in reply to rc__buggy

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

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

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

This entry was edited (2 months ago)

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


in reply to Blaze

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

Recommend a distro for a 13-year-old gamer


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

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

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

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

Wi-fi not working on Pop os 24.04 cosmic desktop


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

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

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

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

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

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

duckduckgo.com/?q=asus+wifi+pc…

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

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

Linux Mobile OS experience 2025?


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

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

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

in reply to Sinfaen

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

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

This entry was edited (2 months ago)

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


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

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

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

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

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


Edit: Fixed silly typo.

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

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

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

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

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

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

This entry was edited (2 months ago)

Introducing Roost: Robust Open Online Safety Tools


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

Autocomplete custom scripts?


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

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

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

How can I do that? I'm on bash…

in reply to Flagstaff

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

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

Did you put in a request for this?


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

Edit:
Found them: Flatpak issue and RPM issue.

This entry was edited (2 months ago)

Which areas of Linux would benefit most from further standardization?


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

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

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

in reply to steeznson

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

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

This entry was edited (2 months ago)

Is Ctrl+D really like Enter?


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


Linux Terminal: CTRL+D is like pressing ENTER


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


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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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


Pidgin 3.0 Experimental 1 released


This entry was edited (5 months ago)

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


Hello!

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

Book links


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

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

Interactive TUI apps



Feedback


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

Happy learning :)

in reply to learnbyexample

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

Thanks for your advice !

in reply to Matth78

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


can't it, though?

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

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

look for symlinks pointing at the contents of directory?


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

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

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

in reply to IsoKiero

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

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

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

\#!/bin/sh

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

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

Google Input Tools on Linux


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

google.com/inputtools/try/

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

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

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

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

This entry was edited (2 months ago)

Laptop for Linux


Hey all.

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

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

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

Thanks in advance

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

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

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

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

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

in reply to hydraulic_elliptical

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

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

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

in reply to Mike

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

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

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

in reply to bonsai

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

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

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

This entry was edited (2 months ago)

Looking for YouTube Tutorials on Arch


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This entry was edited (2 months ago)

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


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

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

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

What about you guys?

A good e-mail client for linux?


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

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

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

in reply to blackghost1st

Sadly no, according to their wiki:

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

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

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

This entry was edited (2 months ago)

Radarr, Sonarr, SABnzbd and Permissions


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

Running Arch.

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

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

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

in reply to non_burglar

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

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

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

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

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

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

user=someuser

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

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

This entry was edited (2 months ago)

Which Distribution and Desktop Environment should I use?


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

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

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

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

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

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

In advance, I thank you all for helping me!

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

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

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

[Solved] How can I free space in BTRFS?


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Deleting snapshot failed.
# snapper rm 365

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

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

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

Any tips?
This entry was edited (2 months ago)
in reply to ikidd

The performance you're dealing with here is in the tens of milliseconds possibly hundreds if you're lucky. Anyone seriously pursuing this issue from the angle of performance genuinely doesn't understand the deep rooted issues here.

If you're so incredibly hard up for compute time that it's critical for you to squeeze out the extra 1/10 of a second from your system utilities then you need to shut your fucking computer down and go touch grass.

I mean even if this saves you 30 seconds a day 50 weeks a year 5 days a week that's 2 hours per year it's saving you.... I'd rather slow fuck the two hours and get an extra 2 hours of pay.

This entry was edited (2 months ago)

Warning: Gnome file manager (Nautilus) can make remote requests when previewing files


I just found this out recently. So this isn't actually Nautilus itself but it's the file previewer (Gnome Sushi) that comes with it. If you select a file and press the spacebar, it will automatically preview the file if it supported. If the file is an audio file, it will automatically fetch album art from the web, and if the file is an HTML file, it can make third-party requests. IMHO this is a huge privacy issue. For example if you were browsing the web using Tor Browser and saved a page to view offline, and then later accidentally opened it using the file previewer, any third-party requests will leak out the clearnet.

This is an open issue and I don't expect it to be fixed anytime soon, so the easiest solution is to simply uninstall Gnome Sushi (on Fedora, it is the sushi package). On atomic distros if Gnome Sushi is installed as a flatpak you might be able to revoke internet permissions for it using Flatseal, though I have not tested this.

Edit: I'm aware that KDE also has file previewers, but I'm not sure if they have the same issue. If anybody else knows please leave a comment letting us know

This entry was edited (2 months ago)

Is there a way to connect multiple desktops and treat them as one system?


I have some desktops (the tower kind) lying around and I'm wondering if there's a way that I can connect them all to one display and combine their computational power or at least make them all accessible in one place. I want to get into server hosting but only have one monitor. They're currently running LMDE.

Any ideas?

Those who use DWM, how do you get the autostart scripts to work?


I'm talking about this patch:

dwm.suckless.org/patches/autos…

Now, the notes seem simple: after apply the patch, dwm will look for the autostart script in ~/.dwm/autostart.sh.

But if you read it carefully, the file is:

~/.dwm/autostart.sh &

Wth does a "&" have to do with file name? I tried to just use the normal file: autostart.sh with exec dunst. It doesnt work..

I tried to create in the Thunar this weird file name, "autostop.sh &". The system does not recognize it as sh script anymore. .

Any help is welcome.

in reply to mazzilius_marsti

The & is an indicator to most shells to run this command in "the background". Try and run ( sleep 10; echo hi ) & - you'll see you get your shell prompt back, where you can run more commands, but 10 second later you'll see that 'hi' come through. 'blocking' is the default behavior, if you don't add the & you're still going get the hi in ten seconds, but you don't get a prompt because your shell's execution is blocked until your command is done.

The doc here is indicating that you havea choice between autostart_blocking.sh and autostart.sh, the latter of which would be run with a &. They could have expressed this better.

As for why your script didn't work, I'd try executing it in a terminal to see what error message comes up.

in reply to mazzilius_marsti

But, whichever command I put in autostart.sh will run as if I run in terminal with the & sign. E.g: dunst & to run in the background.


Well, only if it's one single command, if you have multiple commands inside of the script, they will still run sequentially (the next command will only run after the previous one completely closes) unless you add & to them as well.

The difference is that dwm itself will not have to wait for the autostart.sh to complete before launching itself (thanks to it being run in the background with &)

However, autostart_blocking.sh (which isn't run with a &) will stop dwm from fully launching until the script completes.. I guess this is useful if you need certain things to be set up before dwm actually starts.. but it would potentially add a delay on dwm startup.

This entry was edited (2 months ago)

Gentoo help: sys-kernel/Installkernel


Im following the handbook, and I'm up to configuring the kernel. (In a vm. Skipping the optional installing firmware/microcode for now)

Trying for an OpenRC system, but it looks like all the steps need systemd.

All the videos I watched seems to skip this step and just go to Kernel configuration and compilation, but I dont want to a) mix old videos and up-to-date handbook, and b) blindly copy commands.
I understood mostly everything untill now. Just this kernel step where I got lost the first time I tried to install gentoo.

in reply to MidsizedSedan

So if you want to use systemd-boot as the bootloader you have to (apparently) install the systemd-utils package. Or you can just use GRUB / efistub.

Edit: looks like groche beat me to it 😁

It's probably been 4 years since I last had to rebuild my Gentoo, but I would be very surprised if there weren't good OpenRC instructions. I built mine with systemd and Gentoo handbook instructions always felt like 'Are you sure you don't want to use OpenRC? Ok, here are the systemd steps I guess'

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

Within section 2.1 choose only one subsection to follow. Those are all alternative bootloader options.

The bootloader subsection chosen in 2.1 on this page should match what is done in Configuring the Bootloader. The default path on that page is GRUB, which does not require any systemd components.

If following the GRUB path, follow instructions in 2.1.1 and skip the rest of 2.1. This is not at all clear in the handbook.

I believe that sys-kernel/installkernel is a utility script internal to the Gentoo project that can be configured to work with various bootloader solutions, including (optionally) systemd, and that is what this section 2.1 is talking about.

This appears to be an out of order dependency in the handbook

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

Funny, I just saw an article saying don't get too excited about Linux gaming boosts because apparently Wine doesn't use ntsync yet, and Valve already worked around ntsync by implementing the faster fsync in SteamOS.
in reply to Peffse

fsync isn't faster than ntsync, it's merely a workaround to match Linux to Windows synchronization primitives. From ntsync's official description:

It exists because implementation in user-space, using existing tools, cannot match Windows performance while offering accurate semantics.


So without this, you either have a huge perfomance hit in case of an accurate implementation or you have good performance, but might run into edge cases where software doesn't work well or at all because it's not accurate (see github.com/ValveSoftware/Proto… for examples)

in reply to Peffse

I don't think his statement is true though. If reddit.com/r/linux_gaming/comm… is not manipulated in any way, games with lots of these calls still get big improvements with ntsync over fsync (about 30% in this particular case, which is a massive boost). So while nobody can rule out that his statement may be true on average or in general, there are still cases where ntsync offers a tangible advantage – be it improved FPS or the fact that the game runs at all.

Edit: in the video that the thread is about, fsync didn't beat ntsync in a single one (or I missed it when jumping through it). In the best one, they were exactly tied. Sure, the difference wasn't really big, but again there are titles not working with fsync.

However, I want to stress that I'm not trying to talk about fsync. It's a good solution that significantly improved performance. But ntsync is, from everything I've seen, almost always better; how much depends on the case, and it never seems to be worse.

This entry was edited (2 months ago)

Was anybody else just burned by the Tor Browser flatpak?


And by burned, I mean "realize they have been burning for over a year". I'm referring to a bug in the Tor Browser flatpak that prevented the launcher from updating the actual browser, despite the launcher itself updating every week or so. The fix requires manual intervention, and this was never communicated to users. The browser itself also doesn't alert the user that it is outdated. The only reason I found out today was because the NoScript extension broke due to the browser being so old.

To make matters worse, the outdated version of the browser that I had, differs from the outdated version reported in the Github thread. In other words, if you were hoping that at least everybody affected by the bug would be stuck at the same version (and thus have the same fingerprint), that doesn't seem to be the case.

This is an extreme fingerprinting vulnerability. In fact I checked my fingerprint on multiple websites, and I had a unique fingerprint even with javascript disabled. So in other words, despite following the best privacy and security advice of:

  1. using Tor Browser
  2. disabling javascript
  3. keeping software updated

My online habits have been tracked for over a year. Even if Duckduckgo or Startpage doesn't fingerprint users, Reddit sure does (to detect ban evasions, etc), and we all know 90% of searches lead to Reddit, and that Reddit sells data to Google. So I have been browsing the web for over a year with a false sense of security, all the while most of my browsing was linked to a single identity, and that much data is more than enough to link it to my real identity.

How was I supposed to catch this? Manually check the About page of my browser to make sure the number keeps incrementing? Browse the Github issue tracker before bed? Is all this privacy and security advice actually good, or does it just give people a false sense of security, when in reality the software isn't maintained enough for those recommendations to make a difference? Sorry for the rant, it's just all so tiring.

Edit: I want to clarify that this is not an attack on the lone dev maintaining the Tor Browser flatpak. They mention in the issue that they were fairly busy last year. I just wanted to know how other people handled this issue.

Update: I just noticed that based on this comment, the flatpak was only verified by Tor Project after this particular issue had been fixed. So perhaps I should have waited before installing the flatpak. Sigh...

This entry was edited (2 months ago)

Was anybody else just burned by the Tor Browser flatpak?


cross-posted from: futurology.today/post/4000823

And by burned, I mean "realize they have been burning for over a year". I'm referring to a bug in the Tor Browser flatpak that prevented the launcher from updating the actual browser, despite the launcher itself updating every week or so. The fix requires manual intervention, and this was never communicated to users. The browser itself also doesn't alert the user that it is outdated. The only reason I found out today was because the NoScript extension broke due to the browser being so old.

To make matters worse, the outdated version of the browser that I had, differs from the outdated version reported in the Github thread. In other words, if you were hoping that at least everybody affected by the bug would be stuck at the same version (and thus have the same fingerprint), that doesn't seem to be the case.

This is an extreme fingerprinting vulnerability. In fact I checked my fingerprint on multiple websites, and I had a unique fingerprint even with javascript disabled. So in other words, despite following the best privacy and security advice of:

  1. using Tor Browser
  2. disabling javascript
  3. keeping software updated

My online habits have been tracked for over a year. Even if Duckduckgo or Startpage doesn't fingerprint users, Reddit sure does (to detect ban evasions, etc), and we all know 90% of searches lead to Reddit, and that Reddit sells data to Google. So I have been browsing the web for over a year with a false sense of security, all the while most of my browsing was linked to a single identity, and that much data is more than enough to link it to my real identity.

How was I supposed to catch this? Manually check the About page of my browser to make sure the number keeps incrementing? Browse the Github issue tracker before bed? Is all this privacy and security advice actually good, or does it just give people a false sense of security, when in reality the software isn't maintained enough for those recommendations to make a difference? Sorry for the rant, it's just all so tiring.

Edit: I want to clarify that this is not an attack on the lone dev maintaining the Tor Browser flatpak. They mention in the issue that they were fairly busy last year. I just wanted to know how other people handled this issue.

This entry was edited (2 months ago)
in reply to nikqwxq550

So the notification that is in the browser that directs you to update it wasn't enough? Because that totally works with the flatpak version of tor, because all the flatpak version of tor does is download a copy of the browser to your home directory and run it. There's a little notification dot on the hamburger menu of tor that directs you to the about page where you can download and update.

Because that's what I've been doing.

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

Afaik the notification was suppressed, see the linked github issue in the post, or this one. I can guarantee the notification wasn't there on my end or else I would have noticed it
This entry was edited (2 months ago)

Why do we hate SELinux?


This is not a troll post. I'm genuinely confused as to why SELinux gets so much of hate. I have to say, I feel that it's a fairly robust system. The times when I had issues with it, I created a custom policy in the relevant directory and things were fixed. Maybe a couple of modules here and there at the most. It took me about 15 minutes max to figure out what permissions were being blocked and copy the commands from. Red Hat's guide.

So yeah, why do we hate SELinux?

(help) How to disable a laptop's internal keyboard on Fedora?


Hey folks, thanks for all of your recommendations for distros a while back. I ended up settling on Fedora KDE, and have been futzing around with it on my old laptop just for funsies.

I've re-encountered an old problem though. The laptop's Caps Lock and F1 keys are busted, sending in dozens of keypresses per second even when unpressed. I solved this on windows with a bit of a headache (using a program to disable those keys), but I have no idea how to solve it in this environment. I've tried futzing with keyd with little success, and my search powers are really failing me here.

Any advice?

What's the best way to create dedicated devices with Linux?


Let's say I want to build a GPS module for my car, which is only a GPS, doesn't hold anything else.
Or a recipe tablet for my kitchen which only hold a recipe app.

Is this kind of purposes common? What would be the best way to do this kind of stuff? How do I choose the hardware? How do I "lockdown" certain aspects I don't need about software?

These kind of devices could be convenient because, by only holding what's needed, they would use less resources, they would be completely distraction free and they would be suitable to be used by non tech savy user which would need to use only one or two programs without messing with the system in any way.

I know KDE ha some kind of multi app kiosk settings, GNOME also can achieve something similar tho it's more confusing.. There are some kiosk distros which only give you a browser. But I don't see anything that can be set up, customized, and locked like that.

But would that be the best way of achieving something like that? I mean to use a GPS I don't need a terminal, nor video codecs, nor a browser.. Maybe I can add the possibility to send Osmand google maps links.. Or I can decide to make it hold Spotify too to make it a radio as well.. But a full distro would be wasted!

But how do I prevent every other use except the intended ones? Is there an easy way to achieve a "one purpose device" using Linux? Should I simply use whichever distro I like and uninstall everything which is not needed (I see use case for arch)?

I feel like we have the total freedom of Linux distros on one side, and companies using managed devices on the other by setting complicated policies, but I don't know any options in between!

Maybe the focus here is the desktop environment more than distros! Are there desktop environment purposed to give the user a set of limited apps, or a single app (which isn't only a browser)?

in reply to dontblink

Dietpi user here. I've got a orange pi zero 3 w/ 1GiB of ram serving me nextdns under docker + playing a live stream 24/7 (via yt-dlp/ffplay) and it does its job just nicely.
This entry was edited (2 months ago)
in reply to dontblink

Small tangent, I didn't have the energy to read your whole post, so you might have addressed that. But often it's cheaper to go with an established multi purpose device instead of building something new.

I used to build and sell Raspberry Pi gaming handhelds that were as cheap as possible and literally just held together by some string. My purpose was to get enough money through the sales to be able to build one for myself. Sure, the building process was fun. But when I crunched the numbers just buying a cheap smartphone and controller was much cheaper and more performant and versatile than the self-built solution.

Just buying a cheap phone or tablet is often the cheaper solution.

Heck, even Valve just bought off the shelve tablet displays and turned the image in software for the Steam Deck.

This entry was edited (2 months ago)

Ubuntu explores replacing gnu utils with rust based uutils


At first I was sceptical, but after a few thought, I came to the solution that, if uutils can do the same stuff, is/stays actively maintained and more secure/safe (like memory bugs), this is a good change.

What are your thoughts abouth this?

https://www.cyberciti.biz/linux-news/ubuntu-to-explore-rust-based-uutils-as-potential-gnu-core-utilities-replacement/

in reply to joel_feila

This is one of the old-time original arguments in the OSS community.

The crux of the matter is that the GNU licenses require that modifications be released back to the community. Other "more permissible" licenses like MIT do not.

So if you want to make a commercial version of X, and X is under a GPL, then any changes you make need to be released under the GPL. The idea being "I shared this code with the community with the intent that you can use it for free and modify it as you like, but you need to share back what you do." Also called "Share and share alike".

This defends against "embrace, extend, extinguish" tactics that companies like Microsoft has loved to do. They can't take your code, modify it for their own purposes and re-sell it possibly making a more popular version that is now proprietary.

Is there a downside to sticking to iptables over ufw?


In short, sell me on ufw.

I learned recently that yfw is basically replacing iptables "everywhere", and as I'm getting old and crusty, this means that I have to learn something new when I'd much rather practice yelling at kids to get off my lawn.

To me, iptables is fine, and I like its flexibility. I've been using it ever since it de facto replaced ipchains, so ease of use isn'treally a factor in this equation.

So my more pointed question is: Can I just stick to iptables, or am I missing out on something that can only be done with ufw?

in reply to dan

I was about to say the same -- and also: nftables syntax is a lot cleaner compared to iptables, and the whole configuration can be loaded from a single file just like pf, without doing the dump/reload cycle that iptables required. Unless UFW does features like defining zones which a user might need (like firewalld), then it's not a huge improvement on bare nftables usability-wise.
This entry was edited (2 months ago)

What's with the move to MIT over AGPL for utilities?


I would understand if Canonical want a new cow to milk, but why are developers even agreeing to this? Are they out of their minds?? Do they actually want companies to steal their code? Or is this some reverse-uno move I don't see yet? I cannot fathom any FOSS project not using the AGPL anymore. It's like they're painting their faces with "here, take my stuff and don't contribute anything back, that's totally fine"
in reply to marauding_gibberish142

For me, my personal projects are generally MIT licensed. I generally don't like "restrictions" on licenses, even if those "restrictions" are requiring others to provide their source and I want as many people to use my projects as possible, I don't like to restrict who uses it, even if it's just small/home businesses who don't want to publish the updated source code. Although, I admit, I'm not a huge fan of large corporations potentially using my code to generate a profit and do evil things with it, but I also think that's not going to be very common versus the amount of use others could get from it by having it using MIT who might not be able to use it otherwise with AGPL.

With that said, though, I have been starting to come around more to AGPL these days.

This entry was edited (2 months ago)
Unknown parent

lemmy - Link to source

ReakDuck

In my Company, we do use such code. But its mainly because we distribute our own Propriatary Linux OS.

We sometimes need to change such code, so we just put it on Github as a fork.

This entry was edited (2 months ago)

Gnome Customizations - is it possible to use custom image in application view?


Hello all,

If this is not the right community for this question, I would be happy to be redirected elsewhere, so just let me know.

I recently configured my terminal emulator to an aesthetic that I like (custom font, coloring, shell prompt, etc) and it has made me wonder about customization in gnome.

One of the biggest things that I wish I could change in gnome is the grey-ness of the application view.

In this screenshot, you can see the familiar application view. In between the organizing folders, the desktops, and the dock, there is just so much nothing.

I am wondering if it is possible to customize this relatively easily. I would much prefer an image of my own choosing in place of this, or at least a different color from time to time.

Is anyone aware if this is configurable? I can't seem to find an extension for this, or any real information on how you would do such a thing.

Thanks

This entry was edited (2 months ago)

How to have a boring and low-maintenance system?


Those who don't have the time or appetite to tweak/modify/troubleshoot their computers: What is your setup for a reliable and low-maintenance system?

Context:

I switched to Linux a couple of years ago (Debian 11/12). It took me a little while to learn new software and get things set up how I wanted, which I did and was fine.

I've had to replace my laptop though and install a distro (Fedora 41) with a newer kernel to make it work but even so, have had to fix a number of issues. This has also coincided with me having a lot less free time and being less interested in crafting my system and more interested in using it efficiently for tasks and creativity. I believe Debian 13 will have a new enough kernel to support my hardware out of the box and although it will still be a hassle for me to reinstall my OS again, I like the idea of getting it over with, starting again with something thoroughly tested and then not having to really touch anything for a couple of years. I don't need the latest software at all times.

I know there are others here who have similar priorities, whether due to time constraints, age etc.

Do you have any other recommendations?

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

No it is

pandasecurity.com/en/mediacent…

And:

You're allowing for more attack vectors that would not be there if the system were to be patched. Depending on the severity of the vulnerability, this can result in something like crashes or something as bad as remote code execution, which means attackers can essentially do whatever they want with the pwned machine, such as dropping malware and such. If you wanna try this in action, just spin up a old EOL Windows machine and throw a bunch of metasploit payloads at it and see what you can get.

While nothing sensitive may be going to or on the machine (which may seem to be the case but rarely is the case), this acts as an initial foothold in your environment and can be used as a jumpbox of sorts for the attacker to enumerate the rest of your network.


And:

Not having vulnerability fixes that are already public. Once a patch/update is released, it inherently exposes to a wider audience that a vulnerability exists (assuming we’re only talking about security updates). That then sets a target on all devices running that software that they are vulnerable until updated.

There’s a reason after windows Patch Tuesday there is Exploit Wednesday.

Yes, a computer with vulnerabilities can allow access to others on the network. That’s what it means to step through a network. If computer A is compromised, computer B doesn’t know that so it will still have the same permissions as pre-compromise. If computer A was allowed admin access to computer B, now there are 2 compromised computers.


From reddit.com/r/cybersecurity/com…

in reply to F04118F

Nice cherry picking/moving the goalpost, but that is not how refuting works. A PC at NASA has a much higher "threat level" than my Orange pi zero 3, just chilling on the background. Which means, a potential "security hole" may prove harmful for these pcs... but it'll definitely not hurt me in the slightest.

And before you parrot with other links and/or excuses... yes, I'm not negating their existence. I'm just saying they are there... but, well... "who cares"? If anything, its much faster to set up my distro back up "just like never happened before" than performing any "maintenance" whatsoever. Again, "Common sense antivirus" reigns supreme here -- know what you are doing, and none of these things will matter.

in reply to GustavoM

You keep using the word "maintenance". All I'm worried about is not installing any security patches for months.

The problem that I tried to highlight with my "cherry picking" is:

  • Running a machine with open vulnerabilities for which patches exist also "paints a target on your back": even if your data is worthless, you are essentially offering free cloud compute.
  • But mostly, a single compromised machine can be an entrypoint towards your entire home network.

So unless you have separated this Orange Pi into its own VLAN or done some other advanced router magic, the Orange Pi can reach, and thus more easily attack all your other devices on the network.

Unless you treat your entire home network as untrusted and have everything shut off on the computers where you do keep private data, the Orange Pi will still be a security risk to your entire home network, regardless of what can be found on the little machine itself.

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

This really is the answer. The more services you add, the more of your attention they will require. Granted, for most services already integrated into the distro’s repo, the added admin overhead will likely be minimal, but it can add up. That’s not to say the admin overhead can’t be addressed. That’s why scripting and crons, among some other utilities, exist!

Thinking on switching to linux


Approaching the end of window 10 and have no plans on upgrading to 11.

I am trying to find alternatives to applications I regularly use before jumping ship (it is mostly a gaming focused pc) any suggestions?

There’s oculus software for my vr but don’t know what I’m going to do with that

Small update: probably going to do Linux mint as that appears to be the most beginner friendly

Update two: that's a lot of comments, and Thanks for all the info

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

I'd recommend Lutris over Heroic both because it runs locally where Heroic is Electron, and because Lutris allows community-based native Linux ports for games where applicable, eg. for Ultima VII: The Black Gate + The Forge of Virtue, Lutris gives you the option of installing that game with Exult instead of DOSbox, for Tomb Raider and Tomb Raider II, you have the option to install those with OpenLara, for Doom 1 and 2, you have the option to install those with ZDoom, for Little Big Adventure, you can install that with the ScummVM runner, etc.

Also, at least for DOS games where you don't have the option to install a community-based modern port, you can use native DOSbox as a runner instead of Windows DOSbox as well through Lutris.

Oh, and one more bonus particularly for GOG games in Lutris' favor over Heroic, is Lutris uses the offline installers so that if anything ever goes wrong with any given GOG game, you can just reinstall from the offline installer where Heroic operates more like GOG Galaxy or Steam in that it's always downloaded from scratch.

This entry was edited (2 months ago)
in reply to DFX4509B

Hey, points for Lutris! Thanks for sharing!

I've had issues in the past installing stuff with Lutris, although for advanced scenarios like using community engines and stuff, that's really cool. I definitely have both installed on my machine for different reasons. Lutris handles EA / Origin stuff pretty well. (Titanfall 2 and Sims 2 Ultimate (not the Steam one) run beautifully on Linux, truly glorious!)

Electron annoys me as well, but I will say that I appreciate how Heroic hooks into GoG APIs.
It handles auto-updates, cloud saving, play time logging, that kinda stuff that made Galaxy decent and had a degree of convenience-parity with Steam.

(Maybe Lutris does this too now?)

For a complete newbie , I'd say Heroic has a bit of a smoother and expected ramp to just "Download game and run." But if you want more control, Lutris definitely has more options!

I also can't recommend Bottles enough for other games that aren't from distribution platforms. Shockingly simple.

This entry was edited (2 months ago)
in reply to Emtity_13

  • AMD Drivers: Good news! They work even better on Linux. Bad news, you're probably referring to the AMD "control panel" type application instead of the drivers themselves, which doesn't have a direct equivalent. The drivers should come pre-installed, though depening on distro you may need to select/install "radv" or "vulkan-radeon" manually. Most of the control panel functionality can be found in other applications, like OBS for recording or CoreCtrl for clock speeds.
  • Chrome: Although Firefox is pre-installed in most cases, you have full freedom of choice here. Most people find that Firefox works basically the same after using it for a bit, but if it doesn't fit you, there's other options. Google Chrome is most likely available in your distros app store, but there's also less "spying" options like ungoogled-chromium.
  • Gmail: You can access this on the website, or through a mail client like thunderbird. You can switch if you want to, you're not limited by any means here.
  • Office 360: Though LibreOffice is a great alternative, some find themselves forced to use MS office for compatibility reasons. This is still possible, buy only in a webbrowser.
  • ITunes: This is a hard one to find alternatives for, depending on what you use it for. For managing iPhones from a PC, you essentially need Windows or macOS. For playing music, there's plenty of options.
  • JBL: I'm unsure as I don't use any of their products, but assuming you mean audio related "control panels", there's many options available. Though they may need a bit of tweaking and searching around to get things to sound the way you want.
  • Musescore: I also don't use this, but it's available on Flathub, meaning you can (and probably should) use your distros "App Store" to install this.
  • Norton AV: Not many AVs targeting Linux exist, and they're not the greatest quality. Though it's doable to go without one, as long as you don't download and run random files off the internet. Stick to the app store, and you should be totally fine.
  • PyCharm: This is available on Linux, also in the "app store". There's other IDEs available too, like vscode.
  • Remote Desktop to iOS: I haven't owned an iOS device since 2019, so I don't know which protocol they use. It's possible this isn't supported at all.
  • Star Citizen: It looks like this is playable through Proton. You can use Steam (add non-steam game), Lutris, or Bottles to launch non-steam Windows apps/games.
  • Steam: Works great
  • VPN: As you didn't put a previous VPN provider here, I'm not able to tell you if it works on Linux. Personally I have a hard time recommending any VPN service, but Mullvad stands out as being the least untrustworthy. Almost all others like Nord, Express, etc. share some common traits that make them very untrustworthy to me.
  • Windows Games: This is a bit more complicated. Games from the Microsoft Store are very unlikely to run, and require messing about to even try in the first place. Other games made for Windows likely work (even outside Steam), using management tools like Lutris or Bottles is often easier than manually using Wine.

If a tool (or distro) works well for you, it's a good option. Everyone has different opinions on the "best" distro, but since it's very subjective, there is no single "best" distro. There's only 2 distros I recommend against, that's Ubuntu (and close spin-offs) and Manjaro, because they have major objective downsides compared to equivalents like Mint or Endeavour. The distros I generally recommend to new users are Mint and Fedora, but feel free to look around, you're not forced to pick a specific one.

You noted you were likely going to choose Linux Mint, great! It's a "stable" distro, as in, it doesn't change much with small updates. Instead, new release versions (23, 24, 25, etc) come with new changes. Linux Mint comes with an App Store that can install from Flathub, which should be the first place to check for installing new applications.

As for VR, it depends heavily on which exact headset you have, and is not always a great experience on Linux right now (speaking from experience with an Index). The LVRA wiki is a great starting place: lvra.gitlab.io/. If you're on a Quest, WiVRN and ALVR exist, though they both have their own downsides. If you're on a PCVR headset from Oculus, your options are more limited. You might also want to consider a different distro, as VR development is moving very fast. Many VR users choose to go with a "harder" rolling release distribution, like EndeavourOS, to receive feature updates quicker.

Also of note, if you have the storage space, you can choose to "dual boot" (even with just one drive). This will give you a menu to choose between Windows and Linux when starting your computer, and will give you time to move stuff over. I generally recommend this, as it provides an option to immediately do a task you know how to do on Windows, when it's absolutely required to do the task asap.

Has anyone else questioned their choice of computers for running Linux?


3 years ago I needed a new computer and decided on an 16 inch M1 Macbook Pro, but did lots of overthinking about if I wanted to stick to it. I tried Asahi Linux didn't have any reasons at the time to use linux over macOS (but there was always the chance I might later), the build quality is 2nd to none, none of my Windows laptops lasted more than a few years.

3 years later, I've really been itching to switch to Linux. Two of several reasons: because its DEs are more customizable, it has better documented accessibility APIs if you want to make keyboard navigation software. I reinstalled Asahi Linux and really tried to make it my daily driver, but the lacks of apps would require me to dual boot: Photoshop and Roblox.

I researching again for computers closest to Macbook Pros but none of them come close to its build quality. I think it would be best for me to make my own desktop PC for linux. I don't think I'd fare well with another windows laptop brand.

in reply to TheTwelveYearOld

9 years and 4 months ago I bought an Acer laptop with a 4 core Intel Skylake with hyperthreading (i7-6700HQ) and a Nvidia GTX 960M, because the laptop I had was slow for compiling in my classes at Uni, and I wanted a discrete GPU for the occasional game when away from my Desktop PC (winter break and such (still use it for that btw)). I regretted that three times:

  • First when I wanted to install Linux instead of just using VMs. In early 2016 the kernels on live system ISOs didn't properly support Skylake yet, so I fucked around with Arch a bunch, but didn't end up keeping it installed. Don't remember why, probably got busy with schoolwork.
  • Then a while later, after I had installed Ubuntu or Fedora at some point, the next issue was that cooperative mode of Bluetooth and Wifi on the included Intel wireless chip wasn't well supported (even found an Intel Bluetooth dev saying as much on a mailing list), and it hung sometimes, so I had to make a script to turn the chip off and then rescan the PCI bus, that worked as a workaround but was still annoying.
  • Finally when we had Machine Learning classes I thought I might be able to use CUDA locally, so I tried installing the proprietary Nvidia driver and was greeted by a black screen on the next boot. Had to boot from a live system and chroot in to remove the proprietary crap again.

On my Desktop PC I have used AMD GPUs for quite a while and dual booting Windows and Linux has always been a breeze.

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

To be fair, your issue seems more to be software based than hardware.
I should warn you that even if you do get a x86 laptop, Photoshop is rather janky under Wine and Roblox could find a way to kill the Vinegar client in the future.
I'd recommend you borrow a friend's machine and give it a spin, you might unfortunately not be off the dual-booting hook just yet...
This entry was edited (2 months ago)

EU push for open source, GIMP3 is out, Firefox gets webapps back_ Linux & Open Source News


Looking for a "set it and forget it" distro


Hi all,
Relatively long time Linux user (2017 to be precise), and about two 3rds of that time has been on Arch and its derivatives.

Been running Endeavour OS for at least 2.5 years now. It's a solid distro until it's not. I'd go for months without a single issue then an update comes out of nowhere and just ruins everything to either no return, or just causes me to chase after a fix for hours, and sometimes days. I'm kinda getting tired of this trend of sudden and uncalled for issues.

It's like a hammer drops on you without you seeing it. I wish they were smaller issues, no, they're always major. Most of the time I'd just reinstall, and I hate that. It's so much work for me.

I set things the way I like them and then they're ruined, and the hunt begins. I have been wanting to switch for a long time, and I honestly have even been looking into some of those immutable distros (that's how much I don't want to be fixing my system.

I'm tired, I just want to use my system to get work done). I was also told that Nobara is really good (is it? Never tried it). My only hold back — and it's probably silly to some of you— is the AUR. I love it.

It's the most convenient thing ever, and possibly the main reason why I have stuck with Arch and its kids. Everything is there.

So, what do y'all recommend? I was once told by some kind soul to use an immutable distro and setup "distrobox" on it if I wanted the AUR.

I've never tried this "distrobox" thing (I can research it, no problem). I also game here and there and would like to squeeze as much performance as I can out of my PC (all AMD, BTW, and I only play single player games).

So, I don't know what to do. I need y'all's suggestions, please. I'll aggregate all of the suggestions and go through them and (hopefully) come up with something good for my sanity. Please suggest anything you think fits my situation. I don't care, I will 100% appreciate every single suggestion and look into it.

I'm planning to take it slow on the switch, and do a lot of research before switching. Unless my system shits the bed more than now then I don't know. I currently can't upgrade my system, as I wouldn't be able to log in after the update. It just fails to log in.

I had to restore a 10 days old snapshot to be able to get back into my damn desktop. I have already copied my whole home directory into another drive I have on my PC, so if shit hits the fan, I'll at least have my data. Help a tired brother out, please ❤. Thank you so much in advance.

This entry was edited (2 months ago)

Custom refresh rate on KDE wayland


I'm running KDE wayland with proprietary Nvidia drivers on CachyOS, so far I haven't found a way to set a custom monitor refresh rate, on windows I could use the Nvidia control panel to make one (going from 60hz to 75hz). kscreen-doctor doesn't let you set "unsupported" modes, the kernel launch option of video=1920x1080@75 didn't work, somehow. So how would I do it?
in reply to levzzz

That is what xrandr allows you to do on X11, create and set display modes that aren't reported by the monitor.

EDID editing is basically replacing the data reported by the monitor, which also allows you to add display modes it doesn't report itself. This is the only way to do what you are looking for on wayland.

You can either switch to X11, and use xrandr, or create an EDID file with the display mode you want, and have it load on boot. Doing that is unfortunately not simple.

This entry was edited (2 months ago)

Krita is so KOOL, but how do i Verify the current AppImage?


don't know if this is of any help to anyone except maybe past me, but i had a hard time finding the correct Public Key to verify the current Krita AppImage: So what finally worked was gpg --import this Public Key here files.kde.org/krita/dmitry_kaz… and gpg --verify krita-5.2.9-x86_64.AppImage.sig then gpg says Good signature (fingerprint: E9FB 29E7 4ADE ACC5 E303 5B8A B69E B4CF 7468 332F). Anyway (>' v ')> here is a drawing i made using my laptops wonky touchpad.

KOOL
This entry was edited (2 months ago)
Unknown parent

lemmy - Link to source

InnerScientist

From the mailing list I'm reading that kernel maintainers have heard a few companies looking for something like this, so yes?

Edit:

However, to be clear, the Hornet LSM proposed here seems very reasonable to me and I would have no conceptual objections to merging it upstream. Based on off-list discussions I believe there is a lot of demand for something like this, and I believe many people will be happy to have BPF signature verification in-tree.
This entry was edited (2 months ago)
in reply to ikidd

They probably named it HORNET for a reason - think Japanese Murder Hornets... What Could Possibly Go Wrong??

It will probably start out as little glitches and slowdowns to destroy faith in your system ("Windows works right all the time") a random 2 second pauses. Finally one day every Linux box in the world crashes, all at the same time, because some 'dummy' in Microsoft deleted the private signing key.

This entry was edited (2 months ago)

Latest image of u-blue has removed firefox, several gnome support packages and some pipewire and gstreamer packages


Removed: firefox-136.0.1-1.fc41.x86_64 firefox-langpacks-136.0.1-1.fc41.x86_64 freerdp-libs-2:3.12.0-1.fc41.x86_64 gnome-bluetooth-1:47.1-1.fc41.x86_64 gnome-browser-connector-42.1-8.fc41.x86_64 gnome-classic-session-47.4-2.fc41.noarch gnome-initial-setup-47.2-1.fc41.x86_64 gnome-remote-desktop-47.3-1.fc41.x86_64 gnome-shell-extension-apps-menu-47.4-2.fc41.noarch gnome-shell-extension-background-logo-47.0-1.fc41.noarch gnome-shell-extension-common-47.4-2.fc41.noarch gnome-shell-extension-launch-new-instance-47.4-2.fc41.noarch gnome-shell-extension-places-menu-47.4-2.fc41.noarch gnome-shell-extension-window-list-47.4-2.fc41.noarch gstreamer1-plugin-libav-1.24.11-1.fc41.x86_64 gstreamer1-plugins-bad-free-1.24.11-1.fc41.x86_64 pipewire-utils-1.2.7-7.fc41.x86_64 uresourced-0.5.4-2.fc41.x86_64

The latest build of u-blue:main has removed these packages. Is anybody also experiencing this? I could find no information regarding this on the discourse forum.

Edit : the issue has been resolved in the next build image. It was a small error that crowd in due to shifting to dnf5. Thanks for to maintainers for doing all the hardwark

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

Didn't know what uBlue was, so here: universal-blue.org/

"The Universal Blue project builds a diverse set of continuously delivered operating system images using bootc. That's nerdspeak for the ultimate Linux client: the reliability of a Chromebook, but with the flexibility and power of a traditional Linux desktop.

These images represent what's possible when a community focuses on sharing best practices via automation and collaboration. One common language between dev and ops, and it's finally come to the desktop.

We also provide tools for users to build their own image using our templates and processes, which can be used to ship custom configurations to all of your machines, or finally make the Linux distribution you've long wished for, but never had the tools to create.

At long last, we've ascended."

in reply to Leaflet

Nice post, ~~but your title is misleading~~: the blog post is actually titled "Supply Chain Attacks on Linux distributions - Overview" - the word "attacks" as used here is a synonym for "vulnerabilities". It is not completely clear from their title if this is going to be a post about vulnerabilities being discovered, or about them actually being exploited maliciously, but the latter is at least not strongly implied.

~~This lemmy post however is titled (currently, hopefully OP will retitle it after this comment) "Supply Chain Attack found in Fedora's Pagure and openSUSE's Open Build Service".~~ edit: @OP thanks for changing the title!

Adding the word "found" (and making "Attack" singular) changes the meaning: this title strongly implies that a malicious party has actually been detected performing a supply chain attack for real - which is not what this post is saying at all. (It does actually discuss some previous real-world attacks first, but it is not about finding those; the new findings in this post are vulnerabilities which were never attacked for real.)

~~I recommend using the original post title (minus its "Overview" suffix) or keeping your more verbose title but changing the word "Attack" to "Vulnerabilities" to make it clearer.~~

TLDR: These security researchers went looking for supply chain vulnerabilities, and found several bugs in two different systems. After responsibly disclosing them, they did these (very nice and accessible, btw - i recommend reading them) writeups about two of the bugs. The two they wrote up are similar in that they both involve going from being able to inject command line arguments, to being able to write to a file, to being able to execute arbitrary code (in a context which would allow attackers to perform supply chain attacks on any software distributed via the targeted infrastructure).

This entry was edited (2 months ago)

On Zorin OS, can't get XClicker custom location to work [Solved]


Sorry if this isn't the place for this, I couldn't find a forum for the program. I have 2 monitors and when I try to use a custom location it seems like XClicker doesn't understand how to handle that. When getting a location the coordinates behave as I'd expect, treating all of my screen space as one with the numbers increasing as you go right and down, the top left of my left monitor currently being 0,142. However when I activate to start clicking it seem as though it treats the top left corner of whichever monitor the cursor is on as though it were 0,0, meaning it doesn't actually click where I want.

For example, if I Get a location on the right monitor and position the mouse on the right monitor it'll actually click a location 1920 pixels to the right, since the left is 1080p, and I think 142 pixels down. With the same coordinates, if I position my mouse on the left monitor then activate It'll go close to where I want it to on the right monitor for the first click, then shift to the right again since it's now on the right monitor.

Edit: Oh I figured it out and it's definitely newbie stuff. I was poking around and for shits tried to upgrade my OS. While I couldn't do that, it seems like it did upgrade a lot of other stuff and now the clicker works normally. I was hoping it'd be a miracle and fix another issue, too, but it didn't.

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

Note: for readers who aren't aware, the notation ^X means hold down the ctrl key and type x (without shift).

ctrl-a though ctrl-z will send ASCII characters 1 through 26, which are called control characters (because they're for controling things, and also because you can type them by holding down the control key).

^D is the EOF character.
$ stty -a | grep eof
intr = ^C; quit = ^\; erase = ^?; kill = ^U; eof = ^D; eol = <undef>;
$ man stty |grep -A1 eof |head -n2
       eof CHAR
              CHAR will send an end of file (terminate the input)


Nope, Chuck Testa: there is no EOF character. Or, one could also say there is an EOF character, but which character it is can be configured on a per-tty basis, and by default it is configured to be ^D - which (since "D" is the fourth letter of the alphabet) is ASCII character 4, which (as you can see in man ascii) is called EOT or "end of transmission".

What that stty output means is that ^D is the character specified to trigger eof. That means this character is intercepted (by the kernel's tty driver) and, instead of sending the character to the process reading standard input, the tty "will send an end of file (terminate the input)".

By default eof is ^D (EOT), a control character, but it can be set to any character.

For instance: run stty eof x and now, in that terminal, "x" (by itself, without the control key) will be the EOF character and will behave exactly as ^D did before. (The rest of this comment assumes you are still in a normal default terminal where you have not done that.)

But "send an end of file" does not mean sending EOT or any other character to the reading process: as the blog post explains, it actually (counterintuitively) means flushing the buffer - meaning, causing the read syscall to return with whatever is in the buffer currently.

It is confusing that this functionality is called eof, and the stty man page description of it is even more so, given that it (really!) does actually flush the contents of the buffer to read - even if the line buffer is not empty, in which case it is not actually indicating end-of-file!

You can confirm this is happening by running cat and typing a few characters and then hitting ^D, and then typing more, and hitting ^D again. (Each time you flush the buffer, cat will immediately echo the latest characters that had been buffered, even though you have not hit enter yet.)

Or, you can pipe cat into pv and see that ^D also causes pv to receive the buffer contents prior to hitting enter.

I guess unix calls this eof because this function is most often used to flush an empty buffer, which is how you "send an end of file" to the reader.

The empty-read-means-EOF semantics are documented, among other places, in the man page for the read() syscall (man read):

RETURN VALUE
      On success, the number of bytes read is returned (zero indicates end of
      file), and the file position is advanced by this number.


If you want to send an actual ^D (EOT) character through to the process reading standard input, you can escape it using the confusingly-named lnext function, which by default is bound to the ^V control character (aka SYN, "synchronous idle", ASCII character 22):

$ man stty|grep lnext -A1
       * lnext CHAR
              CHAR will enter the next character quoted
$ stty -a|grep lnext
werase = ^W; lnext = ^V; discard = ^O; min = 1; time = 0;

Try it: you can type echo " and then ctrl-V and ctrl-D and then "|xxd (and then enter) and you will see that this is sending ascii character 4.

You can also send it with echo -e '\x04'. Note that the EOT character does not terminate bash:

$ echo -e '\x04\necho see?'|xxd
00000000: 040a 6563 686f 2073 6565 3f0a            ..echo see?.
$ echo -e '\x04\necho see?'|bash
bash: line 1: $'\004': command not found
see?

As you can see, it instead interprets it as a command.

::: spoiler (Control characters are perfectly cromulent filenames btw...)

$ echo -e '#!/bin/bash\necho lmao' > ~/.local/bin/$(echo -en '\x04')
$ chmod +x ~/.local/bin/$(echo -en '\x04')
$ echo -e '\x04\necho see?'|bash
lmao
see?

:::
This entry was edited (2 months ago)
in reply to Arthur Besse

Which is why I haven’t wrote ‘EOF character’, ‘EOT’ or ‘EOT character’. Neither have I claimed that \x4 character is interpreted by the shell as end of file.

Edit: Actually, I did say ‘EOF character’ originally (though I still haven’t claimed that it sends EOF character to the program). I’ve updated the comment to clear things up more.

This entry was edited (2 months ago)

Here's an exercise in extreme masochism:


The Linux Ship of Theseus


  1. pick any distro and install it.
  2. Then, without installing another distro over the top of it, slowly convert it into another distro by replacing package managers, installed packages, and configurations.

System must be usable and fully native to the new distro (all old packages replaced with new ones).

No flatpaks, avoid snaps where physically possible, native packages only.

EDIT: Some clarification on some of the clever tools brought up here:

chroot, dd, debootstrap, and partition editors that allow you to install the new system in an empty container or blanket-overwrite the old system go against the spirit of this challenge.

These are very useful and valid tools under a normal context and I strongly recommend learning them.

You can use them if you prefer, but The ship of Theseus was replaced one board at a time. We are trying to avoid dropping a new ship in the harbor and tugging the old one out.

It may however be a good idea to use them to test out the target system in a safe environment as you perform the migration back in the real root, so you have a reference to go by.


Easy: pick two similar distros, such as Ubuntu and Debian or Manjaro and Arch and go from the base to the derivative.

Medium: Same as easy but go from the derivative to the base.

Hard: Pick two disparate distros like Debian and Artix and go from one to the other.

Nightmare: Make a self-compiled distro your target.

This entry was edited (2 months ago)

Switching to linux for newbies.


Honestly, at this point I’m so done with window’s bullshit. Their operating system is damn near unusable. All the convenient stuff is hidden in weird places. The constant whining about having to buy their crap. Or worse trying to get me to use the horrible software that comes with the new versions.

My excuse used to be, but I can’t play games on it. This is no longer the case for the games I love. So Windows can suck it. At this point I’m switching away from a lot of stuff I used to use. (x-box became Steam-deck, twitter became blue-sky and reddit is becoming Lemmy) As a kind of computer illiterate person, this has been a worth while transition but a difficult one. Let’s just say I had to learn a lot of new stuff.

So I’m a total Linux newbie but thanks to my Steam deck I’ve become somewhat used to using it. Not like an expert, but I have run wine to create separate environments for running pokémon fangames. And have taken a look around the Linux environment. I like it and think I’ll be able to get used to it with practice. It reminds me weirdly of windows XP in how easily I can get everything to work the way I want. It takes a bit of doing and some research, but it works. Which is all I want in an operating system.

I am looking for tips as to where to start searching, because I am converting my windows computer to Linux. I just don’t know what version.

Any user experience is welcome, I have no idea where to begin. I mostly use the computer I’m installing this on as a glorified typewriter, that I play movies, music and retro-games on.

A user friendly version is preferred, I find it hard to parse out from the various versions I have seen so far how easy they actually are to use. Extra points if a large amount of the information has easy to find tutorials on the internet. I don’t always know where to start looking and as I learned while getting wine to work, some of the names/terms are completely different. (And kind of a lot at once if you are just getting started).

Any resources you might think are useful for a newbie are also highly appreciated.

tl;dr: I (a Linux noob) am looking for a recommendation for what version of Linux to use for my needs. And any tips tricks or other info that I might need to know before I switch. Because windows sucks.

I’m sorry if this has already been asked and answered. I did try to find an answer through searching, but as I already mentioned. My lack of terms and knowledge is holding me back.

Email client for Linux


I have been looking for an email client on Linux after being tired of Gmail and Outlook web clients.

I had Thunderbird installed on my system and thought I'd give it a spin. I set up POP for my email accounts and it worked fantastic... For a total of 2 hours, after which I realised that searching in Thunderbird is simply not going to work for me. I need to search by attachment name and sometimes even by text inside attachment and unfortunately Thunderbird can't do that (I think I tried an extension too but it made the UI super clunky to the point that I couldn't even understand how to navigate it anymore).

Does Betterbird or any other email client fix this problem? I'm willing to try other options if they are FOSS.

Thanks

in reply to marauding_gibberish142

Yes but I can’t search by the name of the attachment.


I just searched for text thats in an attachment filename and it worked - with a caveat. I have a filename called "PMASUP236 - Operate Vehicles In The Field.pdf" on an email. There is no reference to the PMASUP236 in any other part of any email.

If I search "PMASUP236", it returns the email as a result.
If I search "SUP236" it does not.
If I search "Operate Vehicles" it returns that email (along with a heap of others containing the word "Operate" and "Vehicles" in any order).

Admittedly this is on Windows at work, though I do run Thunderbird on Linux at home. Will have to try it there to confirm.

in reply to marauding_gibberish142

I just checked on Linux (Thunderbird 128.5.2esr, Opensuse Tumbleweed) and the behaviour is the same.

If I search “PMASUP236”, it returns the email as a result.
If I search “SUP236” it does not.


This is using the normal search function (top of screen in current version). Quick Filter does not look at attachments at all by the looks. The "Attachments" toggle is only a has / does not have attachment filter.

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

sure. first, configure sudo to be passwordless, or perhaps just to stay unlocked for longer (it's easy to find instructions for how to do that).

then, put this in your ~/.bashrc:

alias sudo='echo -n "are you sure? "; for i in $(seq 5); do echo -n "$((6 - $i)) "; sleep 1; done && echo && /usr/bin/sudo '

Now "sudo" will give you a 5 second countdown (during which you can hit ctrl-c if you change your mind) before running whatever command you ask it to.

This entry was edited (2 months ago)

Need help with setting up full disk encryption (FDE) where /home is on another drive.


Any distro would do, but for my case, it is Arch because I have more control over the partitions. I would like the OS, so root, swap and others on 1 drive. The /home should be on a separate drive. The tricky thing is to have everything encrypted, except /boot and /efi of course.

Now, here is what I can do

1) FDE on 1 drive. This is easy: you create /efi, /boot and then create a large LUKS partition. From there, you create LVM on that LUKS partition and get your: /, /home and swap. Then mount everything correctly and install.

In the grub config, you only need to set it so it knows the LUKS partitom and where the root is. For eg, if your LUKs partition is /dev/sda3, you do:

  • cryptdevice=UUID=: cryptlvm rootfs=/dev/vg/root.

2) Unencrypted /home on another drive. This is like 1) but /home is mounted on a separate drive. Still need to do the grub config, but nothing is needed for /home. It is automatically mounted when you login.

Now for my case: Encrypt /home

The encryption and mount part is easy. But how to get the OS to recognize it? The Arch wiki has this weird thing where you create an encryption key, they called it home.key, using cryptsetup. You then store the key in /etc and then in your /etc/crypttab, you specifiy the drive with /home and location of the key. No need for any passphrase.

The problem I have with this is that keys are stored in root. So if my root system is corrupted, I cant even decrypt home....

Any advice is welcome..

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

Well thanks everyone. I finally managed to get it to work on Arch. System has separate encrypted root and swap in LVM, and a separate encrypted home. It can suspend and hibernate. Below are my steps

DISK PREP

  • partition the main drive for your swap and root first. For me, it is a boot partition + an EFI + a LUKS container with LVM on top. Create your volumes. I use Arch, so format and mount them appropriately before pacstrap. Leave out mount point for /home.
  • Go to your other drive, follow: cyberciti.biz/hardware/cryptse…

to create a LUKS container that is encrypted with: a keyfile and a password. Test both to make sure you can open the locked drive. Format and mount it at /mnt/home or where you want the /home to be.

  • Pacstrap and then genfstab.
    Important: Make sure to copy the keyfile from your archiso environment to your chroot environment aka your system. Otherwise, when reboot, the keyfile is gone. I put it in /root and set permission so only root can read.

AUTOMATIC UNLOCK

  • First, fstab. When you do genfstab, things should be fine. But just double check the UUID is correct for /home. Note in fstab, the UUID is the unlocked one: so the one with /dev/mapper/home. Change to noatime if you desire.
  • Second, crypttab. Assume you decrypt your LUKS home as "home". Add this:

home uuid of the unencrypted home drive location of the keyfile luks

The link above said to just use /dev/sda, but imo UUID is safer if you have a removable drive.

  • Third, grub. Edit your /etc/default/grub and append the following to GRUB_CMD_LINUX:

"rd.luks.uuid=UUID of the locked luks home drive"

FOR HIBERNATION

For some reasons, hibernation doesnt work out of the box. It works when I have everything in 1 drive, i.e 1 boot, 1 efi, 1 lvm on luks for /home, swap and /. The fix is simple:

  • add "resume" to /etc/mkinitcpio.conf. Add before "filesystems" . Rebuild your initramfs with mkinitcpio -P.
  • add to /etc/default/grub: "resume= uuid of the unlocked swap partition". Or if you do LVM, just use "resume=/dev/vg/swap".

Special thanks to bodaciousFern@lemmy.dbzer0.com and Lemmchen@feddit.org for giving me correct ideas about "rd.luks.uuid" and that LUKS can do both pass and keyfile.

This entry was edited (2 months ago)

My (satisfying) experience moving to Linux!


Just wanted to share my experience moving to Linux from MacOS. Very satisfying, but of course not at first. I think my patience has improved a lot too lol.

I started out trying live bootables on my 2012 MBA. 4GB RAM, 60GB HDD. Not a beast really, but it is my only computer. I obviously couldn't risk ending up without a working OS, so the only option was dual boot from an external drive. Bought an SSD connected via USB and started trying to install distros. Initially Fedora Workstation. Was a mess. Slow, wifi was not working well, odd crashes etc.. Decided to start over with something lighter, but all other installers crashed halfway through. I kid you not I shot my back again bent over my small laptop i
without working peripherals trying to install different distros. My doctor was not happy when I came back and told her I fucked up my back again because of my posture lol. Apparently, a shitty USB leads to crashes on most installers. I knew Anaconda worked tho, so I went back to a lighter DE with Fedora, XFCE. Set up an install on the SSD with a shared partition I could access from both MacOS and fedora. No big permission issues yet.

Then fixing network drivers. There is a lot of info about what chip needs what driver, a lot of which is incorrect apparently, because my chip which was supposed to work with bcma needed broadcom-wl. The joy when I remembered USB tethering was a thing.. For a laptop with no ethernet plug this was a godsend. Got the drivers, got wifi.

And since then, many "issues" I encountered where simply things that generally happened behind the scenes on MacOS I didn't even know where happening. Learning about these things has been very gratifying, and gives a lot of respect for a polished OS that just works like magic. Eventually, an issue on MacOS I could not solve due to it being a walled garden made me switch to Linux as a daily driver, and once I got over CMD and CTRL being swapped it sped up my workflows and runs better overall. More tweaking tho of course.

There are odd quirks but I found fun solutions for some, and began planning and learning to remedy others. Mostly, everything is working really well. I am having a lot of fun!

My tip for anyone struggling with getting started with linux, set up a log function so you can easily log any relevant changes you make, and have it accessible from somewhere else (like a shared partition or external drive for example). This way you know what you have done and can use that to fix whatever you fuck up. Also, make a knowledge base with the sources you find useful. I have a small kb in UpNote now so I can look up how some things were done instead of having to search and find the right guides over and over.

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

Nice I didn't know that ^^ should probably learn at least the basic bash operators, I am just hacking together the different commands I happen to know at the moment really

Edit: why echo instead of printf?

This was causing a lot of issues with newlines, like when I fetched the log to view it my $ was right after the log entry so I switched it back. But it is probably useful in the future to use >> instead :)

This entry was edited (2 months ago)

TIL you can send commands to terminal (in vscodium)


I've been using the terminal for 5 years.

99% of attempts at keeping valuable code snippets failed. Or having a useful command history.

Finally, I looked up how to send a line to terminal.

I use vscode since Atom was discontinued (looking forward to zed). But in the meanwhile, I just added

{
    "key": "ctrl+enter",
    "command": "workbench.action.terminal.runSelectedText",
    "when": "terminalProcessSupported && editorTextFocus && editorLangId =~ /shell|bash|zsh|fish/"
  }

Maybe it helps someone :)

With this, I can finally keep a history of all useful commands I run. Like I can have a systemd shell file where I store the commands that I ran. Or a file to store all my podman commands. Now I do not have to type them anymore, I can just run them.

This entry was edited (2 months ago)

Torvalds Frustrated Over "Disgusting" Testing "Turd" DRM Code Landing In Linux 6.15


The big set of open-source graphics driver updates for Linux 6.15 have been merged but Linux creator Linus Torvalds isn't particularly happy with the pull request. In particular, he's unhappy with some new "hdrtest" testing code being built as part of full kernel builds and the "turds" it leaves behind and this code "needs to die" at least from the perspective of non-DRM driver developers.

Mint Cinnamon Issues (Solved)


So following on from my last post I'v now tried again, this time using Rufus to make my boot USB rather than balena etcher which despite being reccomended is apparently problematic. I also downloaded and verified a fresh install of the cinnamon ISO.

Result is uh....

Failed to open \EFI\BOOT\mmx64.efi - Not Found
Failed to load image (windows symbol): Not Found
Failed to start MokManager: Not Found
Something has gone seriously wrong: import_mok_state() failed: Not Found

This happens when trying to boot from the USB so its actually worse than last time where the demo environment worked but it kept crashing on attempting a proper setup.

PC in question is a small notebook with no discreet GPU to speak of (Intel integrated graphics) that I've been hoping to use as a testbed before comiting to Linux on my main PC.___

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

Sorry to link to reddit, but have you already tried the suggestions in this thread from a year ago: old.reddit.com/r/pop_os/commen… ?

Large (1920x9750, ~3MB) screenshot for posterity + those who absolutely do not want to access reddit at all: files.catbox.moe/mqsdxh.png

Edit: (Related links)
- linuxquestions.org/questions/l…
- forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic…
- unix.stackexchange.com/questio…

I'd try the "copy \EFI\BOOT\grubx64.efi to EFI\BOOT\mmx64.efi" solution personally and see what happens. If that works, you might just have an obnoxious BIOS on that computer.

This entry was edited (2 months ago)

The fediverse has a bullying problem


So check it out: Mastodon decided to implement follower-only posts for their users. All good. They did it in a way where they were still broadcasting those posts (described as "private") in a format that other servers could easily wind up erroneously showing them to random people. That's not ideal.

Probably the clearest explanation of the root of the problem is this:

Something you may not know about Mastodon's privacy settings is that they are recommendations, not demands. This means that it is up to each individual server whether or not it chooses to enforce them. For example, you may mark your post with unlisted, which indicates that servers shouldn't display the post on their global timelines, but servers which don't implement the unlisted privacy setting still can (and do).

Servers don't necessarily disregard Mastodon's privacy settings for malicious reasons. Mastodon's privacy settings aren't a part of the original OStatus protocol, and servers which don't run a recent version of the Mastodon software simply aren't configured to recognize them. This means that unlisted, private, or even direct posts may end up in places you didn't expect on one of these servers—like in the public timeline, or a user's reblogs.


That is super relevant for "private" posts by Mastodon. They fall into the same category as how you've been voting on Lemmy posts and comments: This stuff seems private, because it's being hidden in your UI, but it's actually being broadcasted out to random untrusted servers behind the scenes, and some server software is going to expose it. It's simply going to happen. You need to be aware of that. Even if it's not shown in your UI, it is available.

Anyway, Pixelfed had a bug in its handling of those types of posts, which meant that in some circumstances it would show them to everyone. Somebody wrote on her blog about how her partner has been posting sensitive information as "private," and Pixelfed was exposing it, and how it's a massive problem. For some reason, Dansup (Pixelfed author) taking it seriously and fixing the problem and pushing out a new version within a few days only made this person more upset, because in her (IMO incorrect) opinion, the way Dansup had done it was wrong.

I think the blog-writer is just mistaken about some of the technical issues involved. It sounds like she's planning on telling her partner that it's still okay to be posting her private stuff on Mastodon, marked "private," now that Pixelfed and only Pixelfed has fixed the issue. I think that's a huge mistake for reasons that should be obvious. It sounds like she's very upset that Dansup made it explicit that he was fixing this issue, thinking that even exposing it in commit comments (which as we know get way more readership than blog posts) would mean people knew about it, and the less people that knew about it, the safer her partner's information would be since she is continuing to do this apparently. You will not be surprised to discover that I think that type of thinking is also a mistake.

That's not even what I want to talk about, though. I have done security-related work professionally before, so maybe I look at this stuff from a different perspective than this lady does. What I want to talk about is this type of comments on Lemmy, when this situation got posted here under the title "Pixelfed leaks private posts from other Fediverse instances":

Non-malicious servers aren’t supposed to do what Pixelfed did.

Pixelfed got caught with its pants down

rtfm and do NOT give a rest to bad behaving software

dansup remains either incompetent for implementing badly something easy or toxic for federating ignoring what the federation requires

i completely blame pixelfed here: it breaks trust in transit and that’s unacceptable because it makes the system untrustworthy

periodic reminder to not touch dansup software and to move away from pixelfed and loops

dansup is not competent and quite problematic and it’s not even over

developers with less funding (even 0) contributed way more to fedi, they’re just less vocal

dansup is all bark no bite, stop falling for it

dansup showed quite some incompetence in handling security, delivering features, communicating clearly and honestly and treating properly third party devs


I sort of started out in the ensuing conversation just explaining the issues involved, because they are subtle, but there are people who are still sending me messages a day later insisting that Dansup is a big piece of shit and he broke the internet on purpose. They're also consistently upset, among other reasons, that he's getting paid because people like the stuff he made and gave away, and chose to back his Kickstarter. Very upset. I keep hearing about it.

This is not the first time, or even the first time with Dansup. From time to time, I see this with some kind of person on the Fediverse who's doing something. Usually someone who's giving away their time to do something for everyone else. Then there's some giant outcry that they are "problematic" or awful on purpose in some way. With Dansup at least, every time I've looked at it, it's mostly been trumped-up nonsense. The worst it ever is, in actuality, is "he got mad and posted an angry status HOW DARE HE." Usually it is based more or less on nothing.

Dansup isn't just a person making free software, who sometimes posts angry unreasonable statuses or gets embroiled in drama for some reason because he is human and has human emotions. He's the worst. He is toxic and unhinged. He is keeping his Loops code secret and breaking his promises. He makes money. He broke privacy for everyone (no don't tell me any details about the protocol or why he didn't he broke it for everyone) (and don't tell me he fixed it in a few days and pushed out a new version that just makes it worse because he put it in the notes and it'll be hard for people to upgrade anyway so it doesn't count)

And so on.

Some particular moderator isn't just a person who sometimes makes poor moderation decisions and then doubles down on them. No, he is:

a racist and a zionist and will do whatever he can to delete pro-Palestinian posts, or posts that criticize Israel.

a vile, racist, zionist piece of shit, and anyone who defends or supports him is sitting at the table with him and accepts those labels for themselves.


And so on. The exact same pattern happened with a different lemmy.world mod who was extensively harassed for months for various made-up bullshit, all the way up until the time where he (related or not) decided to stop modding altogether.

It's weird. Why are people so vindictive and personal, and why do they double down so enthusiastically about taking it to this personal place where this person involved is being bad on purpose and needs to be attacked for being horrible, instead of just being a normal person with a variety of normal human failings as we all have? Why are people so un-amenable to someone trying to say "actually it's not that simple", to the point that a day later my inbox is still getting peppered with insistences that Dansup is the worst on this private-posts issue, and I'm completely wrong and incompetent for thinking otherwise and all the references I've been digging up and sending to try to illustrate the point are just more proof that I'm horrible?

Guys: Chill out.

I would just recommend, if you are one of these people that likes to double down on all this stuff and get all amped-up about how some particular fediverse person is "problematic" or "toxic" or various other vague insinuations, or you feel the need to bring up all kinds of past drama any time anything at all happens with the person, that you not.

I am probably guilty of this sometimes. I definitely like to give people hell sometimes, if in my opinion they are doing something that's causing a problem. But the extent to which the fediverse seems to like to do this stuff just seems really extreme to me, and a lot of times what it's based on is just weird petty bullying nonsense.

Just take it it with a grain of salt, too, if you see it, is also what I'm saying. Whether it comes from me or whoever. A lot of times, the issue doesn't look like such a huge deal once you strip away the histrionics and the assumption that everyone's being malicious on purpose. Doubly so if the emotion and the innuendo is running way ahead of what the actual facts are.

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

IMO, Dan has some responsibility but more of it lies with Mastodon and other microblogging software that labels this post type as "private", "followers only" or similar without any further explanation. It needs to be clear that it's dependent on good faith and competence of remote servers that may collect that information.

Moreover we need to do a better job of letting users know that anything posted on the internet, and especially anything posted to the fediverse where it's backed up on potentially thousands of servers, should be assumed to be publicly-visible and eternal. If nothing else, it will be backed up on the internet archive. If you want to communicate privately, this is the wrong place.

I wish there was a private social media platform but it seems like the closest we're going to get is Signal.

Also "the bullying problem" has nothing to do with the Fediverse and everything to do with people in general and the erosion of nuance.

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

Re: The fediverse has a bullying problem


Let's clarify something here. Mastodon follower only posts don't have the "public pseudo user" addressed, do they?

That's the important piece that this whole thing hinges upon

If it is present, Mastodon is a fault. If not, Pixelfed messed up.

Am I mistaken?

For example, a followers-only post is addressed to the followers collection of the author, at minimum. When NodeBB sees this, it doesn't even consider it public, because the public pseudo user isn't addressed. We also have no concept of "followers only", but we handle them just fine.

This entry was edited (2 months ago)

Is it rude to reply using English under posts in a language you can’t speak?


I often reply under Japanese posts, and I always assume users will use a translator as I do, but maybe in the context of a Japanese instance or conversation this may look rude?
This entry was edited (2 months ago)
in reply to Jumuta

nah, it’s better for information integrity to reply in the language you understand imo, comments translated using translator services are very obvious anyway and some people are multilingual


Sure, I agree? Maybe there's a misunderstanding here and I should add that it simply would never even occur to me to enter a conversation if I didn't natively understand the language that's being used.

This entry was edited (2 months ago)

Interstellar (mbin app) added piefed support!


Interstellar (!interstellar@kbin.earth) has added Piefed support!

How do i try?


Install interstellar from the play store/F-droid, and create an account on preferred.social/ (only instance with the API enabled, get join code from invite). Then, login from interstellar and you're done!

What's next?


Well, andrew is working on porting thunder to piefed (the main dev of it is interested in it) Admiral patrick said he might port tesseract to piefed, once the API is stable, and ae_harding said he may add it after lemmy 1.0.

Thank you @andrew_s@piefed.social, @olorin99@kbin.earth and @jwr1@kbin.earth for working tirelessly to implement this :D

This entry was edited (2 months ago)

Kann man das Mastodon Konto verknüpfen?


Bin wirklich noch etwas überfordert hier. Wie kann man das feddit Konto und das Mastodon konto verknüpfen?

Wo finde ich die Adresse von meinem feddit Konto und muss ich es auf Mastodon einbinden? Hilfe.... 😱 Bitte...

This entry was edited (2 months ago)

I propose we storm Toronto. Search every building until we find Nicole. The fediverse chick!


Maybe then she'll SHUT UP! Oh my god, is there a single person on this platform who doesn't get these messages every month???

Guys, you all KNOW what I'm talking about, right? Gonna have to go get Tim Misney on this case! And you KNOW what he DOES! eyebrows

in reply to Lost_My_Mind

One huge motive behind creating !nicole@feddit.org was to concentrate all the posts about that spam, which, in turn, are also spam, to one place, which can easily be blocked by users that - understandably - don't want to see that spam. Especially when they don't get the original nicole spam in the first place, such as me - which is highly ironic, but an interesting phenomenon. I'm pretty active as a commentator, and not inactive as a poster, yet only got exactly one message a few months ago.
This entry was edited (2 months ago)

advanced38 doesn't like this.

Isn’t GPLv3 the ultimate solution to all broligarcy problems?


I always believed that problems around technocratic broligarchy could’ve been solved if the software ecosystem using GPLv3 was strong. So when I suddenly see a flurry of articles stating that the EU is trying to come up with its own spin of Linux to boycott monopolies by US companies, I think it is either a waste of time or self defeating because the ultimate power of computer codes isn’t the code itself, but the license attached to it.

Is there something that I have missed in this matter because I barely see anyone talking about the need for more libre software. I find the latest transition from GLP to MIT license for rust-based coreutils to be concerning because we’re basically adopting “doormat” licenses that will enable companies to easily embrace, extend and extinguish the freedoms we cherish so much in this space.

in reply to Maroon

We as a society have to enlighten ourselves such that we have a standard and this standard is open source.

The more people refuse to use proprietary stuff, and promote open source tools, the more powerful those tools get.

As long as we pay 100 bucks for a shitty game and refuse to donate 1 buck to a foss calendar we are far away from where we'd like to be.

If people would pay good for foss, companies would do it

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

I've started doing notes in the terminal as well. I used Obsidian and Logseq for a while, mainly because I wanted something with a GUI so that I could recommend it to people who aren't comfortable with the terminal. But eventually I figured that a terminal solution was the right one for me, since I have a terminal open all the time anyway.

I switched from vim to kakoune a while ago ( kakoune.org ), so I use nb ( xwmx.github.io/nb ) instead of vimwiki.

nb is a terminal application that will open whatever your default text editor is.

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

Not a fan of vim, it's improper implementation of the ex command set and the way it ads line feeds, when you cut-n-paste between windows, makes it basically useless. I much prefer the BSD derived nvi, even on Linux. Like VIM it also handles multiple byte character sets, but UNLIKE VIM it is a COMPLETE and CORRECT implementation of vi/ex not a half-assed kind of sort of implementation.
in reply to CheeseNoodle

If you want to try to get Linux on the main drive working (since USB works but isn't ideal) there are a few things I encountered.

-some distros just didn't like my hardware. Failed to install, or installed but boot would get errors and halt. The remedy was using an rpm distro rather than deb based (I tried about 10 debs, the rpm ones acknowledged the bios error and moved on)

-secure boot can be a bit of a pain. If you don't want to deal with it, Turnoff secureboot, and in some cases EFI and use legacy BIOS mode.

-if you want Secure boot and EFI. Allow USB boot in BIOS, do the install and ensure it is building a GPT disk with an EFI partition. At the reboot stage it should ask if you want to enroll keys, say yes.

If during reboot it does nothing or boots to windows(assuming you have windows drive). Go into BIOS and choose secure boot option where you can pick which Secure OS it found and move that to top of boot list.

-if it is not those things it is often nvidia on Wayland or X issue on laptops. If you don't want to mess with installing a GPU switcher, you can often set your laptop to discrete graphics before install and bypass the two GPU issues

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

As others say, it can be done. If you want more normal umpf, you'll need to mount parts of the filesystem to your ssd. You can mount /home or / on ssd, or have an overlay file system as a file on an ssd/hdd, or use bcachefs with back propagation to the usb, or similar fancy setups.

So you'll boot linux kernel from the usb, but most disk activity will be on your ssd. Fun project, but not super easy/practical if it isn't done automatically.

My old HP microserver is 'made' to boot from a usb-stick inserted on the mb.

Anyway, perhaps an AI can suggest a script to do what you want ?

This entry was edited (2 months ago)

What do you think might be some fun, positive ways for instances to distinguish themselves?


Instances of any fediverse software, to be clear.

Can we please make a viable (federated!) amazon alternative? I have an idea!


Hi folks!
I'm here with another idea. Let's make an amazon alternative. I know! I know! That was asked for a couple times already but lets discuss some details.

Amazon is basically glorified dropshipping by now. What if we just made federated (not sure if over activitypub would work) ads and sales, powered by fediseer (the "trust" network of the fediverse).

Example 1:
So you buy at toms groceries, you trust them. they have experience with tina's hardware store and they trust them. so you can buy both toms and tinas wares on both sites.

Example 2:
So for example, I run a small business that sells computers. You run a small business that sells mice and keyboards. I have worked with you before so I mark you as trusted in my local website, which federates with yours, showing your products in my shop. If a customer buys my computer and buys your keyboard on top, my site sends you a buy order with customer address and payment. I get a small fee for my electricity of say 1%.

Can someone try and poke holes in this idea? It feels like this could work!

Have a nice weekend.

in reply to haui

A version of this focussed on a gift economy/trading platform (e.g. like freecycle, or the buy nothing groups on facebook) would also be cool.

Also person-to-person buying/selling, rather than business-to-person would be nice to have, like craigslist, reverb.com, gumtree, or used items on ebay.

If this was focused on a craigslist/gumtree style of selling, where most of the actual trade is done off-site/in-person with cash or bank transfers, it would completely side-step the payment processor problem.

This entry was edited (2 months ago)

Bridges: The Last Network Effect


This talk discusses how, through bridging, Mastodon and Bluesky can create a cross-protocol network for the open social web.
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Federated wiki software?


I absolutely love wiki walking through random obscure fan wikis, but I hate how most are on Fandom.

I think a federated wiki solution makes sense. I could see it as an evolution of the interwiki concept.

in reply to lgsp@feddit.it

Also:

  • gift economy/trading platform (e.g. like freecycle)
  • buying/selling (e.g. like ebay)
  • local community/bioregionalism networks (e.g. what nextdoor should be)

These seem kind of ideal for a federated network, IMO.

I actually think Lemmy would be a pretty decent format for something stackoverflow like - just maybe needs to UI tweaks to minimise the visual space that replies take up, plus maybe answered post flair

in reply to ProfHillbilly

I think you're starting too big, to use your phrase.

Get used to the basics first: what's different (to whatever you're running now), what's the same. They Linux distributions almost all have GUIs (KDE, GNOME are the main ones but there are many others).

Run a live USB version from a usb stick to get used to it until you have the confidence to install it on an old pc. Personally I do not recommend dual booting; data gets lost that way. Install it on an old pc and learn how to restore your backups to a Linux filesystem (not the fs of what you're used to on Linux platform). I write that because you said that want to end up with a Linux server.

Choose one of the top few from distrowatch.com/

Your aim is to understand what's going on under neither the GUI; how permissions work.


I started by installing a VoIP product into a VM on Windows 2000, but there are better ways now.

Good luck. You shouldn't find it that difficult.

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Configuring A PeerTube Instance


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What is going on behind the scenes when searching for a lemmy post in a search engine?


I was looking for some collection of posts earlier about Proton Mail and the whole controversy with the CEO, and I opened a post the lemmy instance that was suggested was lemmy.zip but the community and the poster were from lemmy.world so that made me ask myself a bunch of questions. Reference link

Note: I used duckduckgo

Here are some questions I have:

  • How does the search engine decide which instance to link you to as you could in theory show every instance for the same post?
  • Could you get a result where all the results are the same post just different instances?
  • Do you think that could deter new people finding out about lemmy through search results?
  • How can an instance make themselves more visible in the search results (for exposure)?
  • I did not get any results from lemmy clients such as vger.app the only results were direct instances, will this always be the case?

I remember learning about search engines a while back but I don't know how relevant that information is any more. Having crawlers and the more a website is linked in other websites the higher up in the search result will be and the whole robot.txt thing.

I know if I wanted to search for something specific in lemmy I could just use its own search function, but what about people who ask general questions and that happens to be answered in a lemmy post. I wanted to know how exposed we are/ will be to people who don't yet know about lemmy.

Meltdown doesn't like this.

in reply to JustAnotherKay

So domains are recursive tree structures. So u have node com which has a bunch of nodes below it of different domains which can have sub domains etc. Its like this cos that's how DNS was designed.

Search engines gives scores to domains and pages. When u say that the content origin of ur page is some other domain the search engines will use that knowledge to adjust rating accordingly.

Say u have 2 domains site1.example.com and site2.example.com the search engine will have a rank for site1, site2, and example.com where the rating of both site1 and site2 effect the rating for example.com.

If the content origin for all federated content has the same origin say instance.fediverse.com then the rating for all federated content will be classified as part of fediverse.com and all content will be working together across all instances boosting the fediverse as a single entity.

This entry was edited (2 months ago)

PieFed supports auto merging threads so you see all the comments in one post


cross-posted from: piefed.social/post/538685

No more duplicate posts

One of the things that the recent addition of the Feeds feature highlighted was how many cross-posts / duplicate posts there are. When you display posts from linux@lemmy.world, linux@programming.dev, linux@lemmy.ml, etc all the cross-posts make it get repetitive, really fast. The same thing happens on the home feed too although it's a bit less obvious because there's a wider range of subjects involved.

Except now, it doesn't, because PieFed de-duplicates your feed! And your home page, and your topics. Attached to this post is a screenshot showing how it works out - an article posted to 7 different places is only shown once despite me having joined most of those communities.

We're still figuring out whether it's a good idea to merge all the comments from all the cross-posts into one page and how to do that in a way that respects the different culture/rules in the communities that the posts were made in. It's a tricky UX and social question.

I've held off on adding a cross-post function to PieFed until now but it'll be added soon.

I believe that the "Nicole" images being sent to Threadiverse users may be intending to deanonymize accounts


For those not familiar, there are numerous messages containing images being repeatedly spammed to many Threadiverse users talking about a Polish girl named "Nicole". This has been ongoing for some time now.

Lemmy permits external inline image references to be embedded in messages. This means that if a unique image URL or set of image URLs are sent to each user, it's possible to log the IP addresses that fetch these images; by analyzing the log, one can determine the IP address that a user has.

In some earlier discussion, someone had claimed that local lemmy instances cache these on their local pict-rs instance and rewrite messages to reference the local image.

It does appear that there is a closed issue on the lemmy issue tracker referencing such a deanonymization attack:

github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issu…

I had not looked into these earlier, but it looks like such rewriting and caching intending to avoid this attack is not occurring, at least on my home instance. I hadn't looked until the most-recent message, but the image embedded here is indeed remote:

lemmy.doesnotexist.club/pictrs…

I haven't stored and looked through a list of these, but as I recall, the user sending them is bouncing around different instances. They certainly are not using the same hostname for their lemmy instance as the pict-rs instance; this message was sent from nicole92 on lemmy.latinlok.com, though the image is hosted on lemmy.doesnotexist.club. I don't know whether they are moving around where the pict-rs instance is located from message to message. If not, it might be possible to block the pict-rs instance in your browser. That will only be a temporary fix, since I see no reason that they couldn't also be moving the hostname on the pict-rs instance.

Another mitigation would be to route one's client software or browser through a VPN.

I don't know if there are admins working on addressing the issue; I'd assume so, but I wanted to at least mention that there might be privacy implications to other users.

In any event, regardless of whether the "Nicole" spammer is aiming to deanonymize users, as things stand, it does appear that someone could do so.

My own take is that the best fix here on the lemmy-and-other-Threadiverse-software-side would be to disable inline images in messages. Someone who wants to reference an image can always link to an external image in a messages, and permit a user to click through. But if remote inline image references can be used, there's no great way to prevent a user's IP address from being exposed.

If anyone has other suggestions to mitigate this (maybe a Greasemonkey snippet to require a click to load inline images as a patch for the lemmy Web UI?), I'm all ears.

This entry was edited (2 months ago)

Help with systemd (I think)


SOLVED If any lost souls find themselves here in a similar situation let it be known that the file that worked for me was creating a file at '%h/.config/systemd/user/google-drive-ocamlfuse.service' with the following content:

[Unit]
Description=FUSE filesystem over Google Drive
After=network.target

[Service]
ExecStart=google-drive-ocamlfuse %h/googledrive
ExecStop=fusemount -u %h/googledrive
Restart=always
RestartSec=300
Type=forking

[Install]
WantedBy=default.target

Howdy, I have very recently installed Opensuse Tumbleweed alongside Windows 10 (On a seperate drive) and am trying to get things setup to where I can fully transition to linux. One of the first things I have hit a wall on is getting a file to execute on boot using systemd.

I am trying to use this package to be able to access my google drive from Dolphin. And so far it works okay. Except that it doesn't survive a reboot. I have to run the command:

google-drive-ocamlfuse ~/googledrive

after each reboot in order for the google drive directories to be accessible. So I googled how to make that happen automagically on boot and found this guide that helped me get a startup script going.

I created /usr/local/bin/ocamlfuseStartup.sh as a file that contains the command from before:

google-drive-ocamlfuse ~/googledrive

and verified that it works as intended when I enter ./ocamlfuseStartup.sh from that directory.

I then created another file at /usr/lib/systemd/system/startup.service that contains the following:

[Unit]
Description=Startup Script

[Service]
ExecStart=/bin/bash /usr/local/bin/ocamlfuseStartup.sh

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

I have no idea what the /bin/bash portion is for because I found it from a googling but without it I get the following error:

startup.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=203/EXEC

However with it I get this error:

startup.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=2/INVALIDARGUMENT

which I take to mean that there is something wrong with my ocamlfuseStartup.sh file maybe? But since it works when I manually execute the file I'm kind of at a loss.

I found this thread where it seemed like someone else was having a similar issue but I didn't really grok what they were talking about.

Any and all help is greatly appreciated!

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

The 203 error you got is because your script isnt a valid executable, it needs to have a shebang at the top, you can change it to something like this and set the executable bit with chmod +x <file>

\#!/usr/bin/env bash
google-drive-ocamlfuse ~/googledrive

this tells it to run using bash as the interpreter.

Im not familliar with this google drive software, but im figuring that its exiting with an error code cuz its running as a system service, and $HOME probobly isnt set so ~ doesnt expand and the software gets an invalid path.

But I recommend using a user service for this, it will run when you login, you should be able to copy the service file you already have into ~/.config/systemd/user/ and run systemctl --user daemon-reload and systemctl --user enable startup.service --now, this will enable and start the service in one go.

I also recommend adding the following lines under [Service]

Type=simple
Restart=always
RestartSec=60

idk if the software will exit if it loses network or wifi or anything, but this will have it automatically restart after 60 seconds, should it exit for any reason.

If you need it to run before login, it is possible to do with a system service, but it will need a bit more setup

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

i would install cron if its not installed, then add a file under

/etc/cron.d/someNiceToRememberName

and with an editor write the following in it:

@reboot root /bin/bash -x /usr/local/bin/ocamlfuseStartup.sh >> /tmp/output 2>&1 ; echo returncode=$? >> /tmp/output

where root is the user it should run with and the redirection (>> /tmp/output 2>&1) is for seeing what is wrong, and echo returncode= prints the exit error indicator.

you might be able to do this with systemd too, but it often messes things up and i like i.e. clean log outputs.

for testing you can add a line that would start it without a reboot.

22 * * * * root /path/to/your/command parameters >> /tmp/output 2>&1

where the 22 is the next minute it should run. with this cronjob it would be run at every x:22 after each hour 09:22 pm 10:22 pm aso. i do this sometimes for testing

as systemd starts cron with a broken environment too, it might as well not work using cron, but then you know its the broken environment systemd starts it with.
if thats your problem, you might want to add:
PATH=$PATH:/usr/sbin:/usr/local/sbin

somewhere at the top of the shellscript depending on what is missing, which by itself would be the directories the commands executed are in.
in terminal use :

which sed

for example to find where the "sed" binary is located (if the script cannot find it)
you could change every occurance of "sed" in the script with the full path to it, or add the directory using the PATH variable as a colon separated list of directories to search commands in (where order matters)

to maybe more easy see what is missing i added the -x as a parameter to bash which makes it print out a line for every command it executes to sdterr so you can see what the last commands were.
you can try it in the terminal (if your terminal is bash or compatible

$ set -x
$ echo foo
+ echo foo
foo
$ 

i'ld guess systemd starts the shellscript with a broken environment and thats maybe why it doesnt work, maybe try adding this to the script too:
echo PATH: $PATH

somewhere at the top of the script and use the redirection i showed for the cron job.
run it once in your terminal and compare the output with what it prints during automated script run.

good luck.

transition to linux. One of the first things I have hit a wall on is getting a file to execute on boot using systemd.

I am trying to use this package to be


that bash thing is the interpreter. the script ocamlFuseStartup.sh is written as bash (possibly the same as your terminal) if that script has a "shebang" (#!/bin/bash) as the very first line AND the file has the execute permission set (chmod +x /path/to/file), then you dont need /bin/bash at the beginning to start it.

This entry was edited (2 months ago)

Raspberry Pi Announces rpi-image-gen To Help Craft Custom Software Images


This entry was edited (2 months ago)

Following the article about old school forums dying, a reminder that there is !fedibridge@lemmy.dbzer0.com that is dedicated to promote the Fediverse. Pinned posts have resources everyone can use.


in reply to solrize

The fediverse is more like the evolution of those old school forums, but diversified into more than just forums. Decentralized, user ran shit that could be a forum, a microblog, a YouTube alternative, a Discord/IRC alternative, an image host, etc. And then they could possibly share content with each other directly, but that's kinda up to the individual app/site.
This entry was edited (2 months ago)

Pixelfed user count has gone vertical.


Editing to let people know that I will be blocking anyone who feels the need to tell me why this graph is inaccurate. I truly don't care, but feel free to chime in with your useless take and land a spot on my block list! 🙂
This entry was edited (4 months ago)

Madbrad200 doesn't like this.

Unknown parent

Yeah I was on Fosstodon first. Moved to Sakurajima (Sharkey) and now I'm on Sakurajima (Mastodon).

You're right, the instance makes a big difference. Very important to find one you enjoy.

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Subscribing to mastodon


Given the different way they apps are structured I don't even know if it's a sensible question, but is there a way to subscribe to something on a Madison server?

The server as a community, or a tag as a community? Does mastodon have some other concept that I could subscribe to?