Linux

I've been floating the idea of moving to Linux for a while. I actually have it installed on a spare drive so I can setup dual boot if I wanted.

I chose to go with Mint but have been running into some issues getting programs to run correctly but the big issue I have is getting steam VR to run. I like to play beat saber for fun and after setup it wasn't connecting to my headset. That's kind of a deal breaker for me. What are some suggestions to get it running correctly

Hi there folks!

I've used Linux for a good while now, but have no idea how to troubleshoot the current issues I'm having with my laptop at work. Let's begin.

The laptop at hand is a HP EliteBook 845 14inch Notebook G10. A standard work laptop, with Windows pre-installed from It. This PC is "new" in the sens that I just got it from IT.

Laptop specs:

• CPU: AMD ryzen 5 7540U
• GPU: Radeon 740M Graphics
• RAM: 16GB
• Kernel: 6.11.6-2-default

Other notable settings:

• fast boot off
• secure boot off
• have encrypted the drive

FYI: These issues have been the same across multiple distros and DEs. I've tried, Bluefin, Aurora, Red Hat Workstation and now running OpenSuse Tumbleweed (KDE+Wayland).

The issues:

1. The first noticeable issues were that the laptop fans are considerable louder when running Linux. I assume there is some preinstalled HP software to control this on windows, as they are completely silent on windows, but constantly noticeable on Linux.

2. The second issue at hand is that the USB-C port doesn't seem to charge the laptop properly. The laptop randomly dies after being on for a while WITH THE CHARGER PLUGGED IN. Very odd. This happens with both normal charger and the office charger (which is also the connection to external screen).

3. Waking up from sleep is a terrible experience. The pc makes everything super slow and laggy. Opening a single application can take up to multiple minutes. The PC has to be restarted for this to be fixed. This happens on both X11 and Wayland.

4. Connection to external monitor also seems to be causing issues and slowing the system down. Especially after pc has been in sleep mode.

These are the main issues I've ran into in only a couple of days trying Linux on this laptop and I don't know what the causing issue is, or if the laptop simple isn't 'made' to run Linux(?).

Would highly appreciate any tips or troubleshooting tips for this. Would love to be able to run Linux on the work laptop!

Edit 1: Now trying Ubuntu, so far so good! Will keep post updated.

Edit 2: Ubuntu seems to do well with this hardware/laptop.

I'm aware of Debian's reputation for not having the most up-to-date software in its repository but have just noticed that Thunderbird is on its current version. Which makes me ask:

When does Debian update a package? And how does it decide when to?

I'm particularly interested in when it will make available the upcoming major release of GIMP to 3.0.

I have to work with Win11 for work and just noticed the lil Tux man in Microsofts Explorer. Likely to connect to WSL.

Apparently now Microsoft wants people to keep using Windows in a really interesting way. By simply integrating it within their own OS!

This way, people don't have to make the super hard and complicated switch to linux, but they get to be lazy, use the preinstalled container and say "See, I use Linux too!".

While this is generally a good thing for people wanting to do things with the OS, it is also a clear sign that they want to make it feel "unneccessary" to switch to Linux, because you already have it!

WSL alone was already a smart move, but this goes one step further. This is a clever push on their side, increasing the barrier to switch even more, since now there is less of a reason to. They are making it too comfortable too stay within Microsofts walls.

On a different note: Should the general GNU/Linux community do the same? Should we integrate easier access to running Winblows apps on GNU/Linux?
Currently I still find it too much of a hastle to correctly run Winblows applications, almost always relying on Lutris, Steams proton or Bottles to do the work for me.

I think it would be a game changer to have a double click of an EXE file result in immediate automatic wine configuration for easy and direct use of the software, even if it takes a big to setup.

I might just be some fedora using pleb, but I think having quick and easy access to wine would make many people feel much more comfortable with the switch.

Having a similar system to how Winblows does it, with one container for all your .exe programs would likely be a good start (instead of creating a new C drive and whatever for every program, which seems to be what Lutris and Bottles does).

EDIT: Uploaded correct image

Basically the title. I’ve only ever seen huge 20 page guides on how to make it work. Is there an easy way?

Specifically on Debian or Arch with a laptop with two gpus (zephyrus g14)

I am currently using a legitimate copy of Windows 11, on the latest version. Just started getting this message after the latest update.

Considering I already have Linux and Mac as alternatives, if they actually pull my license they will just lose a lifelong customer. Their business decisions truly boggle the mind...

Hey there, Just wondering is Linux on an Android device (through UserLAnd or else) is as secure as Linux as the main OS.

Edit...Should say private not secure

Tanx much

I've been using rustdesk for while, and it works very well for me. The news of it being somewhat opaque, and developed from China, makes me a bit nervous.

Is there a FOSS equivalent that won't make me jump through hoops, and be easily installed by someone else remotely?

I would like to be able to have it run at startup in Linux and windows, have a fairly complete feature set, like file transfer, copy paste, etc.

Also it'd be great if it could be easily installed by someone else remotely. I do SMB support, usually onsite, which is why it's not cost effective to pay for a Teamviewer or Anydesk license.

I'm taking a look through flathub, but recommendations would be greatly appreciated.

This is a sobering post that revisits the notion that given a project, how many developers have to be hit by a bus before it stalls.

According to the methodology explained in the article, in 2015 it took 57 developers for the Linux kernel to fail, now it appears that it takes 8.

That's not good.

I was wondering if anyone knew any color schemes with a pure black background (#000000)? Every theme I could think of used something lighter colored so I wanted to know if I was missing some.

The motivation is partially I think it would look cool and partially the potential for lower power usage on an oled screen.

Edit: primarily asking for color scheme suggestions for my window manager and terminal, less so how to theme

EDIT 2: After learning that aliases aren't really suited for regex, and trying the script, I thought maybe reloading the .bashrc file wasn't enough to refresh the aliases, so I closed my terminal and after reopening the terminal and trying the script again it works just fine.

Okay, I've tried searching for help on this and I can't find anything, and I'm banging my head on my desk trying to figure out how to get this to work.

I routinely have to capitalize the first letter in a series of files that are passed to me. So I'll get:

file01
file02

And so on. I use perl rename (I'm using Fedora) with the following command and regex, and from within the directory it works as expected:

prename 's/(^[a-z]?)/\U$1/' *

I do this a lot. At least once a day, which calls for an alias or script.

I tried adding it as an alias to my .bash_aliases like so:

alias cap="prename 's/(^[a-z]?)/\U$1/' *"

And when I do, instead of capitalizing the first letter of the filenames it removes them. Searching got me nothing, in part because I probably am not asking the right question.

So then thought I'd write a dead simple bash script named cap (after removing the alias and reloading .bashrc)

#! /bin/bash

prename 's/(^[a-z]?)/\U$1/' *

And when I use cap in the directory, the script also cuts off the first letter instead of capitalizing it.

I suspect it's the $1 variable in the regex that's causing the problem, but I can't figure out how to address it so it works correctly in the alias or the script.

EDIT: I just tried some more searching and found that regex won't work in aliases, so it explains that, but I still can't figure out how to get it to work in the script.

TL;DR: see title

Linux has many issues, but in comparison with other operating systems the only one that actually makes it a worse option is certain apps and games not working. Sure some distros suck, but you can just use the good ones. Sure drivers can be a pain, but plenty of distros do them for you. Yeah you'll have some issues with Bluetooth or wifi or something like that sometimes, but no more often than on windows (mac too probably but I've never used Mac so idk).

Maybe you hate how windows is set up, maybe you hate how some de is set up, just use one that you like. Dont like gnome? Well despite many distros using it, it is not the only option. Try kde, try cinnamon (I hate it but it would be unfair to ignore it), try cosmic when it comes out or popshell in the meantime. Don't want to lose your current os and be stuck here? Use a VM or dual boot.

All that works fine, it just takes a second to set things up how you want them to be and then you can just use your computer. With a "beginner" distro (I'd recommend pop os, tuxedo os, or mint) cli should be optional in everything you'd actually be doing. The only thing that is a genuine problem with Linux as a whole is that a lot of apps and games just aren't compatible, be they a less popular app who's users rely on it or a really popular game that refuses to enable Linux compatibility in EAC.

I know that projects like wine (and proton) are around and are making a lot of progress here, but this problem still remains the only one that an average user with a distro intended for normal use will be expected to deal with. What do y'all think?

Edit: fixed(?) spacing, hopefully it's easier to read now

Edit 2: wanted to add that as far as I've seen, most of the time people have like one app that doesn't work or doesn't work properly while everything else works fine, and they are either unable or unwilling to switch.

Decided to uninstall my display manager and use startx instead. But now when I resume from suspend, the brightness keys cease to work until I log out and back in. Backlight does still respond when echoing into /sys/class/backlight/intel_backlight/brightness. But what kind of magic does a display manager do to keep brightness controls working after suspend and resume?

Using xfce on tty1 on an X230 if it matters.

If this question was asked before, I apologize in advance for the redundancy.

I recently switched from Windows to Ubuntu on my laptop. Still getting the hang of Ubuntu, but I see a lot of comments on different posts in which a majority of them point to using Mint instead.

Would the best recommendation, be to switch to Mint from Ubuntu?

Apparently, Prism Launcher chose to adhere to the idiotic principle of the hidden "trashbin", .Trash-$(uid), invented by Ubuntu. Even though it's based on QT. This can't be disabled. It accumulated 139 GB of literal Trash, fully replaceable, over time. Just ... why? There's even an open issue about this, for over a year, referenced multiple times. I guess I have another point on my agenda.

Hi folks, as anticipated in the post title, I was wondering which open-source project to support as a user that can navigate the Linux environment but still does not have solid programming nor sysadmin skills. I probably could help with localization as I am native in Italian or I could test software, simulating a "typical user" interaction with it. What do you think? Is there a specific open-source project in need of help?

I was hoping someone could give a recommendation for a noob friendly distro that works well on my laptop, an HP Envy x360 Convertible 15m-es0xxx, i7 16 GB RAM. Thanks for your help and I apologize if these questions aren't allowed here

Welcome to a new issue of "This Week in KDE Apps"! Every week we cover as much as possible of what's happening in the world of KDE apps.

This week, we released KDE Gear 24.08.3 and we are preparing the 24.12.0 release with the beta planned next week. The final release will happen on December 12th, but, meanwhile, and as part of the 2024 end-of-year fundraiser, you can "Adopt an App" in a symbolic effort to support your favorite KDE app.

On immutable systems like bazzite, what's the best way to mount webdav storage as a file system in order to open it with Cryptomator?

options i'm thinking are:

1. use distrobox bc there i can install davfs and cryptomator
2. look for flatpak softwares that enables this function

I'm basically clueless. Any kind of info would be much appreciated.

Including all compressed Noto fonts, which require approximately 104MB of disk space, would be a worthwhile addition to the 2.8GB Fedora Silverblue image. This would provide out-of-the-box support for numerous writing systems worldwide. I hope that Fedora will consider including all Noto fonts in a future release.

However, I don't know where I should send my statement to them.