Noob Question Thread: Ask Any Questions About 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
I'm always too afraid to ask.... Is this year finally the year of Desktop Linux? Is next year the year of Mobile Linux?
trolololo.jpg
I kid, this year has been the year of Desktop Linux for well over two decades for me. Obviously! And I think this megathread is great idea :)
Year of mobile linux
astronauts meme ]
Always has been
What is something Linux related that you've learned recently?
As a meta question, could this work as an additional (or alternate) recurring discussion question? It felt similar in intent, to encourage people to keep learning / asking questions and chances are that if someone learned something then others will benefit from the information (or correct them)
After 26 years of using Linux, I did my first baremetal "immutable" distro install last week.
My youngest son is starting school and instead of the Chromebooks that they recommend, I took a chance and installed Fedora Silverblue on a $200 Lenovo "student-rugged" class laptop. Everything works and he hasn't had any issues so far. He gets access to the same student platform as the other students through Chrome, but then I can install Minetest and Tux Paint and GCompris as well.
The older kids run Debian stable for years now, but if this works out, I might transition them over next semester.
I learned how a kernel actually loads a program and switches between them by using timer interrupts and interrupt vectors that point to specific locations in memory to resume execution from. Not specifically Linux related, but I'm trying to learn more computer science, and it just clicked for me two weeks ago. I've been programming microcontrollers for ten years, but those are monolithic programs, and while I knew what interrupts were and have used them, I never understood how an OS actually runs multiple things while staying in control. Now I do. About time I understood a core concept of these machines that have been here all 42 years of my life.
It's one of those "aha!" moments like when I realized classes and structs are just data types like any other in C++ when I was starting off programming and can be used like them. OOP became fun after that.
I remember when the mapping of virtual memory segments clicked for me. I think i said out loud, "that's so clever!". Now it just seems so fundamental to managing memory for user space applications, but I hadn't thought about how it was done before.
The other day I learned that you can just grep an unmounted filesystem device. It will read the entire disk sequentially like it's one huuuuge file. And it will reveal everything on that disk... whether a file inode points to it or not.
Used it to recover data from a file I accidentally clobbered with an errant mv command. It's not reliable, but when you delete a file, it's usually not truly gone yet... With a little luck, as long as you know a unique snippet that was in it, you can find it again before the space gets something else written there. Don't even need special recovery tools to do it, just use dd in a for loop to read the disc in chunks that fit in RAM, and grep -a for your data.
Alright, absolute noob here, I'm not particularly interested in computer science or an OS I have to obsessively research. First, how is gaming on Linux nowadays? I play a lot of games, most of which are not triple-A, so I wonder how accessible this is. Second, what distributions are accessible and still customizable? I have all kinds of peripherals I'd like to be able to use, speaker systems, midi controllers, etc.
Fellow Linux noob, just started using it earlier this year so if someone with more experience wants to weigh in, please do.
That said, gaming on Linux is pretty good. Steam's proton makes most games playable out of the box, although it's still a good idea to check Proton DB to see if any particular game you want to play is playable.
As for your other question, I'm not totally sure what you mean by accessible and customizable, but I don't think any of your peripherals are going to be distro locked. The Arch Wiki is a pretty good resource for, well, everything, but most relevant to you for your peripherals (it also usually gives good information for any distro, not just arch)
About gaming, from my personal experience, it's overall pretty straight forward. When issues happen, you just got to have patience to read through logs and search up on Google or similar any suspicious parts of the log. Worst part is usually DRM/anticheat, but from what I can gather, usually pretty isolated cases are problematic due to compatibility, usually requiring the devs to go out of their ways to make the DRM incompatible.
As for the distros question, perhaps Linux Mint? It trades off bleeding edge updates for the sake of stability. Just avoid the Debian-based variant of Mint for now as it's still in beta.
Q1: Pretty good! Use ProtonDB to check what games work, and if you need to apply any fixes.
Q2: Linux Mint is the most popular choice for beginners, and it's extremely easy to use. Other people choose Pop!_OS because it's apparently better for gaming (I haven't tried it). However, I think the best distro for gaming, while still being extremely stable, is Nobara (a distro based on Fedora Linux).
Also, practically all Linux distros are customizable, don't worry about which one's the best.
P.S: You can browse through the most popular distros here: DistroWatch
(Background: I've been obsessively using Linux for four years.)
I can also recommend Zorin OS for a semi-familiar look with a very polished design. Switched to it as my first distro after ditching Windows for good.
It used to be that someone with midi controllers could be assumed to be technical enough to say “you’ll be fine, everything will work”, but most of the time nowadays software just automatically figures out stuff and you don’t have to go looking at the implementation chart and using midiox to see where you’re screwing up,
So,
I’ve never seen an interface that didn’t work, but if you’re not comfortable troubleshooting midi signals then give it a shot and see.
What are you using midi for, a daw?
I have an old (2017) Windows 10 box that is ineligible for Windows 11. Originally purchased to run my Oculus Rift, it now just streams YouTube and Twitch and plays some old Steam games and occasionally school related stuff (Lexia, Scratch, stuff like that).
I started thinking that, rather than worrying about an unsupported Windows OS on my network, I might upgrade to Mint or Ubuntu.
So, my question(s) is/are, how much of a hassle will such an upgrade be? Will I need to wipe the drive, or can I keep my files without having to back them up first? Can I run Windows games on Steam with Wine? Are there good 3D card drivers nowadays?
I'm reasonably versed in using Linux as a user, less so as an admin, in case that affects the way you answer.
If you just want some clear instructions: backup your files, wipe your disk and install Linux Mint Cinnamon Edition. It's easy peasy to use and getting the proprietary graphics drivers is only a few clicks away. Just configure your Steam games to run through Proton and you might not even tell the difference.
Thanks for the detailed explanation!
If your Windows partition is encrypted with BitLocker (which it probably ought to be, for security), and you disable Secure Boot, Windows will get angry at you.
You can set up Linux to do Secure Boot (I think I saw Fedora do it for you automatically), but it's extra hassle.
You might be able to decrypt BitLocker in Linux: https://github.com/Aorimn/dislocker/
Games work fine, if you install linux as a dual boot, you can move the files over (windows files appear as if the windows install was a usb key). Also drivers are fine
There would be no hassle in wiping the drive, you can do it as part of the super easy installation process for any Linux distro. Ideally you would back up any important files and drop them into your fancy new file system once the install is finished. And you can pretty much launch almost any game directly out of steam and it will run. There are a few exceptions for some of those games with anti cheats that rootkit your system, but the majority just work out of the box. Drivers included, but Nvidia might be ever so slightly annoying
Everything people are saying here checks out, but you might struggle with VR. I haven’t tried VR on Linux yet, but I’ve heard some things about support being pretty janky. Maybe others with experience can weigh in.
I'd be interested to see what people have to say regarding VR setup, but the Oculus gets little use anymore. I have a few games that were never ported to the newer, self-contained systems (I have a Quest 3), and we've downloaded a bunch of custom Beat Saber levels that I might feel bad about, but the sensors are a big enough pain to set up that I don't know that I'd feel that bad.
That was half the reason I upgraded. I don't know if my old box would've been compatible (probably was), but I wanted it off Microsoft territory so bad and heating about Copilot sent shivers all over my spine.
I've never heard of installing any new OS without having to back stuff up. That's just wishful lazy thinking lol.
You probably won't have to do anything manually about Wine. Steam has Proton built in and it works great. As others always mention, check ProtonDB.com for user reports on how a specific game will work out.
I haven't run into any problems in my library, but I honestly haven't installed a ton of games.
I've used Heroic Games Launcher and Lutris for some other launchers (like Battle.net or Epic Games), and those have been a little hit or miss, but I think the main problem is something I'm missing. Not a huge priority but I'm still working on it occasionally.
I haven't heard anyone call or 3D card since the 90s. They're video cards or GPUs these days man. AMD has open source drivers that work just fine with Linux and should work just the same as the Windows version I believe.
Nvidia has open source ones, but they seem to be pretty terrible compared to the closed source ones. I had one issue with them last week but I think that was more related to KDE than it was the drivers' fault.
I don't really have any fancy hardware to describe how easy that was to get to work. Just a mouse, kb, headset(with mic) all of which worked fine without doing anything. I have a physical dongle for the controller, so I had to get a driver for that so I didn't have to use a Bluetooth connection (pretty shitty comparatively speaking) or gasp plug it in. Had a few issues with it for a while, there was an updated version under a new name and such but it all works now. Just turn the controller on and it's working instantly (unless I forget to charge it lol).
To install at minimum you'll need to likely shrink existing partitions and create new ones for linux if you don't want to wipe the drive, that would be a dual-boot setup with Windows still installed along side. Or you can just wipe the drive entirely and have only Linux.
Regarding the files you should already have backups of anything important, if you don't, set it up ASAP.
Messing with partitions can easily cause data loss if something goes wrong.
You also never know when hardware failure, malware, power surges, lightning strikes, or whatever other disaster will happen and cause data loss. 1 copy of files might as well be 0 copies.
I'm on Linux mint 22 and my audio outputs don't change automatically. When I plug in USB headphones, audio won't output to them unless I manually change it in settings.
Also, why can't I interact with the panel applets (on the right side) while I'm in game? For example: I'm playing a game, I plug in my headphones, I have to manually change the audio output so I hit the "windows" key to bring up the panel, but I can't interact with any of the applets on the right side of the panel (I can't select the audio icon and change settings from there). I have to search audio settings in the panel then alt tab to it. It's really cumbersome
Fun fact: The "Windows key" (or "Command key" for Mac users) has its own generic name: the Super key!
Not trying to be a smartass here; I genuinely find it fascinating! :D
I don't know if this is specifically possible. I'm not quite rookie-level new (been using it about a year now) but I have something I would love to have convenience-wise.
It's a desktop machine with regular speakers, and I have a wireless headset that connects to its own dongle (not Bluetooth). It's there a way to switch to the headset automatically when I power it on, and revert to speakers when I turn it off?
I feel like it's possible hardware-wise, but I'm not tryna learn how to code to make it happen, and I don't know how to find a software solution. I don't even know what to call what I'm looking for.
i'd suggest starting by finding out what package in your distro actually decides where audio goes - mostly it is pulseaudio (older) or pipewire (newer).
depending on the details of how your distro and the dongle work, it could either be a simple "pactl set-default-sink
<headset-name>
", or a more complicated set of udev rules or pipewire/wireplumber scripts.note that distros using pipewire still often support a lot of pactl commands, so it may be worth looking at the simple option even when not using pulseaudio.
They can also use pavucontrol, whether they use pulse or pipe, for a GUI to select default audio interface as well as easily switch apps to different outputs if needed
Is the dongle visible by the system only when the headset is powered on? Does the computer have any way of knowing you've turned your headset on? What make and model is that headset?
With the recent Microsoft garbage, I'm giving Linux another try. I've been running a laptop for a while, no issues. My main rig, however can't read all of my um..?hard drives
A live USB of Mint 21 reads 2 of 5 drives fine. The rest are recognized from GParted, but can't access them. It looks like NTFS-3G is installed.
I've duck duck go'd (which apparently is just Bing) for a solution, but haven't succeeded. Long term, I can probably pick up another drive, copy, and reformat everything to something Linux friendly. For now, I just want access.
I'm lazy and burned out. I don't want to use the terminal- which I did try. I just want to make a few clicks and have access to all of my files.
If it matters, the drives (roughly) show up as: 500 gb, 4 TB NTFS (readable) 3, 12, 16 TB unknown (not readable)
Windows says they're all NTFS.
Is there an easy way to easily mount my drives?
If you can boot back into windows, turn off quick startup/shutdown, run chkdsk or whatever on the drives, reboot back into windows then boot back into Linux and you’ll be okay.
Quick startup is a kind of weird sleep/hibernate mutant that leaves drives in an unclean state when it turns off, so the Linux drivers for ntfs say “I’m not gonna touch that possibly damaged drive”.
I think the disks could be Dynamic Disks on which it would not be a good idea to install a linux distro.
Unfortunately Microsoft's own advice to change it to a basic disk (since it considers dynamic deprecated) WILL RESULT IN DATA LOSS.
Since you only want to access them it seem to be possible with ldmtool. While it is a cli tool there is a corresponding service that at least according to some askubuntu posts and arcwiki should make them behave like normal filesystems.
Is there a way to assess which packages on my linux distribution aren't open source? I'm planning on having a secondary machine which is exclusively open source, but not sure how I would go about ensuring that is the case.
This would depend on the distro you use. Most distros will require you to enable a non-free repository before you can install anything that isn't Foss or open source from the official repos. You could also use an FSF approved distro. Keep in mind, the FSF will only approve distros that don't include any non-free anything in the official repos. Besides that, you just have to know the licensing before you install it.
The language you want is “nonfree” in Debian derivatives.
Depends on the distro. Some have a configuration setting to allow unfree software or not, others have separate repos.
Depends on the distribution, many package managers can filter by license. So you can find anything that doesn't have an open source license.
Bonus: Who creates those distro icons in color coded ASCII in the system info command in the terminal?
Another technique I use is to go to the vendor site for software I use and look at which Linux distros they officially support. Usually they will publish at least an Ubuntu package, sometimes a universal deb file that works on Ubuntu, Debian or Mint. Sometimes an RPM package for Fedora/CentOS too. This is getting less relevant these days with Appimage files and Flapak images that work the same across all distros.
It's natural to get bored or frustrated with one distro and want to try out others. Imagine if Microsoft made many different flavours of Windows that each look and operate differently, everyone who is bored and frustrated with default Windows would be trying them all out, comparing them, debating the pros and cons, communities would form around common favourites.
I have a small gaming PC that I use to test out other distros, I'm currently on Nobara, that I actually highly recommend for a gaming-focused distro.
Your Linux photo editor will still save images with a .png or .jpeg extension, because these are the convention (and may be required if you will be opening those files on a different OS). Similarly, your project files created on Windows will still work fine on Linux (if the equivalent Linux app supports that file format).
For the #4, the file extension can be seen just as a note, a little tag that'll help you (or anyone else that will receive your file) remember which program you should use to successfully open the file.
From the viewpoint of your computer, in fact, a file is just a sequence of bits and every program can open every file, only it will not be able to find what it expects and actually do something useful with it, just as you can open a book written in any possible language: in most cases you will unable to undestand it, in some others you will be able to read it without any problem.
The "concept" of extensions was than introduced to allow your file manager (Explorer for Windows, Finder for macOS, Dolphin for KDE or Nautilus for GNOME) to know which program to launch when you double click on a certain file through a simple association table (that you can edit in your system preferences).
In regards to Linux you can sometimes read that file extensions are not a thing, but this is just because in the commandline you launch a specific program that you personally point to a certain file, so there is no file manager that needs to guess which app should be launched to open the document you just double clicked on.
That said, I think that should be pretty clear that in a Desktop context (like in a Personal Computer) that double click on a file situation pretty much applies to Linux too, so extensions will be useful and respected by the file manager you'll find installed in your distro of choice, even if it can use other means when that is missing.
I'm afraid this answer isn't 100% correct. There are ways to find out a file's type beyond looking at an extension. For example, there are lots of file formats where all of the files start with a specific sequence of bites, known as a file signature (or as "magic bytes" or "magic numbers").
You can try the file command line tool to check that you can find out a file's format without resorting to its extension, and you can read the tool's manpage to learn how it works.
For #1, I've made the realization that most distros are lightweight skins or addons on top of another distro. Most of the time, if you start with the base distro, all you have to do is install some apps, change some configurations, and suddenly you have that other distro. It is much easier than doing a reinstallation.
If you filter out all of these distros that only do a little on top of an existing, you're left with a quite small number actually. I'd bet it's less than 10 that are not super niche. Fedora, Arch, debian, gentoo, nixos are the big ones. There's some niche ones, like void Linux and Alpine.
So I'd say if you try all of those, you don't need to try any more 😁
Bonus: You probably mean Neofetch (or whatever we're using since the developer of Neofetch has "gone farming"). Those are hard-coded into Neofetch by its developer.
For #2,
For gaming, if you use steam, you may not face more than the following:
For programming, you will love your life because everything programming is way easier on Linux.
Is it wise to go for arch to try linux for the first time?
First time Linux user you mean?
I wouldn't recommend it, unless you can navigate the terminal well. When you install arch, it installs no desktop environment, only the ability to talk to a terminal.
It's technically possible and very doable with some googling, but I wouldn't recommend it.
Depends what your goals are. With Arch, you will need to closely follow a guide to get it installed, if anything goes wrong you will need to search through the Arch Wiki for answers. Arch has an insane amount of customisation options, you will spend a lot of time in the Arch Wiki learning about them. By installing Arch you will learn a lot about Linux. Is that your goal?
You will spend more time reading and learning, but come out further ahead than someone who first installs Ubuntu or Mint.
However if your goal is to simply install Linux on your PC to try it out, (if you don't even know if you will like it, and don't know if you want to learn it's mechanics) then Arch wouldn't be my first choice.
No
I'm using Arch, I love it. What's absolutely bonkers is that the system belongs to you.
However, if you have never used Linux, it's insane to try to install Arch. The online wiki is tailored for people with at least a decent amount of Linux knowledge.
As a noob, it will result in data loss, except if you're already very familiar with terminals or are very fluent in IT.
You might want to try something more user friendly, as Zorin then come back to Arch when you want more power.
The arch wiki is difficult to use for beginners. Each page is single topic. It is not a guide. Using it daily, it takes at least a month to understand it well enough to "build your own guides". If you want to do that kind of deep dive, jump on in. If not, you'll have a better time using just about any distro other than arch.
BTW. If you do decide to take that route. Don't become one of those miscreants who "uses arch btw" It's a red flag for someone who doesn't know wtf they are talking about.
This is what I did. If you generally know what you’re doing around computers it just requires patience and a willingness to “Read the (Friendly) Manual.”
If you’re running intel, nVidia, dual GPU setup, and some other things, your installation will be more involved.
But the great part is that once you’ve set all that up, things just generally work and the Arch wiki is an amazing resource.
Could you point me to a good place to start learning how to troubleshoot? I added Unbuntu as a dual-boot to my gaming rig a while back, and when it works, it's great. But as soon as I hit an error, I drop back to Windows because I know how to fix shit there.
First suggestion: commit to using Ubuntu for a set period of time. Could be a week, could be 2 hours. When you encounter issues, force yourself to stay on Ubuntu.
What you'll find is that at first, errors will seem like gibberish, then you'll do some snooping online, and find out how to access some log files or poke around your loaded modules. You'll slowly learn commands and what they do.
Eventually, something will click, ie; "wait a minute, I just checked to see which kernel modules are loaded, and I'm missing one that was mentioned in my error, that must mean I need to load that module at boot." You load that module, reboot, try your command again, and bam, everything works. You've learned how to troubleshoot an issue.
The best way to learn Linux is to immerse yourself in it. You can't efficiently learn German if, every time you hear a phrase you don't understand, you switch back to English, right?
Ubuntu Wiki Ask Ubuntu Ubuntu Forums
The wiki has some information and should correspond to how Ubuntu specifically is configured. You can ask for ubuntu specific help in those communities. You can also ask here and on several Linux communities on Lemmy.
The Arch Wiki I find to be more in depth than the ubuntu wiki. Of course some things may differ from Ubuntu's defaults but I found it a useful resource when using Ubuntu.
Finally I suggest you learn a bit about how Linux works in general, what is in what directory, what is wayland and xorg, understand how drives are named etc and some understanding of the terminal (moving around in directories, how to use sudo etc, no need to learn to make bash scripts).
The first thing I'll say is the reason you're more comfortable with Windows is because you've been using it for however long and learning to deal with the issues it has. The same needs to be done on Linux. You'll have to learn how it works just like you forgot you did for Windows.
Second, along with logs like other users said, you have to know how to use a search engine well. Most issues will be easy to solve, but some may take some searching. The Arch wiki is a good resource even if you aren't using Arch.
I recently had the realization that I've just been putting up with Windows bullshit forever recently when a friend asked me for help with their work PC. They're a Mac user, but they just started working from home and have been provided a Windows laptop. They sent me a bunch of rushed texts when their headset stopped working. They changed the default audio device after they launched the program. Which never works on a Windows PC. I never have that problem because I have just learned to live with it, I don't even think about it anymore.
Now I'm really starting to notice all the little things I put up with from Windows on my machine. To be fair my Linux machine is just as janky but at least I can say I made it that way. I keep telling myself to 'tidy' my Linux machine up but I never do, it still plays games just fine. Usually. If I didn't fuck with it.
Just come ask here when you have trouble, and we'll try to help.
When troubleshooting, the biggest thing is searching the web honestly. But some more things to help you out: look for logs. Linux has loads of logs and sometimes can tell you how to fix the problem.
Logs may not be immediately apparent. Some programs have their own log files that you can look into. Sometimes, if you run the program from the terminal, it'll print out logs there. Otherwise, you read look through journalctl, although this has logs for everything so might be harder to search.
Another useful tip, particularly for system tools and terminal tools, is manual pages. Just run man ls and replace ls with any command, you'll get the documentation on how to use that tool.
Is plasma big screen really an option? Id like to install it on a desktop to act as a android tv. Launch Stremio, YT and maybe one or two other apps/websites. Easy big tile navigation with remote (flirc).
It's in dev since 2020. The images hosted on the site are bit for any of my hardware. It says theres a Debian package. Installed that though LMDE but it was horrible. Somone mentioned Kububtu can install it with apt, but its not listed. Think I'll give up.
Good question! Someone let me know when there's an answer.
I got one!
What constrains access to an rpc socket in the file system? Is it just the permissions of the socket or is there more to the whole process?
E: I originally wrote port instead of socket because it was early lol.
What's an rpc port anyway? Do you mean DBus? Then FS perms of the socket. Perhaps also something in the protocol itself.
I've got one progam that I need for work that I cannot get to run on Linux. I've tried WINE on both Ubuntu and Zorin (and winlator for android). I have the installer exe file and try to launch with WINE but then nothing happens. Is that a program problem, WINE limitation, or something else? Is there a different program I should try to launch it?
How are you launching the exe with WINE? Try doing it via the command line if you aren't already. That way you may get some more information about why it isn't working. Its as simple as wine path/to/your/exe
You could also try something like Bottles, which will let you use possibly newer versions of WINE without modifying your system's WINE.
It could be that only the installer has issues. If you're dual booting have you tried launching the already installed program from your windows partition?
Otherwise I would try launching the installer from the wine command line to see if it gives you a specific error there.
Using a different version of WINE/Proton could work. It may also depend on some extra utilities you need to install on your WINE prefix (Wine tricks is the tool to use for this). If that doesn't work, the almost guaranteed to work option is a virtual machine running Windows. This comes with a small performance hit, but that may not be a concern.
My Ubuntu server (which has been working for a few years now) recently asked me in a full-screen prompt while updating something about GRUB. There was a list of partitions with just one element, which is the partition that GRUB os on. I was focused on something else so I just hit enter, but now I am really scared to reboot it. Is there any way to pull this back up or to double-check that everything is ok with the machine?
you can use grub-mkconfig to verify the grub config and rebuild it if necessary. i dont recall the exact syntax for your distro so I would look it up first.
Will it blend?
Depends on the hardware, but generally, yeah.
(It's a joke)
I couldn't get the Chuck Norris edition to blend, unfortunately.
I wanna install Linux on my Desktop as main OS after years of windows, last time I tried desktop was Fedora and Ubuntu back in the late 00s, back then all I remember is playing around with Gnome and KDE and compiz...
Most of what I know about Linux distros today is from memes...
How can I quickly learn about the best distro for my needs, (general use, some development, and some gaming, easy hardware support). With a toddler and demanding job, I don't have too much time to just experiment with different distros and draw my own conclusions.
Thanks in advance.
Ubuntu and Linux Mint are ideal for people who just want to ignore the OS and get work done.
If you are a Dev you should be clear of such problem, unless you need a very specific tool, but, many people can't switch because the programs they work with are not supported on Linux. Take a look into that, and in the worst case scenario you can dual boot windows.
Gaming wise proton is a bless and let's you play most games, check protonDB for compability. Major portion of the games that don't work are due to crappy anticheat solutions.
Good luck, any other questions feel free to ask.
I agree with Mint. I think Ubuntu has kind of devolved though, and PopOS is the better way to go. Fedora's good too these days.
My recommendation is to try out a few distros in VirtualBox before switching - this was my process, and it can be very gradual.
Is it that much better to have a Desktoo Environment, on my desktop computer? I'm still halving it with Windows trying to get my games to run on arch lol
Can you elaborate on the issue you are having? Having a desktop environment is usually necessary to run games.
I tried running i3, using the arch wiki for the nvidia package. It suggested just the 'nvidia' package for a 2080 TI. Launched steam with proton (forget the newest version at the time it was like last month). Nothing would happen when launching any game. Probably doing a lot wrong or something, sorry if this isn't enough info. I did no logging.
I don't understand. Doesn't every GUI OS have a desktop environment? Not just Linux distros. Like, isn't the Windows Shell just Windows's desktop environment?
I want to upgrade (Mint 21.3 => 22). Last upgrade took hours and the result was so bad I had to reinstall Mint from scratch. Do you guys use the upgrade tool, or do you have good advice on how to approach this?
I don't use Mint, but I would guess that you could change your repos in /etc/apt/sources.list, run sudo apt update, and then sudo apt full-upgrade. Just make sure the full upgrade isn't doing really dumb stuff like deleting a bunch of programs.
I could be completely wrong and this could be terrible advice, but this has become the wisdom for me when I use Debian Testing. Of course, I just did straight sudo apt update after Bookworm was released and the upgrade to Trixie went mostly fine. I have never upgraded between stable versions, so I may not be one to say.
I have a server that has multiple services running under multiple users that each store data. I want to be able to bundle all this data up and send it to another server for backups.
At a high level, how do I manage permissions for this? Currently I run the backup as root, then chown it to a special backups user which can log in through ssh. But this all feels clunky to me.
There are many ways to do this, but the next up from users is using groups!
For each file or data directory, create a group that owns it. This group should have the service's user as member. Then create a user for running the backups, and add it to all these groups.
The benefit of this is you don't have to use root, and you have an association of directory to group that you can always change. You can for example grant a user access to a data directory by just adding it to its group.
Might want to take a look at a dedicated backup tool like Borg. It will keep all the proper permissions and file attributes in the backup.
I am somewhat in the same boat, but more gentoo sided. For the main repo they killed mkstage4 because its outdated and insecure. So like you i wanted to backup my data (my gentoo install) to my nas or local storage. Rsync is the magic bullet for this. You can use ssh to securley transfer data to or from the server. And it automate it via a cron job (i suggest fcron) for a automatic timed backup/sync. Now i will add, rysnc can be used as a backup. But as the name implies it syncs data from one pc to the other. So if you break your desktop and it syncs to your server. Your SOLPDQ, thats only if you automate it tho.
And for the services id reccomend making a directory and adding all the services to a group, which owns the directory. Or the more lazy solution, which is probably frowned uponed. But you can rsync your docker container data to a directory where it has permissions to copy/sync.
Id highly recommend Rsync tho and just syncing offsite to another computer
If Unix permissions don’t work for you, acls are the next logical step.
Howdy. I have a "homeserver" that I'd like to actually start using. What's currently keeping me from it are... Permissions.
I have TrueNas Scale running on top of Proxmox, and I can't for the life of me not access NFS Shares from other VMs (specifically a Debian VM that I use as Docker Host) that I host in Proxmox. Plox hlp.
You can try to see which mounts get exposed with
showmount -e IP
To see if the actual shares are working.
How in the world do I set previews while browsing a folder full of photos in KDE plasma (I'm using Nobara because gaming), I can only see the generic photo icon. I love it so far and I'm having very few issues, but trying to sort and delete photos from a folder without a thumbnail/preview is impossible! I have tried googling the issue but apparently it's not that common? I'm sure these is a dumb setting somewhere but I still haven't found it.
Install the package kdegraphics-thumbnailers, and then depending on the file manager you may have to enable previews, e.g. in Dolphin > Configure Dolphin > Interface > Previews.
Has anyone ever used the enterprise version of dbeaver? Does it do as good a job interfacing with nosql databases it does relational databases?
I'm familiar with Proxmox, virtualbox, and KVM/KVM manager.
If I want to set up a PC to virtualize multiple operating systems, but with the feel of a multiboot system, what virtualization software would you suggest?
My goal is for the closest I can get to a multiboot system (windows, Debian, fedora) but virtualized so I can make snapshots. It should feel like I'm on baremetal when inside the VM.
Virtualbox is clunky with lots of pesky UI cluttering the screen and Proxmox doesn't seem great for this use case.
Finally bit the bullet and got a Thinkpad and I'm leaning towards putting Fedora on it. I've never used Linux before but I've done some research and I like the idea of something that updates more often than Debian but isn't as DIY as Arch. Do y'all think Fedora would make a good starting point? I hear it's stable enough and offers enough non-free applications through the RPM file management system.
Also, are there any drawbacks in using the immutable Silverblue version? I'm considering it just so I don't do anything dumb by accident.
Never be afraid to try different distros you can always wipe and try again. You won’t break your computer. I’m a big fan of immutable distros but I’ve never tried fedora blue. Either will make a rock solid system
Thank you! :]
Fedora is what I've got on my Thinkpad right now and so far it seems pretty good! Silverblue is very intriguing to me but I chose not to go with it because I need to be able to modify aspects of how the lower system works (using JACK for audio for music production purposes; afaik this is not really supported through Flatpak). Compared to Arch or Nix OS or whatever else that's popular with the hardcore Linux enthusiasts, Fedora is just right for someone that needs a working system to just get stuff done.
Once you’re comfortable in the rpm world, rhel is literally free for individuals.
Is OpenRC meant to be faster than systemD as a process system? I've been thinking of spinning up some non systemD distros like Artix on a VM on a mini DELL tinbox.
I will say though, I am not an advanced Linux user as the distros I've used were :
Ubuntu Endeavour OS SpiralLinux (Easy Mode Debian)
Would I need to make configurations in openrc or can it just run without messing with it like systemD?
Thank you
I have read that it is faster, though I have not tested it myself. Personally, my initial reason to use it was just to try something new and explore the unix world. My reason for staying is that it is a very simple init system that is pleasant to work with. It made me understand what an init system is and use it a lot more.
Systemd is good if you just want something invisible and you do not want to mess too much with an init system unless you have to. Everything integrates with it
OpenRC is nicer if you want to write your own init scripts. It is very well documented also.
No question here, just wanted to highlight that I use arch btw
I use gentoo btw
Yes, good
But what init system?
;)
Gentoo is great
I use Slackware btw
You should try NixOS, it's pretty cool.
Don't listen to this guy, use GNU Guix.
i unfortunately using kinoite for my desktop and Debian for my servers. I am not totally in love with kinoite but I don't dislike it enough to change back to regular fedora.
If you're not using GNU/Hurd are you even trying?
Redox will be finished before Hurd becomes a thing.