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Understanding Linux and choosing your first Linux distro, v2.0 (lemm.ee)

submitted 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) by wfh@lemm.ee to c/linux@lemmy.ml

81 comments fedilink

You're about to take your first steps in the wonderful world of Linux, but you're overwhelmed by the amount of choices? Welcome to this (I hope) very simple guide :)

The aim of this guide is to provide simple, clear information to ease your transition as a beginner. This is not a be-all-end-all guide nor an advanced guide. Because there is a lot of info and explanations everywhere, I will often (over-)simplify so as to keep the information accessible and digestible. Please refrain from asking to add your favorite distro/DE in the comments, I feel there is too much choice already ;)

Preamble

Make sure your hardware is compatible

Nowadays most relatively recent hardware works perfectly fine on Linux, but there are some edge cases still. If you don't use niche hardware and your wifi card is supported, chances are you're golden. Please note that nVidia is a bad faith player in the Linux world, so if you have a GeForce GPU, expect some trouble.

Make sure your favourite apps are either available or have a good replacement on Linux

If some proprietary app is essential to your workflow and is irreplaceable, consider running it in a VM, keeping a Windows partition for it or try and run it through Wine (this is advanced stuff though).

Be aware that Linux is not Windows/MacOS

Things work differently, and this is normal. You will probably struggle at the beginning while adjusting to a new paradigm. You may have to troubleshoot some things. You may break some things in the process. You will probably get frustrated at some point or another. It's okay. You're learning something new, and it can be hard to shed old habits forged by years on another system.

When in doubt, search for documentation

Arch Wiki is one of the greatest knowledge bases about Linux. Despite being heavily tied to Arch, most of its content is readily usable to troubleshoot most modern distros, as the building blocks (Kernel, systemd, core system apps, XOrg/Wayland, your DE of choice etc.) are the same. Most distros also maintain their own knowledge base.

Understanding the Linux world

What is Linux?

Linux, in the strictest definition, is the kernel, ie. the core component that, among other things, orchestrates and handles all interactions between hardware and software, of a large family of operating systems that, by metonymy, are called "Linux". In general understanding, Linux is any one of these operating systems, called distros.

What is a distro?

A distro, short for "Software Distribution", is a cohesive ensemble of software, providing a full operating system, maintained by a single team. Generally, all of them tend to provide almost the same software and work in a very similar way, but there are major philosophical differences that may influence your choice.

What are the main differences between distros?

As said above, there are a lot of philosophical differences between distros that lead to practical differences. There are a lot of very different ways the same software can be distributed.

"Point Release" (OpenSUSE Leap) vs. "Rolling Release" (OpenSUSE Tumbleweed): Point release distros are like traditional software. They have numbered releases, and between each one no feature updates take place, only security updates and bug fixes. Rolling Release distros package and distribute software as soon as it's available upstream (the software developer's repos), meaning that there are no versions and no specific schedule.
"Stable" (Debian Stable) vs. "Bleeding edge" (Arch): Stable distros are generally point release, and focus on fixing bugs and security flaws at the expense of new features. Each version goes through a lenghty period of feature freeze, testing and bug fixing before release. Stability here not only means trouble-free operation, but more importantly consistent behavior over time. Things won't evolve, but things won't break. At least until the next release. Bleeding edge distros, which often follow the rolling release model (there are outliers like Fedora which are mostly bleeding edge yet have point releases), on the other hand, are permanently evolving. By constantly pushing the latest version of each software package, new features, new bugs, bug fixes, security updates and sometimes breaking changes are released continuously. Note that this is not a binary, there is a very large continuum between the stablest and the most bleeding edge distro.
"Community" (Fedora) vs. "Commercial" (RHEL): Despite the name, Community distros are not only maintained by volunteers, but can also be developed by some company's employees and can be sponsored by commercial entities. However, the main difference with Commercial distros is that they're not a product destined to be sold. Commercial distros like Red Hat's RHEL, SuSE Linux Enterprise or Ubuntu Pro are (supposed to be) fully maintained by their company's employees and target businesses with paid support, maintenance, fixes, deployment, training etc.
"x package manager" vs. "y package manager", "x package format" vs. "y package format": It doesn't matter. Seriously. apt, dnf or pacman, to name a few, all have the exact same purpose: install and update software on your system and manage dependencies.
"general purpose" (Linux Mint) vs. "niche" (Kali Linux): General purpose distros are just that: distros that can do pretty much anything. Some are truly general purpose (like Debian), and have no bias towards any potential use, be it for a server, a desktop/laptop PC, some IOT or embedded devices, containers etc., some have various flavors depending on intended use (like Fedora Workstation for desktops and Fedora Server for, you guessed it, servers) but are still considered general purpose. They aim for maximum hardware compatibility and broad use cases. At the opposite end, niche distros are created for very specific and unique use cases, like pentesting (Kali), gaming (Nobara), music production (AV Linux) etc. They tend to have a lot of specific tools preinstalled, nonstandard defaults or modified kernels that may or may not work properly outside of their inteded use case.
"team" (Any major distro) vs. "single maintainer" (Nobara): Pretty self explanatory. Some distros are maintained by a single person or a very small group of people. These distros do not usually last very long.
"traditional" (Fedora Workstation) vs. "atomic" (Fedora Silverblue): In traditional distros, everything comes from a package. Every single component is individually installable, upgradeable, and deletable. Updating a package means deleting its previous version and replacing it with a new one. A power failure during an update lead to a partial upgrade and can make a system unbootable. Maybe a new package was bad and breaks something. Almost nothing prevents an unsuspecting user from destroying a core component. To mitigate risks and ensure a coherent system at each boot, atomic (also called transactional or immutable) distros, pioneered by Fedora Silverblue and Valve's SteamOS, were born. Like mobile phone OSes, the base system is a single image, that gets installed, alongside the current running version and without modifying it, and becomes active at the next reboot. As updates are isolated from one another, if the new version doesn't work the user can easily revert to a previous, functional version. Users are expected to install Flatpaks or use Distrobox, as installing (layering) packages is not as straightforward as with standard distros.
"OG" (Debian) vs. "derivative" (Ubuntu): Original distros are directly downstream of their components' source code repositories, and do most of the heavy lifting. Because of the tremendous amount of work it represents, only a few distros like Debian, Arch, Slackware or Fedora have the history, massive community and sometimes corporate financial backing to do this. Other distros reuse most packages from those original distros and add, replace or modify some of them for differenciation. For example, Debian is the parent of almost all deb-based distros like Ubuntu, which itself is the parent of distros like Mint or Pop!_OS.

What are the main components of a distro, ie. a Linux-based operating system?

All distros provide, install and maintain, among other things, the following components:

Boot and core system components (these are generally out-of-scope for beginners, unless you need to fix something, but you should at least know they exist):
- A boot manager (GRUB, systemd_init, etc.): Boots the computer after the motherboard POSTs, lets you choose what to start
- An init system (systemd, etc.): Starts everything needed to run the computer, including the kernel
- A kernel (Linux): Has control over everything, main interface for software to discuss with hardware
Command-line environment, to interact with he computer in text mode:
- A shell (bash, zsh, fish etc.): The main interface for command-line stuff
- Command-line tools (GNU, etc.): Standard suite of command-line tools + default tools chosen by the distro maintainers
- User-installable command-line tools and shells
Graphical stack for desktop/laptop computers:
- Display servers (X11, Wayland compositors): Handle drawing stuff on screens
- A Desktop environment (Plasma, Gnome, XFCE etc.): The main graphical interface you'll interact with everyday.
- User-facing applications (browsers, text processors, drawing software etc.): Some are generally installed by default and/or are part of a desktop environment's suite of software, most are user-installable.
A package manager (apt, dnf, pacman, yast etc.): Installs, deletes, updates and manages dependencies of all software installed on the machine.

Which are the main Desktop Environments and which one should I choose?

As a new user, this is basically the only thing you should concern yourself about: choosing a first Desktop environment. After all, it will be your main interface for the weeks/years to come. It's almost as important as choosing your first distro. These are a few common choices that cater to different tastes:

Gnome: Full featured yet very minimalist, Gnome is a great DE that eschews the traditional Desktop metaphor. Like MacOS, out of the box, it provides its strongly opinionated developers' vision of a user experience. Fortunately, unlike MacOS, there are thousands of extensions to tweak and extend the looks and behaviour of the DE. Dash-to-dock or Dash-to-panel are great if you want a more MacOS-like or Windows-like experience, Blur My Shell is great if you love blurry transparent things, Appindicator is a must, and everything else is up to you. Gnome's development cycle is highly regular and all core components and apps follow the same release schedule, which explains why a lot of distros choose it as their default DE.
KDE Plasma: Full featured and maximalist, Plasma does not cater to a single design philosophy, is very flexible and can be tweaked almost ad infinitum. This may be an advantage for people who like to spend hours making the perfect environment, or a disadvantage as the possibilities can be overwhelming, and the added complexity may compromise stability, bugginess or completeness. There is not yet a single development cycle for core components and apps, which makes it a bit more difficult for distro maintainers and explains why there are so few distros with Plasma as the flagship DE. The KDE team is however evolving towards a more regular update cycle.
Cinnamon: Forked from Gnome 3 by the Linux Mint team who disliked the extreme change of user experience it introduced, Cinammon provides a very traditional, "windows-like", desktop-metaphor experience in a more modern software stack than the older DEs it takes inspiration from. Cinnamon still keeps a lot in common with Gnome by being simple and easy to use, yet heavily modifiable with themes, applets and extensions.
Lightweight DEs for old or underpowered machines: The likes of XFCE, LXDE, LXQt are great if you want to ressurect an old machine, but lack the bells and whistles of the aforementioned DEs. If your machine is super old, extremely underpowered and has less than a few Gb of RAM, don't expect miracles though. A single browser tab can easily dwarf the RAM usage and processing power of your entire system.

As for which one you should choose, this is entirely up to you, and depends on your preferences. FYI, you are not married to your distro's default desktop environment. It's just what comes preinstalled. You can install alternative DEs on any distro, no need to reinstall and/or distro-hop.

How do I install stuff on Linux?

Forget what you're used to do on Windows of MacOS: searching for your software in a seach engine, finding a big "Download" button on a random website and running an installer with administator privileges. Your package manager not only keeps you system up to date, but also lets you install any software that's available in your distro's repositories. You don't even need to know the command line, Gnome's Software or Plasma's Discover are nice graphical "App Stores" that let you find and install new software.

Flatpak are a great and more recent recent alternative to distro packages that's gaining a lot of traction, and is increasingly integrated by default to the aforementioned App Stores. It's basically a "universal" package manager system thet sits next to your system, that lets software developers directly distribute their own apps instead of offloading the packaging and distribution to distro maintainers.

Choosing a first distro

As discussed before, there is a metric fuckload (or 1.112 imperial fucktons) of distros out there. I advise you to keep it as mainstream as possible for your first steps. A distro with a large user base, backed by a decently large community of maintainers and contributors and aimed at being as fuss-free as possible is always better than a one-person effort tailored to a specific use-case. Choose a distro that implements well the DE of your choice.

What are great distros for beginners?

The following are great distros for beginners as well as more advanced users who just want to have a system that needs almost no configuration out of the box, just works and stays out of the way. Always read the installation documentation thoroughly before attempting anything, and follow any post-install requirements (for example, installing restricted-licence drivers on Fedora).

Fedora Workstation: Clean, sensible, modern and very up to date and should work out of the box for most hardware. Despite being sponsored by Red Hat (who are getting a lot of justified hate for moving RHEL away from open-source), this is a great community distro for both beginners and very advanced users (including the Linus Torvalds). Fedora is the flagship distro for the Gnome Desktop Environment, but also has a fantastic Plasma version. Keywords: Point Release, close to Bleeding Edge, Community, dnf/rpm, large maintainer team, traditional, original.
Linux Mint: Mint is an Ubuntu (or Debian for the LMDE variant) derivative for beginners and advanced users alike, that keeps Ubuntu's hardware support and ease of use while reverting its shenanigans and is Cinammon's flagship distro. Its main goal is to be a "just works" distro. Keywords: Point Release, halfway between Stable and Bleeding Edge, Community, apt/deb, smallish maintainer team but lots of contributors, traditional, derivative (Ubuntu or Debian).
Pop!_OS: Backed by hardware Linux vendor System76, this is another Ubuntu derivative that removes Snaps in favor or Flatpaks. Its heavily modified Gnome DE looks and feels nice. In a few months/years, it will be the flagship distro for the -promising but still in development- Cosmic DE. Keywords: Point Release, halfway between Stable and Bleeding Edge, commercially-backed Community, apt/deb, employee's maintainer team, traditional, derivative (Ubuntu).
If you want something (advertised as) zero-maintenance, why not go the Atomic way? They are still very new and there isn't a lot of support yet because they do things very differently than regular distros, but if they wort OOTB on your system, they should work reliably forever. Sensible choices are uBlue's Aurora (Plasma), Bluefin (Gnome) or Bazzite (gaming-ready), which are basically identical to Fedora's atomic variants but include (among other things) restricted-licence codecs and QOL improvements by default, or OpenSUSE's Aeon (Gnome). Keywords: Point Release, Bleeding Edge, Community, rpm-ostree, large maintainer team, Atomic, sub-project (Fedora/OpenSUSE).

Which power-user distros should I avoid as a beginner, unless I reaaaally need to understand everything instead of being productive day one?

These are amongst the very best but should not be installed as your first distro, unless you like extremely steep learning curves and being overwhelmed.

Debian Stable: as one of the oldest, still maintained distros and the granddaddy of probably half of the distros out there, Debian is built like a tank. A very stringent policy of focusing on bug and security fixes over new features makes Debian extremely stable and predictable, but it can also feel quite outdated. Still a rock-solid experience, with a lot to tinker with despite very sensible defaults. It is an incredible learning tool and is as "Standard Linux" as can be. Debian almost made the cut to "beginner" distros because of its incredible reliability and massive amount of documentation available, but it might be a bit too involved for an absolute beginner to configure to perfection. Keywords: Point Release, Stable as fuck, Community, apt/deb, large maintainer team, traditional, original.
Arch: The opposite of Debian in philosophy, packages often come to Arch almost as soon as the source code is released. Expect a lot of manual installation and configuration, daily updates, and regularly fixing stuff. An incredible learning tool too, that will make you intimate with the inner workings of Linux. The "Arch btw" meme of having to perform every single install step by hand has taken a hit since Arch has had a basic but functional installer for a few years now, which is honestly a good thing. I work in sofware. A software engineer who does every single tedious task manually instead of automating it is a shit software engineer. A software engineer who prides themself from doing every single tedious task manually should seriously reconsider their career choices. Arch's other main appeal is the Arch User Repository or AUR, a massive collection of user-created, automated install scripts for pretty much anything. Keywords: Rolling Release, Bleeding-edge, Community, pacman/pkg, large maintainer team, traditional, original.

Which distro should I avoid, period?

Ubuntu: despite having a huge mind-share as the beginner distro, Ubuntu suffers from it's parent company's policy to make Ubuntu kinda-Linux-but-not-really and a second-rate citizen compared to their Ubuntu Pro commercial product. Some of the worst takes in recent years have been pushing Snaps super agressively in order to get some "vendor-lock-in", proprietary walled-garden ecosystem with exclusive commercial apps, forcibly installing snaps even when explicitely asking for a .deb package through apt, baking ads and nags into major software or only delivering critical security patches to Pro customers. Fortunately, there are some great derivatives like Mint or Pop!_OS cited above that work equally well but revert some of the most controversial decisions made by Canonical.
Manjaro: Manjaro might seem appealing as a "user-friendlier" Arch derivative and some of its tools are fantastic to remove some configuration burden, but ongoing mismanagement issues and the fact that it needs Arch-style regular maintenance as updates often break stuff prevent it from being a truly beginner distro. Manjaro also has a highly irregular update schedule that's weeks behind Arch, making using the AUR extremely dangerous, as it always expects a fully up-to-date Arch system.
Any single-maintainer or tiny team distros like Nobara or CachyOS. They might be fantastic distros made by exceptional people (I have mad respect for Nobara's maintainer Glorious Eggroll and his work on Proton-GE), they are most often derivatives so the heavy lifting is already done by their parent distro's maitainers, but there is too much risk involved. Sometimes life happens, sometimes people move on to other projects, and dozens of small distros get abandonned every year, leaving their users dead in the water. Trusting larger teams is a much safer bet in the long term.
Anything that refuse to use standards for ideological reasons like Alpine Linux, Devuan or Artix. Don't get me wrong, not using any GNU tools or systemd is a cool technological feat and developing alternatives to the current consensus is how things evolve. However, these standard tools have a long history, hundreds if not thousands of maintainers and are used by millions, meaning there's a huge chance your specific issue is already solved. Refusing to use them should be reserved to very advanced users who perfectly understand what they're gaining and losing. As a beginner to intermediate level, it will at best make most of the documentation out there irrelevant, at worst make your life a miserable hell if you need to troubleshoot anything.

Philosophical questions, or "I've seen people arguing over the Internet and now I'm scared"

You've done your research, you're almost ready to take the plunge, you even read a lot of stuff on this very community or on the other website that starts with a "R", but people seem very passionately for or against stuff. What should you do?

Shoud I learn the command line?

Yes, eventually. To be honest, nowadays a lot of things can be configured on the fly graphically, through your DE's settings. But sometimes, it's much more efficient to work on the command line, and sometimes it's the only way to fix something. It's not that difficult, and you can be reasonably productive by understanding just about a dozen very simple commands.

I have a very old laptop/desktop, should I use a distro from its era?

Noooo!. Contrary to Windows and MacOS which only work correctly on period-correct computers, Linux runs perfectly well on any hardware from the last 20 to 30 years. You will not gain performance by using an old distro, but you will gain hundreds of critical security flaws that have been since corrected. If you need to squeeze performance out of an old computer, use a lightweight graphical environment or repurpose it as a headless home server. If it's possible, one of the best ways to breathe new life into an old machine is to add some RAM, as even lightweight modern sofware will struggle with less than a few Gb.

Should I be concerned about systemd?

No. In short, systemd is fine and all major distros have switched to systemd years ago. Even the extremely cautious people behind Debian have used systemd as default since 2015. Not wanting to use systemd is a niche more rooted in philosophical and ideological rather than practical or technical reasons, and leads to much deeper issues than you should concern yourself with as a beginner.

Should I be concerned about XOrg/Wayland?

Yes and No, but mostly No. First off, most distros install both Wayland and XOrg by default, so if one is not satisfying to you, try the other. Remember in the preamble when I said nVidia was a bad actor? Well, most of people's complaints about Wayland are because of nVidia and their shitty drivers, so GTX/RTX users should stay on XOrg for now. But like it or not, XOrg is dead and unmaintained, and Wayland is the present and future. XOrg did too many things, carried too many features from the 80's and 90's and its codebase is a barely maintainable mess. X11 was born in a time when mainframes did most of the heavy lifting and windows were forwarded over a local network to dumb clients. X11 predates the Internet and has basically no security model. Wayland solves that by being a much simpler display protocol with a much smaller feature set adapted to modern computing and security. The only downside is that some very specific functionalities based on decades of X11 hacking and absolute lack of security can be lost.

I want to play some games, should I look for a gaming distro?

No. General purpose distros are perfectly fine for gaming. You can install Steam, Lutris, Heroic, Itch etc. and use Proton just fine on almost anything. Even Debian. In short, yes, you can game on Linux, there are great tutorials on the internet.

Should I be concerned about Flatpaks and/or Snaps vs. native packages?

Not really. Flatpaks are great, and more and more developers package their apps directly in Flatpak format. As a rule of thumb, for user facing applications, if your app store gives you the choice between Flatpak and your native package manager version, choose the most recent stable version and/or the one packaged by the developer themselves (which should often be the Flatpak anyway). Snaps however are kinda bad. They are a Canonical/Ubuntu thing, so as long as you avoid Ubuntu, its spins and its derivatives that still include Snaps, you should be fine. They tend to take a lot longer to startup than regular apps or Flatpaks, the snap store is proprietary, centralized and Canonical controls every part of it. Also, Canonical is very aggressive in pushing snaps to their users, even forcing them even when they want to install an apt package. If you don't care, have fun.

I need/want program "x", but it is only available on distro "y" and not on mine. I've been told to ditch my beloved distro and install the other one, should I?

No. Generally, most software is intallable from your distro's package manager and/or Flatpak. But sometimes, your distro doesn't package this program you need, or an inconsiderate developer only distributes a random .deb on their Github release page. Enter Distrobox. It is a very simple, easy to use command line tool that automates the creation of other Linux distros containers using Docker or Podman (basically, tiny, semi-independant Linuxes that live inside your regular Linux), and lets you "export" programs installed inside these containers to you main system so you can run them as easily and with almost the same performance as native programs. Some atomic distros like uBlue's variants even include it by default. That .deb we've talked about before? Spin a Debian container and dpkg install the shit out of it. Absolutely need the AUR? Spin an Arch container and go to town.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to everyone who helped improve this guide: @GravitySpoiled@lemmy.ml, @tkn@startrek.website, @throwaway2@lemmy.today, @cerement@slrpnk.net, @kzhe@lemm.ee, @freijon@feddit.ch, @aarroyoc@lemuria.es, @SexualPolytope@lemmy.sdf.org, @Plopp@lemmy.world, @bsergay@discuss.online ...and many others who chimed in in the comments <3

Link to version 1: https://lemm.ee/post/15895051

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The open web isn't dying. We're killing it (ouvre-boite.com)

submitted 4 hours ago by HaraldvonBlauzahn@feddit.org to c/linux@lemmy.ml

2 comments fedilink

3

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This Week in Plasma: UI and Stability Improvements (blogs.kde.org)

submitted 12 hours ago by Virual@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/linux@lemmy.ml

0 comments fedilink

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Waterfox to integrate Brave adblock engine, with search ads enabled by default (alternativeto.net)

submitted 20 hours ago by commander@lemmy.world to c/linux@lemmy.ml

28 comments fedilink

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Local Tools, Offline Networking and Building Resilience (Linux Prepper Podcast) (podcast.james.network)

submitted 17 hours ago by kiol@discuss.online to c/linux@lemmy.ml

0 comments fedilink

cross-posted from: https://discuss.online/post/37854087

Lemmy struggles with properly displaying the Castopod shownotes. I've filed a bug report here.

Relaying show notes here...

Why Offline & Local-First

Rising Cost of Consumer Technology

Cloudflare Outages - interest in local hosting

Re-purposing older machines into functional use!

(00:11)

Offline Tooling, Local Tooling, Resilience Introduction

(00:50)

Sponsor Ameridroid

LINUXPREPPER code

(01:14)

Domain Changes and thoughts after years on .network, xyz and org

(01:32)

Forum posts related to simple, resilient setups

Show notes listed there as well

(02:21)

Do you have a device in a drawer that might be useful as-is?

(04:38)

KDE Connect - Thoughts after Three Years

(08:30)

Unbound, DNSMasq - Local DNS Caching, Recursive DNS and Resolvers

(09:30)

Quad9 - Global Public Recursive DNS for Public Benefit, alternative to Cloudflare and Google

(09:55)

Local DNS Resilience and Why It Matters

(12:15)

Connecting Multiple Services and What DNS Adblocking Actually Does with Pi-Hole, Adguard Home, etc.

(13:04)

Dividing IP Ranges for Custom DNS, Adblocking assignments

(13:55)

Adding Resilience, Privacy and Speed Most Routers Do Not Offer Natively

(15:20)

Challenges You Can Try at Home!

(15:59)

Wiki in early development as plain text. Learn more on the forum

(17:00)

Low Key Gear Exchange for LFNW. Details for forum users!

Forum post for registered users

(17:36)

100 Selfhosted Services for Low End and 32-bit Hardware

(19:11)

HomeLab Episode to be released with Robin Monks. Unedited interview available on Premium

(19:29)

Nginx, Caddy - Reverse Proxy via DNS Challenge for Local HTTPS Testing

(20:00)

mDNS and Avahi for remote machines gifted to others without https

(22:35)

Become a Premium Subscriber to Support the Show

(23:36)

How resilient is your setup? Let me know! podcast@livingcartoon.org

(24:05)

Discord and bridged Matrix Chats for discussing the show! Please Share with Others!

(24:55)

LFNW Schedule, should be live shortly. April 24th - 26th

(25:11)

AI Scanned My Brainrot, Live only at LFNW, on 04/26 at 3pm!

(26:17)

Upcoming Episode on SeaGL, LFNW and Conferences!

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Significant raise of kernel security vulnerability reports (lwn.net)

submitted 20 hours ago by HaraldvonBlauzahn@feddit.org to c/linux@lemmy.ml

14 comments fedilink

On the kernel security list we've seen a huge bump of reports. We were between 2 and 3 per week maybe two years ago, then reached probably 10 a week over the last year with the only difference being only AI slop, and now since the beginning of the year we're around 5-10 per day depending on the days (fridays and tuesdays seem the worst). Now most of these reports are correct, to the point that we had to bring in more maintainers to help us.

Something I'm predicting is that at least it will change the approach to security fixes: [ ... ] software that used to follow the "release-then-go-back-to-cave" model will have to change to start dealing with maintenance for real, or to just stop being proposed to the world as the ultimate-tool-for-this-and-that because every piece of software becomes a target.

[ ... ]

Overall I think we're going to see a much higher quality of software, ironically around the same level than before 2000 when the net became usable by everyone to download fixes. When the software had to be pressed to CDs or written to millions of floppies, it had to survive an amazing quantity of tests that are mostly neglected nowadays since updates are easy to distribute. But before this happens, we have to experience a huge mess that might last for a few years to come! Interesting times...

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How do you setup swap when installing Linux if the system has SSD? (reddthat.com)

submitted 18 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago) by PumpkinDrama@reddthat.com to c/linux@lemmy.ml

10 comments fedilink

No swap, swap or swap with hibernate? And do you change the swappiness setting?

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Why gpu acceleration suddenly stops working for flatpak apps? (sopuli.xyz)

submitted 20 hours ago by gegil@sopuli.xyz to c/linux@lemmy.ml

2 comments fedilink

I have an nvidia gpu, and run some apps through flatpak. And there is weird problem of gpu acceleration suddenly just stops working in flatpak apps.

Normally when i for example run zoom, i can stream my screen no problem, blender gets full performace from gpu. But if run these programs some time later, zoom just shows black screen, and blender lags so much.

In between this time, i did not do anything to installed packages. I did not do a system update, i did not update flatpak packages. Everything should have been working as it worked earlier but it doesnt.

I found out that in between that time, new nvidia driver version is released on flathub, and updating nvidia driver package specifically, fixes gpu acceleration in flatpak apps. But now i have a question, why does already installed driver suddelnly stops working, until i update it?

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Super slow old Samsung laptop, needs Light weight distro, for SNES games mebbe? (lemmy.ca)

submitted 19 hours ago by Snowballfighter@lemmy.ca to c/linux@lemmy.ml

21 comments fedilink

This laptop was my first experiment into installing linux, I have since expanded to installing linux OS to all my devices. Since then, I now would like to circle back to this very slow, very old PC and install a light weight distro on it. It would act like a back up for writing emails and using Obsidian for putting together client info sheets if my main PC ever had an issue. I would only need to install Waterfox and Obsidian.

But I had a curiosity about SNES emulators? What if I could use this lil guy to play old super mario? Is there an emulator for that and will this junk be able to run it? Which distro would be ideal for this, if at all possible? Looking forward to hearing your thoughts.

Specs:

System:
  Kernel: 6.14.0-36-generic arch: x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc v: 13.3.0 clocksource: tsc
  Desktop: Cinnamon v: 6.4.8 tk: GTK v: 3.24.41 wm: Muffin v: 6.4.1 vt: 7 dm: LightDM v: 1.30.0
    Distro: Linux Mint 22.2 Zara base: Ubuntu 24.04 noble
Machine:
  Type: Laptop System: SAMSUNG product: 905S3G/906S3G/915S3G/9305SG v: P13RBV
    serial: <superuser required> Chassis: type: 9 serial: <superuser required>
  Mobo: SAMSUNG model: NP915S3G-K02CA v: SAMSUNG_SW_REVISION_1234567890ABCD
    serial: <superuser required> part-nu: SAMSUNG SENS Series uuid: <superuser required>
    UEFI: American Megatrends v: P13RBV.083.140805.FL date: 08/05/2014
Battery:
  ID-1: BAT1 charge: 26.5 Wh (98.1%) condition: 27.0/30.6 Wh (88.2%) volts: 8.2 min: 7.5
    model: SAMSUNG Electronics SR Real Battery type: Li-ion serial: <filter> status: discharging
    cycles: 452
CPU:
  Info: quad core model: (up to ) bits: 64 type: MCP smt: <unsupported> arch: Jaguar rev: 1 cache:
    L1: 256 KiB L2: 2 MiB
  Speed (MHz): avg: 602 high: 611 min/max: 600/1000 boost: enabled cores: 1: 611 2: 599 3: 599
    4: 599 bogomips: 7985
  Flags: avx ht lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 sse4a ssse3 svm
Graphics:
  Device-1: AMD Temash [Radeon HD 8250/8280G] vendor: Samsung Co driver: radeon v: kernel
    arch: GCN-2 ports: active: LVDS-1 empty: HDMI-A-1,VGA-1 bus-ID: 00:01.0 chip-ID: 1002:983d
    class-ID: 0300
  Device-2: Silicon Motion WebCam SC-10HDD13335N driver: uvcvideo type: USB rev: 2.0
    speed: 480 Mb/s lanes: 1 bus-ID: 3-3:3 chip-ID: 2232:1054 class-ID: 0e02 serial: <filter>
  Display: x11 server: X.Org v: 21.1.11 with: Xwayland v: 23.2.6 driver: X: loaded: radeon
    unloaded: fbdev,modesetting,vesa dri: radeonsi gpu: radeon display-ID: :0 screens: 1
  Screen-1: 0 s-res: 1366x768 s-dpi: 96 s-size: 361x203mm (14.21x7.99") s-diag: 414mm (16.31")
  Monitor-1: LVDS-1 mapped: LVDS model: AU Optronics 0x152c res: 1366x768 hz: 60 dpi: 118
    size: 293x164mm (11.54x6.46") diag: 336mm (13.2") modes: max: 1366x768 min: 640x480
  API: EGL v: 1.5 hw: drv: amd radeonsi platforms: device: 0 drv: radeonsi device: 1 drv: swrast
    gbm: drv: kms_swrast surfaceless: drv: radeonsi x11: drv: radeonsi inactive: wayland
  API: OpenGL v: 4.5 vendor: amd mesa v: 25.0.7-0ubuntu0.24.04.2 glx-v: 1.4 direct-render: yes
    renderer: KABINI (radeonsi ACO DRM 2.50 6.14.0-36-generic) device-ID: 1002:983d
Audio:
  Device-1: AMD Kabini HDMI/DP Audio vendor: Samsung Co driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel
    bus-ID: 00:01.1 chip-ID: 1002:9840 class-ID: 0403
  Device-2: AMD FCH Azalia vendor: Samsung Co driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel bus-ID: 00:14.2
    chip-ID: 1022:780d class-ID: 0403
  API: ALSA v: k6.14.0-36-generic status: kernel-api
  Server-1: PipeWire v: 1.0.5 status: active with: 1: pipewire-pulse status: active
    2: wireplumber status: active 3: pipewire-alsa type: plugin
Network:
  Device-1: Realtek RTL8111/8168/8211/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet vendor: Samsung Co
    RTL8111/8168/8411 driver: r8169 v: kernel pcie: speed: 2.5 GT/s lanes: 1 port: e000
    bus-ID: 01:00.0 chip-ID: 10ec:8168 class-ID: 0200
  IF: enp1s0 state: down mac: <filter>
  Device-2: Qualcomm Atheros QCA9565 / AR9565 Wireless Network Adapter vendor: Samsung Co
    driver: ath9k v: kernel pcie: speed: 2.5 GT/s lanes: 1 bus-ID: 02:00.0 chip-ID: 168c:0036
    class-ID: 0280
  IF: wlp2s0 state: up mac: <filter>
Bluetooth:
  Device-1: Qualcomm Atheros AR3012 Bluetooth 4.0 driver: btusb v: 0.8 type: USB rev: 1.1
    speed: 12 Mb/s lanes: 1 bus-ID: 4-2:3 chip-ID: 0cf3:3004 class-ID: e001
  Report: hciconfig ID: hci0 rfk-id: 1 state: up address: <filter> bt-v: 4.1 lmp-v: 7 sub-v: 1
    hci-v: 7 rev: 3101 class-ID: 7c010c
Drives:
  Local Storage: total: 119.24 GiB used: 24.63 GiB (20.7%)
  ID-1: /dev/sda vendor: Samsung model: MZMTD128HAFV-000 size: 119.24 GiB speed: 6.0 Gb/s
    tech: SSD serial: <filter> fw-rev: 1K0Q scheme: GPT
Partition:
  ID-1: / size: 116.32 GiB used: 24.62 GiB (21.2%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sda2
  ID-2: /boot/efi size: 511 MiB used: 6.1 MiB (1.2%) fs: vfat dev: /dev/sda1
Swap:
  ID-1: swap-1 type: file size: 4.39 GiB used: 0 KiB (0.0%) priority: -2 file: /swapfile
USB:
  Hub-1: 1-0:1 info: full speed or root hub ports: 4 rev: 2.0 speed: 480 Mb/s lanes: 1
    chip-ID: 1d6b:0002 class-ID: 0900
  Device-1: 1-3:3 info: Realtek RTS5129 Card Reader Controller type: <vendor specific>
    driver: rtsx_usb,rtsx_usb_ms,rtsx_usb_sdmmc interfaces: 1 rev: 2.0 speed: 480 Mb/s lanes: 1
    power: 500mA chip-ID: 0bda:0129 class-ID: ff00 serial: <filter>
  Hub-2: 2-0:1 info: full speed or root hub ports: 4 rev: 1.1 speed: 12 Mb/s lanes: 1
    chip-ID: 1d6b:0001 class-ID: 0900
  Device-1: 2-2:2 info: Elan Micro Touchscreen type: HID driver: hid-multitouch,usbhid
    interfaces: 1 rev: 2.0 speed: 12 Mb/s lanes: 1 power: 100mA chip-ID: 04f3:012e class-ID: 0300
  Hub-3: 3-0:1 info: full speed or root hub ports: 4 rev: 2.0 speed: 480 Mb/s lanes: 1
    chip-ID: 1d6b:0002 class-ID: 0900
  Device-1: 3-3:3 info: Silicon Motion WebCam SC-10HDD13335N type: video driver: uvcvideo
    interfaces: 2 rev: 2.0 speed: 480 Mb/s lanes: 1 power: 500mA chip-ID: 2232:1054 class-ID: 0e02
    serial: <filter>
  Hub-4: 4-0:1 info: full speed or root hub ports: 4 rev: 1.1 speed: 12 Mb/s lanes: 1
    chip-ID: 1d6b:0001 class-ID: 0900
  Device-1: 4-2:3 info: Qualcomm Atheros AR3012 Bluetooth 4.0 type: bluetooth driver: btusb
    interfaces: 2 rev: 1.1 speed: 12 Mb/s lanes: 1 power: 100mA chip-ID: 0cf3:3004 class-ID: e001
  Hub-5: 5-0:1 info: hi-speed hub with single TT ports: 2 rev: 2.0 speed: 480 Mb/s lanes: 1
    chip-ID: 1d6b:0002 class-ID: 0900
  Hub-6: 6-0:1 info: super-speed hub ports: 2 rev: 3.0 speed: 5 Gb/s lanes: 1 chip-ID: 1d6b:0003
    class-ID: 0900
Sensors:
  System Temperatures: cpu: 54.5 C mobo: N/A gpu: radeon temp: 53.0 C
  Fan Speeds (rpm): N/A
Repos:
  Packages: pm: dpkg pkgs: 2190
  No active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list
  Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/additional-repositories.list
    1: deb https: //dl.winehq.org/wine-builds/ubuntu/ focal main
  Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/official-package-repositories.list
    1: deb http: //packages.linuxmint.com zara main upstream import backport
    2: deb http: //archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu noble main restricted universe multiverse
    3: deb http: //archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu noble-updates main restricted universe multiverse
    4: deb http: //archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu noble-backports main restricted universe multiverse
    5: deb http: //security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ noble-security main restricted universe multiverse
  Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/winehq-noble.sources
    1: deb [arch=amd64 i386] https: //dl.winehq.org/wine-builds/ubuntu noble main
Info:
  Memory: total: 4 GiB note: est. available: 3.28 GiB used: 1.13 GiB (34.5%)
  Processes: 207 Power: uptime: 2m states: freeze,mem suspend: deep wakeups: 0
    hibernate: disabled Init: systemd v: 255 target: graphical (5) default: graphical
  Compilers: gcc: 13.3.0 Client: Cinnamon v: 6.4.8 inxi: 3.3.34

10

35

Learning Linux via AI (lemmy.world)

submitted 2 days ago by meathorse@lemmy.world to c/linux@lemmy.ml

23 comments fedilink

Read before you roll out the guillotine! :p

I am a lifelong MS user. I cut my teeth on DOS 5, then everything from Win95 forward. Working in IT Ops, I've leveraged batch files and powershell many times in my career so I'm not afraid of the terminal but I've always focused on Windows as it was the tools of my trade. Therefore, I only ever dabbled in Ubuntu, Mint etc on secondary hardware.

In recent years I've moved away from Ops and my need to keep up-to-date with Windows has disappeared, I'm just a user now so in the middle of last year, I joined the fold and finished migrating all my hardware to Linux - I've been very comfortable ever since. Everything just worked including my favourite games and after a week I realized I would never go back.

I rocked Bazzite on my main PC and enjoyed the confidence that immutability gave me while learning - and it did save my backside when I made a largish mistake that cost me the ability to boot. A couple of quick commands later and I was back in business. I believe that an immutable distro + flatpack is the perfect starting point for most n00bs and average windows refugees.

I have since expanded my use and I reached a point where immutability was becoming a hurdle. There are ways around this but I didn't want to complicate a beautiful thing so now I've come around full circle to my original choice in KDE Fedora. Now that I'm several months in and 100% certain that I will never go back to Windows, I decided to start using the terminal to do things, as I've discovered that GUI applications are fine but the terminal is where the real power is unlocked.

My trouble is that I'm not 12 anymore attempting to learn DOS to move, rename, zip and delete files with near unlimited spare time with which to learn. Typical Linux documentation is fantastically dense and guides or forum posts usually lead you down a path mostly blindfolded. The good ones explain what is happening but mostly in a summary way - so you must trust the source and hope nothing has changed between the date of publish and your version.

It's then that I had a thought - AI is supposed to be good at this sort of stuff, let's put that to the test.

I threw it a bunch of prompts. I wanted to mount a network share, rsync several folders to that share, create a log for monitoring, set it all up in a script and trigger it on a schedule. I could do this in about 10mins in Windows but in Linux, I barely had a clue where to start - apart from rsync.

So, I leverage the AI and what it gave me was pure gold. Not only giving me the commands I needed but also explaining what each portion of the script does - plus detail about how to dry run to ensure it would do as I needed - plus the source links to validate what it has told me.

Most of you are probably thinking "Big whoop, you discovered how to use basic Gen AI and have a cheat code. You haven't learnt anything!" - and you're 100% right!

While I could follow the overall premise of the scripts, I still had little idea what the commands and switches actually did. Previously, a lot of what I learned in DOS and powershell was taking other people's work or scripts and Google bits to understand it enough that I could wield it myself and experiment, gradually expanding on it over time. Sadly I don't have that sort of time and luxury any more. That's when I realized I could leverage the real power of the AI tool.

I could use it as my own mentor, asking it 1000 obnoxious n00bie questions on the details of exactly what each command did, what every single line of the script did. I could ask it to explain in a different way or liken it to a concept I did understand and then feed it back my interpretation to check that I had the right idea. What does that parameter actually do? What if I changed this? Etc.

Naturally curious, I have found myself annoying coworkers in the past, asking for this level of detail from them as I learn better in this way than reading documentation and struggling when I have gaps in my knowledge.

This was the sort of tool or mentor I've been wanting all my life and it's my new Linux superpower. Yes, I can cheat my way to the answer but more than that, I can also quickly break it down to understand exactly what I'm doing, so I'll gradually learn more - and I keep my friends and co-workers on-side, only annoying them when I have really ugly problems!

Now I have my mentor, my next step is setting up a VM as a block of wood to practice my craft on!

I don't want the AI forced on me like Windows is doing, but when I have a solid use case for it, I'm happy to go use it and leverage it to my benefit.

I'd be interested to know if anyone else has had similar experiences or has tried different ways of using AI for good rather than just slop.

11

59

Are you using systemd or an alternative, what do you recommend? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 2 days ago by iByteABit@lemmy.ml to c/linux@lemmy.ml

58 comments fedilink

What are some significant differences to expect when switching to an alternative, and can that affect gaming compatibility and performance?

12

53

Debian with NVIDIA on a laptop that had been sitting in the closet for years (lemmy.ml)

submitted 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) by digital_descartes@lemmy.ml to c/linux@lemmy.ml

7 comments fedilink

Around 2020, I got the aforementioned laptop. At that time, I was using Windows, and generally, my IT knowledge was quite poor. Then I had a break from using it due to issues with computer overuse, and after returning from treatment (2021), I started using other laptops. This one ended up in a closet. Around 2023 I got a my beloved ThinkPad T470.

After some time, I dug this laptop out of the closet and wanted to install Linux on it. I managed to do it, but I couldn’t install the drivers for the dedicated graphics card. Because of that, I didn’t have HDMI or the dedicated card itself functioning. I was installing proprietary drivers, which generally caused issues with the kernel. So, the laptop just sat there for a long time.

At a certain point, towards the end of 2025, I realized that I actually needed a more powerful machine than the ThinkPad T470. So I dug out this old laptop, and at the urging of the LLM I use daily, I tried to put it together. With its help, I finally managed to set up those drivers because it turned out that my previous failure to install them was simply because I hadn’t enabled the ‘contrib’ repository.

It was a success! What’s more, it’s quite a beast now. I threw in a 1 TB SSD, 16 GB of RAM, bought a 200W power supply, and raised the TDP to 45W in UMAF. I must say I am proud of this computer, and I also tweaked a lot of things within the system itself. This laptop has also taught me a lot; before this, I briefly had a PC with an Athlon, which introduced me to playing around with motherboard settings.

What is the purpose of my post? To give hope to people with Nvidia GPUs or laptops with dedicated cards that it is indeed possible to set them up (on Debian especially, cause it's kinda difficile there) :)"

See the screenshot for the full specifications; I recommend taking a look

I forgot to mention, I've been using Linux since December 2022

13

19

Forum/subs for Linux on mobile? (feddit.it)

submitted 2 days ago by dontblink@feddit.it to c/linux@lemmy.ml

5 comments fedilink

Is there something like XDA or a sub specifically for linux phones? Where should I look for when looking on information and conversations specifically on this stuff? Looking online info seems pretty fragmented and hard to find, should I look into specific distros forums/chats? Isn't there some sort of forum aggregating everything on Linux on mobile?

14

274

Plans to remove ipv4 from the linux kernel. (lemmy.dbzer0.com)

submitted 3 days ago by irelephant@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/linux@lemmy.ml

20 comments fedilink

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/66388621

transcript
A ^fake^ email. It reads: From: Linus Torvalds torvalds@linux-foundation.org To: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: [RFC] Remove IPv4 support from kernel, effective next merge window Date: Sat, 15 Aug 2025 10:42:00 -0700 Message-ID: 20250815-drop-ipv4@linux-foundation.org

Hey folks,

After yet another deeply technical and entirely calm discussion about HRT (High-Resolution Timers) that somehow devolved into 200+ replies, personal insults, and at least one GIF of a raccoon, I have decided it’s time to take drastic measures.

Effective next merge window, we will be removing IPv4 support from the kernel. This will both (a) resolve the maintainers’ scheduling disputes, and (b) force the world into the IPV6 utopia we were promised back in 1998.

If you need IPv4 after this point, you can either:

run an ancient kernel from before the change (good luck with the bugs), or rewrite your applications to use IPv6 and learn to love colons in your addresses. Yes, I realize this will break roughly *everything *. No, I don’t care. I have already switched all my machines to IPv6-only, except for the toaster, which unfortunately still insists on using a 192. 168. x. x address. The toaster will be replaced.

If you disagree with this decision, I suggest you take it up with the HRT maintainers. But please keep it civil this time. (Or at least keep the raccoon GIFs under 1MB.)

Linus

15

17

Remap CAPSLOCK to F11 (lemmy.world)

submitted 2 days ago by xylogx@lemmy.world to c/linux@lemmy.ml

9 comments fedilink

Trust me you want to do this:

#!/bin/bash
# Remap Caps Lock to F11
xmodmap -e "keycode 66 = F11"
xmodmap -e "clear Lock"

16

Libinput Hit By Security Issues With Its Lua Plug-In System (www.phoronix.com)

submitted 2 days ago by nobody_1677@lemmy.world to c/linux@lemmy.ml

1 comments fedilink

17

6

zapret anti-cencorship program (quokk.au)

submitted 2 days ago by erin@quokk.au to c/linux@lemmy.ml

0 comments fedilink

i love it so much, i live in russia and half of blocked resources working with no speed loss and vpn,
i set it once on my openwrt and rarely touch config,
if something doesnt work - set resource ip in config and works,

this works by modifying packages and DPI think its sonething different

18

115

Linux and RISC-V by 2030 (lemmy.ml)

submitted 3 days ago by digital_descartes@lemmy.ml to c/linux@lemmy.ml

41 comments fedilink

I'm planning to switch to RISC-V by 2030, and since this is new to me (I’m an old AMD64 (and i386) veteran), I wanted to ask what your thoughts and predictions are regarding performance, stability, and usability as a creator of all kinds of content, whether it’s music, movies, 3D, or watching cat videos on YouTube. I’m also planning to buy a new, fresh computer, maybe a laptop from around 2027/2028. Is that a good idea, or am I biting off more than I can chew? To sum up, I’m asking for your opinions, advice, warnings, and thoughts. Feel free to write not only answers to my questions but anything you consider important in the context of the RISC-V and Linux marriage in the near future

19

6

[Discussion] My thoughts about the usability of Linux (youtu.be)

submitted 2 days ago by Ralkero@thelemmy.club to c/linux@lemmy.ml

32 comments fedilink

I mostly agree with the sentiment of this video, but it's highly biased I feel. On a utilitarian level, everything Muta is criticizing about Windows is absolutely valid. But even as a very experienced desktop computer user, as someone who does not have coding experience or any formal education in the technical side of computing, there are parts of Linux that just cause me to get hung up. If you're someone who likes to customize deeply and change a lot of really small stuff, you run into rocky patches very fast. Now, I agree that almost anything is possible on Linux, but it's about the amount of effort it sometimes takes.

For the average user, when they want to change some seemingly basic features, things that aren't in the settings, eventually, one way or another, you have to use commands. You have to use the terminal for something or other. Some dependency, some change that needs a command to activate. And even if all of that is wrong, and you technically CAN change or acquire everything you need without ever opening the terminal, the problem is that a new user is not going to be able to find a simple answer in a few minutes.

Even with the help of AI, it can still take a long time to troubleshoot what may seem like a basic issue. And like it or not, that matters if you're trying to get people to switch. People, realistically, can't be expected to always just "shut up and do the research". Anyone who's not a techie, or someone with a lot of patience, is going to run out of gas for this troubleshooting very quickly. I wish I had more suggestions about how to actually fix these problems, but I know that for me they are the main reason I can't permanently switch from Windows at this point. We're getting closer, but there is a long road still ahead.

20

19

Killing an AppImage process : is it okay to kill AppRun.wrapped ? (tarte.nuage-libre.fr)

submitted 3 days ago by Takapapatapaka@tarte.nuage-libre.fr to c/linux@lemmy.ml

4 comments fedilink

So, because the repository version gave me dependencies issues, I use AntiMicroX as an AppImage to use a gamepad as mouse/keyboard. I'm trying to create scripts to launch programs like browsers, while launching AntiMicroX as it starts and killing it when the program ends.

So far I've managed to kill the process AntiMicroX-86_64.AppImage with pkill AntiMicroX. But antimicrox still runs in the tray after that. After analyzing the list of processes, i've seen that two processes are launched :

AntiMicroX-86_64.AppImage, which seems to be the GUI as it ends when the window is closed
AppRun.wrapped, which seems to be the core of it, as i can still use the gamepad when it's running (and the icon shows in the tray).

So I can simply pkill AntiMicroX ; pkill AppRun.wrapped and it effectively closes both, working as expected. But I'm kind of unsure about how safe it is to terminate it via its name, since other apps could use this AppRun.wrapped name, i guess.

From what i could find, it seems to be something that should be avoided but can happen when building the AppImage, so pkill could catch other AppImages processes (though none of the AppImage that i have create processes named that way). Probably not a big deal since it's probably restricted to AppImages, but I thought i'd ask around.

21

49

How is Linux on ARM? (For a Laptop) (piefed.social)

submitted 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) by Ek-Hou-Van-Braai@piefed.social to c/linux@lemmy.ml

35 comments fedilink

I've been running Linux for 14 months now and loving it.

My laptop is a HP Victus gaming pc, which is bulky and heavy, but Its powerfull.

I find myself laying on the couch more and developing from there half the time or doing laptop stuff more and more from the couch.

Lugging it to work and back is also not great.

In October I can buy a new laptop through work and write off half the price against tax, honestly I want everything a mac book offers.

Good solid build quality, not plastic. No GPU needed, just light weight, long battery life, shouldn't heat up too much, good trackpad etc.

But fuck apple and their walled garden, so I want something Linux.

ARM is perfect for this, but does Linux play nice with it? What are my options?

Or do I just go with x86 and compromise

22

68

Timing Flaw in systemd Cleanup Enables Root Privilege Escalation (cybersecurity88.com)

submitted 4 days ago by ChrisG@lemmy.world to c/linux@lemmy.ml

23 comments fedilink

Yet another critical vulnerability in systemd, this time involving snapd. Ubuntu folk are affected.

"A serious security issue has been discovered in Ubuntu, and it is gaining attention in the cybersecurity community. The vulnerability is identified as CVE-2026-3888 and mainly affects Ubuntu Desktop systems from version 24.04 onwards. This flaw is dangerous because it allows an attacker with limited access to gain full root privileges. Root access means complete control over the entire system."

23

45

GIMP alternative for Linux, but proprietary. (lemmy.ml)

submitted 4 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) by butter_fly@lemmy.ml to c/linux@lemmy.ml

23 comments fedilink

It's Called Fog Panther. Flathub: FogPanther Claims to be written in GTK4. Looks like a modified GIMP. Made by a business consulting firm, looks sketchy to me.

24

5

I made a script for reading memos from terminal (codeberg.org)

submitted 2 days ago by akaleo@programming.dev to c/linux@lemmy.ml

0 comments fedilink

soshi is a fish shell script that allows you to read your memos from the terminal. It’s use

gum
jq
pandoc
w3m
curl

25

13

LXQt/Lubuntu Long Click to Right Click (lemmy.world)

submitted 3 days ago by BoxOfFeet@lemmy.world to c/linux@lemmy.ml

2 comments fedilink

I recently breathed some new life into this crappy old Nextbook Flexx 10 I have had for years by trying out some lightweight distros. I have Lubuntu on it currently, and I am really enjoying LXQt so far. I was surprised at how good looking you can get it.

That leads me to a minor inconvenience. I like using my old imac USB mouse with it. It's small, has a short cord, and works on just about any surface. The click is also very satisfying. The problem is, it only has one button. On Mint and Windows, that's been an easy fix with built-in accessibility settings. Just long click to right click. But I cannot find that anywhere in Lubuntu. Am I just missing it somewhere? Is there an easy way to implement it?

Preamble

Make sure your hardware is compatible

Make sure your favourite apps are either available or have a good replacement on Linux

Be aware that Linux is not Windows/MacOS

When in doubt, search for documentation

Understanding the Linux world

What is Linux?

What is a distro?

What are the main differences between distros?

What are the main components of a distro, ie. a Linux-based operating system?

Which are the main Desktop Environments and which one should I choose?

How do I install stuff on Linux?

Choosing a first distro

What are great distros for beginners?

Which power-user distros should I avoid as a beginner, unless I reaaaally need to understand everything instead of being productive day one?

Which distro should I avoid, period?

Philosophical questions, or "I've seen people arguing over the Internet and now I'm scared"

Shoud I learn the command line?

I have a very old laptop/desktop, should I use a distro from its era?

Should I be concerned about systemd?

Should I be concerned about XOrg/Wayland?

I want to play some games, should I look for a gaming distro?

Should I be concerned about Flatpaks and/or Snaps vs. native packages?

I need/want program "x", but it is only available on distro "y" and not on mine. I've been told to ditch my beloved distro and install the other one, should I?

Acknowledgements

Why Offline & Local-First

Linux

Rules

Related Communities