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


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

Insurrection act — April 20th. Pls read!


Insurrection act — April 20th. Pls read!

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

FROM THE MEDIUM:

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

THIS WILL BE THE POINT OF NO RETURN.


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

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

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

THIS IS HOW DEMOCRACY ENDS: HERE’S THEIR PLAYBOOK


It won’t all happen in one night.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  1. Elections Are “Postponed” Indefinitely

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

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

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


This isn’t speculation.

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

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

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

We need to prepare now.

We need to plan now.

We need to dismantle his plans before they begin.

We have one month.

That’s it.

The Only Way to Stop this Coup is by Exposing It


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

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

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


Maybe we will be proven wrong.

Maybe we will look silly.

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

Here’s what we must do before April 20:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

WHAT IF WE DON’T STOP IT?


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

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

Stopping it before it happens is the best option.

But what if we don’t?

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

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

in reply to BmeBenji (he/him)

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

Edit:

No.

Shut the fuck up.

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

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

This entry was edited (8 months ago)

Beckn Protocol


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

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

This entry was edited (8 months ago)

don't like this

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


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

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

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

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

This entry was edited (8 months ago)
in reply to gnuhaut

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

Getting ready to switch to Linux full time


But I've got two doubts remaining.

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

If yes, how do I do it?

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

in reply to Focal

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

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

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

This entry was edited (8 months ago)
in reply to Focal

I'm not so sure you're to the getting ready to switch to Linux stage as you think you are. Also, cloning & moving drive partitions are pretty elementary concepts. Not that people shouldn't help but many people on Linux don't realize encouraging people to switch too soon, often results in that person actually hurting the Linux community because they had a relatively productive setup before & now everything sucks to them. Having a dual boot partition or drive is helpful but you should also have some strategies to switch back if needed as your primary OS until you feel more confident & productive.
This entry was edited (8 months ago)

Lemmy vote aggregation idea


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

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

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

What this solves:

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

Mastodon to Lemmy post formatting rules questions


Hi all,

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

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

I was able to get this point:

Mastodon input:

Lemmy crosspost:

Let me walk through the key points.

1. Thumbnail

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

2. Markdown Formatting

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

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

3. Mastodon to multiple Lemmy communities

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

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

4. Direct URL Lemmy link with Text Heading

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

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

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

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


Lemmy Mastadon (automated crossposting?) interaction issue.


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

I also have a Mastodon account:

mstdn.games/@Landgraab_Industr…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


This entry was edited (8 months ago)
in reply to Agent Karyo

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

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

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

in reply to schnurrito

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

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

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

This entry was edited (8 months ago)

Is Libreoffice a good Microsoft Office substitute?


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

One thing to make your girlfriend's transition easier: you can reconfigure the UI to be more similar to more recent versions of MS office. The first time you open it, there will be a popup that brings you directly to the relevant settings menu. It's not one to one but the major options are going to be in similar places after you changed the UI.
This entry was edited (8 months ago)

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


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

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

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

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

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

Current downvoting Accounts
:::spoiler bot-list

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

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


in reply to irelephant [he/him]🍭

You are literally linking to the post I crossposted.

Do some lemmy clients not distinguish crossposts?

Edit: I’m wrong, see comments below.

This entry was edited (8 months ago)

don't like this

Lemmy Mastadon (automated crossposting?) interaction issue.


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

I also have a Mastodon account:

mstdn.games/@Landgraab_Industr…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This entry was edited (8 months ago)

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


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

setxkbmap -option caps:swapescape

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

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

in reply to mazzilius_marsti

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

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

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

Edit: what I always used was

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

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

from here
This entry was edited (8 months ago)

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


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

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

in reply to jeffhykin

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

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

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

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

in reply to InfiniteHench

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

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

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

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

ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/…

scholarworks.uark.edu/mgmtuht/…

This entry was edited (8 months ago)

When did Kdenlive get so good?


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

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

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

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

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

Physical Install to QEMU VM, is it possible?


Hello everyone!

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

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

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

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

in reply to Coki91

Here be dragons. But basically:

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

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

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

Alternative to PicCollage


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

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

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

Note: she is running Linux Mint 21.3

This entry was edited (8 months ago)

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


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

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

in reply to queermunist she/her

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

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

in reply to zonnewin

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

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

don't like this

Why can't I block rule 34 community?


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

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


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

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


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

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

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

This entry was edited (8 months ago)
in reply to gnuhaut

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

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

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

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

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

Never know when it comes in handy.

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

This entry was edited (8 months ago)

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

This entry was edited (8 months ago)
in reply to Cris

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

How do Boosts / Retoots Show on Your Home Server?


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

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

This entry was edited (8 months ago)

What second hand laptop to buy


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

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

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

FediAI - Demo


You post through the UI to a Fediverse hashtag, on which AI bots listen to, which replies are then displayed in the UI. In the future, the main app should have some kind of ranking only to show the best replies. Through hashtags, AI bots can specialize in certain areas. It would also be possible to partially process a task (for example translate it) and then repost it to another hashtag (I call that "prompt routing). This way, you can have chains of AI bots working together on public, shared message queues.
This entry was edited (8 months ago)

World on warcraft on Linux


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

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

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

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

Developer: Universal Blue (US?)

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

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

Developer: system76 (Denver, US)

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

Developer: Valve (US)

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

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

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

Developer: Canonical ltd. (UK)

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

Developer: Thomas Crider (Denver, US)

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

Developer : Linuxmint (French, Dutch, UK)

rEFInd doesn't show BTRFS snapshots.


What I want:


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


Additional Info:


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

I know this is a general community, but this is the 7th community that I'm asking this 🥲

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

in reply to Leaflet

This makes a numerous amounts of incorrect assumptions.

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

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

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

Another wrong assumption

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


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

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

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

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


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

Anyone reading this article should be made aware of this.

in reply to Quack Doc

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


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

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

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


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

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


Makes sense.

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


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

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

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


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

A good example of this is JXL.


Can you expand on what you mean with that?

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


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

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

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


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

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


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

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

This entry was edited (8 months ago)
in reply to Zamundaaa

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

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


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

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


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

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


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

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


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

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


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

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

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


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

Can you expand on what you mean with that?


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

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

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

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


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

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

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


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

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

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

in reply to Quack Doc

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


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

With Windows Advanced Color of course, that may change.

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


What analogy?

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


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

unless I am in “creator/PC” mode


Almost certainly just trying to copy what monitors do.

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


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

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


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

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

This entry was edited (7 months ago)
in reply to Quack Doc

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

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

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

in reply to Quack Doc

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

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

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

This entry was edited (8 months ago)

GUI Programming Recommendations


Hello all,

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

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

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

This entry was edited (8 months ago)
in reply to gronjo45

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

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

This entry was edited (8 months ago)

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


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

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

App support is one thing I can think of.

in reply to irelephant [he/him]🍭

For me..

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

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

Because there's no app.

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

This entry was edited (8 months ago)

Life After Microsoft Windows: Linux Rises


This just warms my heart. The year of the Linux desktop isn't here, but the decade of it is.
This entry was edited (8 months ago)

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


Hey, I hope someone can help me.

Problem:

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

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

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

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

Technical data:

  • Nobara Linux 41 (Based on Fedora)
  • KDE Plasma 6.3.3
  • Wayland
  • Desktop PC. So a external monitor. Not a laptop monitor.
  • I have a 2nd monitor on which this does not happen.
This entry was edited (8 months ago)

A new security fund opens up to help protect the fediverse


in reply to maduncle

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

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

This entry was edited (8 months ago)

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


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

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

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

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

Now:

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

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

This entry was edited (8 months ago)

Lemmyvision 2 song contest - Voting is now live!


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

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

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

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

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

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

Cheers!

Federated Blogging Options


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

Qt 6.9 released


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

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

Qt 6.9 released


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

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

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

This entry was edited (8 months ago)

Linux Kernel Plan To Commit Web3 Integration


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

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

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

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

source

Need advice on my setup: msata and 2.5 ssd.


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

What I want:

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

What I managed to do:

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

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

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

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

This entry was edited (8 months ago)

Ram in use after suspend issue


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

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

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

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

If I reboot then things go back to normal behavior.

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


Specs:

  • Manjaro XFCE 25.0.0 Zetar
  • 6.13.8-2 Kernel
  • Gigabyte B860I AORUS PRO ICE ITX Motherboard
  • Intel Core Ultra 5 245KF CPU
  • 64GB DDR5 RAM
  • 2TB M.2 NVMe
This entry was edited (8 months ago)
in reply to Dr Jekell

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

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

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

This entry was edited (8 months ago)

Building native packages is complicated | Packaging Anubis as native packages


Anubis provides protection against bots scraping websites and DDoSing projects.

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

Unknown parent

lemmy - Link to source

LordKitsuna

Do you just assume that any cartoon character is underaged? There's literally no indication that that character is in any way underaged whatsoever, it appears to be a standard chibi-style depiction of a generic adult.

I think you may need to consult a therapist or other mental health professional if literally every depiction of a cartoon character in a Chibi art style causes you to see pedophilia

This entry was edited (8 months ago)

Resources for discovery across the open social web/fediverse


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

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

Finding instances/software-agnostic
* FediDB
* Fediverse Observer

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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


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

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

Video:
picoshare.jau.nz/-VnpPP8z6xR

Full specs:

5600X

3080 Ti on 570.124.04

Nobara with KDE

Wayland

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

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

This entry was edited (8 months ago)

FediForum Has Been Canceled


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

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

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

anthropomorphized doesn't like this.

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


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

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 (8 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 (9 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 (8 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 (8 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 (8 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…

Unknown parent

I like YAML, as long as you aren't using complicated syntax. Using the | operator will get you some flexible usage that's mostly easy enough to read. YAML definitely has its problems though. If you want, I can share some snippets of my config.

Sadly though, due to Espanso not having a working RPM build for Wayland (or a Flatpak, which they're working on), it's not quite as cross-platform as I want it to be. It won't work on any of the cool uBlue-derived distros that I've gravitated toward, so I'm hoping we get a nice, big update this year.

Unknown parent

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 (8 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 (8 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 (8 months ago)

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 (11 months ago)

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 (8 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 (8 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 (8 months ago)
Unknown parent

lemmy - Link to source

hydraulic_elliptical

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 (8 months ago)

How To Become A Hacker: A Step-By-Step Guide


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 (8 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 (8 months ago)

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

Unknown parent

lemmy - Link to source

NekuSoul

I'd be wary of that fork. It's run by a former Thunderbird dev that got banned for his toxic attitude and hasn't really improved since. Just take a look at the projects website. Being so unrespectful towards your upstream project should have no place in open-source.
This entry was edited (8 months ago)
Unknown parent

lemmy - Link to source

Novaling

I have no idea if Betterbird is actually better than regular Thunderbird, but I use that cause people said so and I read about it a bit. If it does die I guess I'll switch to Thunderbird, just a little cautious about Mozilla after the privacy policy fiasco.

Betterbird is in flathub too which is great for newbies like me.

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 (8 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 (8 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 (8 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 (8 months ago)

I made a Roblox xdg-open wrapper GUI


(Source Code)

This is still a work-in-progress and was mostly made for fun. All it does is read from a list of files in ~/.config/rblx_launcher/ and display them to be clicked, launching xdg-open with the placeId.

The files (friends.txt and games.txt) are formatted like so:

Name
ID
%
This entry was edited (9 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 (8 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 (8 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.

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 (8 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 (8 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 (8 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 (8 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 (9 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 (9 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 (8 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 (8 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 (8 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/

Unknown parent

lemmy - Link to source

prime_number_314159

Ideas can only be patented, not copyrighted. If a company designs something novel enough to qualify for a patent, and so good that people willingly pay for the feature, that's impressive, and arguably still a good thing. If instead they design a better user experience, or an improvement in performance, the ideas can be used in open source, even when the code cannot be.

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 (8 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"
Unknown parent

lemmy - Link to source

Ferk

To me, the problem is not really so much about "locking people in" (it's also unclear what you mean by that, if they were already using that ecosystem before using uutils aren't they already locked in?)

To me, the problem is how the MIT removes legal protections when it comes to ensuring accountability to changes in the source.. how can I be sure that the version of uutils shipped with "X Corp OS" has not had some special sauce added-in for increased tracking, AI magic, backdoor or "security" reasons? They are perfectly free to make changes without any public audit or having to tell their users what their own machine is doing anymore.

This entry was edited (8 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 (8 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 (8 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 (8 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 (8 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 (8 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 (8 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 (8 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 (9 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 (8 months ago)