Linux

Ever had a question about Linux but felt too afraid to ask? Well now's your chance, ask any question about Linux, no matter how noob or repeated it is, and I and others will help answer them.

Previous noob question thread: https://lemmy.ml/post/14261893

been using Arch for years but i am still a novice, yesterday i had found that in order for something to work on my system i will need to edit a few lines in kernel which i did, then removed unnecessary modules > intel, > nvidia, compiled. it worked great but with Arch and its rolling release i am dreading the next update and having to go through this again. what methods are there to automate this process?

Is there any immutable distro that's based on Hyprland? I really like their approach to tiling, but at the same time I prefer to have a solid experience without worrying that the next update might break some dependencies.

> elementary OS may not be as much as popular as it used to be.

> That being said, elementary OS 8 release is still on the horizon with some useful changes based on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS.

...

> However, amidst disagreement between co-founders during the pandemic in 2022, co-founder Cassidy quit the elementary OS team.

> Right after that, the development pace took a big hit, and we saw elementary OS 7 being released almost a year after Ubuntu 22.04 LTS came up.

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> A good indicator about its development activity is its upcoming major release, elementary OS 8, based on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS.

> I took a sneak peek at it using the daily build, and elementary OS 8 is almost ready to have an RC release.

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> You can expect things like:

> - The settings app handles system updates (instead of AppCenter) > - AppCenter is now Flatpak only > - New toggle menu icon giving you easy access to the screen reader, onscreen keyboard, font size, and other system settings > - WireGuard VPN support

I sometimes play games and also open my music player, but the sound from the game drowns out the music, so I need to go into the sound mixer on KDE and manually lower the game's volume every time. I was wondering, is there a way to do this process automatically? As in setting up conditions like "if music is playing (some MPRIS API?) then lower all other apps' volumes)", maybe even crazier "if some app is outputting voice then set its volume back up and lower music app's volume or pause its playback altogether for some specified timeout that keeps being refreshed for as long as voice is heard". I imagine the latter is a bit of a dream, but maybe for the first, even some quick sound profile selector would go a long way, say switching from "normal profile" to "background music profile", etc. which specify preconfigured volumes for those apps. Is that a thing?

I created a new user on this system but anything with sound plain doesn't work - the main user of the system has no issue though.

I already added the new user to the audio group, pulseaudio and pipewire are started by xfce during login too.

For example, when trying to open an mp3 file with mpv I get this:

[ao/pulse] The stream is suspended. Bailing out.

[ao] Failed to initialize audio driver 'pulse'

Could not open/initialize audio device -> no sound.

Audio: no audio

I'm setting up a backup if an external hard drive to my pcloud, and I have come across the following issue. I need the help of this awesome community.

I used to run arch on my laptop, and I set up a backup of a usb hard drive to my pcloud storage. This was extremely convenient, because all I had to do was occasionally connect the drive, start the backup service, and that's it. Any changes to the drive would automatically be backed up in the cloud.

Now I've switched to bazzite,and the pcloud doesn't recognize the external drive as the same device anymore because the path has changed. It treats the drive as a part of the "new" laptop.

Does anyone have any idea how I could get around this? I don't mind starting from scratch again, I just want to find a way to avoid this in the future.

Note: I understand that I could just get a raspberry pi or something similar to act as a new dedicated "pcloud backup device" or something like that. I'm looking first for a solution that would work in the case of a new linux PC veing used in the future to do this same job and not loose the connection.

Edit: I think it would be enough to change the name of the PC, either just for the (pcloud) flatpak or the whole PC.

In my persistence to fit Linux in my life, I'm curious if some "must have" Windows software will work better if I just ran a Windows VM within Linux.

None of the software I need to work is needed to work continuously. They are basically programs that I fire up when needed, for a few minutes, then exited.

Wine will install them, but not run them, so I'm hoping a VM is the answer as I'm not interested in dual-booting to run a few Windows programs occasionally.

> How does Linux move from an awake machine to a hibernating one? How does it then manage to restore all state? These questions led me to read way too much C in trying to figure out how this particular hardware/software boundary is navigated.

Covers meaning of chapters and sections, whatis, whereis, and man -k.

The KDE community has charted its course for the coming years, focusing on three interconnected paths that converge on a single point: community. These paths aim to improve user experience, support developers, and foster community growth.

Please have a look at the warnings in the comments:

https://discuss.tchncs.de/post/21632052/12893621

https://discuss.tchncs.de/post/21632052/12897257

Hey there, folks! I'm about to do my first Linux install and I'm trying to figure out which DE I wanna use. I'm not concerned about how analogous the DE is to any other OS because I'm willing to learn and develop a new workflow. From a performance and overall compatibility perspective, does either GNOME or KDE outshine over the other for this? This is specifically considering the latest non-beta/stable versions of each. Does the Anaconda installer work in the KDE spin of Fedora, or is the install process different altogether? I know Fedora's default is GNOME, does this make for any less stability with KDE?

Edit: I appreciate all of your comments, thank you for taking the time to write them! Initially I was really interested in GNOME for its minimalist design, but it seems KDE can be altered for a similar form without needing to rely much on third party pieces because of how much is already built into it. Although I'm certain the GNOME DE is a really nice one, I think I'm gonna give it a go with KDE simply because it has three customizability already out-of-the-box and it seems to be slightly lighter weight. Of course, there's no reason to ever settle and it's likely I'll try GNOME at some point instead. Thank you! :)

I want to install Debian directly onto my USB drive. Is there an easy way to do this directly without having to reboot to run the installer?

I pay for apple music, but all the linux clients seem to just be webapps which support 256AAC at most. Any way to maybe automatically download my library as flac and keep it locally (legal or not idc)

cant move services as every other service sucks (yes i have tried them all (tidal, spotify, qobuzz, deezer)

thank you all

On Debian-based distros, when an app is available as a DEB or an AppImage (that doesn't self-update), but no APT repository, PPA or Flatpak, the only option is to manually download each update, and usually manually check even whether there are updates.

But, what if those would be upgraded at the same time as everything else using the tools you're familiar with ?

dynapt is a local web server that fetches those DEBs (and AppImages to be wrapped into DEBs) wherever those are, then serves these to APT like any package repository does.

I started building it a few months ago, and after using it to upgrade apps on my computers and servers for some time, I pre-released it for the first time last week.

• Source code
• Experimental tutorial

The stable version will come with a CLI wizard to avoid this manual configuration.

Feedback is welcome :)

From: Alejandro Colomar <alx-AT-kernel.org>

Hi all,

As you know, I've been maintaining the Linux man-pages project for the last 4 years as a voluntary. I've been doing it in my free time, and no company has sponsored that work at all. At the moment, I cannot sustain this work economically any more, and will temporarily and indefinitely stop working on this project. If any company has interests in the future of the project, I'd welcome an offer to sponsor my work here; if so, please let me know.

Have a lovely day! Alex

Prefer me a FOSS email service provider.

Hello! I need to create a VM and passthrought some host USB port to it. Sadly libvirt doesn't support QEMU built-in feature to use -hostport argument (which was added 10 years ago...). I tried to add custom arguments to domain (<qemu:commandline>) but this didn't work. When I just run qemu-system-x86_64 -device host-usb,hostbus=X,hostport=Y -usb everything works well. It seems like libvirt restricts some QEMU actions. How can I fix this? OS: Debian 12

I was curious if anyone has any advice on the following:

I have a home server that is always accessed by my main computer for various reasons. I would love to make it so that my locally hosted Gitea could run actions to build local forks of certain applications, and then, on success, trigger Flatpak to build my local fork(s) of certain programs once a month and host those applications (for local use only) on my home server for other computers on my home network to install. I'm thinking mostly like development branches of certain applications, experimental applications, and miscellaneous GUI applications that I've made but infrequently update and want a runnable instance available in case I redo it.

Anybody have any advice or ideas on how to achieve this? Is there a way to make a flatpak repository via a docker image that tries to build certain flatpak repositories on request via a local network? Additionally, if that isn't a known thing, does anyone have any experience hosting flatpak repositories on a local-network server? Or is there a good reason to not do this?

Question is title.

In the past I've installed many distros on many older PCs, but never used linux properly (although slowly moving over to avoid win11). I've also had a heap of history with windows installs.

A family member has been testing Mint on an old laptop and is going well. This is a trial run before I update their iMac laptop (not sure what one but no longer supposed by OS updates).

I've never booted to an iMac BIOS or installed over top of apple.

• Is this going to be like installing over windows?
• What issues can I expect?
• Should I consider another distro?

Asking here as searching results in AI bullshit websites.

Let's say just like for example like MacOS. It's awesome we have so many tools but at the same time lack of some kind of standardization can seem like nothing works and you get overwhelmed. I'm asking for people that want to support Linux or not so tech-savy people.

Couldn't run Windows 7, and Windows 10 ran like shit. My old PC basically got a second life with Linux.

This is Half-Life GOTY running on Wine, runs really smooth.

The only downside is lack of directX support, OpenGL is there but the integrated graphics card only supports till OpenGL 2.1, which is not enough for many things, and also slower than directX. Still, my PC feels much faster now, and doesn't scream like a demon whenever I open up a browser :)

(Maybe I should dual boot Win7(While never connecting it to the web), just to play some more games with DirectX?)

Also, my local hospital has started using Ubuntu, their old PCs also couldn't handle the heavy burden of running Windows I guess 🤣

So I'm building a new computer before the end of the year and lemmy is obviously pushing me towards Linux.

I am not computer savvy, I have a family member that will help me set up my PC, but I do not want to be calling/messaging them every day when I want to open a program.

Basically my question comes down to: can I operate a Linux PC these days without needing to troubleshoot or type code.

I use my computer about once a week for a few hours I would say, so any time spent troubleshooting is time wasted.

Thanks!

EDIT: since a lot of people are asking what programs I typically use, I'll just list my most used programs.

Word, Excel, ect(I'm fine with alternatives)

Spotify

Gimp (would have been a make or break, so I'm glad it's supported)

Brave browser (browser is a browser)

Steam

Discord

I would say that while I could figure out how the kernels work, I'm at a point with computers these days where I don't have the time. My priorities fall with a seamless daily experience. If I have the time to figure something out I can, but ideally my day to day usage being unbotherd is what I'm after.

A lot of the comments so far have been helpful! I'm definitely going to give Linux a fair shot with my new build, probably start with Mint.

> I have completed an initial new port of systemd to musl. This patch set does not share much in common with the existing OpenEmbedded patchset. I wanted to make a fully updated patch series targeting more current releases of systemd and musl, taking advantage of the latest features and updates in both. I also took a focus on writing patches that could be sent for consideration of inclusion upstream.

> The final result is a system that appears to be surprisingly reliable considering the newness of the port, and very fast to boot.

...

> And that is how I became the first person alive to see systemd passing its entire test suite on a big-endian 64-bit PowerPC musl libc system.

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> While the system works really well, and boots in 1/3rd the time of OpenRC on the same system, it isn’t ready for prime time just yet.

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> There aren’t any service unit files written or packaged yet, other than OpenSSH and utmps. We are working with our sponsor on an effort to add -systemd split packages to any of the packages with -openrc splits. We should be able to rely on upstream units where present, and lean on Gentoo and Fedora’s systemd experts to have good base files to reference when needed. I’ve already landed support for this in abuild.

This work is part of Adélie Linux

Hi all! I'm trying to learn more about NixOS and wondering if anyone had an material they'd recommend that was Flake centric?

I'm planning to test drive NixOS on a secondary laptop as a learning opportunity- not planning on using it as a daily driver at this time, so I'm not too concerned about the learning curve; I realize it'll be a bumpy and steep road!

I did want to give a shout-out to @LunchEnjoyer@lemmy.world and everyone who replied in the NixOS beginner resources thread! Tons of good content shared there that I'm still working my way through.

SUSE just open-sourced a typeface :)

Linux people doing Linux things, it seems.

Situation: we live in europe, there's PRISM and Privacy Shield and all that, to which selfhosting is the solution. Now, my sister, mostly on Apple, got concerned with all the hacks and privacy violations over the years. She's a tech noob, so i can't really recommend her prism-break.org

There's a bunch of hosted solutions geared towards small to medium business, like Univention Corporate Server, NethServer, etc.

Are there similiar bundles for private use, basically Apple cloud alternative? With services like cloud storage, cloud office, media share, maybe chat, videocall?

Or should i let her wait until i got my box up, VPN her over? I'm only semi-professional tho.

Work on realtime preemption for the Linux kernel got its start almost exactly 20 years ago (though it had its roots in earlier work, of course). It is fair to say that finishing that job has taken a bit longer than anybody involved would have expected. Now, though, Sebastian Andrzej Siewior has posted a brief patch series making it possible to enable realtime preemption in the mainline kernel on three architectures.