Linux

From what I saw Cosmic has a lot of potential and looks pretty sleek too, right now I'm using KDE it's a great desktop, but now that I have a second monitor it randomly crashes on me, I think I'll switch to Cosmic when it reaches beta.

I'm looking for a cheap and portable tablet that I can use for writing. Microsoft Surface Pro tablets, at least around the gen 4 models, are rather cheap to buy used, and they seem decently well made. Naturally, were I to buy one, I would have to install Linux onto it.

I've been peripherally aware of the Linux Surface project for some time now. I looked at it recently, after having not for some time, and it seems that they have really made good progress compared to what I remember, and it's making me much more interested in trying to install Linux on a Surface Pro.

Having never owned a Surface Pro, I'm not sure which models are the most reliable and sturdy. I'm not looking for something that's the flashiest; I want something that works well. I want something pragmatic — something akin to the idea of an older era of Thinkpad (eg T460). I want a pen with low input delay and good accuracy, reliable and responsive touch controls, and a decent display. I was thinking the Surface Pro 4 might be a good choice, but it's hard to know as there aren't many videos out there of people installing Linux on them, so I'm wondering what your experience has been with Microsoft Surface Pro's and installing Linux on one.

Cross-posts:

• https://sh.itjust.works/post/23997573

The Linux operating system has reached a notable milestone in desktop market share, according to the latest data from StatCounter. As of July 2024, Linux has achieved a 4.45% market share for desktop operating systems worldwide.

While this percentage might seem small to those unfamiliar with the operating system landscape, it represents a significant milestone for Linux and its dedicated community. What makes this achievement even more thrilling is the upward trajectory of Linux's adoption rate.

...

According to the statistics from the past ten years, It took eight years for Linux to go from a 1% to 2% market share (April 2021), 2.2 years to climb from 2% to 3% (June 2023), and a mere 0.7 years to reach 4% from 3% (February 2024). This exponential growth pattern suggests that 2024 might be the year Linux reaches a 5% market share.

tell me the most ass over backward shit you do to keep your system chugging?
here's mine:
sway struggles with my dual monitors, when my screen powers off and back on it causes sway to crash.
system service 'switch-to-tty1.service'

[Unit]
Description=Switch to tty1 on resume
After=suspend.target

[Service]
Type=simple
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/switch-to-tty1.sh

[Install]
WantedBy=suspend.target

'switch-to-tty1.service' executes '/usr/local/bin/switch-to-tty1.sh' and send user to tty1

#!/bin/bash
# Switch to tty1
chvt 1

.bashrc login from tty1 then kicks user to tty2 and logs out tty1.

if [[ "$(tty)" == "/dev/tty1" ]]; then
    chvt 2
    logout
fi

also tty2 is blocked from keyboard inputs (Alt+Ctrl+F2) so its a somewhat secure lock-screen which on sway lock-screen aren't great.

I have a few different Linksys WRT54G routers and I've installed DD-WRT - build number 44715 - on them. However, this build appears to have been made in 2020. So, I was wondering if there's a more modern version of dd-wrt for this router. If not, is it possible for me to compile the latest version of OpenWRT for these routers which have 4 MB of flash and 16 MB of RAM?

Happy Birthday to the LVFS

9 years ago today I wrote 4 little PHP scripts and pushed it to OpenShift which was the beginning of the LVFS. We've since rewritten it in Python, switched the deployment from "sudo git pull" on the server under my stairs at home (literally) to deploying onto AWS with Terraform.

In 9 years we've onboarded over 140 vendors, shipped ~110 million firmware files and added support for ~85 firmware update protocols for ~1600 different devices. I'm pretty happy with that.

Any Linux Sysadmins here use Timeshift on Linux servers in production environments?

Having reliable snapshots to roll back bad updates is really awesome, but I want to know if Timeshift is stable enough to use outside of a basic home lab environment.

Disclaimer: Yes I know Timeshift isn't a backup solution, I understand its purpose and scope.

I'd like some recommendations as a beginner in the virtualization space for good GUI software for running vms for both experimentation and server use.

I've used virtualbox on Windows before but are there any better alternatives on Linux? I hear a lot of praise of QEMU but this seems to be only terminal based like what you do with containers.

VMware workstation is free but again, I'd like to know your thoughts on other good beginner options.

Thank you advance and have a good day/afternoon/night

cross-posted from: https://piefed.social/post/206134

Recently I switched to Fedora 40 from Ununtu. Now, I am facing this weird problem, whenever my laptop suspends I cannot use the power button to wake my laptop if it's in tablet mode. It works fine in normal case. Also, this wasn't an issue in Ubuntu. Anyone knows how I can change it?

I am using a 2in1 laptop (Dell) if it's relevant

Last Tuesday, loads of Linux users—many running packages released as early as this year—started reporting their devices were failing to boot. Instead, they received a cryptic error message that included the phrase: “Something has gone seriously wrong.”

The cause: an update Microsoft issued as part of its monthly patch release. It was intended to close a 2-year-old vulnerability in GRUB, an open source boot loader used to start up many Linux devices. The vulnerability, with a severity rating of 8.6 out of 10, made it possible for hackers to bypass secure boot, the industry standard for ensuring that devices running Windows or other operating systems don’t load malicious firmware or software during the bootup process. CVE-2022-2601 was discovered in 2022, but for unclear reasons, Microsoft patched it only last Tuesday.

...

The reports indicate that multiple distributions, including Debian, Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Zorin OS, Puppy Linux, are all affected. Microsoft has yet to acknowledge the error publicly, explain how it wasn’t detected during testing, or provide technical guidance to those affected. Company representatives didn’t respond to an email seeking answers.

On Fedora 39 I installed libunity to get notification badges on Discord but on upgrading to Fedora 40 I seem to have lost them. I still have libunity installed and I tried removing it and reinstalling it and it still dosen't work.
I'm using the native package on the KDE spin if that changes anything.

Would love to see if you guys have any ideas! Thanks

This might sound daft, but something similar used to work with live discs.

I've got Windows 10 and Mint 21.1 dual booting on my computer at the moment. Every so often I'll realise that I've missed something from my Windows installation. If it's important, I then have to boot to Windows to get the information, or the settings etc.

Is there a way to virtualise my Mint installation so that I can run both the OSs at once to make sure that I've got everything?

VirtualBox had a tool to do this with a live USB, but that was back in the MBR days, so it probably won't work with modern hardware.

EDIT: Sorry, I should clarify, Mint and Windows are on the same physical disk, and the plan is to remove Windows once I'm done.

Update: I'm giving up. It looks like it is possible if you have separate disks with separate boot partitions, but getting it to work with a shared boot partition is harder work than I'm willing to do right now.

VMware Player can use a partition or disk, but might be in read only mode, I couldn't get far enough to check.

Thanks for all the replies :)

So a while back I threw Ubuntu 22 LTS on an old Surface Pro 3 and gave it to my Dad.

He loves it, but he's the type who's been burnt by updating software in the past, so he basically refuses any whenever prompted.

Been thinking about throwing Debian with Gnome on it for a while, and wondering if it's stable enough to just let updates happen automatically in the background?

I got no experience with Debian I basically jumped right on EndeavourOS as my main distro when I started using Linux full time.

Hi there, I just acquired myself the Sennheiser Momentum 4, mainly for using while communting + work. But figured i'd try them out for some gaming too. They work just fine when watching YT or any video, but when I launch a game the audio quality changes significantly. I have no idea how or why its doing it, nor how to fix it. I've tried all of these different audio profile options, but all of them make the audio either distorted, weak, or make it sound like the audio is trapped inside a room... Anyone know how to go about this? Audio works fine with my normal non-wireless headset.

My system is running Bazzite.

Appreciate any pointers to how to resolve this.

GIMP 3.0 has been more than one decade in the making as the port from GTK2 to GTK3, also transitioning away from Python 2 to Python 3 support, and a wealth of other improvements from the UI to lower down into enhancing this open-source Photoshop alternative.

The GIMP project announced on X/Twitter today that they have entered the string freeze for this much anticipated release.

Privacy benefits aside, does qubes run better than a typical vm like virtualbox? I tend to fiddle with distros a lot and I feel qubes might be a good choice, though I'm wondering about how efficient it is

Hi....

• I don't know what to say in the introduction, but in brief I have some questions about Linux, which were formed after trying some distributions on DistroSea and observing Linux communities on the Internet. Can you help with the answer?

1. I liked Gnome DE interface very much, but whenever I look at the empty workspace after closing an app , I feel that something is missing (sorry, I have been using Windows for almost 15 years). Is there an add on - or any other way - to install some apps on workspace? Or do I have to get used to it as it is ?

2. I read that Linux is more problematic on laptops than on personal computers, is this true? If so...what are the usual problems and is there a way to avoid them?

3. Are there any distributions that come with the minimum pre-installed apps ? ... I mean not even a video or music player

4. If I want to delete a pre-installed app (let's say the default browser), can this be done easily or does it require root, like Android?

5. Does rooting invalidate the system from obtaining updates?

6. I read that switching DEs is easy... but how exactly is it done? Something in the settings, or downloading the interface independently, or customizing it to be similar to the other, or something else?

7. Lazy question : What are wayland and docker? I see a lot of people mentioning them

• Sorry for the many questions, and thanks in advance

I just got a drawing tablet, and have been wanting some software that would allow me to work out math problems, draw architecture diagrams, etc. I've seen some tools like Excalidraw, which look handy for the sharing capabilities. I also have just used plain krita, which has great feedback for the pen sensitivity, but obviously is overkill for whiteboarding.

Are there any tools you use or recommend for handwriting or picture drawing? Pen or mouse?

Finally, another web engine is being developed to compete with Chromium and Firefox (Gecko), and they're also working on a browser that will use it.

Here's the maintainer talking about the current state of the project, and a demo of the current functionality

Edit: I am trying to put linux on a compaq armada 1700.