Linux

cross-posted from: https://programming.dev/post/15948376

I was looking into buying a used or refurbished laptop and installing a Linux distro on it. Mostly want to use it for surfing the web, but I am sure it will have a lot of other uses. What are some good sites to buy a laptop? What should I consider as far as the type of hardware goes (Gpu, WiFi, etc)? What would be good distros to consider? I have been working with Linux for a long time, so I would not consider myself a beginner. Thanks for any advice.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/14567056

I personally see this as a simple version of desktop Linux. If you like what you see donate.

I'm very new to Linux. Currently tinkering with Nobara and wanted to install st. I was able to successfully install it last night but when I started attempting to patch it for customization purposes I think I messed something up. I had needed to remove st multiple times and re-install so I could start fresh and fix my errors. Now when I attempt to run make clean install I get a host of errors related to packages that are installed but can't seem to be found?

``` [astralpath@nobara-pc st]$ sudo make clean install [sudo] password for astralpath: rm -f st st.o x.o st-0.9.tar.gz c99 -I/usr/X11R6/include pkg-config --cflags fontconfig pkg-config --cflags freetype2 -DVERSION=\"0.9\" -D_XOPEN_SOURCE=600 -O1 -c st.c Package fontconfig was not found in the pkg-config search path. Perhaps you should add the directory containing fontconfig.pc' to the PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variable Package 'fontconfig', required by 'virtual:world', not found Package freetype2 was not found in the pkg-config search path. Perhaps you should add the directory containing freetype2.pc' to the PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variable Package 'freetype2', required by 'virtual:world', not found c99 -I/usr/X11R6/include pkg-config --cflags fontconfig pkg-config --cflags freetype2 -DVERSION=\"0.9\" -D_XOPEN_SOURCE=600 -O1 -c x.c Package fontconfig was not found in the pkg-config search path. Perhaps you should add the directory containing fontconfig.pc' to the PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variable Package 'fontconfig', required by 'virtual:world', not found Package freetype2 was not found in the pkg-config search path. Perhaps you should add the directory containing freetype2.pc' to the PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variable Package 'freetype2', required by 'virtual:world', not found x.c:15:10: fatal error: X11/Xft/Xft.h: No such file or directory 15 | #include <X11/Xft/Xft.h> | ^~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ compilation terminated. make: *** [Makefile:16: x.o] Error 1

```

I'm not sure why these issues are occurring now. Could someone help point me in the right direction to troubleshoot? I'm really lost on how to proceed even though the error output seems to be giving me some pretty explicit instructions.

Thanks in advance :)--

I am planning to reinstall the OS on my ThinkPad T400, and I'd like to try using the Trinity desktop environment. Can you suggest some distributions that work well with TDE?

TL;DR I am using Windows and I want help setting up all the conveniences I enjoyed back into Linux... specifically an alternative to OneDrive.

I am going to admit something that is strange and maybe evil... at the least it betrays a loss of integrity and deficit of dignitity.

For the past few months I have been using Microsoft Windows as my OS. It started with finally deciding to play with AI and turning on the features on my phone... which meant turning on Google Play Services... not necessary, but it is what I did.

Then I randomly bought some tiny Livaa PC to mess around with that came with Windows, so I got comfy with that.

As a student, I must use Microsoft Word because as much as Libre Office tries it just mangles the formatting. So, I discovered Office 365 and how it is easily accessible in the Edge Browser... plus Bing AI.

One day I just thought fuck it, I want to use all the music software, play all the games. I want to use my graphics card without needing to think. I want all the harware I bought to work. So I installed Windows. I use OneDrive. I ask Bing, and Bard, and Opera AI...

Well, I pay for Kagi because it is better.

....

Anyways, I think I had my fun. I want to go back. I need to, it is potentially immoral not to.

Please help me transition back!

I noticed yesterday that my 5950X never goes into C6 state, as Powertop only shows C0 C1 and C2. I know there have been issues with Zen and Zen+ regarding C6 states but it shouldn't be a problem from Zen2 forwards? I tried running zenstates --c6-enable but that didn't seem to work and I couldn't find any settings in the bios of my Gigabyte X570 Ultra.

Is there a way to enable C6 states? I'm running Arch on the Zen kernel with ZFS modules. (I also notice the same behaviour on my Proxmox server which has a 5700X)

cross-posted from: https://kbin.social/m/linux/t/468935

> Will it be Slowroll or Linarite -- or nothing at all? Programmers are conflicted about where the venerable Linux distro should go from here.

I have already tried to reinstall, didn't work. I have the RX 6600. I'm on Fedora. Already ran sudo dnf update and restarted multiple times. Could my GPU be dying? The GPU is a Powercolor branded one and basically the cheapest RX 6600 that my local shop had available so its a bit sketchy. But it has worked pretty well so far.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/4244409

Personally I’m a fan of KDE Plasma.

I'm going to very carefully poke the hornet's nest here and ask this basic question that I never really explicitly formulated. It seems apt here on Lemmy in particular because people take as a given the superiority of Linux as the starting point of conversations involved computers generally.

I'm not here to refute this, but I am thinking I should interrogate it a bit more. I'll start with an "average" user, to which I'll have to give some sort of definition.

Imagine somebody with a low to moderate concern about privacy, more than none, but not much more and will happily trade it for useful or enjoyable services. Imagine the use case of a desktop computer for this type of person is productivity software they use at work/school, and occasionally for their own purposes too because they're familiar with it. They also like to watch movies, browse the web, and communicate with friends and family using popular free software packages. Security isn't much of a worry for them, but they do engage in private communication and also banking and will pour a lot of personal information in to the machine in exchange for a lot of useful abilities like paying bills and organising their life.

Now also picture this person is open minded, at least a little and willing to hear you out on the concept of operating systems and of Linux in particular. Is it automatically in such a person's interests to switch to Linux? And is it always a good idea to start with supposition that it is and that the only barrier is hesitancy and ignorance? Would any of their needs actually be better met should they switch? A lot of this discussion tends to devolve in to whether it is or isn't hard for such a person to use Linux should they make the switch and whether using Linux is inherently more difficult than for example Windows but I think what's missed here is, assuming it's super easy to switch for an "average" user and perfectly easy to operate thereafter, is it actually better in such a case? If the needs are so basic, what has been gained? Is it mostly an ideological preference for the philosophical concepts behind the open source movement? That could be enough in and of itself perhaps, you could pitch Linux as "better" within that framework at least for the ideals it promotes. I feel like I sense there's a desire to push Linux for this reason on the thinking that if just one more person joins the fold so to speak, then it generally pushes the world at large vaguely in the right direction in some small way. But is there anything more tangibly superior for an "average" user? It seems like nowadays hardware has long surpassed the needs of users like these such that things like "performance" don't seem all that relevant considering almost any available platform could fulfill these needs so thoroughly that theoretically superior performance from the software would seem not to play a role. There is the security and privacy aspect, certainly for me, that definitely puts me off Windows but if an "average" user says they don't care about this things, can you really say they're being foolhardy in a practical sense? In a wider view, arguably, in the way that it pushes the world in a generally worse direction, but for them directly in the near to medium or even long term, what's going to happen if they just don't even worry about it? People say Windows has poor security, but for the number of people using it, just how many will personally experience actual measurable harm from this? Despite pouring so much personal information in to their computer, I suspect they could likely go a lifetime without experiencing identity theft, or harrassment from authorities, or tangible/financial losses. I suspect they probably know that too. That seems to me again like it really only leaves more of a "digital veganism" approach to Linux's virtues. That's appealing to some, to me a bit even but it's a much narrower basis for proclaiming it "superior"

Now at the other end of the spectrum, the users that are not the least "average" who run Linux on their home systems and probably at work, use open source alternatives for every possible service and do not need conversion as they themselves are Linux preachers. What is it that they typically get out of Linux? I've heard many say they enjoy "tinkering". I get that, is that the main benefit though? It seems then that the appeal is that it's kind of "hard", like a puzzle, but I don't think any of this crowd would like that assessment. What do you want to tinker with though that closed systems would prevent you from doing? This probably goes to the heart of it because it's the point at which I think probably most diverge from say an IT professional or programmer that loves Linux, I am too ignorant here to know what I don't know and I just can't really conceive of a scenario where I might for example want to personally modify the kernel of an operating system. Most examples I see if that type of thing is people making hardware work, and it's ingenious and impressive but the hardware is usually that part of the setup that's not democratised and not open source, it's usually something off the shelf it seems to me that that hardware would have worked already on a more popular platform. Likewise when you eke out of last bit of performance out of a system, what are you actually doing with it? I mean I get that it's a crying shame for hardware to be hobbled by lousy software but if the use for the hardware, the need for computing to be done can be met with existing platforms, what is done with the savings from the better software?

IBM/RedHat obviously missing from the member list.

EDIT: CiQ is also a member of resf.

I am thinking of moving to linux (Debian seemed to suite me) from Windows. I have used lubuntu and and ubuntu somewhat before, but their use has been very limited.

My main use would be to do statistical programming on R and Python. Does Debian have all the CRAN packages I can install on Windows? What about packages on Python? Does Debian suite me at all or should I look elsewhere?

The installation was really smooth, very impressed. Hope this becomes my daily driver now.

debconf: unable to initialize frontend: Dialog debconf: (Dialog frontend requires a screen at least 13 lines tall and 31 columns wide.) debconf: falling back to frontend: Readline Setting up linux-firmware (20230629.gitee91452d-0ubuntu1+system76~1689594960~22.04~9d563bf) ... update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-6.2.6-76060206-generic cp: cannot stat '/lib/klibc-*.so': No such file or directory E: /usr/share/initramfs-tools/hooks/klibc-utils failed with return 1. update-initramfs: failed for /boot/initrd.img-6.2.6-76060206-generic with 1. dpkg: error processing package linux-firmware (--configure): installed linux-firmware package post-installation script subprocess returned error exit status 1 Errors were encountered while processing: linux-firmware E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

This happens when trying to update things in apt in PopOS. Tell me if more info is needed. I hope I posted to the right community.>>>

Any recommendations for easy-to-use Linux distribution for audio production? I might try PipeWire installation too if it's stable and compatible enough.

I've been using debian based distros for 10+ years for now: started with Ubuntus and the last half I've spent with Debian 9/10 but I've become tired of fixing things. I've considered MX Linux and LMDE. I have some experience with them already (although haven't tried Mint's Debian variant yet).

For years I've been bridging JACK and pulseaudio, but it's never been optimal, hence considering PipeWire. I read somewhere that wire plumber package in MX is broken. Not sure about the current state. I probably need to know things like these beforehand when installing a distro or another.

I was thinking about getting a framework laptop myself actually. Seems to be working very well under arch.

After a single APT command gone wrong made my Debian installation unusable, I decided to reinstall Linux. I tried to back up everything to my external hard drive, but it kept unmounting, so I elected to use Filen (a FOSS cloud storage provider) instead.

It was only after installing openSUSE Tumbleweed with KDE Plasma that I realised I hadn't actually synchronised the folder I had moved my backup to; meaning I have lost everything but a single Minecraft world (which I had backed up to a Compact Flash card in February).

Tl;dr: Double check your backups, and use physical storage whenever possible.

TIL the French government may have broken encryption on a LUKS-encrypted laptop with a "greater than 20 character" password in April 2023.

• https://nantes.indymedia.org/posts/87395/une-lettre-divan-enferme-a-la-prison-de-villepinte-perquisitions-et-disques-durs-dechiffres/

When upgrading TAILS today, I saw their announcement changing LUKS from PBKDF2 to Argon2id.

• https://tails.boum.org/security/argon2id/index.en.html

The release announcement above has some interesting back-of-the-envelope calculations for the wall-time required to crack a master key from a LUKS keyslot with PBKDF2 vs Argon2id.

And they also link to Matthew Garrett's article, which describes how to manually upgrade your (non-TAILS) LUKS header to Argon2id.

• https://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/66429.html

How do people here feel about mosh to the wide internet? We provide SSH, and use both normal secure passwords and duo for all logins. We've had a few more inquiries about using mosh recently, and looking at it, the big concerns I'd have are potentially the firewall rules (is it outgoing or incoming high port?) and the long lasting authentication across IPs and network connections. On unmanaged collaborator or partner devices this seems like a kind of hole if the device is compromised or stolen, where the session can live for "a long time".

However, I tend to believe them that their AES session keys make it pretty unlikely to be hijacked just over the net. Is there any consensus?

Was thinking about trading in my gaming laptop and opting for a tablet to be more mobile. Any Linux tablets out there? Or would it be better just to by like a Surface and install Linux that way? TIA

cross-posted from: https://sopuli.xyz/post/730698

> I'm looking to move away from Google Photos, and I already use Backblaze B2 to sync my Joplin notes. Is there a piece of software that can store my photos on S3, while also providing a gallery view (á la Apple/Google Photos)? > > I will be using this on iOS, Linux, and possibly a deGoogled Android ROM (in the future). Multiple different apps are fine, as long as they can work together. > > In terms of features, I don't really care whether it's minimalist or if it has all the bells and whistles. As long as it does its job. > > I have already looked into Nextcloud and Piwigo, but it's not financially sustainable for me to self-host at the minute. I also don't want to pay for Cryptomator if there's a free alternative. > > Thanks!

who has sent invites?

I was thinking of sending out invites to my old Puppys (Puppy users) but I use Raspbian, Manjaro and [shield your eyes] even BSD derivative IOS … ☺️

Is we St Ignatius of GNU compatible? 🤔

Many years ago when I was a baby distro-hopping penguin, I new so little. And many distros were full of watered down unix illuminati. Very condescending/dismissive/unkind advisory know it alls. Boo! Hiss!

A rather intriguing Linux, not even on version one had a kind user; knowledgeable, patient and willing to answer my noob questions. I had that distro on the back burner, valuing its incredible speed and efficient programs but its screen scrolling was s l o w on my hardware …

And then … I was helped with making use of my very old graphic card. Whoosh, all of a sudden Puppy Linux was viable and still very different, experimental and well … just small, efficient, ran from RAM as root. Basically the way Linux for a desktop could be …

I was hooked in …

I was not much for programming but could support in a variety of other ways. Daily news-letters, youtube talks, curating the wiki, posts on the forum. Testing every release and reporting back etc. etc.

I am no longer active but remember …

… support your distro … My very first act was starting this page … grown a bit since then https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puppy_Linux

I'm trying to set up a Linux laptop for a friend who lives in another city. They have only ever used Windows, and likely won't have easy access to fix issues (not that I'm an expert).

First off, is it a good idea to give them a Linux PC at all? Have others had good/bad experiences giving technophobes Linux?

Secondly, if I go ahead with it, what's a good, stable, "safe" OS for a beginner? I'm shy of anything that's a rolling release (e.g. Arch, Manjaro etc) as "bleeding edge" can break things more often than not. I'm leaning towards Debian or something Debian based. But I've also heard good things about Fedora.

If I was the one using the PC, I'd have installed Fedora, as I've heard it's well-maintained. Then again there's been some good buzz about Debian 12. What would your advice be? Thanks!

Are there issues with sharing /home and other directories between linux distributions on the same system? What about sharing between linux and bsd?

Just curious.

Linux foundation and a number of big names in tech commit top talent and invest on RISC-V. The companies that support this initiative are, among others, Google, Intel, MediaTek, Nvidia, Qualcomm, Red Hat, Samsung, SiFive, etc.