Israel detained and then deported an American nurse who tried to save the life of Awdah Hathaleen, a Palestinian activist who worked on the Oscar-winning documentary film “No Other Land.”
After Israeli settler Yinon Levi allegedly shot and killed Hathaleen on Monday in Umm al-Khair, a village in the occupied West Bank, the critical care nurse gave Hathaleen four rounds of CPR. She cradled his head in her hands, checking his pulse and whispering “You’re OK,” as he bled out, the nurse told The Intercept. The medical worker asked not to be named because they fear for their safety. Hathaleen was then taken away in an ambulance, where he died before reaching the hospital.
Soon after, on Monday evening, Israeli law enforcement officers detained the American nurse and an Italian citizen on the scene. The authorities took them to a police station, where they were detained for nearly 24 hours. In detention, the nurse said they recognized five Palestinians from the village sitting on the ground, blindfolded and zip-tied. At the same time, the nurse said, Levi was walking around freely and sharing cigarettes with the police officers — “no handcuffs or anything.” After reporting as ordered to another police outpost, the nurse was deported on Thursday to Jordan.
You have to create a second partition or use a Virtual Machine. Look for dual booting instructions, if you want to install alongside your current distro.
First step is to shrink and possibly move around your existing partitions to make space for a new one. GParted Live may help with that. Once you have enough space, just install Arch there. If you already have separate /home you should be able to reuse it.
Here's some answers to your question: 1. Backup your data, nuke the drive, start again. 2. chroot is the tool for the job. Backup your data before you accidentally nuke your drive. 3. Shrink the partition and write a new one in the empty space, but backup your data before you accidentally nuke your drive. 4. Connect an external drive, install on it, but backup your data before you accidentally nuke your drive.
Finally, the reason that the wiki didn't help is that the question is asked by either a person with not enough experience, or one who doesn't need the wiki. This is a non trivial process and you should backup your data before you proceed, lest you accidentally nuke your drive.
Edit:
Also, anything you break can be fixed .. but only if you have a backup.
Option (4) is safer in the long run because it prevents boot loaders overwriting each other.
Also, dual-booting and accessing the same data in /home IS ONLY SAFE IF YOU DO A FULL SHUTDOWN ON EACH BOOT OF THE OTHER SYSTEM. No hibernate, because hibernate does not unmount file systems.
Here another helpful solution for people who want to evaluate and compare different Linux distributions: GNOME Boxes, a software to easily create virtual machines
.... virtual machines where you only have to select which accompanying image of Arch / Tumbleweed / Ubuntu / Fedora you want to try.
In addition, the combination of a very stable base system (say, Debian or SuSE Leap) with a fast-moving, bleeading edge virtualized system (say, SuSE Tumbleweed, Arch or Guix) on top can be surprisingly useful. And because small virtual machines, when not running, are nothing else than files on your computer, you can have many versions of them, alter things, try stuff out, then delete it and go back to the tidy original state.
Virtualization made simple –
Select an operating system and let Boxes download and install it for you
in a virtual machine.
Features:
Download freely available operating systemsAutomatically install CentOS Str...
OK. Guess i'm installing EndeavourOS alongside my current distro. (Fedora)
But i still have one more question: When i tried to install EOS alongside Fedora in a VM, EOS's GRUB did not find fedora and vice versa. How do i fix that? (Sure, i could spam [ESC] each boot to select the os but that's just inconvenient.)
You can reinstall grub using a grub2disk usb if something goes wrong. It might go better with real hardware than in a VM. I could be wrong though. Sorry I can't be more helpful in that regard, I don't use grub anymore.
Resize your drive so you habe enough space for arch. Then boot into the live USB, partion the empty space into the typical boot/swap/root and then install arch as normal.
believe it or not, the myth of elite cabalism exists to obscure the fact that they simply pay and blackmail politicians. it's so much easier than petitioning the supernatural.
To be fair, there does seem to be a real tradition of “we get together and do things that are embarrassing and possibly illegal to have mutually assured destruction by way of blackmail.” Skull and Bones is supposedly based entirely on that framework.
I'm not super familiar with fraternity hazing antics but I don't know if those work the same as what we conceptualize as cabal rituals. people seem to be more disturbed by say, the Freemasons doing stuff that just boils down to Christianity with cloaks. but can you educate me a little on Skull and Bones? search results regarding them are either full on NWO raving or completely sanitized
I will add that what you describe applies fully to Jeffrey Epstein's mansions and compounds. dude's primary directive was to collect blackmail info. probably safe to assume that to his clients, it was all mutual
Tl;dr is they are a secret society at Yale comprised of legacy kids (I believe both presidents Bush were members, for example) that has initiation rites that are supposed to be humiliating which creates a bond. Apparently they have changed quite a bit from their heyday in the first half of the twentieth century.
I thought the Wikipedia page sounded sanitized but since you are the first person I've ever heard mention them, I'll take your word on its accuracy. TIL more about secret societies
They do love to get together. Sometimes publicly like at Davos to meet at the WEF. Sometimes they like to meet more secretively like at Bohemian Grove. Sometimes they all just know and pay a guy named Jeffrey Epstein.
So it kind of is a cabal. It’s the cabal of people that pay and blackmail each other for favors. And if you’re not quite in the club then you do the legal version of it called lobbying.
they do, but what you're describing doesn't electrify superstitious Americans the way a story about a virgin sacrifice does. hell Christians are more worried about satanic rituals than they are about literal pedophiles.
we can get into the why of that but I get the feeling you already know
Profitez des vidéos et de la musique que vous aimez, mettez en ligne des contenus originaux, et partagez-les avec vos amis, vos proches et le monde entier.
and games would work just fine. as of yesterday or so games would no longer launch no matter the game. If I remove gamescope it launches fine. I would Like to keep using gamescope but I did some research and apparently there used to be problems with NVIDIA and gamescope. I have used gamescope for many many games with no issues till now
I originally tried on my Endeavour OS install that I have been using for some time but then since I have been meaning to try out cachyos I then tried same thing there and it still does not work with gamescope. I have looked through the proton logs but if im being honest no idea what im looking for. Any help would be appreciated 😀
[happy character pointing at a painting of a french resistance fighter holding a molotov cocktail] Freedom fighters! Those people were heroes for fighting against oppression
[angry character shoving their smartphone in our face with a picture of a palestinian holding a rock] Evil terrorists! Those people are monsters for fighting against oppression
.... virtual machines where you only have to select which accompanying image of Arch / Tumbleweed / Ubuntu / Fedora you want to try.
In addition, the combination of a very stable base system (say, Debian or SuSE Leap) with a fast-moving, bleeading edge virtualized system (say, SuSE Tumbleweed, Arch or Guix) on top can be surprisingly useful. And because small virtual machines, when not running, are nothing else than files on your computer, you can have many versions of them, alter things, try stuff out, then delete it and go back to the tidy original state.
Virtualization made simple –
Select an operating system and let Boxes download and install it for you
in a virtual machine.
Features:
Download freely available operating systemsAutomatically install CentOS Str...
If you want a more complex way of creating and managing VMs, there is also virt-manager. But I feel that one is more suited for, say, professional use.
That's right, virt-manager is a GUI with many, many options. It is more tailored to run several VMs at once, give limited network access into or out of them, and so on.
Also very handy to run tiny, outdated Windows systems with an app you can't get rid off isolated from the net because it runs your grandpa's heart-lung machine or so.
that too; i guess it's wrong to call it a supplement when it unifies all these systems that seem disperate if you don't already know the kvm/qemu ecosystem.
Someone else brought up Virt Manager here, which is my preferred; if you’ve ever used VirtualBox, you’ll probably be fine on Virt Manager. I like Virt Manager for using GTK3, as I’m in XFCE. I wouldn’t be surprised if both applications have similar settings, as they’re both LibVirt front ends, it seems.
Also, DistroBox, while a different sort of thing, is great for the sort of thing OP mentioned in that last paragraph. I usually just use command line, but there seems to be an unofficial GUI out there.
I run Bazzite which is immutable and rock solid stable. I use Boxbuddy which is a frontend for Distrobox to install packages from any distro when I can't find it on brew.
I really like Boxes, but since it can only run VMs in the unprivileged qemu:///session, it simply doesn't support features like PCI passthrough, autostart or even slightly sophisticated networking setups. :/
I'm bigger than my cat. Stronger than him. Smarter than him. But giving him a pill is a test of sheer willpower, and in that I am completely outmatched.
It's like every cell in his body is repurposed into a perfect machine, the singular goal of which is not taking a pill. He becomes liquid when I try to hold him down, then instantly transforms into a spring-loaded pill shooter once I get his mouth open. One time, through incredible effort, I managed to do it without losing any blood. I watched the pill go down his throat. The next day I found it caked in his neck fluff, as though his body detected its presence and morphed around it, rejecting it at a cellular level.
He doesn't need a lot of pills, but after years of blissful cat ownership punctuated by epic, disastrous pill-giving, the vet finally revealed that he could take liquid medicine from a little dropper. So that's much better.
The problem, at least here in the US, is that most times, they use pharmaceuticals designed for human consumption. They will either whole pill it, and wish you luck trying to administer it, or half a pill, etc. Charging new fees like medical care for a humans is their latest grift and they have that down, but the pharmaceutical end of it has not caught up. It will, I imagine soon, so they can complete their circular structure that mimics the healthcare system for humans, which is a HUGE money-making scheme of shit. It is why they now push and recommend getting pet insurance. See what they did there?
One time we had to pick up medicine for my wife's cat at the human pharmacy, and the pharmacist confirmed with us that the patient's name was "Sasha Feline", because that's what she saw in the system. But she pronounced it "fuh-leen", like it was a person's name. I don't think she knew it was for a cat.
He doesn’t need a lot of pills, but after years of blissful cat ownership punctuated by epic, disastrous pill-giving, the vet finally revealed that he could take liquid medicine from a little dropper. So that’s much better.
i remember my vet apologizing for not offering this sooner when she saw my bloodied and bandaged hands when my oldest cat needed pills.
it wasn't all bad though; a part of me has happy to see such vigor and strength coming from my senior cat at a time where i thought that he was at death's door. lol
"Yees, yees, good nom, veery good nom, boiled chicken, mmm! Ignore the pill I stuck inside it, just eat it, yees! No! Nonono, don't spit it o-oh, god damn it..."
We tried several of the pill pockets you can get. Our cats would eat around the pill and ....there it be. I think they even sell pill shooters for cats that projectile fling them in the back of their tongue. Yeah, if that did happen to work, it would only work once for our cats.
When I read "pill shooters" I imagined a sort of NERF gun:)) That would be hilarious!
But, yes, it's been a struggle every time. I did find, however, that one of my cats presented significantly less resistance if I'd imbibe the pill with some ham or salami (I'd just rub it on the meat for a bit), then feed it to her immediately after I'd give her a bit of ham/salami to whet her appetite and get her nommin' thoughtlessly. She'd chomp the pill, then I'd give her another bit of ham afterwards, to keep her chewing and swallowing. Then the crying started, because no more ham. Only worked with the one, though (she was THE gourmand, and love-hated me because I refused to give in and overfeed her).
Thankfully, I've only ever had to dole out some periodic dewormers (the yearly "just in case" ones), and only when the vet couldn't see us for that. It was an adventure every time, though!
Mum was a wiz at meat wrapping! I never understood what she did differently, but she was always one-and-done!
This could get very dire very quickly, if anyone here is interested in supporting digital rights globally, in a modern age of copycat law, I thought this petition should gain some attention, especially that this could grow into something that has more overreach then just Apple devices.
It is reported that the Home Office has ordered Apple to build a backdoor into its encrypted services so that they can get hold of content that any Apple user has upload to the cloud.
Encryption keeps our private information safe and secure.
Oltre l’alto portale in pietra, il visitatore viene trasportato in un piano d’esistenza memorabile, dove ogni scorcio dello sguardo incontra e viene incentivato ad assorbire il sacro.
Sorry. I know that this or a similar question has been asked many times, and trying to find a decent answer i get redirected to reddit and blocked because of my VPN. I am looking for the preferred version of the above OS's for installing Docker based on easiness and stability/reliability once installed. Is there such a distro as DockerOS or a Distro with Docker preinstalled? I thought I read something like that last year when I was threatening to pull my finger out the first time and get something up and running, but now I am not sure whether or not I have imagined it.
There is no such distribution. And it's not surprising. That is essentially one package with runc. I also recommend using an podman instead of docker. Then you won't even need to do anything except apt install podman / dnf install podman.
UPD: At the moment, even systemd supports containers. systemd-nspawn daemon...
End goal is running docker with immich, navidrome, and something like jellyfin etc. Along with a few other things that I may add as I go along. Stability and low maintenance would probably suit me best
Are you going to dedicate an entire machine to this?
First, you can run Docker on any distro. Although Debian is great, the version of Docker in the repos is not. So, for Debian, you are going to want to download and install Docker from Docker. Docker is a company.
There is also Podman. This is a competitor to Docker written by Red Hat. It has some technical advantages. I use Podman myself. The command line is basically the same. They host the same containers (OCI images).
If you are going to run a lot of images on a single machine, management can get complicated. many people like Portainer for that.
However, if you are going to dedicate a machine, I recommend Proxmox.
Proxmox takes over the hardware. It runs a hypervisor that lets you deploy virtual machines and containers easily. It gives you a great web-based UI to manage everything. Technically, it runs on Debian but you do not even need to know that. It deploys as on OS.
Proxmox actually has nothing to do with Docker. It allows you to deploy virtual machines (eg. Full Linux distributions or even Windows or other operating systems). It also allows you to create containers. However the container technology is not Docker but actually LXC.
When you deploy an LXC container in Proxmox, it is like launching a Linux VM. You get a full Linux distro that looks like a virtual machine and that shows up on your network like a full computer. But, it shares the kernel with Proxmox and so is incredibly light and resource efficient.
You can connect to Proxmox via a web browser and see any of your virtual machine or container desktops in your web browser (even if just command line).
Proxmox itself is always online. But you can start and stop individual machines (vm or container) whenever you want.
You really cannot appreciate how powerful all this is until you try it.
So, how does this help you run Docker?
Well, for many things, you may actually find it easier to just use a VM or LXC to install and run whatever it is you want. For many applications, I find it easier to manage a Linux distro than a Docker container.
Or, you create a VM or an LXC and run Docker inside of it. You can even run Portainer. You can run many Docker containers in a single VM. Or, create a new VM or LXC if that makes things easier.
But it is so much easier to manage in Proxmox.
For example, I run a Debian LXC container to run PiHole as an ad blocker on my network. It is super lightweight and I launched it by running a script like they suggest on the PiHole website. And I created a VM (with its own virtual disk for storage) to run Immich (photo management). Even though I run Immich with Docker compose, it is just nicer and easier to manage when it is the only thing running on the “machine” (a QEMU VM in Proxmox) with its own filesystem. I can pull up the Immich machine whenever I want and I am at the command-line where the last command was the the Docker up that I ran months ago). Same story for Jellyfin.
Do you also want a NAS? You can run one under Proxmox. But another thing to consider would be running TrueNAS as a NAS and using its built-in Docker support to run your containers.
Thank you for a great, detailed answer. Proxmox it is so. I was going with NixOS and definitely going to try Podman as I've been reading all about that while downloading and copying the Isos. I will be dedicating an entire machine and if I don't do it today, I fear it will be another year before I come back to it. 🥴 I'm going to start it now . Thanks again.
Yep, that's the plan. Still didn't get around to it today. My "free" day and I've not sat down other than the few minutes earlier to write the OP and look at some of the replies l. Hopefully I'll have a few hours to myself after dinner.
I hope it goes (or went) well. If you use Proxmox, you can still through NixOS on a VM and play to your hearts content. But you also run a nice, simple Debian LXC alongside it for something else. And if you break your NixOS install, it does not impact any of your other containers and VMs. That is what makes Proxmox so awesome.
This is how I handle my server, I have an older Mac Mini with a SSD and 16GB of RAM running Proxmox. I’ve got a Debian VM for Docker stuff (all pretty lightweight containers right now), a VM with Debian for a remote VS Code environment and LXC’s for Plex and PiHole. I also wanted to learn about NixOS, so I fired up a VM and installed it to test it out. I will say, I want to learn more NixOS… that’s not an easy or simple solution! Awesome OS and I love the concept, but you really have to be dedicated to learn the syntax and maintain it!
What level of involvement are you looking for in setting up the host os?
I'm a NixOS fan because once you painstakingly get the configuration file set up you basically never need to do it again. If you don't need anything outside of nixpkgs it's easy, otherwise it's terrible. Docker is available in nixpkgs.
Cinnamon development is glacial. It works, but the project simply does not have the resources to properly keep up or even triage important fixes.
It's one of the reasons I didn't stick with mint, and tend not recommend it if someone can use something else. When I stopped using it, the setting that was supposed to allow games in fullscreen to display without compositing was borked, costing you frames and latency. It had been that way for years.
Mint has been a very good conservative distro so I hope they continue in this fashion: transition when the rest of the ecosystem is already there so that there will be no pain for non technical users
They have an experimental Wayland session already. It mostly works except for some pretty important stuff...I also haven't seen development on it for a long while.
I think this is almost a 100% no.
I tried to implement that myself. Making them shorter than the screen is easy. Making them appear above the edge of the screen is hard, but not impossible - the code is in JavaScript and the logic is kind of disjoint across multiple files and stuff depends on panels being at the edge of the screen - I didn't do it in the end because it was too much effort for something I didn't want that much.
Cinnamon is a super simple DE for simple people. I don't mean this as an insult, some people just never even think to customize their computer and are scared by settings and options. Just use KDE if it has features you like, you clearly sound like you're up for the change.
Forgive me if this is an obvious stupid question, but with all this talk (again) about the EU trying to force chat platforms to check the content of its messages, I can help but think: how are they ever going to prevent me and my friend from sharing public keys and using them to encrypt our messages to each other? In other words: how are they ever going to be able to ban encryption?
You don't even have to do it with pen and paper. You can install whatever operating system and software you want on your computer. If blocking certain resources on the internet is an issue, you could torrent public keys, use tor, use i2p, or worst case scenario deliver a USB drive to your friend's door.
That's exactly what makes the proposed regulation so absurd. If you're not completely tech illiterate, you're gonna use whatever fork of your FOSS software of choice to keep communicating securely. This regulation is just a very obvious data grab for the whatsapp users that are too lazy to switch.
It's closed source. So it's impossible to verify Facebook doesn't have you pkey and goes MitM. They say they don't, but you can only take their word for it.
Encryption in WhatApp is actually a fake, because the encryption keys are generated and stored on Facebook's servers, accordingly, they can read any of your messages as plain text, and the intelligence services obviously have access to them.
Also a few months ago there was a leaked slide from an FBI training course or something where they compared different messengers in terms of how well they cooperate with the police, guess who came first ?
WhatsApp provides data to the police in near real time (about 15 minutes from the time of the request)
The message from WhatApp at the beginning of the chat - that your data is not available to third parties is the height of hypocrisy.
Ham radio in the US has restrictions on sending encrypted data over ham frequencies.
They can't stop you, they probably won't even catch you unless you are egregious about it. But if they do catch you, it's like a $10,000 fine.
I think the whole world is quickly moving closer to China's model. Everything that gets encrypted will need the government's key on it anything they can't decrypt will get blocked.
You basically set up some rules at the backbone level looking for suspect traffic. They could now have AI review the suspect traffic and try to tell if what's going on is viable data or nonsense words/coded messages. All communications will need to be identified. None of the blocking would work real time but once they know who's sending it in think that you've sent some stuff that you shouldn't be sending they could just turn you off.
I read an article somewhere recently where AI was able to tell if an image was being used with even the most advanced steganography with a fairly high reliability.
They'll never be able to stop people from privately communicating at small scale, But man will there be some watch lists.
The same way they prevent you from transmitting any other illegal content: they fine you and/or throw you in jail if they know you're doing it.
It's trivially easy to detect encrypted messages just by measuring the entropy of each message. A messaging provider would just turn you in if they detect it.
You could probably get away with peer-to-peer messaging, but your ISP would be able to detect that you're using unapproved encryption and then turn you in to the government.
people can already "vibe code" p2p encrypted apps for communications, its not that hard and it will only get easier to do.
HOWEVER. obviously not bullet proof, and once meaningful quantum computing combines with AI every keystroke and deleted message, every sneeze or fart you had near a smart phone or a router in your life will be recorded and accessed by it, at the will of its controllers.
every recorded secret will be known, or at least be accessible. the blackmail is gonna be off the chain hook. people are going to start doing things that make zero sense. and youll know why.
"in 2008, senator, you googled "how to tuck my wiener so i can fart into my urethra" in twelve separate variations, and when that didnt yield the results you wanted. you looked up "how to inject fart into urethra, safely".......... now, you are going to vote yay on the children coal miners bill, or we'll drop 2008s search history, and maybe take a look at 2014 to see how you discovered how you wanted to be a furrys "dog knotted bitch slave" while on vacation in vegas......looks like we have all the messages.....every second of your visit was recorded by your cell phone and iWatch, all the way down to your heart rate spiking when "white fang" pegged you for the first time that weekend.....so.....its gonna be a.....yay?"
You do something like remove section 230 (or whatever the EU equivalent is) that provides safe harbor from liability for transit providers like ISPs and content providers like websites that host user submitted content. You condition any safe harbor on the services in question being able to turn over and ID exactly who the offending person was without fail and tie any and every packet to a real world person. You make explicit that not being able to scrutinize content (because of encryption) is not an excuse. Thus someone pirating or sending CSAM over your network via a VPN makes you liable for not stopping them.
As a result this forces ISPs to block all encrypted traffic detected via deep packet inspection. Only traffic encrypted with public key infrastructure that has government issued keys that allow snooping on it is allowed.
Tada. There's no way around this that doesn't involve painstaking steganography which can possibly be nailed by AI anyways. Things like embedding a secret message in pictures you send with some pixels shifted to hide the data and your friend having a program and key that can decode it. Or things like taking all the capitalized letters and applying rot13 or something to them with some sort of algorithm but then you need to find a way to make the message intelligible on the surface as if you're sending constant unintelligible messages you might get flagged and blocked or visited by the police (or the police get a warrant and have your mobile company deploy malware onto your devices and spy on you as a threat because of that).
The only other alternative is using alternative infrastructure. HAM radio type network transmission via a series of hops with similar activists but this wouldn't be practical for most given the expense and the bandwidth would be awful. Also probably illegal and if they wanted to it would be trivially easy to identify and arrest those running these nodes and relays due to triangulation.
Turns out the whole liberal west with freedom of thought and speech was in fact a lie. Kept around to use as a stick to whack at the USSR with but now dropped at the first signs of serious popular discontent and trouble in favor of total control. Supposed values quickly dropped with no more excuse than "Russians" or "think of the children" or the usual criminals and terrorists.
They can't stop a really determined actor from engaging in encrypted messaging but they can stop 98% of the population and that's more than enough to control thought and action of the population.
Do you really think that they still are monitoring an paleolitic, forgotten since almost 50 years (1971), pre-internet command line protocol, like Finger, transmitted with a Ping not even over web? They have enough with monitoring high tech steganographic encrypted chats and socialnet, I2P and TOR network. It's something like a knock on the door, asking if someone is at home, serve for short text messages Often the best hideout is a plain sight,
A friend of mine has an old macbook air. It still works, more or less, but the OS isn't getting any updates anymore, and updating to the latest OS seems dicey.
Has anyone had experience installing linux on an old macbook? From a quick internet search it looks like you can just make a bootable USB and have at it. Thinking mint because it's popular and my friend is a pretty basic user. The laptop will be mostly used for like youtube/netflix and basic web browsing.
Edit: a little extra context: I am moderately comfortable with Linux. I ran mint for a while on my desktop, and I've done software development for a job. I can install docker and start a python project fine, but I'd use a GUI for like partitioning a hard drive.
You can run from USB to see how it works without installing, then install once you've found one that works well/that you like. Let us know how it goes!
I tried running Frostpunk 1 on the MacBook Pro 2012 (upgraded with an SSD and 16gb of Ram) and it wouldn’t boot despite the fact that it’s an old game and that I tried some special settings and commands.
I guess you can still play some games on ot, but many are out of reach, even some of the ones you’d think would be playable..
Did this recently actually on the same exact model, drivers work out of the box with ElementaryOS. Zero tinkering involved. Has a maclike interface too. It's based on Ubuntu, since they're centering Mac driver compatibility it's unlikely to break on upgrade. I originally tried to install fedora atomic and so on but realized the drivers were going to be annoying to add (wifi module didn't work) so I just flashed ElementaryOS on it so I didn't have to bother and could send it back to my friend asap.
I put KDE Fedora on a MacBook Air circa 2013 iirc. It’s old heh. It runs well but it hates the new kernel. So after a lot of poking around to find a solution to the full hardware kernel panic lockups I found it was a problem with the wifi, as usual. You might get luckier than me since it’s only a couple chipsets they use that choke.
That said even with that issue I just locked the kernel at 5.15 and it runs just fine. I started with 38 and I’ve upgraded every release until current without any issue.
I just installed Pop!OS on my 2012 MacBook Pro and it's amazing. No matter which distro you go with, you will likely need to manually update and install the WiFi drivers. You'll need an Ethernet connection, which might mean you'll need an adapter.
I ran Xubuntu on a 2011 macbookpro I upgraded to 8gb RAM and an ssd. It runs fine, but it's no longer good as a daily driver because the architecture doesn't support decoding basic video codecs we take for granted to watch youtube and so on.
So it will work, but you may find web-based stuff will make the cpu spike to 90%.
That will work for now - although in my experience the performance of newer OSs on older hardware is not great. Soon, however, new releases of macOS won't support Intel processors. Tahoe, later this year, will supposedly be the last.
Yes, Tahoe will be the last. However that will last you another year and then you'll get a couple more years of security updates after that, so it will still be safe to use. The thing is already >10 years old so hopefully you can find a suitable replacement before then.
Putting Linux on a Mac is, in my experience, a right pain in the ass. They have proprietary hardware and drivers that just make it very painful.
I got three 2012 MacBook Pros I run different operating systems on. They handle Linux great, even the little 13" one with the i5 and no GPU/dedicated VRAM
It's pre-T2, so it should be very easy to install a Linux distro on it. The only bit of misery you're going to encounter, as others have said, is the Broadcom drivers. Except for a select few distros, you'll probably need a USB Ethernet adapter for installing the operating system and adding the drivers.
Also, I'd rather put my hand in the circle saw than try running a rolling release on this laptop because the driver uses DKMS, meaning that kernel updates sometimes break it.
I only know this because the desktop I'm typing this on has a Broadcom Wi-Fi card from when I used to bare metal Hackintosh this machine. I've since moved to a nice house with an Ethernet port in every room; also, I just use macOS in a VM these days anyways.
As others have said, OCLP is a thing and a well-oiled machine from what I hear, but also, the oath I have made to the Church of Linuxology demands that I at least recommend Linux.
I have not had a problem with the WiFi on EOS. It installs fine out of the box.
If you are worried about it breaking, just install both an current and an LTS kernel. If current ever breaks, just boot into LTS. After a couple of days, boot into current again because it is probably fixed.
I have had the FaceTimeHD camera break for a few days before. That is why I run two kernels.
I always just booted the old kernel when I ran into the issue, but it was less than ideal, which is why I would prefer to run a stable distro in this case.
Also, isn't ElementaryOS a stable distro anyway due to being Ubuntu-based?
I feel like stability in some contexts means more than just the software not crashing often (although that is the big part); it means being able to expect the behavior to stay the same until you’re ready to upgrade to the next release and confront the new behavior all at once, sort of like upgrading Windows XP to Windows 7.
There’s certainly a place for rolling release - I use Debian Testing on my desktop - but I certainly appreciate being able to go a month without opening my laptop without getting a daunting notification like “There are 1578 updates available “ (on my Debian 12 Thinkpad, it’s usually only double digit, very minor updates).
Stable should mean that it runs stable, runs without crashing. In most Linux distros though, stable means “not changing”. That is not the same thing.
So, Debian Stable can ship software with a design problem that makes it prone to crashing. That problem can be solved in a newer version (more stable) but Debian will continue to ship the older version (the crashy one) because that is what stable means to Debian.
A good example is that Debian Trixie is about to ship with NVIDIA drivers from a year ago that have problems with Wayland. There are newer drivers that work better. But Debian will ship the old ones.
Yes and no. I think connotation is important here; “stable” means different things in different contexts even within computing, and they both denote different but important things - kind of like free of cost verses freedom.
In the distro case, people need/want a distribution where they know a new version won’t come and break their config when they update at 2 AM and miss it in the changelog, and “stable” has been agreed upon as the term in that context. Of course, that can change, as all language does, but that’s just the current convention.
Also, Debian tends to make sure software is not unusable before stable is shipped (the Nvidia thing is an anomaly I’ll explain below); while they sometimes fail, as you’ve hinted, I find it quite rare that it actually happens. Also, the “static” of Debian isn’t absolute; if something really has a breaking bug or a security vulnerability that affects overall system usability (basically something that can’t be fixed by installing a Flatpak), they will put out a fix, like with the Linux kernel or a web browser (via the security repo, included by default in all installs).
Additionally, looking at this changelog, while the Nvidia situation is objectively a bit embarrassing, it looks like they were working on getting them updated, but just didn’t have much luck - I’m guessing a breaking change in the software that made it harder to package. Also, it’s in the non-free repo, which is on the back burner compared to the rest of the distro - something in the main repo will usually only be at most a few months behind at time of distro release.
I have Linux on: - 2013 MacBook Air - 2017 MacBook Air - 2021 MacBook Air - 2009 MacBook Pro - 2012 MacBook Pro - 2008 iMac - 2015 iMac - 2013 Mac Pro
I predict that EndeavourOS will run beautifully on your 2014 MacBook Air. You need out-of-kernel drivers for both the Broadcom WiFi and the FacetimeHD camera but EOS has you covered on both. They will both update automatically when you update the kernel. EOS has much faster WiFi on my 2013 than the other distros I have tried. Chimera Linux works beautifully as well but that may not be your scene.
I have not tried Mint on any of the hardware above so unfortunately, I cannot say how well it would work. Perhaps just fine though I wonder about the webcam.
As you guessed, installing Linux on that hardware is just holding down the Option key to boot of the USB. It is pretty close to regular PC hardware with a slightly odd UEFI. Everything works, even all the media keys, brightness control, etc.
You can use OpenCore Legacy Patcher to put a newer version of macOS on that hardware as well. As you can tell though, I think Linux is the better play. You will be amazed at how well the 2014 runs.
[edit: I just read some of the other comments. I never had any of those issues with EOS. I really recommend it for that hardware.]
It works but be careful with wifi. The other user said that it works out of the box with endeavourOS, and I know you can install it later with Linux Mint too, but the problem is that this wifi driver for the older chips (from 2011 to 2013 at least) is buggy. In my 2011 macbook air it would crash the whole OS on heavy downloads, and on my 2012 one it won't come up from sleep. So I bought a super tiny supported usb wifi dongle to deal with the problem. Now my two macbook airs work 100% with Linux.
My 2015 macbook air works great with the linux wifi driver, but it has no web cam support, and the driver on github is buggy and not updated for newer kernels anymore.
I just installed Endeavour0S on a 2013 13" MacBook Pro last week and it was like every other installation. I had no problems whatsoever. Even with a current KDE Plasma that little thing runs great.
Update: installed mint. Seems work. Had a problem where it couldn't see the HD. Had to change an option in grub
Pasting what I found online to fix it:
""" thank you so much! what was the solution!
for anyone might read this in the future: in the bootmenu where u can select which version of linux u wanna boot u can press "e" and then u need to add intel_iommu=off at the end of the line of the "linux" row - i had some double dashes at the end for me it did the job when I add them before the double dashes.
Then I could see the harddrive and install mint mate on my old macbook air
also needed later on to set the parameter permantent by opening a terminal and used this command sudo nano /etc/default/grub
edited this line like this: GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash intel_iommu=off" then save and exit nano and this command for updating the boot thingy
I switched to catchyos not too long ago but i also want to get into gamedev im just not sure which engine to go with? I looked in scratch but i find it annoying (visual scripting). Im not sure if i should try godot or some other engine now. Im also not sure where to post at sense itch has become questionable, i also want to try game jams aswell.
Godot. Its the perfect time to pick a popular open source one that is very robust. Pick Godot. I truly believe it is more intuitive than Unity and sometimes even Unreal Engine. Just follow the official tutorials on the website to get started and once you understand how it works you can get pretty crazy with it.
All the game engines work on Linux. Movie studios use Unreal, Blender, and Epic for the big budget stuff now, and (unless someone has new info) everything is rendered on Linux farms.
That being said, I would suggest Godot to just get a simple project going. Lots of HUGE games came off Godot in the past couple years. Balatro was made in Love2D as well. Both are about as simple to learn and portable as you can get.
If you're looking at collaborating in game jams, you'll find it handy to have some Unity, Unreal Engine and Godot under your belt. Don't worry about becoming an "expert" at any of them, just do a few intro tutorials and read the starter docs on each.
Everyone says Godot, but I disagree. Godot is too high level and it won't teach you much about how it all works. Godot is good if you have already mastered languages and common gaming algorithms (e.g. collisions), and you just want to get going. But as a first foray, I'd say, go with SDL. After you done something simple in SDL and learned some hands on knowledge on how things work under the hood, go with Godot or Love. That knowledge will help you troubleshoot godot better then.
Honestly try whatever you want, from Godot to bash on the command line (I'm not even joking) then while doing so, write down what you learn and, as importantly, what is missing. If something is missing and it's a very VERY big deal for you to re-implement (say 3D engine, or VR support, or cross platform support) then and ONLY THEN do look at other engines. See which ones out there do have both what you needed so far AND what is missing. Do NOT think ahead of all the "cool" things you "might need one day" because you would then look for the "perfect" engine for a project that does not even exist in your mind.
TL;DR: it does not matter, pick any, build, share, iterate and pick another one whenever you want to.
GDevelop is a free, fast, easy, open-source game engine. Learn 2D, 3D or multiplayer game development with our tutorials. Publish everywhere: iOS, Android, Steam... Use AI to learn and build faster.
GameMaker is absolutely free to download and keep forever for non-commercial use. For commercial use or Console export, purchase a Professional license or our Enterprise Subscription.
If you're just starting out, Unity is a bit more mature and established - and it works fine on Linux. There are also quite a few resources for getting started that apply to the current version out there (E.g. It isn't rapidly changing too much at the moment for someone just starting out). It also has the best mobile support of any engine out there, so if you want to test your game on a phone that's your best bet.
Godot is popular among hobbyists, and could be a fun start, but I don't know of any serious games being made in it yet (having said that, I know quite a few folk who are currently evaluating it, so maybe in a few years).
But, really, my recommendation is to focus on learning a programming language first. Figure out the ins and outs of basic C#, then start learning about an engine that utilizes it.
I'm only saying this because it sounds like you're looking into how to build games, not just one specific role of the process: if that's the case, starting with some basic C# tutorials/classes would help a lot.
Once you know the be basics it will be much simpler to work with an established Engine, and jumping from one to another will also have less friction.
Finally, remember that scratch is a good tool to learn about how to program. If you're feeling like you've mastered it, now is a great time to move on to a proper programming language.
As I get older I am LOVING dark mode on everything. Does anyone know how to make the UI for my Debian Distro 100% AMOLED black almost like an Inverted color scheme in windows 11?
Gnome themes do exist. Find something here and install it. Just create a .themes folder in your home directory and download a theme from this site. Extract the theme into the .themes folder you just created. Install gnome tweaks and go to town.
What desktop environment are you using? KDE let's users do this pretty easily by just going into the color scheme settings. I'm not sure what the process is for other desktops these days.
You would just install one of the KDE meta-packages. After that you can select the new desktop environment when you login again.
The only thing to note is that some settings don't always play nice between the two (for example one might overwrite settings on the other), so maybe consider making a new user account just to see if you like it.
I have OLED tv as my main monitor, and adjusting the settings of the screen allowed me to achieve this using a black image at full screen. The screen looks like it is turned off. I even tested with a dark room. No light comes from the screen. Once you get that set, then using black in UI colors should achieve this if I understand what you are asking.
I'm not familiar with HDR capablity within Linux though, and many newer OLED screens have some of these capabilities. That could be another element to consider depending on your screen capabilities and settings available.
GTK themes are themes for apps using the GTK GUI toolkit. They are basically CSS rules that apply to app widgets. You can probably find one by searching "amoled GTK theme" then installing it on your distro and using GNOME Tweaks to select the theme.
You don't need to change desktop environments just change your shell theme. You can do it on Gnome with the extension User Themes. While your at it grab blur my shell.
I havent used Ubuntu in a long time but im guessing its a similar process to Debian. Open terminal and type
sudo apt install gnome-tweaks
sudo apt install gnome-shell-extensions
sudo apt install gnome-shell-extension-manager
Go into the extension manager. Click browse and search for and get blur my shell, and User Themes. Go to gnome-look.org and go to the gnome shell section and find a theme you like. Place it in the /.themes folder (located in Home create this folder if needed), then click the gear next to User Themes and select the theme you added.
Make sure you get a gnome theme that is made for your current version of gnome or itll look janky. Blur my shell will take your desktop background and fill in some of the dead space with that. There are other nice extensions too. Lock screen Background, AppIndicator and KstatusNotifierItem Support, Caffeine, Weather O'Clock, are some i use.
Mess around with it a bit and get a feel for it is my suggestion. It should be easily reversible so dont be afraid to try stuff out. (You can turn extensions on/off with a click)
You know, putting up a black theme on your desktop environment is not difficult, you can probably find some online for your DE. The problem is the screen of your laptop/PC. Unless your laptop/monitor is a very expensive one, or a Mac, chances are you're using a cheaper panel. And slapping a 100% black theme there won't make it as black as you imagine it to be (as in your phone, for example, which usually use good quality screens).
Don't worry. If we all go out and buy ourselves a birthday cake, you didn't just depressively try to fill the hole in your soul with cake, you had cake with fellow community members.
Hello, Linux people. Anyone tried lingmo os? Is it stable? In videos the interface looks kinda clean and its based on Debian. Sounds nice. Anyone made some tests? Greetings
Website's style breaks without 3rd party scripts permission. Not that that's indicative of the quality of the distro, but I don't like websites that depend heavily on Google, Cloudflare, and external CDNs for scripts since it makes the website less secure.
The above example ain't unique, though. Heck, I'd argue that the coming and passing of projects is the expected pattern. The projects that remain relevant and continue to receive development are the actual anomalies.
All of which is just to say that it's (almost) ill-advised to prefer a new project over a well-established one. Only after a (relatively) new project receives mass adoption, like what we currently see with Bazzite and CachyOS, does it become somewhat of a safe bet. Even if only for the foreseeable future*. Until then, you're at the mercy of the whims and continued interest of a single developer (or a very small team).
Going back to Lingmo OS itself, I suppose its main appeal lies within its unique aesthetics. I'm especially fond of their macOS-like global menu found within its top bar. The now-defunct CutefishOS also had something similar going on... Which brings us back to our earlier point on longevity. Aight, verdict: honestly, I don't think it's necessarily more aesthetically pleasing than say GNOME or KDE Plasma. At least to me*. As such, I understand that I'm not the target audience. Nor do I think that you or anyone else should be swayed by this (or similar projects) on aesthetics alone.
All of which is just to say that it’s (almost) ill-advised to prefer a new project over a well-established one. Only after a (relatively) new project receives mass adoption, like what we currently see with Bazzite and CachyOS, does it become somewhat of a safe bet.
If you should prefer an established distro over a new one, how is the new one ever going to get mass adoption? And let's be honest, if a distro is a one man or small team project, mass adoption is no guarantee of longevity.
OP is still a very new Linux user (if at all) that hammers on stability in every one of their posts. My comment was written with that in mind. But, even in its current version, it isn't absolute and leaves room for nuance/exceptions by using terms like "(almost)" etc.
Veteran users with awareness of the Linux landscape are somewhat able to discern the upcoming serious projects with a future from the to-be abandonware. FWIW, I've championed distros like Bazzite (and its uBlue siblings), CachyOS, Nobara, PikaOS and secureblue far before they had any serious recognition (if at all). So I'm definitely with you that promising projects deserve adoption, support and more.
And let's be honest, if a distro is a one man or small team project, mass adoption is no guarantee of longevity.
Agreed. I believe the "somewhat" I used alludes to that. One might argue that the concept of absolute guarantee doesn't exist. Even with Arch and Debian*; though I'd argue they come closest IMO. Nevertheless, there are definitely gradations between Arch/Debian and a student-owned hobby project that was created just today.
Mass adoption is a relatively easy metric to gauge. And (often) comes with tons of support/discussion across the internet that will prove to be useful for the new user.
Please feel free to provide other metrics that OP or others might appeal to.
OP is still a very new Linux user (if at all) that hammers on stability in every one of their posts.
Ah, I missed that nuance. In such a case, I always recommend one of the big three, Ubuntu, Mint, and Fedora. When they've been using that for long enough to know what they don't like about it, it's a good time to start exploring the wider ecosystem.
Even with Arch and Debian
Yeah, they've been around long enough that I'd be surprised if they vanished. I would add openSUSE and Slackware (even though it's a one man project) to that list. Of course Patrick Volkerding could get fed up with maintaining Slackware at any time.
And (often) comes with tons of support/discussion across the internet that will prove to be useful for the new user.
That can be a double-edged sword, especially if the distro has been around a long time. What the user finds can be out of date and now just plain wrong. Ubuntu definitely suffers with this.
Please feel free to provide other metrics that OP or others might appeal to.
Besides longevity and adoption, I would argue that whether it has new enough drivers and firmware to support your hardware is the most important metric out there. For example, if your hardware is newer, you should likely choose Fedora from the big three.
That can be a double-edged sword, especially if the distro has been around a long time. What the user finds can be out of date and now just plain wrong. Ubuntu definitely suffers with this.
Excellent point! Thank you for mentioning this! I feel this is often overlooked for reasons I don't understand. Thankfully, we can teach (new) users how they can navigate around this: e.g. by mentioning the version of the distro within the search query OR by simply being wary of old(er) info.
I reinstalled Librewolf via brew on my Mac and got this message: Warning: librewolf has been deprecated! It will be disabled on 2026-09-01.
Any idea what's happening there?
Would love to have another way to use Librewolf on Mac OS btw... it has to be reinstalled regularly with "brew reinstall librewolf --no-quarantine" because the installation "is broken". Very annoying, but I love Librewolf!
The commit says something about something being “unsigned.” I suspect that means the LibreWolf artifact is unsigned, so they can’t verify its integrity. github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-c…
Verification I understand that if I ignore these instructions, my issue may be closed without review. I have retried my command with --force. I ran brew update-reset && brew update and retried my c...
The way to keep it in homebrew is to either start signing librewolf builds or provide an alternative tap from Librewolf's repo. One of the catalysts for the deprecation is that installing unsigned apps seems to only work in Intel-based macs and Apple has decided macOS 26 will be the last release that will support this architecture.
The --no-quarantine flag might be deprecated. There's a discussion on homebrew github about disabling it, as Apple is closing the door on unsigned apps: github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-c…
Verification This issue's title and/or description do not reference a single formula e.g. brew install wget. If they do, open an issue at https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-core/issues/new/choose...
I want to run a small VM running a very low-maintenance distro for the sole purpose of running a private VPN (preferably WireGuard).
I do this because I want to access all of my ESXi VMs from WAN.
I'm thinking Fedora Server because it has roling-release, so I don't have to reinstall, I guess? But I want it to be very stable, because if it fails I lose access to ALL my VMs.
I'm not sure I would agree for arch if the OP wants low maintenance. I've never run it myself, but the way I've heard arch described is the further you go without regular updates the more likely you are to have a problem when you do update.
Yeah, GPG keys expire, but that happens with all package management systems if left alone long enough. I mean you'd have to maintain like 3 packages (linux, wireguard-tools, archlinux-keyring). In Debian you'd have to maintain the kernel, debian-archive-keyring, and wireguard-tools. Its the same.
I've been very pleased with ublue (Fedora) distros as daily drivers. They are very stable and low maintenance like you prefer. UCore sounds best for this purpose - github.com/ublue-os/ucore
Ubuntu 24.04 is security maintained for 10 years - no major version bumps just security updates the whole time. Installs lean, works great. I use it for exactly this.
You really don’t want a rolling release distro for something like this - major software updates might change the behavior of your software, break your configs, etcetera. Stable distros do as much as they can to make sure that software behaves the same, only porting security fixes.
This way, you don’t really have to touch it except for updates with a nearly nonexistent chance of going wrong (and there’s stuff like unattended-upgrades so updates are automatic) and major upgrades.
You can go several years without a major upgrade just fine - Debian versions are supported for 5 years, and we’re only a few days from getting Trixie, which will last into 2030. New versions come out every two years, and it’s not that hard to upgrade between consecutive ones; I don’t think sitting down on a weekend every two years is that bad.
I kind of hate Ubuntu, but it’s pretty based in this case due to really long support. This might be a really great case for Rocky Linux though, as it also gets 10 years support.
This might be a really great case for Rocky Linux though, as it also gets 10 years support.
That happens to be my plan. I just started rolling out a few but I will have to bulldoze some servers because CloudStack doesn't work in it yet. That means it's upgrade-disco for my 9s in 5 years.
Since 2002 I've been doing yum-cron for updates, but just at the side gig with up to 50 boxes. It used to be absolutely rock solid before systemd wrecked it, but it's still pretty reliable.
Does anyone know how to test a Wayland session with a Kubuntu 24.04 live USB? I'm testing it out now, but I see that it's using an X11 session. I'd like to test how the laptop would work under Wayland instead, before installing Kubuntu or Ubuntu for good.
Some web search lead to this post, which gives quite involved instructions but it's from 2020. Hopefully it's more straightforward now?
I want to try out Wayland from a live USB session of 20.04.1. I tried the steps in https://askubuntu.com/a/988579/428527 which is regarding 17.04 without success (system settings still indicate X11...
Libraries aren't even allowed to stock all the books they need owing to exorbitant license fees, so I don't see a publicly-funded, community cloud getting any purchase this side of a revolution, sadly.
I've been running into this issue on my home's server, the host OS is Proxmox while i have a Debian 12 VM running within it as a VM i have two external HDD's (1tb, 5tb) running in a drive bay which are randomly disconnecting from the server and i can't seem to make heads or tails of the error in my journalctl, i don't think there is corruption on the drives but i'm hesitant to run any checks as i cannot back these up given how full they are.
The drives typically get recogniced under a different device name/ID right away. for example, /dev/sdb1 will now be /dev/sdd1, and that cycle just repeats every time they disconnect
This is kinda frustrating having to re-mount and re-add these to the VM, is there any way i could simply automate the re-mount of these drives and have the VM pick it up right away?
Echoing the other user; I just worked on a data recovery job with your symptoms near identical. Back up your important files while you still have them and get new ones ASAP; preferably some form of SSD.
This is hardware failure, not driver error. Your files will start to corrupt if you wait too long.
Back up your important files while you still have them and get new ones ASAP; preferably some form of SSD
Unfortunately I’m going to have to until pay day for me to replace the drives, and I currently don’t have 6tb to back up to, I was thinking of getting a 10tb western digital NAS drive as it is significantly cheaper than a 10tb SSD.
Granted an SSD would be ideal if I can find one relatively ”cheap” that still has a NAND chip for caching.
1) Do they BOTH disconnect at the same time? 2) Is this connected over USB?
Edit: nevermind, looked closer at the logs. You USB device is resetting as it says right there in the logs. Either that carrier is on the fritz, or you have power saving features on the USB port it's connected to, and it's shutting the port down when it thinks it's inactive.
I’ll give this a shot when I get home, I have an 2.5” SSD that is connected to a regular USB 3.0 port that isn’t shutting off like the HDD’s so I’m skeptical to think that a power saving feature is causing this.
If the 2.5" draws power from that USB port, then that port will always be seen as "in-use" by your machine. If your carrier has its own power source, then it could be seen as idle from time to time.
Usb is weird, it works for external drives to put or retrieve the odd file from an external HDD, but feature creep made it unusable for VMs unless you tweak it to hell and back.
I had a similar issue with a SAS drive In the backplane of a dell server. I thought for sure the drive was failing. Reseated it, cleaned the ports, ran some tests, just kept failing without any obvious signs why it was. Replaced it with a spare and same issue. That seemed very unlikely, so I put the old drive in another slot and its still running just fine going on 2 years without an issue. If you have another toaster give it a try.
The market is rife with cheapo junk tech. Ive seen several crapo off brand drive toasters fail, so thats possible. I don't know the brand of yours so I can't speak to them.
It could also just be the power supply for the toaster is crapping out, or doesn't provide enough amperage. Those power supplies dont always keep providing the same amount of power forever, sometimes it drops over time, and that could be the cause too. Or they could be poorly made, meaning they probably drop in even short time periods.
If you have another power supply with the same voltage and higher amperage, you could try that. You could also try running only one drive in there and see if it keeps failing, if no issues, you could try the other drive and see if that one has issues. If that one doesn't have issues either it could indicate power issues.
Hi there, I'm about to organize an install party for my local community with the help of two other Linux enthusiasts. Has anyone ever done that here? Do you have any tips on which distro to install or what people absolutely need to know before leaving the room?
On the distro side I'm thinking fedora or Linux mint buy I have no experience with the latter, it just seems very beginner-friendly.
I'm also planning to start with a quick presentation on what is linux and the basis (distribution, package manager, root, ...).
Also, I don't know how much time we need (I guess it depends on how many people show up but we'll certainly limit to 10 or so per party).
@OP, I'd be prepared for very few people to show up. I've only taken part in one install party and we had five people turn up the whole evening, and two of them decided not to go for it.
For the distro try MX Linux, they have a version for latest HW (the AHS version) and a standard version, even a 32bit one. It is based on Debian, always up to date, no complicated systemd, snap, flatpak, etc. It is using Xfce that can easily be setup with a bottom bar with menu, windows button and systray icon like Windows.
I'll have my first Install Party next week. I will install Linux Mint because it is easy and well documented. I'll bring a laptop with a clean install. So I can teach some basics while the installations are running.
Fedora, like other distros, keep multiple previously known-good copies available to boot. If you have an issue with one after an update, just boot to the last one prior to boot and rerun updates.
This issue can happen with any distro, though rare.
It was either failing before grub or wasn't in the list, I can't remember now but I know rollbacks were not a possibility. If I remember correctly I had to reboot once after the install, then update, and then reboot once again to have the updated system boot.
This issue can happen with any distro, though rare.
I've used Linux for about 15 years, and that was the only time a fresh install crapped out on me.
agreed on Mint. Fedora seems to be more on the new, cutting edge side while Mint is stable and reliable. Much more beginner friendly because there's less likely to be errors or niche issues, at least in my experience.
great to hear! I love install parties. Mint, Fedora are awesome but bring some MX Linux and or Antix for older hardware! And dont forget those with only Ubuntu in their mouth 🙂
Also if you can take the time to give a little info on paper like, where is the updater, if they're waiting for more you can show very little CLI (but i wouldnt it scares the ppl of 7 times out of 10)
absolut basics is:
how to install stuff from software manager
where to find our own files
usual distro management from GUI
if they show signs for more knowledge throw some easy CLI (file management, tarball install)
Depending if your crowd is computer litterate or not.
Anyone new to a subject gains their confidence (or not) if you're confident (or not)
So, I'd suggest picking 1 distro to install,.and make sure you're familiar with it.
Have multiple copies of the installer ready so you're able to get things running in parallel and then you're 75% ready.
Also be prepared for people turning up with all their cherished photos on their laptop not understanding what you're about to do, so they'll say they're happy for you to install a new OS and then be upset that pictures of Fluffy aren't there any more...
If possible it might help to have a couple demo PCs out so that they and try different desktop environments. Some might be more enthusiastic if they can not only play around with it when it's up and running (and gives people something to do while your helping others) but also if the DE matches their "workflow better" it also gives you a chance to show them how to do common tasks. Maybe different demos have different "suites", like here's the gaming demo, here's regular, productivity, etc
I agree with some of the other posts, I'd stick with 1 distro (whichever all the helpers are most comfortable with) so that you can speak confidently about it, and decrease the chances of something going wrong and you having to break out Google and the terminal. A DE is an easier choice to explain that different distros affecting and impacting things they can't see. Especially if you might have to provide tech support during the beginning. Maybe just say a throw away line or 2 about there being different distros, just like there's different kinds of cheese. Still same thing at its core, just different options.
I also recommend a couple spare external hard drives for them to back up their files.
I'd maybe do just a brief overview at the beginning. And go more in depth afterwards so they don't get overloaded.
Suggestion: get the most visually different Linux distros you can. Set up demo machines with each different desktop environment. Leave them out and available for people to try each and see what they like. If you aren’t netbooting the installs, leave a bowl of cheap flash drives with the distros they are trying by the demo machines. Let people play with each one and describe what they want. Then when install time comes, go nuts.
Linux Mint is a really good choice. I recently tried OpenSUSE and ran into all kinds of issues that I didn't have with Mint. Hardware issues were the only issues I had with Mint. I prefer Xfce to Cinnamon though, preferably with the DesktopPal97 theme.
That is the extent of the help I can provide.
EDIT: Oh also, check that their hardware supports Linux. The glorious Arch wiki has that information available for a lot of distros.
I've never run an installfest, but I've been to my university's Linux Users Group installfests, and here's what they did: - Brought USBs with Fedora and OpenSUSE, which are their standard noob recommendations. Personally, I've used Debian for a long time, but I can get why Debian might not be something they want to recommend for noobs. - Be there to help them - If they're a bit squeemish about it, have them install in a VM software like VirtualBox on Windows or something like UTM on macOS.
Also, I'd recommend you bring extra USB peripherals in case the internal devices need a little bit of work; bring some extra mice, keyboards, and ethernet adapters. You hopefully won't need any of them, but they'll certainly make life easier if you do.
As for time, I'd imagine doing the basic install and ironing out some (not all) of the kinks probably takes less than it takes for a group to stat D & D characters, if that's a helpful comparison for you.
You can encourage your target audience to back up their important data upfront in order to save them a couple of hours at the beginning of your party. But also try to bring plenty of external drives as others here have suggested already.
tldr: For Linux adoption it would be better for devs to focus on 2 ("main") distros which are very similar to Windows and macOS and then 2-3 further ("big") distros which give a bit more room to experiment. All the other distros create confusion and analysis-paralysis for the user who wants to switch or wants to help others to do the switch.
Edit because some people got emotional and I was being imprecise:
Disclaimer: I dont want to dictate any foss dev, I understand that "Linux" isnt a company. By "Linux" in this post I only ment the desktop OS for personal and work use.
--- (sorry for the long paragraph, i ranted and brain dumped the idea)
I see a problem: Even "stable" distros like Debian and big and "fully developed" DEs like KDE or GNOME arent ready for the majority of the users switching from windows. Missing software compatibility and the need to fall back on the commandline are just some of the problems. The biggest one is the confusion for the average user: They google "install Linux" and then need to do research for at least 30minutes, figuring out which of the popular distros is the right one for them. If decided, then (depending on the distro) they then have to choose the DE.
Its a sinilar problem to the adoption of the Fediverse: You are expected to decide what instance you want to be part of. This makes it also very hard for a linux enthusiasts to convince/help install a distro for a family member, as you dont know their preferenced or how they use their Win/Mac machine. So either you as an expert have to observe and then do research on what distro+DE fits the usecase or the enduser themselves need to distro-hop, which is obviously not happening.
Now you are thinking: But just install Linux Mint and they probably do most of the things in their Browser anyways.
But in my experience the switch of potentially the browser, the mail-client and ontop of that the OS is a pretty tall ask for an average end user. So the whole switching thing becomes a multi year operation where they first switch the software they use to FOSS one. Which is a tall order and it makes it even harder to explain and convince someone. Heck, it already takes multiple days to get my grandma up to speed after the change Win10 -> Win11, because some buttons moved and the context menue looks different.
Now my utopian idea: If there were only a handful of popular distros+DEs, one could map them on a 2D-plane or even on a spectrum of "fixed, you have to adapt" to "flexible, you have to adjust the settings". Mac users could switch to a distro which is quite fixed (comparable to macOS). This fixed distro should out of the box be close to the mac experience. With windows the same.
Very very rough prototype of the spectrum to visualize my idea. I dont know enough about it but tried anyways:
flexible
Windows 10
MacOS
fixed
If then most of Linux Devs (from Kernel to distro to UI to software) mostly focus on the 4-5 main distros, then they would get more stable and they could be made to behave closer to their proprietary counterparts.
This then could make the switch from Mac/Win so much more easy because:
The distro is closer to the old proprietary OS. So the enduser just has to learn other "new" software, the OS doesnt demand a learning curve but just replicates the Win/Mac experience.
The decision which distro to use is easier, as there are the main ones which are easy to choose because they are distinct from one another.
Disclaimer: No, i am no expert, I probably dont know enough of the technical side, I just wanted to share the enduser experience. Obviously there will always be countless distros by enthusiasts who tinker with their dozends of dev-friends for their personal-perfect distro. There will always be the people who deliberately do some frankensteined distro, and I am not here to forbid any of this. The confusing diversity of all the options is just not helping the wider public.
I've seen this opinion voiced quite a few times for the last 28 or so years I've been a Linux user.
Guess what? It's free and open source software. People work on what they feel like when they feel like if they feel like. You can't mandate "let's just have a couple of distros, think of the public!". It doesn't work like that. Yes, life is not perfect.
Furthermore, Linux (as a whole) is not a for-profit project, or a singular organization.
Desktop Linux is far from it's only purpose, and many of the devs are far more interested in their own use-cases: servers, embedded systems, supercomputers, phones, special purpose OSs. Wikipedia even has a page for the wide range of use beyond desktops and servers. So we can't simply treat devs as a unified group with a common goal like we can generally do with Microsoft, Apple, Google, Steam, etc. unless you pick a particular distro!
Agree! I dont want to dictate anyone and I understand that my rant wont change anything.
It was more about the hypothetical optimum "if we one wanted to optimize for user-share of the desktop OS market", then there should be fewer but better distros.
My feeling on this is that or the "general public desktop" use case we have to defer to corporate supported distros (RedHat, Ubuntu, Suse), because they have to work with hardware vendors that are typically averse to the idea of sharing driver code, and you have to make sure your desktop runs smoothly on your average PC.
No, I dont suggest that there should be another new distro. The existing ones are pretty good at the goal of being userfriendly, at least some of them like Linux Mint
But mint wouldn’t be possible without the work that the Ubuntu community puts into making a stable and polished distribution. And Ubuntu wouldn’t be possible without the Debian community who put in the effort to make the distribution the best for their usage.
I guess its in the nature of open source. However really need to get on top of the search results of "install linux". I like the End of 10 campaign, however i also have just noticed that in their install guide they don't specify where to get Linux exactly just
Download the operating system you want to install. Search for Linux distributions for beginners to get some suggestions.
It is a problem if the goal is to increase the "personal desktop OS marketshare".
But diversity is a good thing for itself I agree. I have the feeling that it is a bit sad that it seems that there isnt one or two "main" distros, which one could recommend that tech illiterate family member.
The problem isn’t diversity of distributions. The problems are people who go on describing history of GNU/Linux when a newbie asks them what distribution to start with; and ‘top 10 Linux distributions’ articles which litter the Internet. Just the other day someone shared a link to Distrochooser, a website which gives newbies ten distributions to pick from.
When a newbie asks about Linux, point them at Linux Mint Cinnamon Edition and that’s it. Or at most ask if their primary use-case is playing games in which case recommend Bazzite. That solves the ‘problem’ of distribution proliferation.
I switched to LMCE when Win 10 becoming unsupported started being announced. I fucking love it. Sure it was different from what I was used to, but it worked, right away. I was able to install software that did what I needed with 0 hassle with very few exceptions and now I'm used to it. I also have no urge to distro hop, but I'm glad that the people who want to can.
I think this is a great unpopular opinion. TL:DR; In a similar sense to Lemmy/Fediverse vs. Reddit, the diversity of setups and software with some common elements is part of the point.
::: spoiler the rest of my long comment
Many of the dev teams have different philosophies and aims, and they aren't being paid to work together, let alone if they're receiving any money at all.
Ubuntu kind of was the normie out-of-the-box distro previously, but people always had a bone to pick with Canonical, be it with systemd, their Amazon ad stuff or with snaps.
On the gaming side, Valve helped immensely with the commercial aspect, boosting tireless efforts by community developers of projects like DXVK and Wine to make Linux gaming viable. Valve was trying long before the Steam Deck. In 2013 they released the Linux Steam Client and their port of Portal. Later they released the Steam Machine which wasn't too successful but along with the Steam Controller was a precursor to the Deck. Now with arch-based HoloOS, Proton, as well as the sandbox system, games built for Windows can easily be made to work on most Linux distros without worrying about library dependencies or other issues that were common from the way various distros are built and managed.
From an enduser perspective, as long as you can access the apps you want and do the things you want to with your computer, it's mostly the look of the desktop environment rather than anything under the hood that matters to most people. The big ones are GNOME, KDE, Cinnamon, XFCE, MATE. Perhaps user guides could be made to better transition people to not feel lost, but there are both legitimate reasons (like accessibility) and others as a matter of taste to select a particular desktop environment.
Thank God you are not forbidding anyone from working on their own distros.
Can you elaborate on how we are going to get Ubuntu and Fedora developers to work on Debian and Arch instead? Are we going to buy out IBM and Canonical?
FOSS developers don't develop distros. Distro maintainers package that software into distros. Linux, KDE, GNOME, systemd, GNU software etc are just single pieces of the puzzle developed individually.
The distro is closer to the old proprietary OS. So the enduser just has to learn other “new” software, the OS doesnt demand a learning curve but just replicates the Win/Mac experience.
There's always a learning curve with new things (software or otherwise). In case of Win why would we want to go back in time in usability? E.g. Cinnamon and KDE are far superior in UX compared to Windows. Also in Linux distros you can actually fix problems unlike in windows.
I've been using Linux as a daily driver since 2018 (thanks Valve and Proton) and in my experience things just work (if they are supported) and thing like headset don't just randomly stop working because reasons unlike in windows. In windows you then run some troubleshooter that can't fix it, reboot several times while praying to whatever gods you like and hope for the best. If that doesn't help you start searching online and only find vague instructions that might help but no solutions.
Missing software compatibility
What compatibility? If user insists on running some windows only software it's expected to run into problems.
the need to fall back on the commandline are just some of the problems.
So? Even windows and macOS has a command line. It's easier to help with problems if you instruct them to run some command (though running random commands of the web is not really a good idea security wise) then trying to navigate them to some gui which might not exist in their distro. Even in windows users are told to run commands in the command line to try and fix problems e.g. sfc /scannowand dism <whatever>.
Now you are thinking: But just install Linux Mint and they probably do most of the things in their Browser anyways.
In AD 2025 this is true in most cases. People just use social media, some webmail, youtube, read news etc. The OS is just there to start the web browser.
What you say could be boiled down to: If just everybody concentrated on making quality software for Windows, we could have much more quality software for Windows.
Your view is common but irrational. The concept is described by Linus Torvalds as "Scratch your own itch". The richness and diversity of Linux distros is a strength not a weakness.
If you want to make a Barbie themed distro you can. And if you want to, why should anyone try to prevent you? If development was concentrated around fewer distros, it is far from a sure thing this development would go in the direction you would personally want. You would just have fewer options.
You're laboring under the common misconception that enticing windows and macos users is the objective. It's not.
For anyone involved in any FOSS project (linux or otherwise), your objective is to make your project the best it can be. In this context the endless variety of distributions and their philosophies is a great strength.
It's the same thing with trying to make the fediverse more popular. I'm glad people have found their way to communities they're happy with, but things were just fine before.
It's not wrong. If the only objective of Linux were to steal users from Windows or Mac, becoming a homogeneous dictatorial OS is the way to do it. Most people don't care about choice, and in fact having to choose is an anti feature. Apple's success proves this, but companies like Microsoft for the same reason: it's all a boring dystopia of sameness.
Linux's strength is diversity. It's both the only functioning communism on the planet, and the best evolutionary testbed for software. It's great for people who value freedom and choice; it's mostly a confusing mess for everyone who don't give a single shit how computers work, or which style that use - they want to be given something that works OOTB and always have it work the same way. They want to be told what to do, because honestly they can't be arsed to figure it out. This doesn't imply anything at all about the kind of people they are, they just aren't interested in computers.
I give no shits about how a car works; I don't care how many HP it has, I don't want to assemble and decide on every single component. I don't even like driving - it's just time out of my day which demands all of my attention, and which I'd rather spend doing something else. I absolutely hate the car buying experience - taking days to test drive and decide. I'd be just as happy to be able to look up "best car this year at this price point" and buy that.
For a great many people, computers are like cars are to me: a necessary evil.
So: it's not a bad expectation that Linux adoption would dramatically increase if it became a monopoly of software. If all the Gnome developers would stop wasting their time and work on KDE instead. (See how that sounds when you swap out "X11" and "Wayland" for "Gnome" and "KDE"? I see people making this argument all. The. Time.) But it'd become a lesser ecosystem.
How the Hell do people who think like this function in the supermarket where they have to make choices between many different breads for example?
I assume that under normal circumstances. you are intelligent enough to handle making a choice and have just been brainwashed by Microsoft and Apple into thinking that choice in an operating system is a bad thing.
Sorry if that comes off as aggressive, but the learnt helplessness of it makes me very angry.
You've been living off Nescafé your whole life, and your friend told you there's a whole world of artisanal types coffee out there. Your friend told you to try single origin -- robusta or arabica -- from Brazil, Columbia, Indonesia, Etiopia, and other regions, each with its own characteristics, whatever your palate prefer.
When you ran out of coffee, you went to the store. All that choices overwhelm you. Your friend was busy that day, and all you were told was just to pick whatever you like. At the same time, your body's already craving some caffeine, and you just need something for that. Well, there's that Nescafé you're already familiar with. So you just went with what you already know and love. After all, you don't know if you're gonna like what your friend recommended.
Yeah. but you're going to pick one like you've been recommended, try it and see if you like it. If not, you won't get it again and you'll try something else. There might be a moment of indecisiveness but it's not hard. If that overwhelms you, how do function in modern society?
You'd be surprised at how a lot of people function in a society. People taking up college majors without knowing about these studies. People getting expensive fashion items because their friends wear them. Some people even have kids just because they're told to.
Back to the coffee analogy, I'm sure you'd try the artisanal stuff when your friend have it served to your face. When you know 'what you're supposed to get', you may face uncertainty, especially with the fact you may have to go out of your way to get it. Perhaps you'd try it out and actually like it. Perhaps you'd still prefer your Nescafé as that complexion doesn't suit you and you're more familiar with that basic miserable taste.
Its like restaurants . you could go and some menu items you like and some you won't like. asking for a recommendation from the waiter is a pretty good bet.
I have to interject: It is not like bread, as it is a bigger commitment (as I dont want to distrohop for longer than a week) and also it is more complex to create an OS than to create a bread (so more manpower is needed). Choice is a good thing. But too much choice can be bad. Imagine someone is directing a "linux curious" person to distrowatch. There the newbie will be overwhelmed. Maybe not and he just clicks on a distro and tries it. Probably a bad idea as the change from his previous (corporate) OS is a big change already, now the newbie uses a distro which probably doesnt fit his needs.
My case is that, like with the fediverse, the different options hinder the wider adoption, as potential new users have a problem with it during onboarding. Which is a difficult time as is. Even for someone who is switching from Windows to MacOS, two polished and widely adopted OSes, they are gonna have a hard time. Now add the choice from dozens of distros and the very vocal linux community and the switch is impossible for many potential new linux-users.
I'd like to say that I am not brainwashed, I am currently using Debian+KDE in Dualboot wuth Windows and Linux Mint for the selfhosting server. (Yes I know, this is the wrong distro for a server, it was my first contact with linux so I just picked the most polpular among newbies. Which is kind of the point of the whole thread.)
I'm sorry, but the process is exactly the same. Pick one you've been recommended, pick one you like the look of, or pick one at random to try it. With pretty much every distro having a live environment, you don't need to install it to try it out. Hell, if you use distrosea, you don't even need to download it to try it. It's not rocket science, it's just that people are conditioned to think there shouldn't be choice in an operating system. I suppose it's fairer to say it's more like a car. See which ones you like the look of, try them out and make a decision.
tldr: For Linux adoption it would be better for devs to focus on 2 (“main”) distros which are very similar to Windows and macOS and then 2-3 further (“big”) distros which give a bit more room to experiment. All the other distros create confusion and analysis-paralysis for the user who wants to switch or wants to help others to do the switch.
This is a mythical man-month fallacy. If everyone who works on distributions focuses on just a handful of them, that does not mean development will go any faster or lead to better outcomes.
Also observe that majority of work which ends up in GNU/Linux systems is outside of distributions. And this work often ends up quite focused.
Linux Mint is not harder for Grandma than windows 10 was. Granny just is used to use windows. Same with children. With less tech people when talking about Linux or choices, I just talk and choose Mint. If they evolve, they will know better. (btw, This is exactly the path that old-schoolers take to become Mint users .)
When you come from world business models, efficiency, where marketing sacrifices all the values for profit, your ideas look rational. However, ideological point of view, does Linux necessary need those people ( who obviously needs Linux )? This is a free world, you can choose exploitation, abuse and inefficiency if you want - Microsoft or Apple.
You've given it a lot more thought than the average person pointing this out, so thanks, but ultimately the same stuff that makes Linux and Fediverse good is what prevents most people from adopting them, you can't really have it both ways, and when you try you just end up with the worst of all worlds like Canonical with Ubuntu and it's enshittification, GNOME with their extreme vision causing mass user flight to KDE, or .world having what seems to be a printer of dumb motherfuckers in any comment section.
I feel like there really are just 2 or 3 main distros for Linux adoption. Every article, forum, discussion, etc... it's always Mint, followed by either Fedora or Ubuntu. IMO distro is less important for converts than desktop environment.
I think the most important thing for adoption is actually little quality of life stuff.
The first question during installation should be "are you new to Linux" and if you select yes it doesn't ask you about file systems or partitions it just installs the goddamn operating system with a default configuration, and casual friendly software.
Photo and video thumbnails that just work.
An idiot proof way to get a video player with support for every video codec.
More GUI based "intermediate" applications. If Grandpa has to figure out samba config files just so he can open up his photos on his laptop he's going to second guess his decision.
An idiot proof way to get a video player with support for every video codec.
Is this really still a problem? I haven't used anything but Gentoo (and some Arch) for 18 years, so for me it hasn't been a problem for a long, long time. By now it should be clear that these patents are unenforceable and distros, especially non-corporate ones should just ignore them.
Kinda. It's not hard, but it's also not idiot proof.
On Fedora for example you just need to use RPM Fusion instead of the standard Fedora repos. The problem is that you need to know that you need to use RPM Fusion.
Fedora is a pretty common recommendation to new users (with good reason it's excellent) but plenty of casual users will run into that problem and decide that videos don't work right on Linux.
Your problem is that you're starting from the wrong premise: the primary goal of most people working on Linux is not to make more people switch to it, strange as that may sound, it's to create an operating system that they personally want to use. Which can mean a lot of different things, depending on the person. So it's inevitable that there are a lot of different distros, and the only reason there aren't even more is that most of the one-man shows that don't attract many users peter out and vanish after a few months or years.
I've personally always been of the opinion that it's great to have so many different options, and i also never understood why people get so stressed about choosing a distro. You can always switch to something else later if you find something better, but first you need to find out your likes and dislikes about a distribution to begin with. Pewdiepie said in his linux video "just pick one!", and that's how i went about it as well. When i saw an LTT video about trying linux instead if windows 11, they recommended PopOS, so that's what i chose. Ended up trying a bunch of different ones later, and as of right now i'm on Void linux.
There need to be a handful of distros with less settings, being more "fixed".
I personally like to being able to set everything how I like it.
But it just isnt necessary to have THAT many actively developed distros. If devs could drop 1/4 of the distros and redirect their efforts on bigger projects, those would profit massively.
There are two negatives to the “fragmentation” of Linux.
1 - application compatibility
2 - paralysis of choice
For the first, we need to put as much focus as possible on Flatpak and we need ONE independent App Store where app devs can distribute and users can subscribe.
For the second, the Linux community needs to agree on one or two distros that we agree should always be the recommendation for new users. I always recommend Mint. We could maybe have one more specifically for gamers.
But, overall, diversity is the great strength of Linux. Not only can it adapt to every niche but the is competition and innovation between distros. The entire ecosystem drives itself forward in a way that a “unified” platform cannot.
Thanks, you condensed my thoughts very well. The point with flatpak is very important. I used discovery by kde but it seemed not as polished as it should be. Not to say that there are better "stores". I hope the inclusion of flatpak/flathub into distros/DEs gets improved significantly and gets adapted wider.
I agree with the sentiment because it is a pain to find a distro which you want. But the reason for this is that Linux has given you the luxury to pick and choose what distro and DE you want. When you go to Windows or Mac, people just accept that it is what it is.
That being said, I will blame the Linux community to some extent for promoting "complicated" (like Arch) or too barebones distros (like Debian) to newbies. The shock of moving from Windows to Linux is already a hurdle for most. When you add the need for tinkering and troubleshooting from day one, I can see why people would quit.
We are indirectly focusing on a handful of "distros" as most distros ship with KDE, Gnome or something similar.
True! And for an enthusiast who wants to spend only a few days on finding a distro and setteling into it, like me, its nice to have only three (big) DEs, which you can test and choose in one day and then are set for the further journey.
Now "bundle" a distro to each DE and a newbie would have that experience for the whole distro-finding-experience
I am thinking this could be neat for people new to Linux to help them select a first distribution.
A few more points:
There are a lot of choices
There are also a lot of different valuable qualities.
Consequently, there are no distributions that are "good" or "bad".
It is nice to try out things! And trying out things will change what appeals to you.
That said, perhaps you don't want to try out too many things now, instead right now you'd prefer something that just works....
Also, your needs and your capabilities will change over time. If you are a young student who wants to learn programming, a pc gamer, or somebody who likes to learn and understand Linux in detail, they might be different from when you are a busy parent or a young professional which just needs to write job applications!
So, what matches your needs best will likely also change over time.
Finally, the choice of distributions is not an either-either or black-and-white thing. You can run Linux, and on top Windows in a Virtual Machine (basically an entire simulated computer). You also can run another Linux distribution in a virtual machine, which matches a specific use case.
There are too many choices. I’ve tried the chooser and at the end it gave me 9 distributions to choose from (i.e. nine distributions with no marked negatives). I’ve tried again and it gave me 13 distributions to choose from. This is absolutely useless for someone who knows nothing about Linux.
If someone selects ‘I have little or no knowledge about Linux’ it should go straight to recommending Linux Mint or with no other questions. Or maybe Bazzite if they selected gaming as main use case.
And if I select Windows experience, why doesn’t it mark Ubuntu with a negative as it has more of a MacOS feel?
last time it got posted here people dismissed it. I don't get why it got a positive reaction this time. It's a kinda cool app but also completely impractical. If you already know if you want systemd on your system or not, you aren't a noob and you already know what you want, or at least know what to search for.
This thing is more like one of the "What Power Ranger are you?" type of surveys.
I don't generally recommend opensuse. The package management always made me go back to arch or debian. I would recommend trying it if you have a spare pc or space for a vm though.
That's a poor statement to make without giving any evidence. I use both Debian and Opensuse for decades in production environments. Both have very mature package management tools. Can't remember that they have failed me ever. Back in the days Opensuse's early zypp had problems, but that was solved in 2008.
I feel like I'm googling the wrong thing since I'm mostly getting start menu replacements and not a supplement. I want to click the ps button or a keyboard button and have a grid pop up over my apps that displays pinned apps/games that I can scroll through and launch with my controller or keyboard. Does something like that this exist?
Can't you just create a folder with links / shortcuts to all the applications and games and just open said folder with a click (or some kind of shortcut)?
Exactly! I harbor nostalgia for the old Windows 3 desktop icon grid, so I open a file manager window pointing to ~/Desktop and display the *.desktop shortcuts there as icons. This is done automatically when gdm starts. My file manager is PCManFM, which is a rip-off of nautilus. Double-clicking on an icon opens the shortcut — be it to a terminal or a graphical application. I have to alt-tab to the PCManFM window of course, so I need the keyboard. Then I have to double-click with the mouse. It’s keeping both hemispheres of the brain active: subject/verb, left/right. Presumably you can map your game controller's buttons to keyboard equivalents like , , and (or map your game controller's buttons to PCManFM's hot key config), which would allow you to navigate the PCManFM icon grid.
I want a dock/panel that goes away and pops up based on a shortcut, like slides on screen or pops up on top, rofis prob the move, like ddterm but for games
Rofi is certainly a great choice, though it relies on scripts to customize it to your needs. These scripts can be anywhere from extremely basic to insanely complex but you have to create them. Personaly I use it as: * an app launcher * a clipboard manager * an infobar to show things like the date/time, memory usage, disk space, battery level, wifi signal… * an omnibar to perform an internet search, quick units conversions * a calculator for simple math * a bookmark manager (list, open, edit, add, remove) * a password/2FA token manager (list, edit, add, remove, autofill internet fields) * a wifi manager * a vpn manager
While I try to share on this blog stuff that are a little bit more confidential than I think they should be, we will talk today about a famous program: rofi .
Profitez des vidéos et de la musique que vous aimez, mettez en ligne des contenus originaux, et partagez-les avec vos amis, vos proches et le monde entier.
On 9 July, Austrian parliamentarians passed a highly controversial bill legalising the deployment of state-sponsored spyware, known as the Federal Trojan (Bundestrojaner), to enable the interception of encrypted communications.
The Bundestrojaner bill would give law enforcement agencies the power to install malware on private devices (such as smartphones or laptops) to monitor encrypted messaging applications.
It would do so by amending several laws, including: the State Security and Intelligence Service Act; the Security Police Act; the Telecommunications Act;the Federal Administrative Court Act; and the Judges’ and Public Prosecutors’ Service Act.
The plan sparked widespread concern among privacy advocates, cybersecurity experts, and numerous civil society organisations.
The day before the vote more than 50 organisations, including Statewatch, wrote to legislators.
A joint letter (pdf) called on them to “vote against this dangerous instrument of state surveillance and against a historic step backwards for IT security in the information society.”
Legislators in Austria’s lower parliamentary house, the National Council, voted in favour of the bill, 105 to 71.
The interior minister Gerhard Karner, described it as a “special day for security.” Support for the bill came from the governing parties – the conservative Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP), the Social Democratic Party (SPÖ), and most members of the liberal NEOS party.
Two NEOS MPs, Stephanie Krisper and Nikolaus Scherak, broke ranks to vote against the measure, alongside the Greens and the far-right Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ).
On 17 July, the Federal Council – the upper house of the legislature – voted by 40 to 19 not to object to the bill, completing the parliamentary process.
The bill now awaits unanimous approval from the governments of Austria’s nine states before it can become, a constitutional requirement triggered by the inclusion of certain provisions on the administrative judiciary.
Nevertheless, opposition parties and civil society organisations have said they will file legal challenges against the measures.
Government officials insist that the spyware will be restricted to targeting messaging apps and that broader system-wide searches will not be permitted.
However, technical experts have repeatedly warned that such limitations are practically unenforceable in real-world applications.
Spyware with the capability to intercept encrypted communications inevitably provides access to a wide array of personal information stored on the device, including photos, files, emails, contacts, and location data.
Critics note that this effectively bypasses all existing security protections, raising serious questions about the proportionality, necessity, and legality of such intrusive surveillance powers.
The current legislation includes some procedural safeguards, in an attempt to respond to critiques of previous state trojan proposals.
These include an extension of the review period for the Legal Protection Commissioner (from two weeks to three months), and transferring the authority to approve spyware deployment from a single judge to a panel of judges at the Federal Administrative Court.
However, the Legal Protection Commissioner is part of the Ministry of the Interior – the very same ministry that authorises and deploys the spyware – raising significant concerns about impartiality and conflicts of interest.
Furthermore, the intelligence agencies themselves conduct the mandatory trustworthiness assessments for the Commissioner and their deputies, further undermining the potential for effective and independent scrutiny of surveillance activities.
The bill was approved in the National Council despite extensive opposition from a broad range of civil society groups, professional bodies, and public institutions – including bar associations, universities, municipalities, press freedom advocates, and medical organisations.
Following the vote, civil society organisations describing the law as institutionalising state hacking by deliberately exploiting software vulnerabilities.
In a joint statement, they said that the government should be working to close these gaps to protect citizens from cyber threats.
The Bundestrojaner has a long and contentious legislative history in Austria. Initial attempts to introduce similar surveillance powers date back to 2016, but they were repeatedly rejected or delayed due to sustained criticism and concerns about privacy violations.
In 2019, Austria’s constitutional court struck down an earlier version of the law, ruling that surveillance of encrypted communications constituted a serious breach of fundamental privacy rights protected under the constitution.
Austria is set to legalise the use of highly-intrusive spyware by state authorities. The government has justified the law in the name of monitoring encrypted messaging applications.
This doesn't help with the type of exploits they're talking about (eg; Pegasus). Those gain access to your device itself, thus giving access to all apps on your device.
And just like that Austrian citizens will be the target of every hacker group on the world as the state malware will be a weak link in every device's security layers and once they crack it, they'll have deep access to thousands or maybe even millions of people's devices depending on ho w broadly police decide to deploy it (likely on every device of every person who is arrested, detained, or has any contact with police for any reason like perhaps just visiting prisoners or entering government buildings to renew a passport.)
deep access to thousands or maybe even millions of people's devices depending on ho w broadly police decide to deploy it
Maybe read the article before you post?
I get it, germans have tried to get Bundestrojaner through again and again, only to have explained why it's a bad idea. But still, it's not about mass surveillance.
I'm going with how police work currently in the US as a baseline. In the US, many jurisdictions require that you surrender your phone as a blanket policy, and if you refuse to unlock it, many have software to hack it. This has been determined generally to be legal as simply being detained or entering restricted areas is considered probable cause for a search, just like a physical search of your person or purse or whatever is legal.
Assuming Austria does something similar and now they additionally can install illicit malware, I think they absolutely will as a blanket policy.
Unfortunately, it has become the norm in the UK and much of the EU as well. I don't know Austria well, but ive heard it has a strong right-wing leaning in the police force, like most. Police will always prefer control due to the nature of the job and humans will always prefer easy solutions to their goals.
sounds like it's not supposed to be a general use tool, but instead for counterintelligence only:
The Ministry of the Interior anticipates submitting around 30 requests per year for the surveillance of unencrypted messages and between 5 to 15 requests for encrypted communications. If there are 30 instances of encrypted message monitoring within a single calendar year, the Interior Minister is obligated to inform a permanent subcommittee of the National Council, which is the directly elected chamber of the Austrian Parliament.
Each surveillance method will require case-by-case approval from the Federal Administrative Court. The process involves a legal protection officer from the Ministry of the Interior, who will have three business days to respond to any request. Following that, a panel of three judges from the Federal Administrative Court will review the case. In urgent situations, an individual judge may grant approval, supported by a 24-hour judicial service system.
If you have Windows, they can absolutely coordinate with Microsoft for stealth installs. If you’re using Linux, it’ll be a little tougher, but not impossible. Your processor (and probably bios) have government backdoors built in.
Really your best defense is them not caring enough to monitor you at that level. If you’re a target for surveillance by an intelligence agency, there’s absolutely nothing you can do.
The interior minister Gerhard Karner, described it as a “special day for security.”
This might be a Hollywood association with German accent, but feels like a really ominous quote. Like that sadistic guy in round eyeglasses in the Indiana Jones movie.
Been using the CLI more and more and for whatever reason it gives me more dopamine than using apps with a GUI and I'm curious about what else is out there since I was a windows user til 6 months ago.
Discovering ish and the ability to use alpine linux on my iphone, also has me curious if there is anything useful/fun out there that isn't openssh, ranger, and ffmpeg. (a-shell is still updated and comes with those two by default but doesn't have access to alpine repo and apk, uses its own iphone based thing) Tho im curious about cli tools/apps in general to use on my pc or over ssh, not just those that could be installed on my phone
I mostly use ffmpeg to convert video and compress stuff for size limits (so I can convert before sftp when away from my pc after the render finishes) Ranger file manager on phone since it can easily exit at a path, and yazi with the shell script that lets it exit at whatever path your on on pc.
Will update this list as people comment. - Conversion/Compression: ffmpeg - Email: mutt, neomut - File management: mc, nnn, ranger, yazi, sfm - File editor: vim, neovim - Git: lazygit - Piracy: ani-cli (anime) rip (music) - Pdf Management: pdftk (pdftk-idk, or stapler) - Python: rich, pythondialog, textual - Docker management : lazydocker - Performance monitor: btop, nvtop (nvidia), ncdu (disk usage) - Network management: nmtui - Web browser : browsh (firefox backend) - Video downloader: yt-dlp - Shell scripts: dialog, whiptail - Misc: netpbm (plaintext image creation) If you can't comment this post seems to be bugged for me at least, says I've deleted it and I can't reply to anyone.
inotify-tools has command-line utilities that can be used in a Bash script or a Bash one-liner to make arbitrary things "happen" when something "happens" to a file or directory. (Then the file is opened or written to or renamed or whatever.)
I probably should mention rsync. It's like a swiss army knife for copying files from one place to another. And it supports "keeping files syncronized" between two locations.
Of course, there's tons of stuff that you pretty much can't talk about Bash scripting without mentioning. Sed, awk, grep, find, etc.
Also, I totally relate about the terminal giving more dopamine. I kinda just hate going on a point-and-click adventure to do things like image editing or whatever. To the point that I've written a whole-ass domain-specific-language to do what I want rather than use Gimp. (And I'm working on another whole-ass domain-specific-language to do a traditionally-GUI-app sort of task.)
A bunch of GNU tools have added JSON output and it's so good. Like, GNU column can take tabular data and convert it into JSON really easily. It's like the perfect text stream.
You can save tons of time by adding aliases to your .gitconfig such as 'ga $fname' (where "fname" would be files you want to add) the alias for git add. You can also do the same thing with gc, gs, etc and if youre like me and you write dozens of lines of code a day, it can save you a lot of time.
helix . modal text editor similar to vim, but with less configuration required
Not only less configuration required, but also semantic navigation (jump around the AST directly with simple keybindings). I can't use a code editor without it now.
semantic navigation (jump around the AST directly with simple keybindings).
just searched up abstract syntax tree in helix, and i learned about syntax aware motions. how had i never heard of them before? they look very useful! thanks for mentioning that
Well, seeing them in the list like that rubs me the wrong way. 😅
Both of those come with a CLI, called git and docker respectively, which is the official way of using them. These CLIs might not be particularly sexy, depending on who you ask, but they're decent enough and worth learning, even if you go the lazy* route, since online resources all just explain the official CLIs and you might find yourself one day administering remote systems where you can't install additional software...
I rely on cli tools for a lot of things too. Here's a list:
tmux: terminal multiplexer zsh (with fzf zsh completion): shell fzf: fuzzy finder doas: sudo replacement bat: cat replacement fd: find replacement advcpmv: cp/mv replacement eza: ls replacement zenith: htop replacement trash-cli: trash management neomutt: email client (notmuch is a most recommended addition) neovim (and plugins): text/code editor buku: internet bookmarks manager tut: mastodon client ucollage: image viewer udevil: (un)mounting removable devices and networks without a password magic-tape: youtube search/download and more rofi: used with scripts to do a lot of things pass: password manager yazi: file explorer iwd: wireless manager khal: calendar and webdav sync with vdirsyncer taskjuggler: complete task manager newsboat: feed aggregator fwupd: firmware updater chawan: web browser ncmpcpp: mpd-client duf: disk usage abook: contacts manager
I have some of them detailed here. This GitHub also has a long list.
Feel free to tell them why and help fill us in on whats better lol, im sure no one minds finding better, or is it because youd rather use an app or website?
If you aren't aware, pbm represents an image with plaintext, which makes it great for when you want to easily create an image with code
I recently learned there is a whole suite of CLI tools which work with the format. Like conversion to/from png, scaling, and overlaying one image on top of another.
Good old nano is something i use a lot, although i am considering finally giving micro a try, heard a lot of good things about it, and i want something with a bit more features in the terminal, but i really hate vim keybinds. I also really like rmpc, which is an mpd client with album art support, though i am not using it anymore at the moment because i realized mpd wasn't really what i was looking for when it comes to music players.
Edit: also want to mention cyanrip. Really good cli cd ripper with a lot sane defaults, easy to use, and in terms of accuracy probably the closest thing to EAC on windows.
s-tui is also great. It's a tui stress testing utility. I still use it every now and then even if it's just to test if my fan curve is actually working by putting some load on the cpu.
I prefer dua over ncdu, specially when called interactively (dua i), since you can explore the results in parallel before it finishes scanning, while it updates asynchronously.
Oh boy. This is a rabbit hole which, once you fall into, there's no coming back out.
There is a world of terminal software. You can, quite reasonably, get entirely rid of X (and Wayland) and live in the console. Honestly, the reason I don't is only because there is no fully competent terminal web browser (although there are some quite good ones), and because anything having to do with graphics like photo management, or vector graphics drawing, is really where GUIs are useful. But for everything else, terminal clients are almost always superior.
Choosing a good terminal emulator is important, and the best one right now is Rio. It's fast, smaller memory footprint, and less CPU use than Wezterm or Kitty, and it supports ligatures, iTerm, and SIXEL graphics.
In that goes tmux, because it works over ssh and having consistent everywhere is handy, because it survives terminal and window manager crashes, and because you can open multiple clients in different windows on the same tmux session.
In that runs zsh, because it's the best shell. It's backwards-compatible to bash, but has a ton of extra features.
I'm conservative about replacing standard POSIX tools with new fad tools, because grep is literally everywhere (even BusyBox) and new things usually aren't; but ripgrep and fd are such nice improvements over grep and find I've been unable to resist. Helix is currently the best text editor. However, having a good familiarity with grep, find, and vi is IMHO critical, because they're the foundations.
My media player is ostui, which is an ncurses SubSonic client with synced lyrics and cover art support. I use catnip for visualization, because it uses less memory and CPU than cava. For task management I use a bespoke script (tdp) that use fzf with todo.txt files. I use gotop for system monitoring.
I try to use chawan for terminal web browsing, and it does do CSS layout better than most, and supports sixel image rendering, but it's often a chore so I mostly browse in Luakit, which is a GUI program.
rook is my secret service tool that uses a KeePassXC DB as the backing store, and provides credentials to everything that needs them.
vdirsyncer syncs my calendar and contracts to a VPS, and thence to my phone
mbsync syncs all of my email from my IMAP server, and I use notmuch to index and tag it
khard is a terminal address book that uses standard vcard directories
lbb is a super-fast address book search tool which also works on vcard directories
khal is a TUI calendar app, which works with vcal directories
aerc, which someone else mentioned, is a fantastic TUI email client that can use notmuch.
tasker is what I use for scheduled cron control; it uses standard crontab files.
devmon and udevil handle automounts of USB media
mosh is a UDP-based ssh, with interruptable sessions and network resilience
mpdris2-rs is the agent I use to hook up various media control tooling to ostui (which supports the mpris protocol) and other players - mpris is a sort of standardized glue for media players.
gomuks is an excellent TUI for Matrix
weechat is a TUI for IRC. I prefer gomuk's interface, but you can get a Matrix plugin for weechat if you want to use only one. I find I often have to restart weechat because otherwise it end up eating all of the memory; there's a memory leak, or something in it.
syncthing-daemon for syncing between almost everything
restic for backups
dinit handles all of my user task management, because systemd is fucking broken for user tasks. dinit is a better init system.
Almost every application I use is a cli or TUI client. The exceptions are the web browser, for reasons I've explained; Jami, which doesn't have a CLI client; Factorio, which is a game; and darktable for photo management. I'll also occasionally open Gimp or Inkscape for graphics, vlc for movies (which I could probably watch in the terminal, now that I think of it), and I usually view PDFs in a GUI client such as mupdf.
My philosophy on software is to use standards wherever possible. I avoid programs that insist on using their own DBs when there's a perfectly good standard, such as ics, maildir, and so on. It's just another form of vender lock-in. Hence notmuch (maildir), khard and lbb (directory of .ics), khal (directory of .vcs), rook (KeePass DB), and so on. This drives most of my tooling choices.
The suggestions in the comments are all nice, but the biggest game changer for me was nushell. Once you understand how it works there is no going back. I have saved so many hours already.
I originally provided this an alternative to the broken AUR packages.
However, it seems that Arch users would rather use broken packages and
keep complaining to me instead of their packager. I spe...
He has a point. Package managers are extremely stupid. Installing stuff on Linux is stupid. We need a 15th standard. Or one making all the existing ones work together.
That's basically what I do on Linux anyway except you have to give the install permissions and occasionally to tar -xyzabc and then build something and then add it to your path and then create a shortcut and then give it an icon.
Reform voters think the new party co-founder is more intelligent, trustworthy, hard-working and principled than the prime minister, suggesting Starmer’s attempts to woo the right aren’t working. Rivkah Brown reports.
Does anyone know if these is an open source and privacy-focused alternative to xTiles? A friend of mine showed me this site where it's like Notion, but more visual and easier to use. It's looks really cool, but I wanted to know if there was something similar that's private and open source.
I looked into Logseq a while and saw comments that it was a little buggy, but that was awhile back, so I'll take a look at it again. Appflowy looks interesting at first glance, so I'll look further into it and see if it's a good alternatie. Affine seems to be interesting as well and could be a contender, as I see they have a vision board.
All these are great suggestions that I'll look further into. Thank you!
I'm setting up a computer with linux mint debian editon, and the computer is going to be used by a lot of people who sign in via AD. I have custom display settings (background, pinned applications, theme, custom menu icon) that I would like to apply to all users, but right now they only show up when I log into the account that I set it up on.
Also, is there a way to get a custom firefox esr config to apply to all users as well? I want to remove pocket and make duckduckgo the default browser.
Side-note: Mozilla is shutting down Pocket, so you might not need to adjust that config. I'm not sure, how they handle disabling it in browsers, but given that the backend has already been turned off, presumably they would disable it even on ESR with some update...
“(1) GENERAL DUTY.—In order to reduce the proliferation of the unlawful sale, distribution, or manufacture (as applicable) of counterfeit substances and certain controlled substances, a provider shall, as soon as reasonably possible after obtaining actual knowledge of any facts or circumstances described in paragraph (2), and in any event not later than 60 days after obtaining such knowledge, submit to the Attorney General a report containing—
“(A) the mailing address, telephone number, facsimile number, and electronic mailing address of, and individual point of contact for, such provider;
“(B) information described in subsection (c) concerning such facts or circumstances; and
“(C) for purposes of subsection (j), information indicating whether the facts or circumstances were discovered through content moderation conducted by a human or via a non-human method, including use of an algorithm, machine learning, or other means.
WTF? We're gonna be required to narc on people struggling with addiction now, even if they're trying to quit? That's bad for everyone involved. I sure won't be hosting nothing in the US again if this passes.
Noooo, AI mods and Admins on every platform will do it for you. You, as a mod, simply have to maintain plausible deniability that you were illiciting more details and not warning people about not sharing info.
You know, just like being trans - keep your questions about everything a secret or you'll be arrested.
In practice, it's impossible to determine the purpose of purchases. If someone talks about their experience of buying from a dealer without further context, you'd have to narc. Or, you open yourself up to legal liabilities.
Besides, people buy on behalf of others all the time. People share with others. Substance use is often not a solitary activity. This law would create a situation where it's risky for you if you do not narc every time.
The bill suggests that violations may be “discovered through content moderation conducted by a human or via a non-human method, including use of an algorithm, machine learning, or other means.” Automated snooping on people’s private correspondence should constitute unlawful search. Fuck that.
Basically, if you've ever posted anything about a controlled substance online, the new Palantir - powered super-surveillance state will hold that data until it's ready to either use it to fuck you harder, or as all they need to fuck you if they don't like you.
No (at least not per the language of the act) . Paragraph 2 which it references does not include cases of possession or purchasing for personal use, or personal use itself etc. You have to have spoken about specifically making or selling fentanyl, meth, or prescription pain meds or stimulants (and falsely claiming to be a doctor).
Trump does a ton of drugs! I know a guy who'd been at parties where he personally witnessed Donald snorting huge, fat lines of cocaine. That's not even counting all of the crack he'd smoke. Enough to kill a horse. He'd send out his people and they'd come back with just pounds of cocaine and crack.
What he really like, though, was Angel Dust. Man, that guy could put away epic amounts of Angel Dust, and then he'd stumble around the room groping anything with legs. I heard that when Donald Trump was on a dust binge he'd break out his stash of the child pornography, drop trou and just start wacking it there in front of everybody. Christ, Donald Trump loves his angel dust and child pornography.
Big piece of this is paragraph 2 referenced, which reads:
“(2) FACTS OR CIRCUMSTANCES.—The facts or circumstances described in this paragraph are any facts or circumstances establishing that a crime is being or has already been committed involving—
“(A) creating, manufacturing, distributing, dispensing, or possession with intent to manufacture, distribute, or dispense—
“(i) fentanyl; or
“(ii) methamphetamine;
“(B) creating, manufacturing, distributing, dispensing, or possession with intent to manufacture, distribute, or dispense a counterfeit substance, including a counterfeit substance purporting to be a prescription drug; or
“(C) creating, manufacturing, distributing, dispensing, or possession with intent to manufacture, distribute, or dispense an actual or purported prescription pain medication or prescription stimulant by any individual or entity that is not authorized, which includes an individual or entity that falsely claims to be a practitioner.
Hmm how long until Hollywood sees this and demands the same of anyone discussing engaging in online piracy?
Also an interesting thought. What if this isn't actually meant to get all drug producers or users talking online but the companies? This could be meant to be used as a threat and a sledgehammer against the tech companies. Basically they pass this, let them rack up not reporting anything for months, years, then come and hit them with a lawsuit demanding internal moderation logs and data and threaten to rake them over the coals for thousands of built up violations BUT then they offer to instead drop all that in exchange for them changing their moderation policies in a certain political way to suit the administration and some token reforms to address the law which won't be scrutinized further if they comply with the political censorship wants.
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