bus. We travel around, it's pretty great. I don't have a laptop or a mailing address that works, so getting certain things done is difficult, and I have two things I need help with.

I installed a solar system a while back, with an older charge controller a friend recommended. I more recently upgraded the batteries to lithium irons. So now this controller requires reprogramming, and to do so you have to plug an RJ45 (pretty sure that's the name) into it, and probably download some shitty chinese spyware program to fiddle with it. Their newer models bluetooth and require an app of course.

The other thing is either much trickier or impossible, and while I've booted up dumpstered laptops with thumbdrive linux before (and found the homemade blowjob video, heh) I've no idea how to even go about fiddling with this.

It's a (shitty chinese) dash/backup/security camera system. It's been referred to as a 'pizza box' system by someone who hates money. It might have a wifi chip onboard, but I can't figure out it does or not.

I'd like to flash it to run linux, if possible, and put some actually useable video monitoring/porting/editing maybe programs on there. The current UI is unusable even when it's cooperating. Like if there were an accident, I'd just basically be bluffing. Sure the data's probably there, but it's in a format that won't register on any device I've plugged the SD card into. I need it to export to filetype I can use with an ipad, which is the only computer we have aboard.

If any of this sounds like a fun or interesting challenge, I can throw some dollars at you. Or trade work! We do auto/diesel/bicycle mechanic work, welding, sewing, leather and general handy shit.

in reply to DempstersBox

Sell it and get something with an existing FOSS firmware. And a laptop (dumpster ones work too). What you're asking for is $1000 upfront, at minimum, with no satisfaction guarantee.

If you're willing to do most of the work yourself, I'd suggest finding an official firmware update and running binwalk on it. Also take good photos of the PCB and look for datasheets of every chip. Then you'll be able to pose specific questions and maybe get decent help.

Still, it's probably best to set up ONVIF client software or something.

This entry was edited (1 month ago)

Canonical Releases Ubuntu 25.04 Plucky Puffin


Hardware enablement highlights
Canonical continues to enable Ubuntu across a broad range of hardware. The introduction of a new ARM64 Desktop ISO makes it easier for early adopters to install Ubuntu Desktop on ARM64 virtual machines and laptops.

Qualcomm Technologies is proud to collaborate with Canonical and is fully committed to enabling a seamless Ubuntu experience on devices powered by Snapdragon®. *Ubuntu’s new ARM64 ISO paves the way for future Snapdragon enablement, enabling us to drive AI innovation and adoption together.

Leendert van Doorn, SVP, Engineering at Qualcomm Technologies, Inc.*

This entry was edited (1 month ago)

[solved] What ports do I need to open for mDNS?


EDIT: The bad solution is to unblock UDP port 5353 but the port has to be source port, not destination port. (--sport flag) See the now modified rules. The issue is that this is very insecure (see this stackexchange question and comments) but obviously better than no firewall at all because at least I'm blocking TCP traffic.

The proper solution (other than using glibc and installing nss-mdns package) is to open a port with netcat (nc) in the background (using &) and then listen with dig on that port using the -b flag.

port="42069"
nc -l -p "$port" > /dev/null || exit 1 &
dig somehostname.local @224.0.0.241 -p 5353 -b "0.0.0.0#${port}"

Then we need to remember to kill the background process. The DNS reply will now be sent to port 42069, so we can just open it with this iptables rule:
-A INPUT -p udp -m udp --dport 42069 -j ACCEPT

---->END OF EDIT.

I want to setup iptables firewall but if I do that, it blocks multicast DNS which I need. I am using command

dig "somehostname.local" @224.0.0.251 -p 5353

to get the IP through mDNS and these are my iptables rules (from superuser.com):
*filter

# drop forwarded traffic. you only need it of you are running a router
:FORWARD DROP [0:0]

# Accept all outgoing traffic
:OUTPUT ACCEPT [623107326:1392470726908]


# Block all incoming traffic, all protocols (tcp, udp, icmp, ...) everything.
# This is the base rule we can define exceptions from.
:INPUT DROP [11486:513044]

# do not block already running connections (important for outgoing)
-A INPUT -m state --state RELATED,ESTABLISHED -j ACCEPT

# do not block localhost
-A INPUT -i lo -j ACCEPT

# do not block icmp for ping and network diagnostics. Remove if you do not want this
# note that -p icmp has no effect on ipv6, so we need an extra ipv6 rule
-4 -A INPUT -p icmp -j ACCEPT
-6 -A INPUT -p ipv6-icmp -j ACCEPT

# allow some incoming ports for services that should be public available
# -A INPUT -p tcp -m tcp --dport 22 -j ACCEPT
# -A INPUT -p udp -m udp --dport 5353 -j ACCEPT # does not help
-A OUTPUT -p udp -m udp --sport 5353 -j ACCEPT # SOLVES THE ISSUE BUT IS INSECURE - not recommended


# commit changes
COMMIT

Any help is welcome 😀
This entry was edited (1 month ago)
in reply to TMP_NKcYUEoM7kXg4qYe

As I said, I’m not sure about that.

Still, dig won’t be listening on port 5353 for the answer, it’ll open some random port, so the firewall rule for 5353 will not apply. And the conntrack rule, is my guess, also doesn’t apply, because what I think the conntrack module does is:

  • Remembers about the outgoing connection (i.e. when dig sends its udp packet out): source port, destination IP and port
  • Check incoming packets against this info, and lets them through if they appear to be an answer

Since the outgoing packet is going to multicast, and the incoming packet (I suspect) is coming from the IP of the machine that answers (a different IP therefore), conntrack wouldn’t be able to figure that out. The answer doesn’t match the outgoing packet that dig sends. Since this is just a hunch, I would try to confirm this by looking at the traffic in e.g. wireshark.

in reply to gnuhaut

Edit 2: Actually dig picks a random port to send the mDNS request from and sends it to 224.0.0.251:5353 (multicast IP). The correct host then replies from port 5353 to the previously picked random port from dig. But I found that you can specify the port with dig -b IP#port so I think that should help. I kinda don't have the time to try it out currently though.

end of edit2.

well I randomly solved it by adding

-A OUTPUT -p udp -m udp --sport 5353 -j ACCEPT

Which basically means you are right. The destination port is just some randomly picked number (checked wireshark), so I have to filter based on source port, which is 5353.

Edit: Also thanks for your help!

This entry was edited (1 month ago)

crc32sum - Calculate CRC32 for each file (Bash using 7z) - bugfix


Hi all. This is an update on my script extracting CRC32 checksum from the 7z commandline tool. The output should be similar to how the md5sum tool outputs, the checksum and the file name/path.

The initial version of this script was actually broken. It would not output all files if a directory was included (wrong counting of files through argument number). Also filenames that contained a space would only output the first part until the space character. All of this rookie mistakes are solved. Plus there is a progress bar showing what files are processed at the moment, instead showing a blank screen until command is finished. This is useful if there are a lot of files or some big files to process.

Yes, I'm aware there are other ways to accomplish this task. I would be happy to see your solution too. And if you encounter a problem, please report.

crc32sum:

(Note: Beehaw does not like the "less than" character and breaks the post completley. So replace the line cat %%EOF with or copy it from the Github Gist link below:)

\#!/usr/bin/env bash

if [[ "${#}" -eq 0 ]] || [[ "${1}" == '-h' ]]; then
    self="${0##*/}"
    cat %%EOF
usage: ${self} files...

Calculate CRC32 for each file.

positional arguments:
  file or dir       one or multiple file names or paths, if this is a directory
                    then traverse it recursively to find all files
EOF
    exit 0
fi

7z h -bsp2 -- "${@}" |
    \grep -v -E '^[ \t]+.*/' |
    \sed -n -e '/^-------- -------------  ------------$/,$p' |
    \sed '1d' |
    \grep --before-context "9999999" '^-------- -------------  ------------$' |
    \head -n -1 |
    \awk '$2=""; {print $0}'
This entry was edited (1 month ago)
in reply to thingsiplay

I was actually looking for something like this a few days ago. This is pretty useful as there's no crc32sum readily available on linux. Thanks for that!

I would personally change a few things, mostly small nitpicks to be fair.
1. Prefer [[ ]] over [ ] for tests. Source: shellcheck.net/wiki/SC2292
2. Use $0 instead of hardcoding crc32sum in the help messages. That way it will work even if someone names the script differently
3. You could exit 0 after the help and end the if there instead of having the whole work being done in an else.

As I said, nitpicks!

This entry was edited (1 month ago)
in reply to acidrain42

Agreed on your points and usually I do 2. (name) and 3. (exit instead else) sometimes. For the [[ over [, it usually matters only for word splitting and globbing behavior, if you do not enclose the variables between quotes I believe. But looking into the shellcheck entry, looks like there is no disadvantage. I may start doing this by default in the future too.

So thanks for the suggestions, I will update the script in a minute.

Edit: I always forget that Beehaw will break if I use the "lower than" character like in
, so I replaced it in the post with cat %%EOF which requires to change that line. And the example usage is gone for the moment.

Edit2 (21 hours later): I totally forgot to remove the indentation and else-branch. While doing so I also added a special option -h, in case someone tries that. Not a big deal, but thought this should be.

This entry was edited (1 month ago)

Sharing some of my newest small Bash scripts using 7z


New version for toarchive: gist.github.com/thingsiplay/88…

(I have added a new version of the script. The old one is renamed to 'toarchive-old'. The new script has some guard rails and more checks. Also original files can be removed automatically on success, like gzip does. But an option -r must be explicitly given here, like toarchive zip -r file.txt. Directories can be removed too, but the option uppercase -R is required here, as in toarchive zip -R my_dir. Have in mind this will use rm -r system command. Although some guard rails are in place to prevent massive fail, you should be very careful. Note that no file is removed, if -r or -R are not used at all.)


I always write little scripts and aliases that help me from time to time. I just wanted to share some of my newest simple scripts. There are probably better or easier ways to do, but writing and testing them is fun too. Both make use of the 7z command, a commandline archive tool. Posting it here, so anyone can steal them. They are freshly written, so maybe there are edge cases.

crc32sum:

(Update April 17, 2025: Note this is a new version that addresses some issues. The old version I had posted was broken.)

\#!/usr/bin/env bash

# Calculate CRC32 for each file.
if [ "${#}" -eq 0 ]; then
    echo "crc32sum files..."
    echo "crc32sum *.smc"
else
    7z h -bsp2 -- "${@}" |
        \grep -v -E '^[ \t]+.*/' |
        \sed -n -e '/^-------- -------------  ------------$/,$p' |
        \sed '1d' |
        \grep --before-context "9999999" '^-------- -------------  ------------$' |
        \head -n -1 |
        awk '$2=""; {print $0}'
fi

toarchive:
\#!/usr/bin/env bash

# Create one archive for each file or folder.
if [ "${#}" -eq -1 ]; then
    echo "toarchive ext files..."
    echo "toarchive zip *.smc"
else
    ext="${1}"
    shift
    opt=()
    stop_parse=false

    for arg in "${@}"; do
        if [ ! "${stop_parse}" == true ]; then
            if [ "${arg}" == "--" ]; then
                stop_parse=true
                opt+=(--)
                continue
            elif [[ "${arg}" =~ ^- ]]; then
                opt+=("${arg}")
                continue
            fi
        fi
        file="${arg}"

        7z a "${opt[@]}" "${file}.${ext}" "${file}"
    done
fi
This entry was edited (1 month ago)

Is there an easy way to create blocklist of post or comment for other people?


I'll bring you straight into my mind: I was scrolling throught the n-th depressing post of the ~~day~~ hour and I thought "If I answer that post/comment by #negativity, will other people be able to filter out this content using my answer?" If not, how could we build some sort of blocklist for people to curate there experience on the fediverse.

I know I can block key word like "politics" "Trump" "Elon" but sometimes it doesn't have a precised word yet use human can categorise it easily.

don't like this

in reply to pseudo

I don’t agree with this particular usecase. Because I’ve personally experienced, people who shun “negativity” meaning they just completely ignore people’s suffering which often adds a devastating layer of invisibility to oppression. But probably hopefully this isn’t your case and it’s more about “doom and gloom” than people’s reality of suffering.

But anyways, I do agree that blocklists are probably a feature that lemmy needs.

This entry was edited (1 month ago)

don't like this

Getting used to Helix


I'm leaving text editors like vscode/codium behind to learn something more modular, like Helix. I really wanna get used to. What advices can you give me to practice? I know that there is a :tutor command, I'm almost done with it. Do anyone know if there are exercices to practice? Im looking something similar to Ruby koans, a list of excersices to solve like "puzzles" but to Helix.
in reply to oni ᓚᘏᗢ

Not quite what you were asking for, but there is tomgroenwoldt.github.io/helix-…

It's quite good for letting you know about things you didn't know you could do, but sometimes it tells me I'm wrong because I'd do it a different way - e.g. I'd go to line 13 by :13 but it wants 13G.

Also, from within helix you can do space ? to get the list of commands and any bindings they're on.

USB Tethering from Android just stopped working [Fedora 42]


Upon upgrading from Fedora 41 to 42, I noticed that the USB tethering just doesn't work

networkctl recognizes the device as "wwan" now, instead of "ether". If I load up a previous kernel, USB tethering works normally.

This seems to be a change in the kernel, and probably won't be reverted in the future. What do I do?

More detail in this comment

You know what? Fuck this. I just backed my shit up and installed Debian. Still, please try to look into this, this could be a problem for many others

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

I've been working on a phone tethering router so might have some insight here for you. Android can use CDC or RNDIS to tether. It depends on your phone which ones gonna be used. Try to figure out which one its using (can do this by watching logs when plugging in usb usually itll say there which type of device is connecting). When i was doing the router i had to make sure cdc_ether and rndis_host kernel modules were both loaded to ensure compatibility. It might be as simple as manually loading a module in the new kernel version. Although I'm not exactly sure how it'll work on fedora i was doing this all on OPNsense.

What i was doing was tethering the phone to a router (old thinkpad running router OS) then passing that connection on to its network and connecting to the Access Point on the network with my laptop. I still havent fully worked out the kinks yet but its going pretty well. Sorry i can't be more specific for your case, but hopefully it gives you some terms you can use to google more effectively at the least.

This entry was edited (1 month ago)
in reply to IHave69XiBucks

Below are the kernel logs for when I connect the USB on F42 (new kernel)

::: spoiler new(the one that doesn't work)

Apr 17 hh:mm:15 fedora kernel: usb 5-8: USB disconnect, device number 6
Apr 17 hh:mm:15 fedora kernel: rndis_host 5-8:1.0 wwp0s29f7u8: unregister 'rndis_host' usb-0000:00:1d.7-8, Mobile Broadband RNDIS device
Apr 17 hh:mm:15 fedora systemd-networkd[2818]: wwp0s29f7u8: Link DOWN
Apr 17 hh:mm:15 fedora avahi-daemon[1092]: Interface wwp0s29f7u8.IPv6 no longer relevant for mDNS.
Apr 17 hh:mm:15 fedora systemd-networkd[2818]: wwp0s29f7u8: Lost carrier
Apr 17 hh:mm:15 fedora avahi-daemon[1092]: Leaving mDNS multicast group on interface wwp0s29f7u8.IPv6 with address fe80::acfa:54ff:fee2:5884.
Apr 17 hh:mm:15 fedora avahi-daemon[1092]: Withdrawing address record for fe80::acfa:54ff:fee2:5884 on wwp0s29f7u8.
Apr 17 hh:mm:20 fedora kernel: usb 5-8: new high-speed USB device number 7 using ehci-pci
Apr 17 hh:mm:20 fedora kernel: usb 5-8: New USB device found, idVendor=2717, idProduct=ff88, bcdDevice= 4.19
Apr 17 hh:mm:20 fedora kernel: usb 5-8: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
Apr 17 hh:mm:20 fedora kernel: usb 5-8: Product: Redmi Note 11
Apr 17 hh:mm:20 fedora kernel: usb 5-8: Manufacturer: Xiaomi
Apr 17 hh:mm:20 fedora kernel: usb 5-8: SerialNumber: 2ce0eff1
Apr 17 hh:mm:20 fedora kernel: rndis_host 5-8:1.0 wwan0: register 'rndis_host' at usb-0000:00:1d.7-8, Mobile Broadband RNDIS device, 7a:03:3c:1e:05:d2
Apr 17 hh:mm:20 fedora mtp-probe[3287]: checking bus 5, device 7: "/sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.7/usb5/5-8"
Apr 17 hh:mm:20 fedora mtp-probe[3287]: bus: 5, device: 7 was not an MTP device
Apr 17 hh:mm:20 fedora kernel: rndis_host 5-8:1.0 wwp0s29f7u8: renamed from wwan0
Apr 17 hh:mm:20 fedora systemd-networkd[2818]: wwan0: Interface name change detected, renamed to wwp0s29f7u8.
Apr 17 hh:mm:20 fedora mtp-probe[3291]: checking bus 5, device 7: "/sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.7/usb5/5-8"
Apr 17 hh:mm:20 fedora mtp-probe[3291]: bus: 5, device: 7 was not an MTP device
Apr 17 hh:mm:24 fedora ModemManager[1186]: <msg> [base-manager] couldn't check support for device '/sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.7/usb5/5-8': not supported by any plugin

:::

And these are the logs on the old kernel that still works:

::: spoiler old(the one that works)

Apr 17 hh:mm:15 fedora kernel: usb 5-8: new high-speed USB device number 5 using ehci-pci
Apr 17 hh:mm:15 fedora kernel: usb 5-8: New USB device found, idVendor=2717, idProduct=ff88, bcdDevice= 4.19
Apr 17 hh:mm:15 fedora kernel: usb 5-8: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
Apr 17 hh:mm:15 fedora kernel: usb 5-8: Product: Redmi Note 11
Apr 17 hh:mm:15 fedora kernel: usb 5-8: Manufacturer: Xiaomi
Apr 17 hh:mm:15 fedora kernel: usb 5-8: SerialNumber: 2ce0eff1
Apr 17 hh:mm:15 fedora kernel: rndis_host 5-8:1.0 usb0: register 'rndis_host' at usb-0000:00:1d.7-8, RNDIS device, 82:1c:ae:65:4a:34
Apr 17 hh:mm:15 fedora NetworkManager[1495]: <info>  [1744877835.2127] manager: (usb0): new Ethernet device (/org/freedesktop/NetworkManager/Devices/7)
Apr 17 hh:mm:15 fedora mtp-probe[4001]: checking bus 5, device 5: "/sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.7/usb5/5-8"
Apr 17 hh:mm:15 fedora mtp-probe[4001]: bus: 5, device: 5 was not an MTP device
Apr 17 hh:mm:15 fedora kernel: rndis_host 5-8:1.0 enp0s29f7u8: renamed from usb0
Apr 17 hh:mm:15 fedora NetworkManager[1495]: <info>  [1744877835.2356] device (usb0): interface index 7 renamed iface from 'usb0' to 'enp0s29f7u8'
Apr 17 hh:mm:15 fedora NetworkManager[1495]: <info>  [1744877835.2456] device (enp0s29f7u8): state change: unmanaged -> unavailable (reason 'managed', managed-type: 'external')
Apr 17 hh:mm:15 fedora NetworkManager[1495]: <info>  [1744877835.2479] device (enp0s29f7u8): carrier: link connected
Apr 17 hh:mm:15 fedora NetworkManager[1495]: <info>  [1744877835.2484] device (enp0s29f7u8): state change: unavailable -> disconnected (reason 'carrier-changed', managed-type: 'full')
Apr 17 hh:mm:15 fedora NetworkManager[1495]: <info>  [1744877835.2497] policy: auto-activating connection 'Wired connection 2' (1cd60103-249a-3a35-b7e8-c2ac149f67ab)
Apr 17 hh:mm:15 fedora NetworkManager[1495]: <info>  [1744877835.2501] device (enp0s29f7u8): Activation: starting connection 'Wired connection 2' (1cd60103-249a-3a35-b7e8-c2ac149f67ab)
Apr 17 hh:mm:15 fedora NetworkManager[1495]: <info>  [1744877835.2502] device (enp0s29f7u8): state change: disconnected -> prepare (reason 'none', managed-type: 'full')
Apr 17 hh:mm:15 fedora NetworkManager[1495]: <info>  [1744877835.2505] device (enp0s29f7u8): state change: prepare -> config (reason 'none', managed-type: 'full')
Apr 17 hh:mm:15 fedora NetworkManager[1495]: <info>  [1744877835.2566] device (enp0s29f7u8): state change: config -> ip-config (reason 'none', managed-type: 'full')
Apr 17 hh:mm:15 fedora NetworkManager[1495]: <info>  [1744877835.2579] dhcp4 (enp0s29f7u8): activation: beginning transaction (timeout in 45 seconds)
Apr 17 hh:mm:15 fedora avahi-daemon[1380]: Joining mDNS multicast group on interface enp0s29f7u8.IPv6 with address fe80::78eb:ce85:f0d8:dda6.
Apr 17 hh:mm:15 fedora avahi-daemon[1380]: New relevant interface enp0s29f7u8.IPv6 for mDNS.
Apr 17 hh:mm:15 fedora avahi-daemon[1380]: Registering new address record for fe80::78eb:ce85:f0d8:dda6 on enp0s29f7u8.*.
Apr 17 hh:mm:15 fedora mtp-probe[4003]: checking bus 5, device 5: "/sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.7/usb5/5-8"
Apr 17 hh:mm:15 fedora mtp-probe[4003]: bus: 5, device: 5 was not an MTP device
Apr 17 hh:mm:17 fedora NetworkManager[1495]: <info>  [1744877837.2676] dhcp4 (enp0s29f7u8): state changed new lease, address=192.168.244.164, acd pending
Apr 17 hh:mm:17 fedora NetworkManager[1495]: <info>  [1744877837.4372] dhcp4 (enp0s29f7u8): state changed new lease, address=192.168.244.164
Apr 17 hh:mm:17 fedora avahi-daemon[1380]: Joining mDNS multicast group on interface enp0s29f7u8.IPv4 with address 192.168.244.164.
Apr 17 hh:mm:17 fedora avahi-daemon[1380]: New relevant interface enp0s29f7u8.IPv4 for mDNS.
Apr 17 hh:mm:17 fedora avahi-daemon[1380]: Registering new address record for 192.168.244.164 on enp0s29f7u8.IPv4.
Apr 17 hh:mm:17 fedora NetworkManager[1495]: <info>  [1744877837.4400] policy: set 'Wired connection 2' (enp0s29f7u8) as default for IPv4 routing and DNS
Apr 17 hh:mm:17 fedora systemd-resolved[1315]: enp0s29f7u8: Bus client set default route setting: no
Apr 17 hh:mm:17 fedora NetworkManager[1495]: <info>  [1744877837.4676] device (enp0s29f7u8): state change: ip-config -> ip-check (reason 'none', managed-type: 'full')
Apr 17 hh:mm:17 fedora NetworkManager[1495]: <info>  [1744877837.4739] device (enp0s29f7u8): state change: ip-check -> secondaries (reason 'none', managed-type: 'full')
Apr 17 hh:mm:17 fedora NetworkManager[1495]: <info>  [1744877837.4771] device (enp0s29f7u8): state change: secondaries -> activated (reason 'none', managed-type: 'full')
Apr 17 hh:mm:17 fedora NetworkManager[1495]: <info>  [1744877837.4790] device (enp0s29f7u8): Activation: successful, device activated.

:::

{clock details changed to hh:mm for privacy}

One thing I notice is the new upgrade trying to use ModemManager rather than NetworkManager. The device is also defined as "Mobile Broadband", instead of "Ethernet".

Loading the kernel module with modprobe, as another commenter suggested, didn't make any change.

Another thing: An excerpt from the kernel changelog at cdn.kernel.org/pub/linux/kerne…

rndis_host: Flag RNDIS modems as WWAN devices

[ Upstream commit 67d1a8956d2d62fe6b4c13ebabb57806098511d8 ]

Set FLAG_WWAN instead of FLAG_ETHERNET for RNDIS interfaces on Mobile
Broadband Modems, as opposed to regular Ethernet adapters.

Otherwise NetworkManager gets confused, misjudges the device type,
and wouldn't know it should connect a modem to get the device to work.
What would be the result depends on ModemManager version -- older
ModemManager would end up disconnecting a device after an unsuccessful
probe attempt (if it connected without needing to unlock a SIM), while
a newer one might spawn a separate PPP connection over a tty interface
instead, resulting in a general confusion and no end of chaos.

The only way to get this work reliably is to fix the device type
and have good enough version ModemManager (or equivalent).

I am so lost xD
This entry was edited (1 month ago)
in reply to maliciousonion

You're not alone in this:

discussion.fedoraproject.org/t…

discussion.fedoraproject.org/t…

bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.c…

lore.kernel.org/all/e0df2d85-1…

When Debian upgrades to this kernel version you might run into the issue again. Unless there is a fix deployed before then.

This entry was edited (1 month ago)

Help me understand DSP on Linux?


And also on computers generally lol.

The situation: I'm trying out Bitwig on my geriatric computer, which is running Linux Mint. It seems that I can't do very much without spiking the DSP, leading to awful glitchiness in playback. However, according to btop, the CPU (i7 4770) load isn't breaking 30%, spread evenly across the cores.

Things I have tried:
- uninstalling speech dispatcher, which helped
- tweaking the pipewire config, which doesn't seem to have helped much

So... what is the bottleneck here?

EDIT: the (main) issue was that my user didn't have real time priority permissions. An edit to /etc/security/limits.conf has improved things immeasurably.

This entry was edited (1 month ago)
in reply to Andrzej3K [none/use name]

One of the things you run into with audio production software is that in order to maintain accuracy with respect to phasing between channels, they require very accurate timing, this usually comes at the expense of very high interrupt rates and context switching and under the best of circumstances this is hardware intensive, more so with older processors that don't have single instructions for storing the entire register set or restoring the entire register set to the stack with one instruction as many modern CPUs do. So hate to say it but you may need to upgrade to something less geriatric. You might also try a real-time kernel, it might allow the application to keep things sync'd up with less hardware interrupts though it will rely more on software interrupts do do the same. Unfortunately, I have found that while I can get the performance I require on my six year old processor using a realtime kernel, it has come with a sacrifice of stability, that is to say real time on my hardware at least has not been terribly stable.

This is what resistance to the digital coup looks like


in reply to cm0002

in reply to cm0002

She touches on the aspect of monetization and claims that "you could save money by being on the Fediverse".

Yes, in theory it is possible. In practice this is something that only is available for the already-famous journalists who have enough pull to move their audience from Substack to their own property.

For everyone else, the Fediverse is (a) too small and (b) too "anti-money" to encourage professionals to even try making a living here. They stay on Substack for the same reason that video creators stay on YouTube: it's a horrible master, but at least it lets them pay their bills.

This entry was edited (1 month ago)

supersquirrel doesn't like this.

in reply to amateurcrastinator

I don't mind paying for software either. I own Affinity & Zbrush licenses. However I run the risk that in the future, these products may be sold to the highest bidder and development stalls (as it happened a couple years ago in the case of Zbrush) or interoperability suffers. When this happens, you have to go through learning a different program, and DCCs are... huge. Whole factories. It's very hard to reinvest the time necessary to learn them inside out and be proficient again. It is also impossible to contribute to a non-open codebase. Proprietary programs are ticking bombs.
This entry was edited (1 month ago)

Why I'm breaking up with Windows


I'm going back to Linux after ~8 years of maining Windows. I was a Linux desktop and server user back in college and did all my dev on there. When I got my first job, I bought a better laptop and started maining Windows.

I am going back to Linux for three main reasons: I hate the Windows 11 UI, I'm increasingly paranoid about privacy/security, and the development experience for native software has sucked for a long time.

Besides the obvious downward spiral in UI since Windows 7, it's also become unreliable and slow. Some days, File explorer just won't open. Others, it takes a full minute to load my "home" view, and some others I get weird bugs where the color settings are broken or I can't actually click on folders anymore. The start menu is slow to open when pressing the Windows key, windows search is slow to index and sometimes looks stuff up on Bing instead of opening a file. The default apps (calculator, image viewer, media player) have been getting replaced with slower UWP versions with flatter and flatter UI. Finally, Windows is increasingly pushing AI stuff onto the platform, which leads me to privacy/security

I am increasingly paranoid these days about privacy and security. While I don't have any outstanding issues with security at large, I don't trust Microsoft's telemetry collection and I especially don't trust anything that gets sucked up into Windows Recall's AI Black hole. This hasn't been an issue, but I've always wondered why Microsoft hasn't made it simpler to create containerized applications with AppX/Windows SDK. It seems like it should be way easier to create a flatpak-like sandboxed application with any API (Win32, WinForms, WPF, or any language really).

Believe it or not, Windows is a good development platform, these days, unless you're trying to write Windows software. Microsoft, under Satya Nadella, has been taking care of its developer community and making a lot of tools free and some open source. vcpkg has revolutionized my C++ development and I've always been fond of many MSVC extensions such as SAL. There's a lot of pros and cons, but I generally prefer NT API calls over POSIX API calls (which are far more long in the tooth than NT at this point). That said, I tend to just write cross-platform "modern" C++ and don't make too many system calls anymore. I will miss Visual Studio (and the ease of SLN/Vcxproj files), and it seems like the only comparable C++ IDE available for Linux is CLion. I'm actually a fan of DirectX and HLSL over OpenGL and Vulkan: Microsoft has made a lot of really great first party libraries/tools available for DirectX that make it a really fun API to work with when you include DirectXTK. I am one of the rare few users who actually enjoys PowerShell; I prefer piping typed, structured data over piping streams of bytes. I also really hate sh/zsh/bash syntax.

That said: Microsoft has utterly lost the plot on native windows application development. They release a new UI Framework for C# and Whatever the latest managed C++ framework is every 3 or so years, and then immediately fail to support it, subtly changing XAML syntax or .Net namespaces so that your old UWP or WPF code is strangely not compatible anymore. To me, what is most telling about Microsoft's level of commitment to its newest frameworks is the fact that they are still supporting WinForms with modern, cross platform .Net builds, meaning that you can use modern C# and .Net features in a runtime that is supposed to have been replaced by their XAML products a long time ago. The only really viable way to write a DirectX application, and the only way that has any official documentation on it, is STILL to use the original Win32 APIs to create a window and manage IO.

So anyways, I'm not as zealous about Linux as most people on the internet are; I still think Windows is a good software development platform and maybe Microsoft can turn the ship around some day, but I doubt it.

in reply to shortrounddev

the development experience for native software has sucked for a long time.


For as long as Windows has existed, I have found its APIs to be noisy, awkward, and generally unpleasant to use. It was a major part of why I switched my development focus to Unix a long time ago. I guess this is a matter of personal taste; I wonder how you'll feel about the APIs more commonly used on Linux after five or ten years of using them full-time.

Despite a few niggles (I don't care for Bourne-style shell syntax or Windows shell syntax) I have found my productivity to be better and more enjoyable since the switch. Nowadays, benefits include everything that comes with an open-source ecosystem, like the software install/update model of Linux distros, and the ability to solve or work around library/OS problems myself if I can't wait for someone else to fix something.

And, of course, having a privacy-respecting platform for myself and my users is important to me.

In short, I'm happier here. Welcome.

By the way, if you do cross-platform desktop app development in native code, give Qt a try. It does an excellent job overall.

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

they are still supporting WinForms with modern, cross platform .Net builds, meaning that you can use modern C# and .Net features in a runtime that is supposed to have been replaced by their XAML products a long time ago.


Microsoft is all about corporate clients, that's why their Windows is backwards compatible down to Windows 95, because there is some big corporation that buys the corporate license in bulk and runs some corporate Windows 95 accounting application on it.

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

Yeah no, Putin is a different story

He doesn't give a shit about dead soldiers in body bags. Almost noone in Russia sees that, or if they do they'll be told som lie about it. Its much simpler than in the US

You know what's not simpler? Demographics. As I recently read somewhere, demographics is like a freight train, slow, but all of the sudden you hear this horn bare and you're splattered under it.

Putin lost now about a million men of working age. That is a huge gash that will come back to haunt Russia. Not Putin, mind you, he'll be dead and gone within a few years. Russia, though, is thoroughly fucked for the next decades. It already has low population issues before, and their demographics chart at this point is a fucking rollercoaster. Their population is already relatively old, and with the loss of about a million men, in a country largely dependent on mineral extraction and sale, it will be ugly.

in reply to Phoenixz

He's losing men over 50 years old that are left out and are garbage of society. They wouldn't be participating in any demographic activities anyway.

I bet there are millions of Americans like this too. Coal miners who lost the job, casino players, heavy drinkers. For a hefty sum of money and a chance to be important again they'd do anything. You really underestimate how quick they can be turned into a cannon fodder and how little the society will miss them.

Source: I lived in Russia.

This entry was edited (1 month ago)

Security is a mess, and why a threat model is important


This post is long and kind of a rant. I don't expect many to read the whole thing, but there's a conclusion at the bottom.

On the surface, recommended security practices are simple:
- Store all your credentials in a password manager
- Use two factor authentication on all accounts

However, it raises a few questions.
- Should you access your 2FA codes on the same device as the password manager?
- Should you store them in the password manager itself?

This is the beginning of where a threat model is needed. If your threat model does not include protections against unwanted access to your device, it is safe for you to store access your 2FA codes on the same device as your password manager, or even in the password manager itself.

So, to keep it simple, say you store your 2FA in your password manager. There's a few more questions:
- Where do you store the master password for the password manager?
- Where do you store 2FA recovery codes?

The master password for the password manager could be written down on a piece of paper and stored in a safe, but that would be inconvenient when you want to access your passwords. So, a better solution is to just remember your password. Passphrases are easier to remember than passwords, so we'll use one of those.

Your 2FA recovery codes are something that are needed if you lose access to your real 2FA codes. Most websites just say "Store this in a secure place". This isn't something you want to store in the same place as those (in this case our password manager), and it's not something you will access often, so it's safe to write it down on a piece of paper and lock it in a safe.

Good so far, you have a fairly simple system to keep your accounts safe from some threats. But, new problems arise:
- What happens if you forget your master passphrase?
- What happens if others need access to your password manager?

The problem with remembering your passphrase is that it's possible to forget it, no matter how many times you repeat it to yourself. Besides naturally forgetting it, things like injuries can arise which can cause you to forget the passphrase. Easy enough to fix, though. We can just keep a copy of the passphrase in the safe, just in case we forget it.

If someone else needs to access certain credentials in your password manager, for example a wife that needs to verify bank information using your account, storing a copy of the password is a good idea here too. Since she is a trusted party, you can give her access to the safe in case of emergencies.

The system we have is good. If the safe is stolen or destroyed, you still have the master passphrase memorized to change the master passphrase and regenerate the 2FA security codes. The thief who stole the safe doesn't have your password manager's data, so the master passphrase is useless. However, our troubles aren't over yet:
- How do you store device credentials?
- How do you keep the password manager backed up?

Your password manager has to have some device in order to access it. Whether it's a phone, computer, tablet, laptop, or website, there needs to be some device used to access it. That device needs to be as secure as your password manager, otherwise accessing the password manager becomes a risk. This means using full disk encryption for the device, and a strong login passphrase. However, that means we have 2 more passwords to take care of that can't be stored in the password manager. We access those often, so we can't write them down and store them in the safe, Remembering two more passphrases complicates things and makes forgetting much more likely. Where do we store those passphrases?

One solution is removing the passwords altogether. Using a hardware security key, you can authenticate your disk encryption and user login using it. If you keep a spare copy of the security key stored in the safe, you make sure you aren't locked out if you lose access to your main security key.

Now to keep the password manager backed up. Using the 3-2-1 Backup Strategy. It states that there should be at least 3 copies of the data, stored on 2 different types of storage media, and one copy should be kept offsite, in a remote location (this can include cloud storage). 2 or more different media should be used to eliminate data loss due to similar reasons (for example, optical discs may tolerate being underwater while LTO tapes may not, and SSDs cannot fail due to head crashes or damaged spindle motors since they do not have any moving parts, unlike hard drives). An offsite copy protects against fire, theft of physical media (such as tapes or discs) and natural disasters like floods and earthquakes. Physically protected hard drives are an alternative to an offsite copy, but they have limitations like only being able to resist fire for a limited period of time, so an offsite copy still remains as the ideal choice.

So, our first copy will be on our secure device. It's the copy we access the most. The next copy could be an encrypted hard drive. The encryption passphrase could be stored in our safe. The last copy could be a cloud storage service. Easy, right? Well, more problems arise:
- Where do you store the credentials for the cloud storage service?
- Where do you store the LUKS backup file and password?

Storing the credentials for the cloud storage service isn't as simple as putting it in the safe. If we did that, then anyone with the safe could login to the cloud storage service and decrypt the password manager backup using the passphrase also stored in the safe. If we protected the cloud storage service with our security key, a copy of that is still in the safe. Maybe we protect it with a 2FA code, and instead of storing the 2FA codes in the password manager, we store it on another device. That solves the problem for now, but there are still problems, such as storing the credentials for that new device.

When using a security key to unlock a LUKS partition, you are given a backup file to store as a backup for emergencies. Plus, LUKS encrypted partitions still require you to setup a passphrase, so storing that still becomes an issue.

Conclusion


I'm going to stop here, because this post is getting long. I could keep going fixing problems and causing new ones, but the point is this: Security is a mess! I didn't even cover alternative ways to authenticate the password manager such as a key file, biometrics, etc. Trying to find "perfect" security is almost impossible, and that's why a threat model is important. If you set hard limits such as "No storing passwords digitally" or "No remembering any passwords" then you can build a security system that fits that threat model, but there's currently no security system that fits all threat model.

However, that doesn't let companies that just say "Store this in a secure place" off the hook either. It's a hand wavy response to security that just says "We don't know how to secure this part of our system, so it's your problem now". We need to have comprehensive security practices that aren't just "Use a password manager and 2FA", because that causes people to just store their master passphrase on a sticky note or a text file on the desktop.

The state of security is an absolute mess, and I'm sick of it. It seems that, right now, security, privacy, convenience, and safety (e.g. backups, other things that remove single points of failure) are all at odds with each other. This post mainly focused on how security, convenience, and safety are at odds, but I could write a whole post about how security and privacy are at odds.

Anyways, I've just outlined one possible security system you can have. If you have one that you think works well, I'd like to hear about it. I use a different security system than what I outline here, and I see problems with it.

Thanks for reading!

Using Mac Keyboard-layout on Linux?


Hey everyone,

as a longtime-Mac user who got used to the typical Mac-keyboard layout and using a Logitech MX Keys (Mac only) I was wondering if there is any chance of adopting the Mac-layout 1:1 on one of my favourite Linux-distros using KDE (desktop PC) without mapping each single key to match the Mac-key?

Is there any base tool I can use for this or any tool I can download to accomplish this?

Thanks in advance!

in reply to eldavi

Oh that's sad. Last version of MacOS I used was 11 or 12, and things like keyboard shortcuts and mouse behaviour stopped working randomly there too. Guess the detoriation of their GUI hasn't slowed down.

For what it's worth I used some drag and drop shelf tool, closed source, a mix of macboard and dropover, can't find it right now.

This entry was edited (1 month ago)

secureblue: Hardened Fedora Atomic and Fedora CoreOS images


Not many people have heard about secureblue, and I want to spread the word about it. secureblue provides hardened images for Fedora Atomic and CoreOS. It's an operating system "for those whose first priority is using linux, and second priority is security."

secureblue provides exploit mitigations and fixes for multiple security holes. This includes the addition of GrapheneOS's hardened_malloc, their own hardened Chromium-based browser called Trivalent, USBGuard to protect against USB peripheral attacks, and plenty more.

secureblue has definitely matured a lot since I first started using it. Since then, it has become something that could reasonably be used as a daily driver. secureblue recognizes the need for usability alongside security.

If you already have Fedora Atomic (e.g. Secureblue, Kinoite, Sericea, etc.) or CoreOS installed on your system, you can easily rebase to secureblue. The install instructions are really easy to follow, and I had no issues installing it on any of my devices.

I'd love more people to know about secureblue, because it is fantastic if you want a secure desktop OS!

(In honor of Holiday. You know who you are.)

This entry was edited (3 months ago)

secureblue: Hardened Fedora Atomic and Fedora CoreOS images


cross-posted from: lemmy.ml/post/26453685

Not many people have heard about secureblue, and I want to spread the word about it. secureblue provides hardened images for Fedora Atomic and CoreOS. It's an operating system "for those whose first priority is using linux, and second priority is security."

secureblue provides exploit mitigations and fixes for multiple security holes. This includes the addition of GrapheneOS's hardened_malloc, their own hardened Chromium-based browser called Trivalent, USBGuard to protect against USB peripheral attacks, and plenty more.

secureblue has definitely matured a lot since I first started using it. Since then, it has become something that could reasonably be used as a daily driver. secureblue recognizes the need for usability alongside security.

If you already have Fedora Atomic (e.g. Secureblue, Kinoite, Sericea, etc.) or CoreOS installed on your system, you can easily rebase to secureblue. The install instructions are really easy to follow, and I had no issues installing it on any of my devices.

I'd love more people to know about secureblue, because it is fantastic if you want a secure desktop OS!

Interesting thoughts about privacy, security, and all the things


I'm making this post to share some interesting less talked about things about privacy, security, and other related topics. This post has no direct goal, it's just an interesting thing to read. Anyways, here we go:

I made a post about secureblue, which is a Linux distro* (I'll talk about the technicality later) designed to be as secure as possible without compromising too much usability. I really like the developers, they're one of the nicest, most responsible developers I've seen. I make a lot of bug reports on a wide variety of projects, so they deserve the recognition.

Anyways, secureblue is a lesser known distro* with a growing community. It's a good contrast to the more well known alternative** Qubes OS, which is not very user friendly at all.

* Neither secureblue, nor Qubes OS are "distros" in the classical sense. secureblue modifies and hardens various Fedora Atomic images. Qubes OS is not a distro either, as they state themselves. It's based on the Xen Hypervisor, and virtualizes different Linux distros on their own.

** Qubes OS and secureblue aren't exactly comparable. They have different goals and deal with security in different ways, just as no threat model can be compared as "better" than any other one. This all is without mentioning secureblue can be run inside of Qubes OS, which is a whole other ballpark.

secureblue has the goal of being the most secure option "for those whose first priority is using Linux, and second priority is security." secureblue "does not claim to be the most secure option available on the desktop." (See here) Many people in my post were confused about that sentence and wondered what the most secure option for desktop is. Qubes OS is one option, however the secureblue team likely had a different option in mind when they wrote that sentence: Android.

secureblue quotes Madaiden's Insecurities on some places of their website. Madaiden's Insecurities holds the view that Linux is fundamentally insecure and praises Android as a much better option. It's a hard pill to swallow, but Madaiden's Insecurities does make valid criticisms about Linux.

However, Madaiden's Insecurities makes no mention of secureblue. Why is that? As it turns out, Madaiden's Insecurities has not been updated in over 3 years. It is still a credible source for some occasions, but some recommendations are outdated.

Many people are strictly anti-Google because of Google's extreme history of privacy violations, however those people end up harming a lot of places of security in the process. The reality is, while Google is terrible with privacy, Google is fantastic with security. As such, many projects such as GrapheneOS use Google-made devices for the operating system. GrapheneOS explains their choice, and makes an important note that it would be willing to support other devices as long as it met their security standards. Currently only Google Pixels do.

For those unfamiliar, GrapheneOS is an open source privacy and security focused custom Android distribution. The Android Open Source Project (AOSP) is an open source project developed by Google. Like the Linux kernel, it provides an open source base for Android, which allows developers to make their own custom distributions of it. GrapheneOS is one such distribution, which "DeGoogles" the device, removing the invasive Google elements of the operating system.

Some Google elements, such as Google Play Services can be optionally installed onto the device in a non-privileged way (see here and here). People may be concerned that Google Pixels can still spy on them at a hardware level even with GrapheneOS installed, but that isn't the case.

With that introduction of secure Android out of the way, let's talk about desktop Android. Android has had a hidden option for Desktop Mode for years now. It's gotten much better since it was first introduced, and with the recent release of Android 15 QPR2, Android has been given a native terminal application that virtualizes Linux distros on the device. GrapheneOS is making vast improvements to the terminal app, and there are many improvements to come.

GrapheneOS will also try to support an upcoming Pixel Laptop from Google, which will run full Android on the desktop. All of these combined means that Android is one of, if not the, most secure option for desktop. Although less usable than some more matured desktop operating systems, it is becoming more and more integrated.

By the way, if you didn't know, Android is based on Linux. It uses the Linux kernel as a base, and builds on top of it. Calling Qubes OS a distro would be like calling Android and Chrome OS distros as well. Just an interesting fact.

So, if Android (or more specifically GrapheneOS) is the most secure option for desktop, what does that mean in the future? If the terminal app is able to virtualize Linux distros, secureblue could be run inside of GrapheneOS. GrapheneOS may start to become a better version of Qubes OS, in some respects, especially with the upcoming App Communication Scopes feature, which further sandboxes apps.

However, there is one bump in the road, which is the potential for Google to be broken up. If that happens, it might put GrapheneOS and a lot of security into a weird place. There might be consequences such as Pixels not being as secure or not supporting alternative Android distributions. Android may suffer some slowdowns or halts in development, possibly putting more work on custom Android distribution maintainers. However, some good may come from it as well. Android may become more open source and less Google invasive. It's going to be interesting to see what happens.

Speaking of Google being broken up, what will happen to Chrome? I largely don't care about what happens to Chrome, but instead what happens to Chromium. Like AOSP, Chromium is an open source browser base developed by Google. Many browsers are based on Chromium, including Brave Browser and Vanadium.

Vanadium is a hardened version of Chromium developed by GrapheneOS. Like what GrapheneOS does to Android, Vanadium removes invasive Google elements from the browser and adds some privacy and security fixes. Many users who run browser fingerprinting tests on Vanadium report it having a nearly unique fingerprint. Vanadium does actually include fingerprint protections (see here and here), but not enough users use it for it to be as noticeable as the Tor Browser. "Vanadium will appear the same as any other Vanadium on the same device model, and we don't support a lot of device models." (see here)

There's currently a battle in the browser space between a few different groups, so mentioning any browser is sure to get you involved in a slap fight. The fights usually arise between these groups:

For that last one, I would like to mention that Firefox rewrote the terms after backlash, and users have the ability to disable bloatware in Brave. Since Brave is open source, it is entirely possible for someone to make a fork of it that removes unwanted elements by default, since Brave is another recommended browser by the GrapheneOS team for security reasons.

Another interesting Chromium-based browser to look at is secureblue's Trivalent, which was inspired by Vanadium. It's a good option for users that use Linux instead of Android as a desktop.

Also, about crypto, why is there a negativity around it? The reason is largely due to its use in crime, use in scams, and use in investing. However, not all cryptocurrencies are automatically bad. The original purpose behind cryptocurrency was to solve a very interesting problem.

There are some cryptocurrencies with legitimate uses, such as Monero, which is a cryptocurrency designed to be completely anonymous. Whether or not you invest in it is your own business, and unrelated to the topics of this post. Bitcoin themselves even admit that Bitcoin is not anonymous, so there is a need for Monero if you want fully decentralized, anonymous digital transactions.

On the topic of fully decentralized and anonymous things, what about secure messaging apps? Most people, even GrapheneOS and CISA, are quick to recommend Signal as the gold standard. However, another messenger comes up in discussion (and my personal favorite), which is SimpleX Chat.

SimpleX Chat is recommended by GrapheneOS occasionally, as well as other credible places. This spreadsheet is my all time favorite one comparing different messengers, and SimpleX Chat is the only one that gets full marks. Signal is a close second, but it isn't decentralized and it requires a phone number.

Anyways, if you do use Signal on Android, be sure to check out Molly, which is a client (fork) of Signal for Android with lots of hardening and improvements. It is also available to install from Accrescent.

Accrescent is an open source app store for Android focused on privacy and security. It is one of the default app stores available to install directly on GrapheneOS. It plans to be an alternative to the Google Play Store, which means it will support installing proprietary apps. Accrescent is currently in early stages of development, so there are only a handful of apps on there, but once a few issues are fixed you will find that a lot of familiar apps will support it quickly.

Many people have high hopes for Accrescent, and for good reason. Other app stores like F-Droid are insecure, which pose risks such as supply chain attacks. Accrescent is hoped to be (and currently is) one of the most secure app stores for Android.

The only other secure app store recommended by GrapheneOS is the Google Play Store. However, using it can harm user privacy, as it is a Google service like any other. You also need an account to use it.

Users of GrapheneOS recommend making an anonymous Google account by creating it using fake information from a non-suspicious (i.e. not a VPN or Tor) IP address such as a coffee shop, and always use a VPN afterwards. A lot of people aren't satisfied with that response, since the account is still a unique identifier for your device. This leads to another slap fight about Aurora Store, which allows you to (less securely) install Play Store apps using a randomly given Google account.

The difference between the Play Store approach and the Aurora Store approach is that Aurora Store's approach is k-anonymous, rather than... "normal" anonymity. The preference largely comes down to threat models, but if you value security then Aurora Store is not a good option.

Another criticism of the Play Store is that it is proprietary. The view of security between open source software and proprietary software has shifted significantly. It used to be that people viewed open source software as less secure because the source code is openly available. While technically it's easier to craft an attack for a known exploit if the source code is available, that doesn't make the software itself any less secure.

The view was then shifted to open source software being more secure, because anyone can audit the code and spot vulnerabilities. Sometimes this can help, and many vulnerabilities have been spotted and fixed faster due to the software being open source, but it isn't always the case. Rarely do you see general people looking over every line of code for vulnerabilities.

The reality is that, just because something is open source, doesn't mean it is automatically more or less secure than if it were proprietary. Being open source simply provides integrity in the project (since the developers make it as easy as possible to spot misconduct), and full accountability towards the developers when something goes wrong. Being open source is obviously better than being proprietary, that's why many projects choose to be open source, but it doesn't have to be that way for it to still be secure.

Plus, the workings of proprietary code can technically be viewed, since some code can be decompiled, reverse engineered, or simply read as assembly instructions, but all of those are difficult, time consuming, and might get you sued, so it's rare to see it happen.

I'm not advocating for the use of proprietary software, but I am advocating for less hate regarding proprietary software. Among other things, proprietary software has some security benefits in things like drivers, which is why projects like linux-libre and Libreboot are worse for security than their counterparts (see coreboot).

Those projects still have uses, especially if you value software freedom over security, but for security alone they aren't as recommended.

Disclaimer before this next section: I don't know the difference in terminology between "Atomic", "Immutable", and "Rolling Release", so forgive me for that.

Also, on the topic of software freedom, stop using Debian. Debian is outdated and insecure, and I would argue less stable too. Having used a distro with an Atomic release cycle, I have experienced far less issues than when I used Debian. Not to mention, if you mess anything up on an Atomic distro, you can just rollback to the previous boot like nothing happened, and still keep all your data. That saved me when I almost bricked my computer motifying /etc/fstab/ by hand.

Since fixes are pushed out every day, and all software is kept as up to date as possible, Atomic distros I argue give more stability than having an outdated "tried and tested" system. This is more an opinion rather than factually measured.

Once I realized the stable version of Debian uses Linux kernel 6.1, (which is 3 years old and has had actively exploited vulnerabilities), and the latest stable version of the kernel is 6.13, I switched pretty quick for that reason among others.

Now, many old kernel versions are still maintained, and the latest stable version of Android uses kernels 6.1 and 6.6 (which are still maintained), but it's still not great to use older kernel versions regardless. It isn't the only insecurity about Debian.

I really have nothing more to say. I know I touched on a lot of extremely controversial topics, but I'm sick of privacy being at odds with security, as well as other groups being at odds with each other. This post is sort of a collection of a lot of interesting privacy and security knowledge I've accrued throughout my life, and I wanted to share my perspective. I don't expect everybody to agree with me, but I'm sharing this in case it ever becomes useful to someone else.

Thanks for taking the time to read this whole thing, if you did. I spent hours writing it, so I'm sure it's gotten very long by now.

Happy Pi Day everyone!

Comprehensive guide to hardening RHEL clones?


Is there some sort of comprehensive guide on hardening RHEL clones like Alma and Rocky?

I have read Madaidan's blog, and I plan to go through CIS policies, Alma and Rocky documentation and other general stuff like KSPP, musl, LibreSSL, hardened_malloc etc.

But I feel like this is not enough and I will likely face problems that I cannot solve. Instead of trying to reinvent the wheel by myself, I thought I'd ask if anyone has done this before so I can use their guide as a baseline. Maybe there's a community guide on hardening either of these two? I'd contribute to its maintenance if there is one.

Thanks.

in reply to pastermil

You raise a valid point. In which case, I want to try and prevent malicious privilege escalation by a process on this system. I know that's a broad topic and depends on the application being run, but most of the tweaks I've listed work towards that to an extent.

To be precise, I'm asking how to harden the upcoming AlmaLinux based Dom0 by the XCP-NG project. I want my system to be difficult to work with even if someone breaks into it (unlikely because I trust Xen as a hypervisor platform but still).

I admit I was a bit surprised by the question since I've never consciously thought about a reason to harden my OS. I always just want to do it and wonder why OSes aren't hardened more by default.

in reply to marauding_gibberish142

Privilege escalations always have to be granted by an upper-privilege process to a lower-privilege process.

There is one general way this happens.

Ex: root opens up a line of communication between it and a user, the user sends input to root, root mishandles it, it causes undesired behavior within the root process and can lead to bad things happening.

All privilege escalation is two different privilege levels having some form of interaction. Crossing the security boundary. If you wish to limit this, you need to find the parts of the system that cross that boundary, like sudo[1], and remove those from your system.

[1]: sudo is an SUID binary. That means, when you run it, it runs as root. This is a problem, because you as a process have some influence on code that executes within the program (code running as root).

This entry was edited (1 month ago)

Is there still any hope for static binaries (games) that "just work" across distros?


Has anybody been able to build a statically linked binary that shows a Vulkan surface? I've put some context around this problem in the video. I understand that the vulkan driver has to be loaded dynamically - so it's more of a question whether a statically built app can reliably load and talk with it. I think it should be possible but haven't actually seen anyone make it work. I'm aware of "static-window9" by Andrew Kelley but sadly it doesn't work any more (at least on my Gentoo machine T_T).

(I'm also aware of AppImages but I don't think they're the "proper" solution to this problem - more like a temporary bandaid - better than Docker but still far from perfect)

Unknown parent

lemmy - Link to source

hilliard

edit and alas: I have seen the error of my ways, and as such, will, from this day forth, worship at the linux of mint
and ye though there are other worthy transitional distros, I shall not see them, for the votes have taught me so. and the people said mint
This entry was edited (1 month ago)

Help with sed commands


Hi all! I have always only used sed with s///, becouse I've never been able to figure out how to properly make use of its full capabilities. Right now, I'm trying to filter the output of df -h --output=avail,source to only get the available space from /dev/dm-2 (let's ignore that I just realized df accepts a device as parameter, which clearly solves my problem).

This is the command I'm using, which works:

df -h --output=avail,source \
    | grep /dev/dm-2 \
    | sed -E 's/^[[:blank:]]*([0-9]+(G|M|K)).*$/\1/

However, it makes use of grep, and I'd like to get rid of it. So I've tried with a combiantion of t, T, //d and some other stuff, but onestly the output I get makes no sense to me, and I can't figure out what I should do instead.

In short, my question is: given the following output

$ df -h --output=avail,source 
Avail Filesystem
  87G /dev/dm-2
 1.6G tmpfs
  61K efivarfs
  10M dev
...

How do I only get 87G using only sed as a filter?

EDIT:

Nevermind, I've figured it out...

$ df -h --output=avail,source \
    | sed -E 's/^[[:blank:]]*([0-9]+(G|M|K))[[:blank:]]+(\/dev\/dm-2).*$/\1/; t; /.*/d'
85G
This entry was edited (1 month ago)

Can this become the European Union's own Linux Distribution?


cross-posted from: lemmy.zip/post/36434157

cross-posted from: lemmy.zip/post/36434036
A new community-led initiative called “EU OS” to develop a Linux distribution initiative looks like a positive development. It is specifically created to address the unique requirements of the European Union's (EU) public sector organizations. For me, this initiative stands out for its commitment to the EU's digital sovereignty, reducing reliance on external vendors, and creating a secure, independent digital ecosystem.




Can this become the European Union's own Linux Distribution?


cross-posted from: lemmy.zip/post/36434036

A new community-led initiative called “EU OS” to develop a Linux distribution initiative looks like a positive development. It is specifically created to address the unique requirements of the European Union's (EU) public sector organizations. For me, this initiative stands out for its commitment to the EU's digital sovereignty, reducing reliance on external vendors, and creating a secure, independent digital ecosystem.



in reply to quack

As much as I like fedora, I'm on the suse side.

It should be based on suse because it is european. EU wants to push european it solutions. Fedora would be better than microsoft but it is both linux after all. Both can use kde and gnome. They are not so much different.

Moreover, BSI, Secunet and others already work with suse.

Edit: I should install opensuse myself to put my money where my mouth is. The difference between fedora and opensuse isn't too big for me anyway.

Are there suse based distros, like ublue? https:// osinside.github.io/kiwi/overview.html

This entry was edited (1 month ago)

Can this become the European Union's own Linux Distribution?


A new community-led initiative called “EU OS” to develop a Linux distribution initiative looks like a positive development. It is specifically created to address the unique requirements of the European Union's (EU) public sector organizations. For me, this initiative stands out for its commitment to the EU's digital sovereignty, reducing reliance on external vendors, and creating a secure, independent digital ecosystem.

Can this become the European Union's own Linux Distribution?


cross-posted from: lemmy.zip/post/36434036

A new community-led initiative called “EU OS” to develop a Linux distribution initiative looks like a positive development. It is specifically created to address the unique requirements of the European Union's (EU) public sector organizations. For me, this initiative stands out for its commitment to the EU's digital sovereignty, reducing reliance on external vendors, and creating a secure, independent digital ecosystem.