[SOLVED]Unity Hub hangs at login: what terminal commands can I use to see what it's doing?


I switched to a Linux Mint/Win11 dual boot system over the weekend and installed Unity from Flathub. Running Unity Hub is fine but when I try to login, it hangs with no errors. I can log into the asset store just fine, so nothing wrong with the credentials. I'd like to know what terminal commands I could use to see what it's actually doing and figure out why it hangs.

I really don't want to continue using it in Windows and only keep it to run work programs, and really need to use Unity for University.

Edit: Troubleshooted via the terminal, then uninstalled the .Deb package that I downloaded from the Unity website and then followed another tutorial from another part of their website with terminal commands. Managed to log in and run my projects.

This entry was edited (1 month ago)

[SOLVED] Weird root permission issue on Sway which is not present in i3


Hello fellow lemmings

I am a long-time i3 user and have decided to switch to Sway.
I have encountered a weird error which has left me utterly bamboozled.

I am using Ubuntu 24.04 which has gone from 20.04 -> 22.04 -> 24.04.
It has Ubuntu-Gnome, i3 and Sway currently installed.

The issue


The error that I'm facing is when I'm using Sway, I simply don't have sudo access.

This is what the error looks like

$ sudo visudo
[sudo] password for xavier666:
Sorry, user xavier666 is not allowed to execute '/usr/sbin/visudo' as root on <HOSTNAME>.

When I switch back to i3, my permissions are fine for the same user.
I have not done any crazy modifications to the sudoer's file as far as I can remember.

PS: I have added a command to no-sudo xavier666 ALL = NOPASSWD: /usr/bin/brightnessctl

The "fix"


I temporarily solved it by adding xavier666 ALL=(ALL:ALL) ALL to the sudoer's file.

IMO, I think this should not be required.
I don't remember ever adding the default user to the file for all the installations that I have done.
(But this is the first time I've installed Sway)

Logs/Outputs


Running sudo -l without the fix (on Sway)

Matching Defaults entries for xavier666 on <HOSTNAME>:
    env_reset, mail_badpass,
    secure_path=/usr/local/sbin\:/usr/local/bin\:/usr/sbin\:/usr/bin\:/sbin\:/bin\:/snap/bin,
    use_pty

User xavier666 may run the following commands on <HOSTNAME>:
    (root) NOPASSWD: /usr/bin/brightnessctl

When I run the same command on i3, i get this (ALL : ALL) ALL extra line in the output.
And when I run sudo -l with my fix on Sway, (ALL : ALL) ALL is present and the permission issue is fixed.

What is causing Sway to remove the root permission for the user?

Note: I'm just asking for the standard sudo behaviour. I'm not trying to run GUI applications as root.

Edit:

The issue was caused by swhkd.
It was installed as a setuid binary (as instructed by the developer of the project).
Once I switched back to sway's default keybinds and disabled swhkd, the permissions were back to normal.
I removed my previous "fix" in the sudoers list and I still have sudo access.

Thanks a lot everyone and specially @gnuhaut@lemmy.ml for pointing me in the right direction.

This entry was edited (1 month ago)
in reply to xavier666

Yeah so this does not confirm my hunch, and I don't think sway is changing your group membership. Version 1.9 does not allow sway to be installed setuid root, and it isn't, as confirmed by the ls output.

So it must be something else. It could be anything between the login shell in the console and the shell started with the messed up groups. What's weird is that in order to change group membership, you would need root permissions (technically you only need CAP_SETGID, but why would you have that?). I think there are really only two ways to do that: Run a binary that has the setuid bit (like e.g. sudo) or CAP_SETGID, or talk to some process (e.g. a daemon like systemd) that is already running as root, and ask it to do that for you.

I cannot imagine why anything between the login shell -> sway -> ??? -> zsh would be either setuid root, or have any reason or permission to change groups in any way. So that's really weird and interesting.

How do you open the shell inside sway? Keyboard binding from sway config? Launcher? Which terminal? Do any of the involved programs have setuid root bit set (looks like rws instead of x in ls -l output)?

About zsh: I mean I guess in theory one could change groups in the zsh configuration if you had the permissions (which you shouldn't have), but I cannot think of any reasonable explanation why anybody would want do that.

in reply to gnuhaut

Issue resolved!

It was swhkd. Thank you very much for your insight and extremely detailed response!

$ ls -l $(which swhkd)
-rwsr-xr-x 1 root root 2583192 Mar 10 17:16 /usr/bin/swhkd

Since we know what's causing it, can you make a "guesstimate" of what it's doing? Why are other applications are getting infected by it? And why is a keybind manager affecting permissions?

I will raise an issue on their github. The project is already looking for maintainers.

This entry was edited (1 month ago)

~/bin vs. ~/.local/bin for user bash scripts?


For one user account, I want to have some bash scripts, which of course would be under version control.

The obvious solution is just to put the scripts in a git repository and make ~/bin a symlink to the scripts directory.

Now, it seems on systemd systems ~/.local/bin is supposedly the directory for user scripts.

My question, is mostly, what are the tradeoffs between using ~/bin and ~/.local/bin as directory for my own bash scripts?

One simple scenario I can come up with are 3rd party programs which might modify ~/.local/bin and put their own scripts/starters there, similar to 3rd party applications which put their *.desktop files in ~/.local/applications.

Any advice on this? Is ~/.local/bin safe to use for my scripts or should I stick to the classic ~/bin? Anyone has a better convention?

(Btw.: I am running Debian everywhere, so I do not worry about portability to non systemd Linux systems.)

in reply to wolf

I migrated to fish recently and at first I was really annoyed that I had to decompose my ~/.bash_aliases into 67 different script files inside ~/.config/fish/functions/, but (a) I was really impressed with the tools that fish gave me to quickly craft those script files (-

~> function serg
    sed -i -e "s/$1/$2/g" $(rg -l "$1")
end
~> funcsave serg
funcsave: wrote ~/.config/fish/functions/serg.fish

) - and (b) I realized it was something I ought to have done a while ago anyway.

Anyway, all this to say that fish ships with a lot of cool, sensible & interesting features, and one of those features is a built-in place for where your user scripts should live. (Mine is a symlink to ~/Dropbox/config/fish_functions so that I don't need to migrate them across computers).

in reply to applemao

Thank you all so much for your help, here is my output of systemd:

It must be something weird with my initial boot. I am dual booting, but on separate hard drives. My PC does have 6 hard drives in it however. Or, maybe something is messed up in my install?


<br />43.616s fstrim.service
11.630s plocate-updatedb.service
10.593s systemd-suspend.service
 4.389s plymouth-quit-wait.service
 4.277s ufw.service
 4.028s systemd-resolved.service
 3.964s systemd-timesyncd.service
 3.330s NetworkManager-wait-online.service
 2.759s apt-daily.service
 2.293s fwupd.service
 1.563s logrotate.service
 1.316s NetworkManager.service
  835ms apt-daily-upgrade.service
  693ms motd-news.service
  653ms blueman-mechanism.service
  458ms user@1000.service
  450ms dev-sda2.device
  432ms dpkg-db-backup.service
  404ms udisks2.service
  349ms accounts-daemon.service
  335ms gnome-remote-desktop.service
  309ms ubuntu-system-adjustments.service
  307ms apparmor.service
in reply to applemao

fstrim.service is disk tool (that's supposed to only be run once a week, not every time you boot) that automatically cleans up old deleted SSD data. opensource.com/article/20/2/tr…

It looks like it's running too often, or on the wrong devices, every time you boot your computer. You can actually safely disable it; askubuntu.com/questions/116512… but it's worth looking into why it's taking so long and being run so often.

Running this should show you the log results of fstrim doing it's thing without actually doing anything;
sudo fstrim --fstab --verbose --dry-run

These two will show the status of fstrim and it's autorun service;

systemctl status fstrim systemctl status fstrim.timer

I got most of this from a quick google search; duckduckgo.com/?q=fstrim.servi… You can do the same for the other major time-takers on your boot list. For comparison, here's the top results of my semi-fresh install of linux mint;

dageek247@mintPC:~$ systemd-analyze blame
2.237s NetworkManager-wait-online.service
2.077s systemd-binfmt.service
2.003s systemd-resolved.service
1.976s systemd-timesyncd.service
1.916s fwupd-refresh.service
1.365s logrotate.service
1.326s NetworkManager.service
933ms fwupd.service
401ms blueman-mechanism.service
334ms udisks2.service
263ms apt-daily-upgrade.service
254ms dpkg-db-backup.service
229ms dev-nvme0n1p3.device
215ms accounts-daemon.service
201ms power-profiles-daemon.service
199ms polkit.service
197ms smartmontools.service
183ms rsyslog.service
173ms ubuntu-system-adjustments.service
169ms systemd-udev-trigger.service
156ms user@1000.service
155ms proc-sys-fs-binfmt_misc.mount
146ms ModemManager.service
132ms apparmor.service
123ms avahi-daemon.service
121ms bluetooth.service
114ms grub-common.service
111ms lm-sensors.service
106ms switcheroo-control.service
105ms secureboot-db.service
in reply to applemao

On my last computer I found that the boot process was looking for things that weren't there but that the motherboard had rudimentary functionality for like a floppy drive. It didn't even have a connector for one.

For whatever reason, that caused a 10-30 second delay while the kernel tried to determine if there was a floppy drive connected. Pretty sure I had everything disabled via the BIOS but apparently it wasn't disabled enough and the kernel could still see it.

That required throwing something into the system config, probably somewhere in /etc/modprobe.d, to blacklist that particular kernel module.

There was another problematic module as well; I can't remember what that was, but I'm pretty sure it was the same fix. Got the boot time to login screen down to less than 10 seconds.

But all that said, even on this computer where the boot time is pretty quick, I usually put the computer into suspend mode to keep times down.

Sausage, a terminal word puzzle in Bash, inspired by Bookworm


gitlab.com/christosangel/sausa…

sausage is a terminal word forming game, written in Bash.

This game was inspired by en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bookworm….

https://friendica.eskimo.com/photo/preview/1024/7186456

The aim is to score points by creating words, moving around in six directions in the grid, using consecutive letters.

When the user created longer words, coloured letters appear. The user can score more points by using these coloured letters.

More points can also be scored, when the user manages to create the bonus words.

When smaller words are created, or low point yielding words, red letters appear in the grid. If not used, these red letters will drop one cell in every turn.

When a red letter reaches beyond the bottom of the grid, the game is over.

The user can also reshuffle the letters in the grid, in order to be able to create words. However, there is a price to this action: the existing red letters will drop one cell, all other bonus coloured letters will be lost, and more red letters will appear.

If the score is among the 10 best scores achieved, it makes it in the Top Ten Highscores.

https://friendica.eskimo.com/photo/preview/1024/7186458

This game is named sausage as a tribute to

Renowned writer and lexicographer Dr. Samuel Johnson starts to read a tiny scrap of paper containing Baldrick's miniscule novel:

Once upon a time, there was a lovely little sausage called...


...only to realize that after 18 years of arduous work, he failed to include the word SAUSAGE in his magnum opus.

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

I'm confused, is this different than:

send.vis.ee/

This site states "⚠️ Send will be terminated on May 24th. ⚠️
Costs are getting too high to keep hosting this service. Find an alternative instance here or host your own."

My Thoughts on the Fosstodon Drama | Kev Quirk


in reply to Ulrich

I have to ask, then: what motivates people to do it?

If mods are not financially compensated for it, the only rational explanation is that they are either getting some form of benefit (soft power, access to privileged information) or they are getting some pleasure out of it, i.e, power tripping.

don't like this

in reply to Ulrich

Ah, I thought you were talking about something here on the Fediverse.

In any case, I wish people didn't feel afraid to talk about business here. Maybe more people would realize that behind the majority of "business" there are genuine people and not just the cartoon capitalist pigs.

This entry was edited (1 month ago)

don't like this

in reply to poVoq

Some people chose to do the right things because they are right


This is just another way of saying that people do things for moral validation - a.k.a, self-righteouness - and is no at all different from "power tripping".

in reply to rglullis

That is a rather toxic way of looking at the world. I get it, I kind of can rationally understand the idea that you can explain all selfless behavior as being selfish because the least you get out of it is dopamine, so you are wired to feel good doing what you think is right.

Now, can you tell me how this is just not a very shitty and cynical lens to view humans through? I've had my nihilistic phase in my 20's. I hope you also find a way out of the hole of the "arbitrariness" of ethics.

Because each other is all we have, and ethics is ultimately what makes us human. The ability to reprogram our own pleasure circuit and maybe, just maybe, just use it to be not an asshole, just to start with. And then at some point just do something nice for others. Because if everybody did that, the world would not be the shithole it is.

I'm thankful to mods who volunteer their free time to tend to the garden of the communities they care about.

in reply to zenforyen

I am not at all talking about the cases of someone who is passionate about some topic and then goes on to cultivate a community around it, and I am not saying "every moderator is doing it for some ulterior motive".

I am talking specifically about the types that put on themselves to become mods of dozens of subreddits. Or instance admins that go months in a row begging for money to be able to pay their own bills, instead of shutting down the instance or make it only for those that contribute back.

IOW, I am talking about the cases where people act beyond what anyone would consider "healthy".

This entry was edited (1 month ago)

don't like this

in reply to rglullis

Okay wow, thanks for the clarification. That is indeed weird. Yeah, then I guess I agree, it's really ... Just not very healthy behavior.

Okay I mean for some people maybe this whole Internet thing, becomes too much an end in itself, maybe they are missing something in life and trying to get it that way.

If you are employed, have family and/or friends and a hobby or two, how do you even have the time to mod dozens of subs and stuff like that?

So if they are doing it while being nice, one can actually say they could need some empathy. If they are not being nice, well, for such cases it might explain why the other things in life might be lacking.

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

Hey, any comparison to Ayn Rand or their fans should be an immediate ban. No need to go that low.

All I've been arguing with you could be summed up as "if we want the Fediverse to be universal, we will need to grow a lot faster and we need to accept the reality that not everyone values the same things as you do" and you responding "No, I don't to make the Fediverse universal because most people are too morally weak to stand for the things I care about".

(And if you think I am exagerating: don't make me look for the conversation where you said that people should be okay using this crap because the other open source alternatives committed the grave sin of "raising money from investors".)

don't like this

in reply to rglullis

Fine I didn't need to go as low as Ayn Rand.

But I think you still didn't get my argument last time. Tl;dr: there is no point in doing what you propose as it just results in recreating the same shit we already have. This has nothing to do with moral failings and everything with strategy and not repeating the same mistakes all over again.

And besides that I agree that Siskin isn't great, and most likely suggested this instead. And that "open-source alternative" is now open-core and can't pay their bloated expenses now that VC funding has run dry. I hope you see the irony in what you just wrote, because that is really a clear example of how unsustainable and ill advised that kind of growth is.

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

it just results in recreating the same shit we already have


This is you passing opinion as undisputed truth. I am not proposing "Let's take on the big corporations by building another big corporation", I am saying "we can get rid of the dominance from big corporations if we help foment an economy of small, independent businesses." and I am saying "if we keep this anti-business culture where we are hostile to even some food truck owner trying to connect to their customers, then don't complain when the food truck owner continues using Facebook/Instagram/Twitter".

And that “open-source alternative” is now open-core


Synapse is still AGPLv3. Their closed parts are for Enterprise. No one is being locked out of crucial features. No one is being locked out of reaching out other users of the network. No one is being forced to "upgrade" after reaching a certain size. To call it open-core is just yet-another display of bias.

and most likely suggested this (Monal) instead.


Monal does not make video calls! Not having video calls was a non-starter in 2015, let alone today.

because that is really a clear example of how unsustainable and ill advised that kind of growth is.


Is it? Because so far I managed to talk with a lot more people on Matrix than I ever did on XMPP, and that wouldn't change even if Element closed shop tomorrow. And even if it did, the odds would be highly in favor of some other company like Beeper picking up the pieces to serve its customers and it would still be in their interest to keep things open to have the ecosystem around.

So, at the end of the day, yes, I'd rather have this "unsustainable" growth than claiming any moral victory for sticking to the Betamax of chat protocols. This "unsustainable" system gave me and few hundred million people something that is far from perfect, but at least it can make video calls on iOS.

This entry was edited (1 month ago)

don't like this

in reply to rglullis

I like high quality communities, which cannot maintain quality without staff, and which would probably struggle to maintain any funding.

One example of a community I became a moderator for often had trolls occasionally show up and post obviously malicious content, and commercial ad spam. Due to timezone differences, these often took hours to be deleted by existing staff.

So it wasn't about morality, righteousness, money or power. It was about me wanting to develop a community I cared about.


Edit: in a comment chain, you mentioned people who clearly moderate for other motives. They exist, I've seen them and helped get some removed in one particular community. Like you said, there are other motivators.

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

it gives them personal satisfaction to help out with something that is meaningful to them.


What about the cases where "what is meaningful to them" conflicts with "what is meaningful to the others"?

I said on a sibling comment but it bears repeating: I am not talking about someone who enjoys a hobby and goes on to create/mod a community about it. I am thinking about the cases where someone finds themselves as part of a large community and realizes that the majority of the members keep pushing you to things you either don't want to or disagree with.

LandedGentry doesn't like this.

in reply to LandedGentry

It is a broader issue, namely: there is no such thing as doing a "thankless" job for purely altrustic reasons. This is not an issue on a small scale, but once it reaches it some critical mass we should wonder what motivates those who keep a position of authority.

(And before I get another barrage of people saying "I do it because I care about it/ I want to help / someone needs to do it"... yeah, sure, but if you are cultivating something because you happen to like the thing at hand , then you are doing for your own personal interest and it is not entirely altruistic. And that is totally fine.)

in reply to LandedGentry

No, I missed it before.

My "axe to grind" is not against mods. My "axe to grind" is against Small Fedi. I can elaborate more later if you want, but now I need to get back to work...


As I often do, I made a poll on the fediverse about two concepts I am interested in: Big Fedi versus Small Fedi. Although I think these are interesting topics, I couldn’t come up with exact summations of what the “Big Fedi” and “Small Fedi” positions are. So, I wanted to write down what I could here.

The fediverse, in this case, is an internetwork of social networks. It works a lot like email; you can have an account on one network and follow, message, and react to people (or bots) on other networks. The biggest software tool for making fediverse networks is Mastodon; there are a lot of other Open Source servers for setting up nodes. There are also some proprietary nodes — Meta Threads and Flipboard are two of the biggest.

The following are some clusters of ideas that I think coalesce into “Big Fedi” and “Small Fedi”. I haven’t been able to tie them all back to some fundamental principle on either side.

Big Fedi


The “Big Fedi” position is a set of ideas that roughly cluster together. Not everyone who agrees with one or a few of these agrees with them all, but I think they tend to be related.

  • The fediverse should be big. Real big. Like, everyone on the planet should have an account on the fediverse. It will make the internet better and the world better.
  • We should make choices that help bring the fediverse to new people. Because the fediverse should be big, we should be doing things to make it bigger; in particular, to bring it to more people.
  • There should be a lot of different account servers. (I’m using “account servers” instead of “instances” or “servers”.) It’s good to have a lot of choice, with a lot of different parameters: software interfaces, financial structure, what have you.
  • Commercial account servers are welcome. This variety includes commercial services. If they provide the right mix of features and trade-offs that certain people want, it’s good to have them, especially if they have a lot of users.
  • Moderation can be automated. Shared blocklists, machine learning, and other tools can be used to catch most of the problematic interactions on the fediverse.
  • Account servers can be big. It doesn’t matter how big they are: 1M, 10M, 100M, 1B people is fine.
  • The fediverse should have secondary services. In order to grow, we need secondary services, like people-finders, onboarding tools, global search, bridges, and so on.
  • The individual is central. People should be able to set up their environment how they like, including their social environment. They have the tools to do that. The account server may set some parameters around content or software usage, but otherwise it’s mostly a dumb pipe.
  • Connections should be person-to-person. The main social connection is through following someone. Building up this follow graph is important.
  • People I care about should be on the fediverse. I have a life outside the fediverse — friends, family, colleagues, neighbours. My governments, media, celebrities, sports figures, leaders in my industry. It would be good to have more of those people on the fediverse, so I can connect to them.
  • People should get to make choices about their account server. Everybody has different priorities: privacy, open source, moderation, cost, stability, features. We can all make our own choices about the account server we prefer.
  • It should be possible to have ad-free account servers. Technically and culturally, we should be able to set these up.
  • It should be possible to have Open Source account servers. People who prefer free network services should be able to run them and use them.
  • It should be possible to have algorithm-free account servers. You should be able to just follow things reverse chronologically.
  • It should be possible to have individually-run account servers. A normal technically-minded person should be able to run their own account server for themself, friends, their household, or even for a larger communty.
  • Harms that are mostly kept to account servers are up to people on those servers to solve. Good fences make good neighbours. If things become unbearable, people can move servers somewhat frictionlessly.
  • Affinity groups should stretch beyond account server boundaries. Groups, lists, and other social network features are important and should be fully federated. They should provide a lot of features.
  • There may be some harm that comes with growth; we can fix it later. We’re going to find problems as we go along. We can deal with them as we come to them.
  • The fediverse is going to look very different over time. The way things work now are not how they’re going to be 1, 3, 5, 10 years from now. Especially as the fediverse grows, different structures and ways of working are going to develop.
  • Open standards are important. By having public, open standards available through big standards organizations, we gain the buy-in from different account network operators to join the network. We definitely don’t have time to negotiate bilateral agreements; we need solid standards.
  • Variety in types of account server operators is good. Different people have different needs and tolerances. If we want to have more people, we need to cater to those different needs with different account servers.
  • Existing organizations can and should provide account servers. Not just existing tech companies; also businesses providing servers for their employees, universities for students, cities or other governments for their citizens.
  • Existing services, even if they’re bad, will become somewhat better if they have fediverse features. People on those services will get to connect with a variety of new people. They’ll find out about the fediverse, and might move to another account server, or try something else new.
  • It’s more important to bring good people to the fediverse than keep bad people off it. More people is good, and the people I care about on other networks are also good. There may be some bad people, too, but we’ll manage them.


Small Fedi


Here is a rough cluster of ideas that I’d call “Small Fedi”. Again, not everyone who agrees with one or two of these agrees with all of them.

  • The fediverse should be safe. Safe from harassment, safe from privacy violations.
  • Growth is not important. We’ve gotten along this long with a small fediverse. It’s OK how it is, so growth is not important. Growth is a capitalist mindset.
  • People who aren’t on the fediverse don’t matter as much as people who are. Their needs, at least. When discussing the future of the fediverse, we don’t need to talk about people on other networks much at all.
  • If people want to get on the fediverse, they can join an existing account server. We don’t need to bring new account servers to the fediverse; there are a lot already. People who really care about getting on the fediverse can join an existing account server, or set up their own. If they’re not willing to do this, they’re probably not that interested in the fediverse, so why should we bother trying to connect to them?
  • If growth could cause harm, we either should fix the problem before growing, or we shouldn’t grow. We should examine opportunities carefully, but by default we should say no.
  • Commercial account servers are discouraged. Most commercial services do harm. Even if they’re on the fediverse, they’re going to try to do harm to make more money. So, they should be avoided as much as possible.
  • Secondary services can cause harm and should be severely limited if allowed at all. People search and content search can be used for privacy invasion or harassment. Shared blocklists can be manipulated to cause echo chambers. Machine learning can be biased. Onboarding services favour big account servers. They should be discouraged or, preferably, closed.
  • The account server is central. Moderation decisions, cultural decisions, account decisions, most social decisions should happen at the account server level.
  • Account servers are the primary affinity group. You should find an account server that feels like home. Any other groups are less important.
  • Feeds like “fediverse” and “local” are important. There is a public community of account servers that your account server connects to, and the public feed from that community is important. You might use it more often than your home feed. Your local feed is also important, because your account server is a group you belong to.
  • Moderation should be primarily by hand. The courage and wisdom necessary to make most moderation decisions can only be managed by hand. Automated tools can be manipulated.
  • Account servers must be small. Human moderators can only do so much work, so the account servers they moderate can only be so big.
  • The fediverse works just about right right now, and shouldn’t change. There’s a good reason for how everything works, and it’s fine. People who want to change the way things work just don’t get it.
  • It’s not important that people from my real life are on the fediverse, and it’s kind of discouraged. The account server is the most important affinity group, then the larger “fediverse”. That’s enough; other people are needed or welcome. People who I know who aren’t on the fediverse don’t care about fediverse stuff, so they’d get bored here, anyway.
  • It is highly discouraged to have ad-supported account servers. Even if they only show ads to their own users, they are causing harm. In particular, they’re showing our content next to ads, or using our content to develop ad algorithms. Either way, harm goes beyond the server border.
  • It is highly discouraged to have proprietary account servers. They just can’t be trusted with their own users’ data. Also, they’re going to get some of our data, just through federation, and who knows what they’ll do with it.
  • It is highly discouraged to have algorithmic timelines. Anyone having these causes problems. If you want one, you just don’t get it.
  • Open standards are less important than making things work the way we want them. In particular, fiddling with standards to keep people safe, and to discourage particular account server structure, is an OK thing to do.
  • Most existing institutions have proved themselves untrustworthy and should not provide account servers. Name any particular part of civil society, and I can come up with an example of at least one bad practice they have.
  • Harms that happen on one account server are a problem for every account server. Server blocks, personal blocks, and protocol boundaries aren’t enough to isolate problems to their account server of origin. Secondary or tertiary effects can happen and cause harm.
  • Existing services, if they’re bad, will make the fediverse worse. Bad practices, bad content, bad members will cause problems for everyone on the fediverse.
  • It’s more important to keep bad people off the fediverse than to bring good people to it. Bad people can be really horrible. There aren’t actually that many good people on bad services, and if they really wanted to connect with us, they’d find another way.


Where do I land?


I’m mostly a Big Fedi person; I did the work on the fediverse that I’ve done in order to bring it to everyone on the planet. I don’t think people should have to pass a test to be allowed on the fediverse.

That said, I respect that harm can come from new technical decisions and new network connections. As someone deeply involved in the standards around ActivityPub and the fediverse, I’d like to make sure that we give people the tools they need to avoid harm — and stay out of the way when they use them. I very much like the Small Fedi suspicion of new services and account servers, and careful consideration of the possibilities.

I’d like to find ways to mitigate the problems of so many people on proprietary social networks being unconnected to the fediverse, but still centre the safety of existing fedizens. I don’t have an easy answer to how this can work, though.

Anyway, thanks for reading this far. Also, an acknowledgment: I borrowed the term “Small Fedi” without permission from Erin Kissane’s great piece on Untangling Threads. I’m also using it differently, stretching it out, which admittedly is an ingrateful thing with something you borrow. I hope it is not ruined by the time I return it.

Another acknowledgment: this framing is loosely based on the worse is better series of essays by Richard Gabriel. His lists of ideas are much shorter, more cohesive, and more algorithmic.

evanp.me/2023/12/26/big-fedi-s…

#bigfedi #fediverse #smallfedi


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

I think there is a spectrum between what you did (you were mod until you no longer thought that the pain of dealing with Reddit was worth it or morally justified) and someone who sticks around as a mod of 50+ subreddits because they see as an instrument of control, or someone that keeps running a big Mastodon instance despite financial struggles; and my point is to understand where most people lie.
in reply to rglullis

Ugh, the comments here are so full of BS and distortions of what really happened 🤦

So here is the actual tl;dr: Some people asked the main Fosstodon admins what they think about having an openly Trump supporting, islamo- and transphobic moderator in their team and their response was "not here on Fosstodon and not our problem" (paraphrased, but close to their actual response).

That is pretty much like this scenario: lets say you get (credibly) informed about someone openly corrupt in your organization. If your response is: I have not seen them steal money in our organization and our processes should prevent any theft happening, then you are missing the forest for the trees.

If an organization can't get such basic governance issues right and prefers to hide behind a "neutral" stance on something that is really concerning to a large percentage of their members than they irrevocably lose a lot of trust and that is more than justified.

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

Actually, I don't really know differences between. Just all guides use cfdisk and I forgot about mbr and gpt. But I changed mbr to gpt using gdisk(after start he say, that I have mbr and gpt and which I want to use. I chose "create blank gpt" and now I can use gdisk to partition disk. And after gdisk lsblk show right information!
Thats it
This entry was edited (1 month ago)

XrossMediaBar Desktop Environment?


I built a home theater PC and now I'm obsessed with getting an xmb ui on there. I know retro arch has a nice implementation, but I couldn't find any support for jellyfin or spotify menu items. Should I forge ahead and create custom ones? Does anyone know a better way? Any advice is appreciated. Thanks!

peertube recomendation algo alpha build


cross-posted from: lemmy.world/post/28808772

Finally released an alpha build for the PeerTube recommendation algorithm!
Basic UI is complete. If you want to try it out, the link is here:
👉 github.com/solidheron/peertube…

New features since the last build:
- Sort by videos that share your time engagement similarity.
- Sort by videos that share your like similarity.
- Display of like similarity cosine values.
- Basic information shown for recommended videos (title, account, and channel names).
- 404 check for generated instance links (so you don’t get stuck clicking into dead videos—you’ll know which instance hosts the video).
- De-ranking for previously seen videos (simply a 0.5x multiplier on time and like similarity).

Features from previous builds:
- Ability to input multiple instance domain names (DNs) and generate playable video links.
- Limit of 5 recommendations per channel to avoid floods (e.g., during testing, The Linux Experiment would dominate otherwise—this limit is more of a failsafe than a feature).

Personal thoughts:
I still think cosine similarity beats chronological algorithms.
This algorithm also synergizes with other algorithms—it's great for finding videos that appear next to or below what you're currently watching.

You can also revisit videos you previously liked to help strengthen your like similarity vectors.


Moving forward: basic design philosophies and current issues

There’s an issue I’m calling the “Linux pipeline.”
Basically, Linux-related videos tend to dominate PeerTube’s well-produced content.
Since the algorithm relies on English words in descriptions, titles, and tags, Linux videos—which sometimes have fewer general keywords—end up being more "orthogonal" to typical user vectors, causing lower ranking.

Another challenge:
It’s really hard to properly combine like cosine similarity and time engagement cosine similarity.
You could add them, but it doesn’t fully make sense:
- High like similarity + high time engagement similarity = you probably like and will watch the video longer.
- But short videos can be liked even if they contribute almost nothing to time engagement (because time engagement is based on percentage watched × video length).

If I combined them, it would basically enter machine learning territory:
You'd have to adjust proportions dynamically based on user behavior.
Since I want this algorithm scoped to one person only (no data sharing yet), that level of ML is out of scope for now.

(Sharing data across devices could come later—Brave browser has sync features, and PeerTube watch history syncing could be possible.)


Summary:
Most of the data structure is settling into place.
Future updates will probably focus on expanding the data structure and making small improvements.

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

I think open discovery algorithms are the way. We are against algos but sorting by like similarity would be beneficial.

What are you guys thinking? @dessalines@lemmy.ml @nutomic@lemmy.ml Are you optimistic about this or fuck any algorithms?

This entry was edited (1 month ago)

"This Linux thing is better than normal computers"


A few years ago my wife and I built a computer out of old parts for her friend's then 10 years old son. Last month we were visiting them, and I heard the wife's friend say something funny that I thought I'd share with you.

They live on the other side of the city, this was the kid's first computer, and his mom doesn't have much computer experience either, so our goal was to build something that was easy to use and hard to break from the beginning. Originally I choose ElementaryOS since it seemed to fit the bill, but after a year or two it turned out that it couldn't be upgraded to a new major version without a full reinstall so it got stuck with an older version. We didn't visit that often, and the kid's games still worked so it wasn't a major issue until Factorio broke due to glibc incompatibility.

When his birthday was coming up last month we bought him a SSD to make the computer a little bit zippier without a major upgrade, and I thought I'd give him a brand new Linux experience too, so I asked for advice here and in the end chose Bazzite. While I was helping the kid with the installation, I overheard his mom saying in the other room:

This Linux thing.. We've never had any problems with it, he just clicks something to install it and it works. Unlike normal computers, where you always have to do things and fix them.


Perhaps not the most eloquent, but I consider it a very good review.


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.


in reply to Bieren

  • GIMP (with photogimp patch)
  • Steam
  • Librewolf (I could also opt for a chromium based browser)
  • Tor Browser (to browse onion links/throwaway browser)
  • Heroic Games Launcher
  • Prism Launcher
  • latest Java lts (either from adoptium or openjdk i dont care about flashy new features)
  • Libreoffice Still (similar to the second reason above and onlyoffice in appimage due to Libreoffice weird handling with ppsx files and powerpoints)
  • QEMU/KVM with virt manager
  • Gnome evolution (if it's gtk desktop I could opt for other email clients)
  • Proton-GE
  • WINE
  • Ghostty(Kinda sucks it's based on libadwaita and gnome forces this theme on you no matter your desktop)
  • Fish/ZSH(fish not having posix compatibility is kinda annoying)
  • MPV (I could still use vlc but I prefer mpv because it can stream youtube links)
  • ytp-dl(I can opt for a gui for convenience sake)
  • BTOP
  • Fastfetch
This entry was edited (1 month ago)

I have an Asus laptop from 2007


Like the title says I want to install a Linux distro on my old laptop. I am currently looking into installing a SSD, but I want to learn a distro for fun! I haven't been able to find a good current resource aside from the Linux Masters here, so I am actually asking for help on the Internet! What distro is the best!?

imgur.com/8zldESD

EDIT: thanks so much everyone for your recommendations and advice! I installed a couple of different systems before deciding that I think the laptop can support Fedora with KDE plasma, and I'm finding it really attractive and easy to use. You will see once I get some more disk space used how the performance holds up! If it runs into trouble I might switch the machine back over to mint with, that one seemed to run really well and was pretty familiar seeming from my Windows days, also seem more low end and booted a little faster. I think I might even end up switching to Linux on my desktop I had so much fun with it last night!! I really appreciate all the information and will probably be experimenting with a more lightweight build on this computer in the future! I'm a Linux user and it was easier than I ever thought! ❤️

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

I want to learn a Distro for fun.


Are you just using this laptop to dip your toes into Linux and see if you like it? I would recommend Debian + XFCE. It's lightweight, it prioritizes stability over new features, and it's a fairly easy UI for a newbie to understand. Alternatively Linux Mint MATE Edition might be worth a try. It's also lightweight but is a bit more "up to date" than Debian feature wise.

in reply to Bristlecone

Debian gets feature updates significantly slower than other distros, instead it focuses on insuring stability and security. It's rock solid.

Linux Mint is actually based on Ubuntu (which itself is derived from Debian), so for the most part the two are fairly similar. There are a few key differences but for someone learning Linux you don't need to worry about them. Pick one of them, get your feet wet, and then google the differences to see if you want to switch.

After all, endless Distro hopping is a right of passage for all fledgling Linux users! 😀

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

Objectives of learning and fun?

You do not state noobliness, ease of setup or time to install, number of failures/retries or anything like that.

**EDIT: you did state noobliness later on in comments so . . . i'd go stock debian +lxqt. ****

~~or all that I'd recommend arch. Do not use archinstall script , that reduces both learning and fun. Resource? follow the archwiki and go through lots of linked pages at each step. If you do wuss out and install stock debian (+lxqt)~~

maybe partition off a spare 10-20GB so you can play around with an arch install after you realise how boring and uneducational the others are (joke)

This entry was edited (1 month ago)

Camera app that photos/films in the background to be conspicious?


I remember some time ago installing an app that allowed me to film in the background whilst having another app open on top. I believe this was from f-droid. I actually have a legitimate use for this for crime evidence.

Could someone please suggest its name if they know, either from f-droid or a decent (trustworthy) app from the play store please.

Allow traffic only through tun0 via wlan0, ssh, and localhost in and out


Hi all, I'm trying to have my rpi5 running raspberry OS communicate with the Internet only through the tun0 interface (vpn). For this I wanted to create a ufw ruleset. Unfortunately, I've hit a roadblock and I can't figure out where I'm going wrong.

Can you help me discover why this ruleset doesn't allow Internet communication over tun0? When I disable ufw I can access the Internet.

The VPN connection is already established, so it should keep working, right?

I hope you can help me out!

This is the script with the ruleset:
sudo ufw reset

Set default policies


sudo ufw default deny incoming

sudo ufw default deny outgoing

Allow SSH access


sudo ufw allow ssh

Allow local network traffic


sudo ufw allow from 192.168.0.0/16

sudo ufw allow out to 192.168.0.0/16

Allow traffic through VPN tunnel


sudo ufw allow in on tun0

sudo ufw allow out on tun0

Add routing between interfaces (I read its necessary, not sure why?)


sudo ufw route allow in on tun0 out on wlan0

sudo ufw route allow in on wlan0 out on tun0

sudo ufw enable

This entry was edited (1 month ago)

How I made a blog using Lemmy - a write-up


This is a followup to my introduction of BlogOnLemmy, a simple blog frontend. If you haven't seen it, no need because I will be explaining how it works and how you can run your own BlogOnLemmy for free.

Leveraging the Federation


Having a platform to connect your content to likeminded people is invaluable. The Fediverse achieves this in a platform agnostic way, so in theory it shouldn't matter which platform we use. But platform have different userbases that interact with posts in different ways. I've always preferred the forum variety, where communities form and discussion is encouraged.

My posts are shared as original content on Lemmy, and that's who it's meant for. Choosing for a traditional blog style to make a more palatable platform for a wider audience, and in this way also promoting Lemmy.

Constraints


Starting off I did not want the upkeep of another federated instance. Not every new thing that is deployed on the Fediverse needs to stand on its own or made from the ground up as an ActivityPub compatible service. But rather use existing infrastructure, already federated, already primed for interconnectivity. Taking it one step further is not a having a back-end at all, a 'dumb' website as it were. Posts are made, edited, and cross-posted on Lemmy.

The world of CSS and JavaScript on the other hand - how websites are styled and made feature-rich - is littered with libraries. Being treated like black boxes, often just a few functions are used with the rest clogging up our internet experience. Even jQuery, which is used by over 74% of all websites, is already 23kB in its smallest form. I'm not planning on having the smallest possible footprint*, but rather showing a modern web browser provides an underused toolset of natively supported functionality; something the first webdevs would have given their left kidney for.

Lastly, to improve maintainability and simplicity, one page is enough for a blog. Provided that its content can be altered dynamically.

*See optimization

How it's made


Graphviz

1. URL: Category/post


Even before the browser completely loads the page, we can take a look at the URL. With our constraints only two types of additions are available for us, the anchor and GET parameters. When an anchor, or '#', is present websites scroll to a specific place in a website after loading. We can hijack this behavior and use it to load predefined categories. Like '#blog' or '#linkdumps'. For posts, '#/post/3139396' looks nicer than '?post=3139396', but anchors are rarely search engine compatible. So I'm extracting the GET parameter to load an individual post.

Running JavaScript before the page has done loading should be swift and easy, like coloring the filters or setting Dark/Light mode, so it doesn't delay the site.

2. API -> Lemmy


A simple 'Fetch' is all that's required. Lemmy's API is extensive already, because it's used by different frontends and apps that make an individual’s experience unique. When selecting a category, we are requesting all the posts made by me in one or more lemmy communities. A post or permalink uses the same post_id as on the Lemmy instance. Pretty straight forward.

3. Markdown -> HTML


When we get a reply from the Lemmy instance, the posts are formatted in Markdown. Just as they are when you submit the post. But our browsers use HTML, a different markup language that is interpretable by our browsers. This is where the only code that's not written by me steps in, a Markdown to HTML layer called snarkdown. It's very efficient and probably the smallest footprint possible for what it is, around 1kB.

Optimization


When my blog was launched, I was using a Cloudflare proxy, for no-hassle https handling, caching and CDN. Within the EU, I'm aiming for sub-100ms* to be faster than the blink of an eye. With a free tier of Cloudflare we can expect a variance between 150 and 600ms at best, but intercontinental caching can take seconds.

Nginx and OpenLiteSpeed are regarded as the fastest webservers out there, I often use Apache for testing but for deployment I prefer Nginx's speed and reliability. I could sidetrack here and write another 1000 words about the optimization of static content and TLS handling in Nginx, but that's a story for another time.

* For the website, API calls are made asynchronously while the page is loaded and are not counted

Mythical 14kB, or less?


All data being transferred on the internet is split up into manageable chunks or frames. Their size or Maximum Transmission Unit, is defined by IEEE 802.3-2022 1.4.207 with a maximum of 1518 bytes*. They usually carry 1460 bytes of actual application data, or Maximum Segment Size.

Followed by most server operating systems, RFC 6928 proposes 10x MSS (= Congestion Window) for the first reply. In other words, the server 'tests' your network by sending 10 frames at once. If your device acknowledges each frame, the server knows to double the Congestion Window every subsequent reply until some are dropped. This is called TCP Slow Start, defined in RFC 5681.

10 frames of 1460 bytes contain 14.6kB of usable data. Or at least, it used to.
The modern web changed with the use of encryption. The Initial Congestion Window, in my use case, includes 2 TLS frames and from each frame it takes away an extra 29 bytes. Reducing our window to 11.4kB. If we manage our website to fit within this first Slow Start routine, we avoid an extra round trip in the TCP/IP-protocol. Speeding up the website as much as your latency to the server. Min-maxing TCP Traffic is the name of the game.

* Can vary with MTU settings of your network or interface, but around 1500 (+ 14 bytes for headers) is the widely accepted default

10kB vs 15kB with TCP Slow Start
\
Visualizes two raw web requests, 10.7kB vs 13.3kB with TCP Slow Start\
- Above Blue: Request Starts\
- Between Green: TLS Handshake\
- Inside Red: Initial Congestion Window

Icons


Icons are tricky, because describing pixel positions takes up a considerable amount of data. Instead SVG's are commonplace, creating complex shapes programmatically, and significantly reducing its footprint. Feathericons is a FOSS icon library providing a beautiful SVG rendered solution for my navbar. For the favicon, or website icon, I coded it manually with the same font as the blog itself. But after different browsers took liberties rendering the font and spacing, I converted it to a path traced design. Describing each shape individually and making sure it's rendered the same consistently.

Regular vs. Inline vs Minified


If we sum up the filesizes we're looking at around 50kB of data. Luckily servers compress* our code, and are pretty good at it, leaving only 15kB to be transferred; just above our 11kB threshold. By making the code unreadable for humans using minifying scripts we can reduce the final size even more. Only... the files that make up this blog are split up. Common guidelines recommend doing so to prevent one big file clogging up load times. For us that means splitting up our precious 11kB in multiple round trips, the opposite of our goal. Inline code blocks to the rescue, with the added bonus of the entire site now being compressed into one file making the compression more efficient to end optimization at a neat 10.7kB.

* The Web uses Gzip. A more performant choice today is Brotli, which I compiled for use on my server

In Practice


All good in theory, now let's see the effect in practice. I've deployed the blog 4 times, and each version was measured for total download time from 20 requests. In the first graph we notice the impact of not staying inside the Initial Congestion Window, where only the second scenario is delayed by a second round trip when loading the first page.

Scenario 1. and 3. have separate files, and separate requests are made. Taking priority in displaying the website, or the first file, but neglecting potential useable space inside the init_cwnd. We can tell when comparing the second graph, it ends up almost doubling their respective total load times.

The final version is the only one transferring all the data in one round trip, and is the one deployed on the main site. With total download times as low as 51ms, around 150ms as a soft upper limit, and 85ms average in Europe. Unfortunately, that means worldwide tests show load times of 700ms, so I'll eventually implement a CDN.

Speedtest 4 scenarios

  1. Regular (14,46kB): no minification, separate files\
    - dev3.martijn.sh/
  2. Inline (13,29kB): no minification, one file\
    - dev1.martijn.sh/
  3. Regular Minified (10,98kB): but still using separate files\
    - dev2.martijn.sh/
  4. Inline Minified (10,69kB): one page as small as possible\
    - martijn.sh/

I'll be leaving up dev versions until there's a significant update to the site

Content Delivery Network


Speeds like this can only be achieved when you're close to my server, which is in London. For my Eurobros that means blazing fast response times. For anyone else, cdn.martijn.sh points to Cloudflare's CDN and git.martijn.sh to GitHub's CDN. These services allow us to distribute our blog to servers across the globe, so requesting clients always choose the closest server available.

GitHub Pages


An easy and free way of serving a static webpage. Fork the BlogOnLemmy repository and name it 'GitHub-Username'.github.io. Your website is now available as username.github.io and even supports the use of custom domain names. Mine is served at git.martijn.sh.

While testing its load times worldwide, I got response times as low as 64ms with 250ms on the high end. Not surprisingly they deliver the page slightly faster globally than Cloudflare does, because they're optimizing for static content.

Extra features


  • Taking over the Light or Dark mode of the users' device is a courtesy more than anything else. Adding to this, a selectable permanent setting. My way of highlighting the overuse of cookies and localStorage by giving the user the choice to store data of a website that is built from the ground up to not use any.
  • A memorable and interactable canvas to give a personal touch to the about me section.
  • Collapsed articles with a 'Read More'-Button.
  • 'Load More'-Button loads the next 10 posts, so the page is as long as you want it to be


Webmentions


Essential for blogging in current year, Webmentions keep websites up-to-date when links to them are created or edited. Fortunately Lemmy has got us covered, when posts are made the first instance sends a Webmention to the hosters of any links that are mentioned in the post.

To stay within scope I'll be using webmention.io for now, which enables us to get notified when linked somewhere else by adding just a single line of HTML to our code.

Notes


  • Enabling HTTP2 or 3 did not speed up load times, in fact with protocol negotiations and TLS they added one more packet to the Initial Congestion Window.
  • For now, the apex domain will be pointing directly to my server, but more testing is required in choosing a CDN.
  • Editing this site for personal use requires knowledge of HTML and JS for now, but I might create a script to individualize blogs easier.

Edit: GitHub | ./Martijn.sh > Blog

This entry was edited (1 month ago)

PewDiePie using Hyprland on Arch wasn't on my 2025 bingo card!


What he did was half a decade ago! The comment section is wiled, keep it down.

I saw this in my Mastodon feed and wanted to share, and that was a mistake.

Edit: I label myself an anarcho-syndicalist, and I don’t watch PewDiePie. I have my fair share of opinions about him from his early days but there is no need to label Felix as a nazi. I used my brain cells to check some of his latest videos and I don’t see any mention of nazism fascism or any political mentions! What I do see is Felix starting a family in Japan, traveling around Japan, and just being a human living his life!

This entry was edited (1 month ago)

PewDiePie: I installed Linux (so should you)


I don't normally watch him but this popped on my feed, and I'm pretty impressed. Dude really fell the Arch+Hyprland rabbit hole and ended up loving it.

Probably one of the largest YouTuber switching to Linux, and is very positive about it.

That Hyprland rice is pretty sick too.

in reply to Max-P

It's good, and it's funny. So much so that I'm jealous.

With this potential critical mass combined with the gaming community it's all downhill for Windoze from here.

PS To force GPU on Steam games in Linux, because games might unknowingly perform needlessly bad.

- -
✍︎ arscyni.cc: modernity ∝ nature.

This entry was edited (1 month ago)

The power of Linux


Today i took my first steps into the world of Linux by creating a bookable Mint Cinamon USB stick to fuck around on without wiping or portioning my laptop drive.

I realised windows has the biggest vulnerability for the average user.

While booting off of the usb I could access all the data on my laptop without having to input a password.

After some research it appears drives need to be encrypted to prevent this, so how is this not the default case in Windows?

I'm sure there are people aware but for the laymen this is such a massive vulnerability.

in reply to Aussiemandeus

This is not that big of a deal most of the time, since you are the only person interacting with your computer, but it's worth remembering when you decide to recycle or donate -- you have to securely wipe in that case. Also bear in mind, if you do encrypt your drive, there are now more possibilities for total data loss.

Oh, fun fact: you can change a users windows password inside Linux. Comes in handy for recovery, ie, user forgot their password.

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

Yes, any laptop without an encrypted storage drive will have its data accessible by someone booting from a live USB.

It really is a massive vulnerability, but it's not well known because so few people even understand the concept of a 'live USB' to make it a widespread threat or concern.

So yeah, if you're ever in possession of a Windows machine that doesn't have an encrypted disk, you can view the users' files without knowing their password via a live USB.

It's also not limited to laptops.

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

The developer is just kind of insane. They reimplemented wlroots from scratch all on their own, a feat that cannot be understated, and the reason they did that is because of how massively they were outpacing wlroots development in terms of features.

just some things:

  1. a full proper animation stack for eyecandy
  2. single window capture (sway still doesn't have this)
  3. keypress forwarding to specific windows (like xdotool)
  4. global hotkey support
  5. insanely good documentation: wiki.hyprland.org/
  6. color management and HDR (sway is just now getting this)
  7. proper permission management for screencopy (coming in the newest version, first compositor to implement)
  8. a full plugin system for extra things you want to do
  9. a proper app not responding dialog

If the feature exists, hyprland has it, almost guaranteed, they are not minimalists, which I appreciate right now while wayland is still getting everything sorted out.

This entry was edited (1 month ago)
Unknown parent

lemmy - Link to source

chonkyninja

Tpm is for crypto and secure generation and storage of values for use in encryption generally. Secureboot is just firmware verification of loaded binaries from boot on out, they’re 2 different pieces and are not really relevant to each other, unless you’re like me and have a fully customized bootloader with keys in TPM and an EFI module with support for the TPM and unlocking your boot drive.
Unknown parent

lemmy - Link to source

chonkyninja

Cool story bro. And I am one of the 9 people that worked on the team at Intel to implement your modern EFI/UEFI.

I just don’t have the time or energy to sit here and explain the whole fucking stack to a bunch of people who mostly could care less. But, Secureboot, it’s a good thing, and the tools on linux get better every hour. Check out lanzaboote.

github.com/nix-community/lanza…

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

Fair. Although, I consider Microsoft's market "Most laptops" since Apple kind of does its own thing and Chromebooks are ultra-low end laptops. Thus Microsoft gets ~95% of the market for themselves.

Personally, I'd say that's a clear case of monopoly since MS controls this entire segment of "non-Apple, non-ultra low power laptop, PCs", but you're right - there are other players. The thing is, they have relatively tiny niches in which they thrive and in fact pose no threat to the monopolist.

But I now I see how you see it as an oligopoly, which is quite valid.

This entry was edited (1 month ago)

Installing Firefox on windows 11


I recognize this post is mostly about windows, but I'd like the feedback of some Linux users who use windows, have had similar issues or can reproduce it. If nothing else, if anyone has seen this issue before, this thread will show the rest of how bad things have gotten.

TLDR: You can't install Firefox on certain windows versions unless you use the store, and even then, it's very difficult to find. I'm installing Mint on my friend's laptop Monday.

This all started with my friend having issues logging into a web portal on her personal computer. She was unable to do so on any browser on her home computer, and only on Firefox on her office computer.

When I tried to download and run the installer myself, windows refused, telling me something called s-mode was preventing me. Progressing through the dialogs, I realized the way to disable s-mode was in a greyed out foot note link a few pages back. Fuck you windows.

I go back, click the link, and I was redirected to the store with a prompt to disable s-mode, but the button to do so was greyed out and can't be clicked. It mentions you can do so by getting windows 11 pro. Fuck paying. I'll install Chocolately.

This is where it started to get REALLY. Press win key. Start typing powershell. It shows a link to me some automation app with the powershell icon. I must have mistyped something. I did it again. Powershell pops up. I wasn't convinced I typed it wrong, so I did it again. BACK TO THE AUTOMATION APP. I do it again. BACK TO POWERSHELL. I do this five or 6 times before I asked her to watch so I can confirm I'm not losing my mind.

So I click on the correct admin powershell and paste the chocolately install command. I didn't expect it to work at this point, and my suspicions were confirmed. Once again, I was redirected to the windows store. I look at the settings and several other things. Nothing. This was the point I said fuck it, I'll install it from the store. She's upset and needs it to work remotely.

I type in the search bar "firefox" and I am given 3 results: "firefox", "firefox browser", and "mozilla firefox". None of which have an icon. Everything below it, safari, chrome etc have icons! I look at every of the 'firefox' results. None actually have Firefox. But now their's Vivaldi and Duck Duck Go. It fucking had Thunderbird!

Ok. Now I am PISSED. There is only one thing left to do. Alphabetic lists. I am scrolling down the F's the rest of the day if I have to. I am finding this shit. But no alpha lists. My last hope is 'Free Apps' And I FINALLY found it!

Does anyone have any idea at all what the fuck is going on? Have you seen this or anything remotely close? Has the hive mind awoken? I do recognize this is version-dependent, and Microsoft does distributed versions and telemetry to test prereleases against hardware. I'll get her version number on Monday. And then I'm installing Mint.

With FOSS, what is to stop scammers from hiding malware or worse in their programs?


Something I've wondered. One of those "too good to be true, it probably is" type things. With all the FOSS especially for linux, installing package after package because a web search said it would fix your problem, how is it Linux isn't full of malware and such?

Id like to understand better so I can explain to others who are afraid of FOSS for those reasons. My best response is that since it's open source, people can see what it's doing and would right away notice something malicious. I wouldn't, since I'm not that into code, but others would.

SOLVED GNOME extensions stopped working after upgrade to Fedora Workstation 42


I've just upgraded to Fedora Workstation 42 and am now unable to activate any GNOME extensions. The little switches in the GUI do not respond and it's the same for all extensions. The Extensions and Extensions Manager apps are both installed as flatpaks - do I need to adjust their permissions in Flatseal? Is the problem due to something else? Thanks!

Edit/solution:
I totally missed the 'Use Extensions' switch at the very top. All my extensions are working on the current GNOME version (48) now. I am the most silly. Hopefully the other solutions in the comments will be useful to someone else in future 😀

This entry was edited (1 month ago)
in reply to Dariusmiles2123

I get you, like "been there, done that"

Nowadays I have like 10 if not 15 extensions (most of which are not essential to my workflow) and they make the already wonderful Gnome base just better for me personally

this is why I usually wait with recent distribution upgrades, another upside is: it saves me a bunch of headaches too since – by THW time I do upgrade – all the little bugs have usually been fixed

This entry was edited (1 month ago)

Correct way to configure tc rules?


OS: Ubuntu 24.04

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

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

in reply to Juntti

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

You could also try

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

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

manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/n…

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

This entry was edited (1 month ago)

my new experiences with KDE Plasma and GNOME!


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Email client recommendations ?


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

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

Any recommendation would be greatly appreciated !

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

This entry was edited (1 month ago)

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


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

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

Very good science!

Result in short:

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

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

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

For me, this result is also not too surprising:

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

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

This entry was edited (1 month ago)

Why doesn't the Linux subreddit leave Reddit already?


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

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

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

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

Permissions issue setting up Plex


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

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

in reply to lilpatchy2eyes

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

sudo usermod -a -G plex
sudo service plexmediaserver restart

Two commands and bam! You're in business.

ref: askubuntu.com/questions/458547…

This entry was edited (1 month ago)

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


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

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

in reply to wuphysics87

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

instead teach the willing some fundamentals:

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

What was your first Linux distribution?


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

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

What was your first Linux distro?

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


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

Thank you


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

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

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

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

I was looking for stability, and got it!

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

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

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

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

Freeeeeedom!

Thanks again!

in reply to Orvorn

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

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

Aurora so far seems to be the best choice.

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

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

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

Anti Commercial-AI license

in reply to onlinepersona

renaming symbols, presenting documentation, formatting files,


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

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


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

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


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

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


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

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


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

This entry was edited (1 month ago)

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Are GPU drivers reliable on Linux?

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

And also, what distro might be best for me?

in reply to ssillyssadass

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


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

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


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

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


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

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


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

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


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

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

Are GPU drivers reliable on Linux?


AMD? Generally yes.

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

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


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

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


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

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

And also, what distro might be best for me?


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

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

  • Ubuntu
  • Kubuntu
  • PopOS!
  • ZorinOS

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

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

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

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


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

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


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

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

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


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

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


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

How does digital security work on Linux?


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

Is it more vulnerable due to being open source?


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

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


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

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

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

Are GPU drivers reliable on Linux?


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

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


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

And also, what distro might be best for me?


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

This entry was edited (1 month ago)

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


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

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

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

in reply to ptu

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This entry was edited (1 month ago)

OpenMandriva Lx 6.0 Rock The Spring Release – OpenMandriva


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

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

in reply to CAVOK

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

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

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

For their selling pitch, you can check their FAQ.

This entry was edited (1 month ago)

I switched from Manjaro to CachyOS and OMG!


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

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

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

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

Unknown parent

lemmy - Link to source

Peter G

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

[meta] is your post discussion or user support?


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

please tell when you're asking for help

ty

how could this idea work withthe fediverse


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

don't like this

in reply to nebhelo

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

Btw, I use Arch (via EndeavourOS*)


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

in reply to BlueFootedPetey

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

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

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

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

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

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

in reply to Psyhackological

At least the situation will get better.

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

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

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

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

If you have any questions remaining, just ask.

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

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

This entry was edited (1 month ago)

Decentralization Scoring System (v1.3)


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

📊 Scoring Metrics (Total: 100 Points)

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

📋 Example Breakdown (Estimates)

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

📧 Email


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

Total: 95/100


🐹 Lemmy


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

Total: 79/100


🐘 Mastodon


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

Total: 74/100


🟣 PeerTube


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

Total: 94/100


🖼 Pixelfed


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

Total: 42/100


🔵 Bluesky


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

Total: 14/100


🟠 Reddit


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

Total: 3/100


How Scores are Calculated

🧑‍🤝‍🧑 How User/Content Share Scores Work


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

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


📊 Formula:


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

📌 Example:


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

🖥️ How Ease of Self-Hosting Scores Work


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

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

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

📚 Sources



Footnotes


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

Source: github.com/NoBadDays/decentral…

in reply to AnonomousWolf

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

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


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

This entry was edited (1 month ago)

How to get people to use Mastodon?


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

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

The Server Selection Problem^TM^


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

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

Mastodon's landing page.

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

Why any server?


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

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

All servers are Mastodon, after all.

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

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

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

Auto-selector


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The onboarding experience


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

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

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

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

The Feed Problem


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

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

New account, empty feed.

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

A simple solution


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

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

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


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

Thoughts?

in reply to JemandInChapinero

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here are my suggestions to diagnose this.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This entry was edited (1 month ago)

Kodi on Wayland losing focus


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

Any fediverse like discord clones?


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

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

in reply to RustyNova

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


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

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

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

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

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

So that means, right now:

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

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

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

This entry was edited (1 month ago)

First draft woes


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

watty doesn't like this.

in reply to Cattail

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

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

This entry was edited (1 month ago)

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


youtu.be/hKypVQuA7yk

Please and thank you

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

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

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

in reply to atmorous

Depends what you mean by "Linux" here.

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

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

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

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

in reply to Geodad

Virtual memory is different from swap memory.

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

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

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

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

This entry was edited (1 month ago)

Help


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

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

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

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

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

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

This entry was edited (1 month ago)

don't like this

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


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

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

OP:


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

Device is a Microsoft Surface Pro 7.

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

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

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

This entry was edited (1 month ago)

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


in reply to ALostInquirer

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

Pixelfed is where I post my original photography and artwork.

Bookwyrm is for my book nerdery, mostly.

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

This entry was edited (1 month ago)

Looking for app menu groups solution


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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This entry was edited (1 month ago)
Unknown parent

lemmy - Link to source

Amphy

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

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

Non-English Keyboard Input on KDE


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

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

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

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

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

in reply to pastermil

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


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

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

userbase.kde.org/Tutorials/Com…

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

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

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

Then I ran # dpkg-reconfigure keyboard-configuration.

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

This entry was edited (1 month ago)

BotKit 0.2.0 released


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


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

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

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

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

Then run it;
$ script_name docker

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

trap 'helpfunc' ERR

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

Is there a federated Strava alternative?


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

Are there any good options for this?

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

This entry was edited (1 month ago)

CachyOS vs arch


Sensitive content

in reply to sparkle_matrix_x0x

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

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

This entry was edited (1 month ago)

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


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

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

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

This entry was edited (1 month ago)

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


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

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


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

Need advice on a one pc home


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

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

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

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

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

thank you for your time

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

It's actually very simple:

monitors-on:

#! /bin/bash

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

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

hyprctl keyword monitor HDMI-A-1, disable

monitors-off is basically same thing but reversed:

#! /bin/bash

hyprctl keyword monitor DP-1, disable

hyprctl keyword monitor DP-3, disable

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

es-de

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

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

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

This entry was edited (1 month ago)

How to use Java in Flatpak VSCodium [TUTORIAL]


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

Flatpak VSCodium with java extension

Via Terminal


  1. Install VSCodium:


flatpak install com.vscodium.codium

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


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

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


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

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


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

  1. Restart VSCodium:


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

  1. Done.


Via Graphical interface


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


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


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



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

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

  1. Restart VSCodium

PS

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

in reply to serpent0763

This is overly complicated. Just install Java then run

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

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

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

This entry was edited (1 month ago)

[Deleted]


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

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

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

creating a USB gadget


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Original comment, silightly edited:

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

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

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

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

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

Can't update to Fedora Silverblue 42


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

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

discussion.fedoraproject.org/t…

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

Using the CLI method, I run the following command:

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

and get the following errors:

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

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

This entry was edited (1 month ago)

Repartition again plus Printer


Hey again.

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

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

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

in reply to L3ft_F13ld!

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

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


in reply to roofuskit

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This entry was edited (1 month ago)

Muyal_Hix doesn't like this.

[SOLVED] Installing Linux distro without breaking Windows install


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

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

OP:


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

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

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

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

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

This entry was edited (1 month ago)

USB formatting on Bazzite (SOLVED)


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

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

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

This entry was edited (1 month ago)

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


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

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

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

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

in reply to ArtificialHoldings

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

I just want working voice chat and group chats.

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

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

This entry was edited (1 month ago)

Weird stuttering on fresh Fedora 42 GNOME install


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

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

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

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

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

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

Any suggestions?

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

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

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

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

This entry was edited (1 month ago)

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


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

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

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

Fedora 42 KDE

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

This entry was edited (1 month ago)
Unknown parent

lemmy - Link to source

Parptarf

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

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

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

This entry was edited (1 month ago)
Unknown parent

lemmy - Link to source

Parptarf

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

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

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

This entry was edited (1 month ago)

Decentralization Scoring System


🧮 Decentralization Scoring System (v1.0)


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

📊 Scoring Metrics (Total: 100 Points)


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


📋 Example Breakdown (Estimates)

📧 Email (2025)


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

Total: 45/100


🐹 Lemmy (2025)


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

Total: 60/100


🐘 Mastodon (2025)


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

Total: 55/100


🔵 Bluesky (2025)


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

Total: 14/100


🟥 Reddit (2025)


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

Total: 3/100


How Scores are Calculated

🧑‍🤝‍🧑 How User/Content Share Scores Work


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

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


📊 Formula:


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

📌 Example:


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

🖥️ How Ease of Self-Hosting Scores Work


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

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

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


PS.


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

in reply to AnonomousWolf

in reply to anothermember

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

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

don't like this

in reply to AnonomousWolf

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

3. upower.service is enabled and running.

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

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

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

Canonical Releases Ubuntu 25.04 Plucky Puffin | Canonical


Why do you use the distro you use?


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

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

in reply to aleq

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

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

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

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

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

This entry was edited (1 month ago)