Linux

YouTube: https://youtu.be/ZlZDWeVL2LI

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Video description:

In this video I will demonstrate how the Linux kernel runs executables by diving into the flow of the execve system call handling.

Information about kernel dev setup: github.com/nir9/welcome GNU Bash: gnu.org/software/bash Documentation about debugging the Linux kernel with GDB: docs.kernel.org/dev-tools/gdb-kernel-debugging.html

I saw plenty of efforts that aim to create a Linux distribution for non-enthusiasts, for people who just want to use their computers, and not care about the details - A Desktop for All on the GNOME blog, most recently. While I commend the effort, my own experience is that these efforts are futile, and start off from a fundamentally wrong premise: that people are willing (let alone wanting) to manage their own operating systems.

...

My family is using Linux because that’s the system I can maintain for them. Apart from my Dad, they never installed Linux, and never will. They don’t install software, they don’t upgrade, they don’t change settings either. All of that is something I do for them. And to do so effectively, I need a distribution I am familiar with, one that is also flexible enough to fine-tune for every member of the family, because they prefer fundamentally different things!

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The common pattern between all these three is that neither of them maintains their own systems. I do. As such, how beginner friendly the distribution is, is meaningless. The users of the system don’t care, they’ll never see those parts. They’ll have a preconfigured system maintained by someone else, and that’s exactly what they want. To make this work, I’m using distributions I am familiar with. For my parents, that’s Debian, because I was a Debian person when their systems were installed. For my Wife, it is NixOS, because I’m a NixOS person now. For the Twins, it will likely be NixOS too.

I need recommendations for a stable release distro for OBS Studio livestreaming and light video editing. This machine will be shared between several users who are techies, although not necessarily Linux (they're coming from Windows). I don't want to worry about things breaking because of an update, or to start a shoot only to find problems once we're live.

Nvidia and nonfree codecs should be treated as first-class citizens. H.264 w/ AAC will be everywhere with this workflow.

Some thoughts:

Linux Mint Debian Edition: Currently my top choice. It just works?

Fedora Bazzite: My second choice, maybe with auto-update disabled. Seems a bit risky though in the case of security updates to packages.

OpenSUSE: I run Slowroll on my laptop and work desktop, however recent package management errors relating to codecs and the packman repo have spooked me away.

Debian: Release cadance seems too slow for my preference.

Many of us are notorious fence-sitters. This video attempts to explore some of the psychology of our profound hesitation when switching operating systems. I will share my personal experience, talk about some of the fears we face when making big changes, offer some warm encouragement, and do it all without a whiff of the elitist technobabble that tends to rear its ugly head in Linux discussions.

I don't know about all of you, I don't like these new flat icons that everyone is using. What ever happened to the old icons, like on iPhone and Samsung they used to have them years ago. Those were good times. Now it is always these stupid boring cartoonish designed icons. Side note: Somebody please update this icon pack. I am trying to use it on xfce on arch but some of the icons aren't working properly because it hasn't been updated in a while. I'll donate to you right away if you do it. Link to the repo: https://github.com/madmaxms/iconpack-obsidian

Hi all,
I have a smaller nvme for my root and home partitions, and I wanted to upgrade to a 1TB. I have several drives on my machine and have been backing up in different ways. One way is I just copied all of my home folder and pasted it on one of the drives. Another way is I copied that folder to my NAS. I also have Pika backup setup to do automatic backups daily to one of the drives. My question is, how do I go about the process of restoring my backup with Pika? Do I reinstall the whole system, install Pika, point it at its old backup folder and have it restore? If so, what does it actually restore? Does it originally back up apps, their data and whatever I have in my home folder, then it restores all of that to the new system? Or does it only back my config files and home folder? Sorry if this is an obvious and dumb question, but I really don't want to do things from scratch since I've had this same install for a long time and I've set it up the way I like it.
Running Endeavour OS with KDE plasma. Thanks in advance.
P. S for this who wonder why I didn't separate root and home partitions since I have many drives It's a long story and it would be off topic and I don't want to bore you all with it.

I've installed debian on an old laptop and am wondering if the 10 gig base system size can be slimmed down by deleting unneeded files.

I ran the commands to look for any runaway logs or other obviously large files and nothing popped out.

Is there a group of folders full of stuff I don't need or is this just the size of modern distros?

EDIT: I ended up doing a netinstall and got a 6ish gig system so I'm pretty happy with that. The netinstall image was able to detect my wifi card even though the debian live installer was not.

I'm a Linux noob. But I get suddenly when i try to download the updates the Fedora Software store is showing me, this fail,

package proton-vpn-gtk-app-4.7.4-1.fc41.noarch cannot be verified and repo protonvpn-fedora-stable is GPG enabled: /var/cache/PackageKit/41/metadata/protonvpn-fedora-stable-41-x86_64/packages/proton-vpn-gtk-app-4.7.4-1.fc41.noarch.rpm could not be verified. /var/cache/PackageKit/41/metadata/protonvpn-fedora-stable-41-x86_64/packages/proton-vpn-gtk-app-4.7.4-1.fc41.noarch.rpm: digest: SIGNATURE: NOT O.K.

A new patch series posted today to the Linux kernel mailing list would block kernel modules/drivers from TUXEDO Computers from accessing GPL-only symbols in the kernel.

TUXEDO Computers maintains a set of kernel drivers currently out-of-tree for their various laptops for additional functionality around power profiles, keyboard backlight controls, WMI, sensor monitoring, the embedded controller, and other functionality. They have said they want to eventually mainline these drivers but in the name of allowing for rapid hardware support they maintain them out-of-tree and ship them with their Ubuntu-based TUXEDO OS and also have the driver sources available via GitLab.

The issue at hand though is that these kernel drivers marked as GPLv3+ and that conflicts with the upstream Linux kernel code licensed as GPLv2. There was a commit to change the driver license from GPLv3 to GPL(v2) but was reverted by TUXEDO Computers on the basis of "until the legal stuff is sorted out."

Update: TUXEDO Computers Relicenses Some Of Their Drivers To GPLv2

As of yesterday, TUXEDO Computers has now been able to re-license their driver consisting of fully in-house code from GPLv3 to GPLv2+. These are the TUXEDO Computers drivers where it's all written by TUXEDO employees and not having to worry about code from any third-party developers or other vendors.

The gxtp7380, ite_8291, ite_8291_lb, ite_8297, stk8321, tuxedo_compatibility_check, tuxedo_nb02_nvidia_power_ctrl, and tuxedo_tuxi drivers are the initial ones able to be moved to the GPLv2+ licensing for satisfying upstream Linux kernel developers. Moving the other drivers to GPLv2+ will take longer due to needing to check with the associated parties that contributed to those drivers.

Hello, I'm looking for a new distro that aligns with my privacy preferences and offers a wide range of packages without requiring me to search for PPAs, similar to Manjaro. I've grown uneasy about Manjaro's decision to collect unique data like MAC addresses and disk serial numbers by default, even if it's for diagnostic purposes.

In light of this, I'd like to ask for your recommendations on a Linux distro that meets the following criteria:

1. No opt-out telemetry: I'm looking for a distro that doesn't collect any unique data by default.
2. Access to a wide range of packages: I prefer a distro that offers a vast repository of packages, so I don't have to search for PPAs or third-party repositories.
3. User-friendly: I'm not a fan of complicated configurations or steep learning curves, so a distro with a user-friendly approach would be ideal.

I'm curious to hear any recommendations you might have. Thanks!

wf-recorder is an utility to record your screen for wayland, can be piped with slurp to only record a section of your screen.

one thing that it's missing is an indicator for an ongoing recording, so i was wondering if anyone had some sort of indicator implemented with it.

like for example,, one time i was browsing through some neofetch screenshots and i found out that a lot of them have anime or furry stuff as their wallpaper or profile picture,, but they use linux. hmm or maybe they even have proprietary videogame images!! i used to think that was bad but now i realize that even if you have proprietary stuff as images like,, furry fanart of some proprietary videogame, it's like just a picture, a jpeg. but still,, younger me would've freaked out by the idea of having proprietary files, but i still enjoy linux. what do you think?? please

I guess the other post was removed so I couldn't continue the convo there. A few people said Sunshine worked great for them with their Nvidia cards and I've actually lost sleep over my issues.

I'm running Bazzite on a fairly new custom build with a RTX 2060S. Someone else said they used a RTX 40 series GPU so maybe my hardware is just too old. Still everything worked great in Windows (same machine) including streaming. I'm willing to try another OS but I don't know if I can deal with another new GPU because it'd be my 3rd and I hate the hassle of selling stuff online.

A key thing I've seen is that the vainfo command reports no encoding capabilities at all. I've never seen any other reports online where someone showed an Nvidia card that could encode according to vainfo. I can absolutely encode using ffmpeg though which is why I'm even more frustrated.

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.