Linux

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Hello, everybody. I have a Microsoft Surface Pro 3 that I'd like to install some Linux distro on to use as an eBook reader. Does anybody have any experience or recommendations for a distro that's touchscreen-friendly? Thanks in advance!

Edit: I'm using Linux Mint on my main PC. I like it, but haven't tried it on the Surface yet.

Summer is here and with that comes garage sales! I went looking around and found this beauty, for $10!!! When i went to go purchase it, the very nice 60ish year old man, Boldly said and proclaimed "it doesnt run windows, well it cant because it only has 2gb of ram. but its still a usable machine" So he then said the phrase that every nerd begs to hear, "do you know what linux is?" Me and this man talked for almost and hour about linux and the enshitfaction of windows. He did install antix a lightweight debian based distribution GNU/Linux/SystemDeeznuts distribution on it. and said he ran Antix on his main computer for daily use, I sadly did not ask what his main computer is :(. But i just thought it was so cool and sureal to meet a linux user at a garage sale, like you go to foss conventions and you expect to see some the the nerdiest people that have roamed this planet. But this guy was just so cool, i beckon all the time about windows is a inflated rotting corpse. although i still need it for fusion 360 sadly :(, it was really fun to talk another person so passionate about linux IRL.

  but anyway enough blabbering about this totally rad Linux user,

he had a user account setup to auto login and user named antix which was also the sudo password. I have personally never used Antix but it has alot to offer for lower end computers, some light weight web browsing and some text editing. Obviously there were some thing you could not do or the computer struggled. Playing youtube was the quite the benchmark for this billet of a computer.

But i got quickly board with debian/Antix and i knew from the moment i saw this computer there was 1/2 things i wanted to do with it! the first thing was install FreeBSD. I have always been intrigued by it, a UNIX like OS that was by design meant to replace UNIX and if were not for Linux may have been the windows alternative OS that linux is today. So i grabbed by CD burner and started burn'n! the install went pretty smooth, minus a few small hiccups. first off when it boots, it loads then goes to a blackscreen and stops displaying, i found another person with this computer and wanting to install FreeBSD on it on the FreeBSD forum. I had to punch in a few commands that made it TTY only, i then followed the Handbook and install intel's video drivers. After that i have a fully functioning FreeBSD install!!!! Now for the Fun part installing the window manager! and programs, after installing sway and enabling some system settings. everything clicked together and i had to see how much the CPU struggled with playing video from youtube to compare BSD vs linux . The CPU works very hard for them frames!

All in all, its actually pretty usable. granted not for the average user, i often read hackaday and browse the web via links web browser. and i part of me likes it a little more than my 2020 E14 thinkpad, not spec wise but design wise. this computer is built thiccccccc and has a latch for the screen and inductive buttons for wifi and other functions. and believe it or not the battery life is 4 hours. its a genuine HP with a lithium cell battery, its only a 10watt cpu but to me thats crazy for a 2007 computer!.

And the weirdest thing about this computer, which me and my friend were torn whither if the original owner swapped the HDD for an SSD, because it is relatively quite, however after i opened the bottom covers. It made me very surprised

Its a friggin ipod classic style mini drive!!!!

yes you heard right, I recently find out that one can use an Android feature called "USB tethering" to get internet through an Android device. which is really cool since now you don't have to worry about your wifi card not working in linux since you can just use your old Android device as wifi access point and have internet. not only it's supported in Linux but it's also supported in BSD world too. this can enable people in trying out distros like Guix, Parabola etc which doesn't provide non-free firmware.

just wanted to share this amazing feature I didn't know :)

So, I'm not that understanding of linux. But I guess I can't call myself "new" anymore. I've been using linux since December. Although to be fair, I'm barely ever home. "Using" linux at this point mostly consists of opening firefox, and watching youtube.

I know "sudo" is "super user" "apt" is some kind of repository command, and then you type "install (program)"

But I've really taken to flatpack. I hate hate HATE the terminal. All I ever do is screw things up in there. I don't know what I'm doing. I just follow commands. "Just copy/paste this exact set of text". And then I have an error.

It's kind of like knowing 4x4=16. And all you do is memorize that line, as opposed to knowing that 4x4 is the same as 4+4+4+4. And knowing what 4 is. If you memorized 4x4=16, but get presented with 4x4-2, and you don't understand the core concept of numbers, you wouldn't know how to adjust 16 to 14, and know WHY it's 14. I'm just copy/pasting someone elses instructions.

sudo apt get firefox && -z, -r, -☆, -$, randop, redo, up.

That's probably complete jibberish in terminal, but it helps you (the experienced linux user) understand how terminal feels/looks to me. If I had a problem, and troubleshooting told me to copy/paste that to solve my problem, I would. That to me looks as legitimate as any other jibberish that would actually work.

Ok. Rant aside, lets start a civil war in here! I've been using ZorinOS, and I kind of like it. HOWEVER, I did spend a considerable amount of time tweaking it. It's finally how I want it, so I'm not messing with it. So I've never experienced KDE. I've only experienced GNOME. And quite honestly I don't know what that means. I know it has to do with the desktop environment.....but I don't know what would be different if I used another desktop environment.

But that brings me to a question I was told you just can't ask the linux community without blood being shed.

What's better? KDE? Or GNOME?

Ok, so I have a weird setup, but if I could get this shit to work, it would be crazy.

First off, I have one of these

The neat thing about that is, your hard drive can be ejected very easily. And a new one inserted. It also has a spot for a slave drive that can do the same thing.

Right now, I'm using ZorinOS as my daily driver. I don't know how exactly I became a Linux user, but, I guess at this point I've been using it daily since the week of Christmas 2024. Which was like 6 months ago now.

Anyways, self realizations aside, I have an idea. I've installed Lutris on this install, and I have run out of room for my games. I also have an 8TB hard drive I'm not using.

My plan is to use the 8TB hard drive to do nothing but install games to. Then have Lutris look for the games on the slave drive. Now here's where it gets interesting.

What if that 8tb drive gets filled too? Well, I could buy a SECOND 8TB drive!

What if I install Game 1, Game 2, and Game 3 on SSDSlave1 and then I install Game 4, Game 5 and Game 6 on SSDSlave2.

So now, I'm playing Game 2. But I want to play game 6. So I just turn off the PC, swap slave drives, and turn it back on. And now, it's ready for me.

Oh, but we're not done yet.

I'm using SSDMain1 with ZorinOS with Lutris installed. What if I swapped hard drives to SSDMain2 with Mint with Lutris installed? Then whichever hard drive is inserted is what dictates what games I can play. Like an old school NES except now for modern systems.

So, recap. Slot 1 should be able to swap between OS's,

And slot 2 would be able to swap between games.

With any combination working, since they'd both have Lutris installed.

Is that possible?

cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/40081431

A friend and I are trying to get a machine set up to work as my school's library's printing computer instead of Windows ones. It is running NixOS. We got it bound to active directory, applications installed, etc., but the issue is that we can't get it to print. It'll say that it's printing but the print job never reaches the print server. To access the print server you're supposed to authenticate, but it doesn't ever give a prompt to. I tried turning off the firewall temporarily to see if that was the issue but it made no difference.

In configuration.nix, services.printing.enable=true and services.printing.drivers = [ pkgs.cups pkgs.hplip ]; (it is an HP printer that we're currently testing on).

I'm thinking that either SAMBA is configured incorrectly and/or the syntax that I put into CUPS for the printer is incorrect.

Current SAMBA config:

services.samba = { enable = true; openfirewall = true; settings = { public = { path = "/srv/public"; browseable = true; writable = true; "guest ok" = true;

In CUPS it shows the syntax for a Windows printer via SAMBA as follows: smb://[workgroup/]server[:port}/printer

The issue is that I don't know what it means by that. I know the print queue, domain, IP, and port (although I'm under the impression that I don't need the port for this case), but I don't know how it would fit into this. I tried looking around on the CUPS wiki but it was vague and confusing to me. Any help with this is much appreciated.

cross-posted from: https://reddthat.com/post/43504668

What's new in this release:

• Mono engine updated to version 10.1.0.
• OSMesa library no longer needed.
• More support for generating
• Windows Runtime metadata in WIDL.
• Locale data updated to Unicode CLDR 47.
• P010 format support in Media Foundation.
• Various bug fixes.

I think the least that distros can do, is allow listing all packages and system settings in config files like .toml, rather than having to type in every single package to install, or click through system setting GUIs to setup. Would that require using a whole programming language or system like NIx?

While NixOS works much differently from most distros, that's the only reason I use it: package and system settings in text files. If I fix something, it's fixed permanently, I don't need to hunt down files in random directories if I want to change a setting. If I ever need to reinstall the OS I don't have to write dnf install every single damn package and manually setup all that up all over again. Having daily-drove Windows macOS & Fedora as throughout the years, my setups have felt hacky as well as houses of cards as I've wanted or had to set them up again (I don't mean Fedora specifically, but distros in general).

Basically it feels insane that it's the way most linux users and servers in the world operate. If I, a humble computer hobbyist can figure out Nix, why don't more users do so, and why is Nix so niche?

The following gif demonstrates folding:

edit: I'm using Fedora Workstation 42!

I really like the ability to just search "sleep", "shutdown", "restart", etc. Switching between windows and opening search using either the super key or a three finger swipe up is super handy, on Windows the button opens the start menu (where the search is horrible) and a three finger swipe up can open app switcher, where you have to hold your three fingers to go to another app.

Using GNOME extensions to see power usage, CPU usage, memory usage, etc. is very useful. Weird that the "extension list" addon isn't a thing that's on by default. Feel like being able to see all your extensions is a really important part of having extensions. Being able to see the clock at the top took a bit getting used to but makes so much more sense than having it tucked in a corner. I also like the integrated calendar, much better than Window's version where you are unable to see any of your events, not even as a dot!

Using dnf and flatpak to install programs is very smooth and I like being able to update all my programs at once with just "sudo dnf update && flatpak update"! Being able to see the dependencies and progress bars and download speeds is really helpful too. I don't need to search for programs anymore because of a thing called "fuzzy search". It's like magic!

GNOME's UI looks much cleaner than Windows, everything is actually cohesive. It's not a mix of flat and glass and clear and ancient. It's all adwaita. (that's what you call it, right?)

Something weird was not having the minimise and maximise buttons. I had to enable those myself, which is a bit odd. Now that it is enabled it works fine.

I also really like being able to easily customise themes (everforest) and icons (Papirus!). And if GNOME is considered "not very customisable" in the linux world, KDE, Cinnamon, etc. must be even more customisable! I'm happy with GNOME though, so I probably won't switch DE anytime soon. Maybe when I get a new computer I could try out KDE.

App compatibility was no problem. All the apps I used before (thunderbird, obsidian, joplin, vscodium, godot, etc.) all have linux versions, and the ones that don't (like SumatraPDF and AIMP) have linux alternatives. Okular and Gapless has been working great!

There were very few issues, but there were some nonetheless. OBS Studio footage was very choppy as hardware decoding wasn't working, and I had to dig deep into forums to install drivers for my intel igpu. Now it works fine, so that's good! I also had an issue with a VPN app, but they support an app called "Clash Verge". They only note the Windows and Mac versions on their site, but clash verge has a linux app too, and it works quite well!

I don't play many games, mostly Minecraft and some retro titles. mGBA works fine on linux, and Minecraft java edition supports linux. I've also tried a bunch of linux games like SuperTuxKart and Xonotic and, considering they were made around a decade ago or so (I think) they were really fun! My other games ran fine with Steam installed, Proton and Wine makes them run fine!

I'll be sticking with the penguin as it's fun, playful, and is much cuter than both the window and the apple. :D

I want to see either a persistent rectangle box on the edges of the region being recorded (anything outside the box isn't recorded), or dim the parts of the screen that aren't being recorded. I looked for screen recorders for hyprland & wlroots and didn't find any with this functionality. wf-recorder + slurp works for me but I want a boundary visual.

A few months ago, a new terminal emulator was released. It's called ghostty, and it has been a highly anticipated terminal emulator for a while, especially due to the coverage that it received from ThePrimeagen, who had been using for a while, while it was in private beta.

I feel super dumb asking this. But what actually is and how does github (or similar sites) work? Are they all just source files one needs to manually compile? I am always confused when I look at a github page. I know some have directions but they still go way over my head sometimes. Im not a total noob but some of this stuff seems like you need to be in programming and have an IDE just to run a program.

Archive.

You've heard the "prophecy": next year is going to be the year of the Linux desktop, right? Linux is no longer the niche hobby of bearded sysadmins and free software evangelists that it was a decade ago! Modern distributions like Ubuntu, Pop!_OS, and Linux Mint are sleek, accessible, and — dare I say it — mainstream-adjacent.

Linux is ready for professional work, including video editing, and it even manages to maintain a slight market share advantage over macOS among gamers, according to the Steam Hardware & Software Survey.

However, it's not ready to dethrone Windows. At least, not yet!

I've been on the fence since I've been trying Hyprland. What I want out of a window manager / DE is lots of window customization settings (borders, animations, etc.), & having configuration inside one file or one directory with hot-reloading (I'm switching from KDE since its config files all over the place). Hyprland is very popular among WM users with a large ecosystem, though I prefer stacking rather than tiling. I can make it work with some window rules, and shell scripts using hyprctl & jq.

I'm wondering how many little things I will need to fix / figure out. For instance, when I open the firefox bookmarks library with CTRL SHIFT O. When that window is open but not focused, and not on top, if I press CTRL SHIFT O again on a DE it comes back to the top, but not on Hyprland. I could probably find a fix for that?

I might be answering my own question but I really want to hear thoughts.

CachyOS looks really good, and I want to try it. But what's the effect of being sponsored by cloudflare? Is it FOSS? Does it collect data? What's Cloudflare getting out of the sponsorship?