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

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by wfh@lemm.ee to c/linux@lemmy.ml

29 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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Dad uses a computer in 2025 (lemmy.world)

submitted 21 hours ago by Tehhund@lemmy.world to c/linux@lemmy.ml

16 comments fedilink

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/37358118

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"detect-fash" Feature Developed (and Rejected) for Systemd (www.youtube.com)

submitted 1 day ago by Donaldist@feddit.org to c/linux@lemmy.ml

31 comments fedilink

I would say, finally, in an era of bitter political struggle even in the free software world, finally we see a good humoured hacker joke again

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Is Linux Smartphones any good? (lemmy.blahaj.zone)

submitted 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) by SuperDuperKitten@lemmy.blahaj.zone to c/linux@lemmy.ml

28 comments fedilink

When I have read anything Android phone related on Lemmy, I often see comments talking about how they switch to Linux phone or tell people to swap Android with Linux ASAP.

What's the general experience like using Linux as your phone and is it any good? I remember watching video couple years about it and hearing about it and the lack of apps (at least that is made for mobile in mind) and wonder if that has changed or is it just good enough.

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Windows 10 End Of Life - Your Story (sopuli.xyz)

submitted 1 day ago by theorangeninja@sopuli.xyz to c/linux@lemmy.ml

62 comments fedilink

As the Windows 10 EOL date is close I was wondering what fellow Linux users thoughts about it are.

Are you helping open minded people making the switch to Linux? If yes, which distro are you using? Are you using resources like endof10.org?

Or are you using the the opportunity to get your hands on some cheap hardware for your homelab? Are you keeping an eye on special websites or just ebay (or your local equivalent)? Are you talking with local companies to get the hardware directly from them?

Or are you just observing and enjoy your peace of mind because you switched already to Linux before?

Whatever it is, we are very interested to hear your stories concering this interesting time.

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I hate how Apples + Googles Prinz services are fucking my Printer, yet CUPS does it right. (lemmy.ml)

submitted 13 minutes ago* (last edited 12 minutes ago) by Luffy879@lemmy.ml to c/linux@lemmy.ml

0 comments fedilink

I have a brother laser Printer which I use via IPP from my network. It can hold a bunch of pages in RAM and Print them once the other (it can Print 3 in a row) are finished.

Now what does any propriatery printing service do?

They feed ONE PAGE AT A TIME, so my printer starts printing, then it starts cooling off, but then it has to HEAT UP AGAIN FOR FUCKS SAKE, and that every time.

Also if I just print via CUPS from my Linux machine, its like 5 times faster.

And I just don't understand how my 15€ thin client from over 20 years ago can do more and better than my 1200€ iPad.

Just a reminder why I keep using Linux.

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What's a good Google Drive replacement for syncing my Keepass database? (beehaw.org)

submitted 2 hours ago by JillyB@beehaw.org to c/linux@lemmy.ml

17 comments fedilink

I recently switched my desktop to Linux mint. Overall it seems to work well for me. The one exception is that my password manager, Keepass, won't work. I currently use Gdrive to sync the database between devices. It works very well for this purpose. Is there another way I can sync this file as seemlessly as Gdrive? It would to work for an Android phone and Mint PC.

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FSF announces Librephone project (www.fsf.org)

submitted 9 hours ago by JRepin@lemmy.ml to c/linux@lemmy.ml

17 comments fedilink

The Free Software Foundation (FSF) today announced its project to bring mobile phone freedom to users. "Librephone" is an initiative to reverse-engineer obstacles preventing mobile phone freedom until its goal is achieved.

Librephone is a new initiative by the FSF with the goal of bringing full freedom to the mobile computing environment. The vast majority of software users around the world use a mobile phone as their primary computing device. After forty years of advocacy for computing freedom, the FSF will now work to bring the right to study, change, share, and modify the programs users depend on in their daily lives to mobile phones.

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is i2p relevant today? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 2 hours ago by arsus5478@lemmy.ml to c/linux@lemmy.ml

2 comments fedilink

after a year or so hiatus I reinstalled i2p on my debian.

I don't think I'm going to use it much: I enjoyed using it to torrent files and to ask about censorship circumvention, things I now have alternatives to.

why is this network still relevant?

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What would you do with a device like this (sh.itjust.works)

submitted 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) by ayyo@sh.itjust.works to c/linux@lemmy.ml

36 comments fedilink

Was given this little wintel box by a friend fairly recently, but I haven't yet even powered it on. I don't have a power cable for it unfortunately but when I do, what do you think I should do with it? What would you do with it?

I think it could potentially be just a basic lightweight desktop for web browsing and such, maybe a little smart tv box or something like that to replace the Chromecast I'm ashamed to admit I use, maybe run some basic self hosted stuff like pihole or home assistant? Could probably be a little emulation machine for retro games but I doubt it would be capable of much more than that. But I'm not sure there's too many ideas! I need suggestions people

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LibreWolf support for appamor (lemmy.ml)

submitted 12 hours ago by RezaDarius@lemmy.ml to c/linux@lemmy.ml

6 comments fedilink

Linux is new on my pc. I would like know, if you have detailed instructions on how to activate appamor for my LibreWolf browser in Linux LMDE 7?

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Looking for sites that show popular Linux packages by category and popularity (lemmy.dbzer0.com)

submitted 9 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago) by Davy_Jones@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/linux@lemmy.ml

13 comments fedilink

I often use pkgstats to check the popularity of Arch packages I use. Sometimes I notice a package is declining in popularity, and I’d like to find similar alternatives that are trending instead. Something like https://pkgstats.archlinux.de/fun

Are there any sites that categorize Linux software and show popularity within each category, so it’s easier to discover alternatives?

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Fire memes as I help my friends move to Linux (reddthat.com)

submitted 1 day ago by iqarwone@reddthat.com to c/linux@lemmy.ml

31 comments fedilink

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Which Linux distro would you say that fits me best? Do you think the LLM got it right? (reddthat.com)

submitted 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago) by PumpkinDrama@reddthat.com to c/linux@lemmy.ml

1 comments fedilink

https://distrochooser.de/en/d5ed36c131b0/

You want something that just works out of the box.
Your focus is everyday tasks with some programming.
You prefer cutting-edge software, but the system itself can be stable.
You want a graphical installer and easy GUI management.
You like Cinnamon for a Windows-like UI.
You’re okay with either pre-installed software or minimal install.
You don’t mind if the distro itself has a smaller community as long as the parent distro is well-supported.

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-8

... (reddthat.com)

submitted 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago) by Davy_Jones@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/linux@lemmy.ml

0 comments fedilink

You want something that just works out of the box.
Your focus is everyday tasks with some programming.
You prefer cutting-edge software, but the system itself can be stable.
You want a graphical installer and easy GUI management.
You like Cinnamon for a Windows-like UI.
You’re okay with either pre-installed software or minimal install.
You don’t mind if the distro itself has a smaller community as long as the parent distro is well-supported.

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174

Blender 5.0 Beta Officially Released with HDR and Wide Gamut Display Support (9to5linux.com)

submitted 1 day ago by petsoi@discuss.tchncs.de to c/linux@lemmy.ml

5 comments fedilink

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38

Intel Compute Sticks - Making them useful (or fun)? (anarchist.nexus)

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

32 comments fedilink

Edit: So one is definitely going to be the Proselytizer Library Stick (OK I need a better name for it, fine). Going to test out some Debian options on there, just need to find a nice way to make it a user friendly portable library/reader, so feel free to mention whatever comes to mind there as well.

But I have more of these little suckers, so thats just one for now.

So I've got a few Intel compute sticks sitting on my desk here, and I don't know what I want to do with them (aside from throw them out, I'd rather find some value in them if I can).

They are STK1AW32SC, which have the atom x5-Z8330 chips, with a whopping 2gb ram, 32gb emmc, and a microsd slot.

A few things I've considered:

Take a few LCDs and the drivers and make a "household front end", basically just point to my locally hosted services (mealie for recipes, hass, etc)
Same thing but make it a digital picture frame
Compute to point to a magic mirror instance
Try out how terrible emulation is on them to make a little game console for the kids thats standalone? They already can use the living room one for that, which is a usff box with a lot more power. So probably not.
Automatically boots to rick roll to stick in TVs at my BILs house and drive him nuts?

Open to ideas! I've got tons of machines here, so I really don't need them to do anything - which means the silly and borderline stupid (see rick roll note above) are perfectly acceptable ideas.

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56

LUKS decrypt at boot over SSH? (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 day ago by clif@lemmy.world to c/linux@lemmy.ml

44 comments fedilink

I've done a little research but curious about first hand experience.

I've got a little home server that is full disk encrypted with LUKS (+LVM, of course). It's headless (no display, no keyboard, etc) and just lives attached to the back of my desk, out of the way.

If it gets rebooted due to a power outage, I can plug in a keyboard, wait long enough for it to get to the LUKS password prompt, enter password, hit enter, and assume it worked if I see the disk activity light blinking. Worst case scenario, I can move it to a monitor and plug it in to get display too.

Because lazy, I'd prefer to be able to enter the decrypt password remotely. "Dropbear" seems to be a common suggestion but I haven't tried it yet.

So, asking for your experience or recommendations.

I'll start. Recommendation #1 - get a UPS : D ... But besides that.

Addendum: either way, I currently need to be home to do this because I access it remotely via tailscale along with my desktop. Since both are full disk encrypted, neither will boot to the point of starting tailscale without intervention. But, I might repurpose a nonencrypted RPi with SSHd to act as a "auto restarts with tailscale so I can SSH to it, then SSH to server to enter the LUKS password" jump point.

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I just found out my fiancee wants to switch to linux, lets start a distro war, what should be her first? + other questions (sh.itjust.works)

submitted 2 days ago by StarvingMartist@sh.itjust.works to c/linux@lemmy.ml

242 comments fedilink

So i was surprised today when my fiancee told me she was thinking about switching over to linux. Surprised because she is absolutely not technically minded, but also because she was weary about having Microsoft AI slop forced on her PC every update. ( i'm so proud!)

Now i've used a little linux but i've always been a holdout. Won't stop me from moving someone else over but i have too much going on in my setup to deal with that right now. So i'm not super versed but i was able to give her the basic rundown of what distros are, concerns when switching, what may and may not be available, shes still on board so we're doing this! Knowing her she would like to not have to transition too much, whats something fairly hands off and easy to learn. I've heard some good things about mint from hanging around you nerds the past few years but also some not so good things, any suggestions?

next concern is what kind of transfer process is this going to be? i have some spare HDD's so we can try and get everything ported over but i'm so busy with school right now i can't quite allocate the time to really deep dive this.

Any help is appreciated, cheers!

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16

Changing Screen Position on raspberry pi (lemmy.zip)

submitted 17 hours ago* (last edited 17 hours ago) by TheMonkeyLord@lemmy.zip to c/linux@lemmy.ml

3 comments fedilink

Hello there, I am working on a little project as a way to improve my cad abilities. I am hoping to build a custom fantasy computer to go along with the pico8 fantasy system. I am basing it off of the Mac se/30 but am obviously hoping to get that nice 1:1 aspect ratio.

Trouble is that decent size 1:1 screens don't seem to exist as far as I have researched, I instead found a small 4:3 lcd panel I can use, and was originally planning to simply rotate the screen and let it render 1:1 while physically covering the top and bottom, but it seems to add significantly more vertical height than I anticipated.

so now I am hoping that I can shift the screen down and somehow get the PI to render only in the topmost visible section.

Included are a couple pictures of what I mean.

I am just wondering if there is a way, in software, to rotate and move up the screen, or at least the pico 8 window

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14

My new public samba share asks for authentication [RESOLVED] (lemmy.ml)

submitted 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) by yo_scottie_oh@lemmy.ml to c/linux@lemmy.ml

16 comments fedilink

EDIT: I've accepted that the tutorial I was trying to follow is incomplete or incorrect. I've successfully accessed my new samba share after creating a user on the host machine and updating smb.conf. I must authenticate to access the share, and I'm fine with that, so I'm calling this thread "Resolved." I want to thank everyone who chimed in in the comments. Feel free to keep the discussion going for anyone else who stumbles upon this thread.

Here are my final notes on this subject:

Install samba packages: sudo apt update && sudo apt install samba
Confirm smbd is running: sudo systemctl status smbd
Create a dedicated folder for the share: sudo mkdir /mnt/ShareDemo
Create a new user and set the password for Linux: sudo adduser shareuser
Add the new user for Samba using the same password: sudo smbpasswd -a shareuser
Change ownership of the ShareDemo folder: sudo chown -R shareuser:shareuser /mnt/ShareDemo
And change its permissions to 0775: sudo chmod -R 0775 /mnt/ShareDemo
Update firewall rules to allow access: sudo ufw allow samba
Add the share definition to the end of /etc/samba/smb.conf as follows:

[ShareDemo]
   path = /mnt/ShareDemo
   valid users = shareuser
   public = no
   writable = yes
   browseable = yes

I'm not sure if restarting the smbd is necessary, but if it is, here's how to do that: sudo service smbd restart

On another device on the same network, we should now be able to find and access this shared folder in the Network section of our file browser of choice and authenticate using shareuser.

ORIGINAL POST:

Background: I'm attempting to set up a public samba share on my local network following this tutorial on thelinuxcode.com. Long term, I'll probably set up some security around this, but for now I just want to confirm I can follow a basic tutorial. Unfortunately, so far, I'm failing.

What I've done so far (on the host machine):

Installed samba packages: sudo apt update && sudo apt install samba
Confirmed smbd is running: sudo systemctl status smbd
Created a dedicated folder for the share: sudo mkdir /mnt/ShareDemo
Changed ownership of the ShareDemo folder to nobody:nogroup: sudo chown -R nobody:nogroup /mnt/ShareDemo
And changed its permissions to 0775: sudo chmod -R 0775 /mnt/ShareDemo
Added the share definition to /etc/samba/smb.conf as follows:

[ShareDemo]
   path = /mnt/ShareDemo
   valid users = @users
   force user = nobody
   force group = nogroup 
   public = yes
   writable = yes
   browseable = yes

Updated firewall rules to allow access: sudo ufw allow samba

As far as I can tell, I've followed the instructions exactly as described in the tutorial. According to the tutorial, my newly created Samba share should now be accessible from any Windows, macOS, or Linux device on the same local network. On Linux:

Install samba-client if you haven‘t already -> DONE.
Open your file manager and click "Other Locations" or "Network" -> DONE.
Browse for your Ubuntu hostname and click the share folder -> DONE.
It will mount automatically without any login prompt needed -> this is where I'm stuck. I've tested this on two different Linux devices on my local network. In both cases, the samba share shows up in the file manager, but the system prompts me to authenticate and I cannot proceed as an anonymous user.

Even though the tutorial doesn't specifically say I need to, I've tried restarting smbd after updating smb.conf, but I still have the same issue.

What have I done wrong? Is the tutorial missing a step or simply outdated? Is there another tutorial that I should follow instead? Thanks in advance!

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SOLVED: Ethernet stopped working hours after installation. Wifi works OK. (lemmy.ml)

submitted 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) by Stopwatch1986@lemmy.ml to c/linux@lemmy.ml

17 comments fedilink

Another Windows migrant here. I can’t get my ethernet to work but wifi works OK. I am almost certain that when I installed Debian Trixie with KDE Plasma a few weeks ago, ethernet worked but it stopped a day or so later. Info Centre reports:

2: enp0s25: <NO-CARRIER,BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP> mtu 1500 qdisc fq_codel state DOWN group default qlen 1000
link/ether 54:ee:75:52:01:23 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
altname enx54ee75520123
3: enx0050b6c0f7f3: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc fq_codel state UP group default qlen 1000
link/ether 00:50:b6:c0:f7:f3 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
inet 192.168.1.92/24 brd 192.168.1.255 scope global dynamic noprefixroute enx0050b6c0f7f3
valid_lft 3419sec preferred_lft 2969sec
inet6 fe80::8437:d694:3204:62ff/64 scope link
valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever

I deleted the wired connection in System Settings | Wi-Fi & Networking and it was recreated which probably suggests the ethernet connection is detected even if the fields there are all blank. Also, the internet traffic plasmoid shows enx0050b6c0f7f3 with around 1/5 of the cumulative traffic of wifi.

I tried the obvious things, just in case. I disabled the firewall, restarted the router, deleted the wired connection, played with settings in Wi-Fi & Networking and tried dhcpcd.

$ sudo dhcpcd 
main: control_open: Connection refused 
dhcpcd-10.1.0 starting 
dev: loaded udev 
DUID 00:01:00:01:30:54:2e:d5:00:50:b6:c0:f7:f3 
wlp4s0: connected to Access Point: glocal 
enp0s25: waiting for carrier 
enx0050b6c0f7f3: IAID b6:c0:f7:f3 
wlp4s0: IAID 86:9b:42:5e 
enx0050b6c0f7f3: soliciting an IPv6 router 
wlp4s0: soliciting an IPv6 router 
wlp4s0: rebinding lease of 192.168.1.122 
wlp4s0: probing address 192.168.1.122/24 
enx0050b6c0f7f3: rebinding lease of 192.168.1.216 
enx0050b6c0f7f3: leased 192.168.1.216 for 3600 seconds 
enx0050b6c0f7f3: adding route to 192.168.1.0/24 
enx0050b6c0f7f3: adding default route via 192.168.1.254

and sudo systemctl status NetworkManager.service returns

●NetworkManager.service - Network Manager
Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/NetworkManager.service;enabled; preset: enabled) 
Active:active (running)since Sun 2025-10-12 23:59:31 BST; 47min ago
Invocation: a3faea14d3dc48e29a2e2d27750ca082
  Docs: man:NetworkManager(8)
  Main PID: 98676 (NetworkManager)
 Tasks: 4 (limit: 9149)
Memory: 6.3M (peak: 7.1M)
   CPU: 2.457s
CGroup: /system.slice/NetworkManager.service
└─98676 /usr/sbin/NetworkManager --no-daemon

Oct 13 00:03:10 tpkde NetworkManager[98676]: <info>  [1760310190.8454] dhcp4 (wlp4s0): activation: beginning transaction (timeout in 45 seconds) 
Oct 13 00:03:10 tpkde NetworkManager[98676]: <info>  [1760310190.8623] dhcp4 (wlp4s0): state changed new lease, address=192.168.1.85, acd pending 
Oct 13 00:03:11 tpkde NetworkManager[98676]: <info>  [1760310191.0217] dhcp4 (wlp4s0): state changed new lease, address=192.168.1.85 
Oct 13 00:03:11 tpkde NetworkManager[98676]: <info>  [1760310191.0237] policy: set 'glocal' (wlp4s0) as default for IPv4 routing and DNS 
Oct 13 00:03:11 tpkde NetworkManager[98676]: <info>  [1760310191.0440] device (wlp4s0): state change: ip-config -> ip-check (reason 'none', managed-type: 'full') 
Oct 13 00:03:11 tpkde NetworkManager[98676]: <info>  [1760310191.0839] device (wlp4s0): state change: ip-check -> secondaries (reason 'none', managed-type: 'full') 
Oct 13 00:03:11 tpkde NetworkManager[98676]: <info>  [1760310191.0841] device (wlp4s0): state change: secondaries -> activated (reason 'none', managed-type: 'full') 
Oct 13 00:03:11 tpkde NetworkManager[98676]: <info>  [1760310191.0855] device (wlp4s0): Activation: successful, device activated. 
Oct 13 00:03:11 tpkde NetworkManager[98676]: <info>  [1760310191.1033] audit: op="statistics" interface="wlp4s0" ifindex=4 args="2000" pid=1511 uid=1000 result="succe> 
Oct 13 00:33:10 tpkde NetworkManager[98676]: <info>  [1760311990.8671] dhcp4 (wlp4s0): state changed new lease, address=192.168.1.85

Not sure if this is relevant, but DCHP is handled by pi.hole on a Raspberry Pi. This has been working serving multiple devices for a long time without issues. Also, this is temporarily a dual boot Windows/Linux setup. When I log out and into Windows, everything works as ever.

After several days trying, I ran out of ideas. Can someone help please.

EDIT: SOLVED! In case it helps others, reading https://wiki.debian.org/NetworkManager closely, I ran nmcli device which showed that specific ethernet interface as 'unmanaged'. I am not sure why. Then, I followed the instructions below:

If you want NetworkManager to handle interfaces that are enabled in /etc/network/interfaces:

Set managed=true in a drop-in file in /etc/NetworkManager/NetworkManager.conf.d/ or directly in /etc/NetworkManager/NetworkManager.conf.

Debian documentation could be more accessible, but it is invaluable. Thanks all for your help.

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12

(Solved) How do I make flock ignore a nohup process? (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) by Gonzako@lemmy.world to c/linux@lemmy.ml

7 comments fedilink

Hi!

I've a cronjob that I don't want to be concurrent but it needs to leave a long-running process after it does it's job that I set up with a nohup command.

The deal is that once the script has setup the lock doesn't get released so any further calls to the script just get ignored.

Is there a better alternative/flag I'd use? I couldn't discern much from the flock or nohup man pages.

Solved: With bit more fiddling found the - u flag on the flock man page. You can unlock yourself at the very end of the script.

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15

Kubuntu - SDDM not loading (lemmy.sdf.org)

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

6 comments fedilink

At first Instead of my SDDM I would just see an after image of what was last displayed on screen. But if I typed in my password and pressed enter, it would let me in just fine. Then after following some suggestions from users in r/Kubuntu I’ve made a bit of progress. Now when I boot up my computer instead of the SDDM being invisible, it now doesn’t load at all, from there I switch to tty3 then back to tty2 and then log in through the terminal. After that I run startplasma-wayland and then I have access to my desktop. The post where all this went down - https://www.reddit.com/r/Kubuntu/comments/1nvreuo/sddm_not_rendering/

Does anyone know a fix? I would like to be able to see my login screen.

Here’s my specs in case that would help - https://i.imgur.com/XtC43zw.png

And here’s my journalctl output after booting and launching plasma - https://pastebin.com/nnGsWebd

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78

KDE celebrates the 29th birthday and kicks off the yearly fundraiser (kde.org)

submitted 1 day ago by JRepin@lemmy.ml to c/linux@lemmy.ml

1 comments fedilink

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/37518459

This week is KDE’s 29th anniversary. It may not be a nice round number like 25 or 30, but whenever another birthday rolls around for an independent project the size and scope of KDE — powered by the goodwill of its contributors and users — that’s really quite something!

This year KDE are celebrating by kicking off their yearly fundraiser. Let’s raise at least €50,000 before the end of the year!

Linux

Rules

Related Communities

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