Protecting Science: TIB builds Dark Archive for arXiv - TIB-Blog
Protecting Science: TIB builds Dark Archive for arXiv - TIB-Blog
Research and science are international; it is not for nothing that we speak of international specialist communities.Micky Lindlar (TIB – Leibniz-Informationszentrum Technik und Naturwissenschaften und Universitätsbibliothek)
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Microsoft pushes staff to use internal AI tools more, and may consider this in reviews. 'Using AI is no longer optional.'
Microsoft internal memo: 'Using AI is no longer optional.'
Executive Julia Liuson recently told Microsoft managers to include internal AI tool usage when evaluating employee performance.Ashley Stewart (Business Insider)
Trump's secret police are terrorizing American streets
Trump's secret police are terrorizing American streets
The altercations are growing more tense — especially in Los Angeles.Justin Glawe (Public Notice)
Core inflation rate rose to 2.7% in May, more than expected, Fed’s preferred gauge shows
Core inflation rate rose to 2.7% in May, more than expected, Fed’s preferred gauge shows
The PCE price index was projected to rise 0.1% in May, with the annual inflation rate at 2.3%, according to the Dow Jones consensus.Jeff Cox (CNBC)
looking for a RDP client
I made the jump off windows to EndeavourOS. I work from home most days of the week, and as such RDP to my workstation(laptop on a dock nearby).
I need an RDP client that can authenticate to win11 RDP, and support audio/mic to the session. Being able to span dual-screen is a plus.
I can't install any software on the work PC as I do not want to fall foul of the security team.
RDesktop doesn't support mic input.
Remmina doesn't appear to authenticate to win11 properly.
FreeRDP not updated in 8 years?
FreeRDP not updated in 8 years?
Lolwut?
GitHub - FreeRDP/FreeRDP: FreeRDP is a free remote desktop protocol library and clients
FreeRDP is a free remote desktop protocol library and clients - FreeRDP/FreeRDPGitHub
Alright fine I admit it, I want to learn Linux
I'm just so sick of Microsoft and Google.
But there's two things holding me back:
1) I wanna play Steam games on my PC
2) I am just an amateur hobbyist, not a tech wizard
Is there any hope for me?
A lot of people here have already given good advice.
I shall add my experience, recommendation and some tips (may incidentally repeat some of them).
- If you play some games with kernel level anti-cheat (like Rainbow Six Siege, Apex, Valorant, LoL, Fortnite, Battlefield games, Destiny 2 among others), you will have to stick to dual-boot. Check on ProtonDB for compatibility of games.
I have 500+ games on Steam and pretty much everything I've played has worked so far.
In terms of other software you use, make sure you have alternatives that work on Linux.
- For Photoshop, there's Krita/GIMP.
- For Video editing, there's Kdenlive, DaVinci Resolve, etc.
- For browsing and office apps, there's LibreWolf and LibreOffice.
If you happen to have any software that you don't have a good alternative or that only runs on Windows, then you'll have to stick to dual booting.
- If you do end up dual booting, DO NOT use your external HDD in NTFS to run games on linux. It will work for a while, but you'll constantly have to 'chkdsk' or check disk on Windows every time your HDD is found corrupted.
Also, NTFS is Windows' proprietary filesystem. So, I've heard that using ntfs-fix (chkdsk equivalent on linux) might cause data loss. Not sure how far it's true, but be cautious of using that too.
But otherwise, I believe that just reading files from NTFS drive usually is not a problem.
- If you are NOT dual booting however, you won't have to face this mess. You can backup the data on your HDD somewhere, format it in 'ext4' filesystem for Linux-only use ('Exfat' if you want to share any data with others on Windows/Mac) and restore all your files back to this HDD in ext4. Hope you have extra HDD with enough free space to move your files while you convert disks to ext4. You can also probably use cloud services for backup.
- I've used Ubuntu, Mint, Arch and Fedora.
- Had faced a lot of issues with Ubuntu back in the day, and Snap Steam is a mess. So, avoid it.
- Mint is easy to use, removes snap from Ubuntu and just uses apt, has a great Desktop Environment called Cinnamon, and I'd usually recommend this to someone new, but I wanted to shift from X-11 to Wayland for security reasons and HDR support among others. If Wayland worked well with Mint, I'd still be using it today, but that was the only reason I moved away from it.
- While Arch is nice, it's certainly not for someone new.
- That leaves us with Fedora KDE, which would be my recommendation. It has good security features like SE-Linux out of the box.
The reason I suggest KDE over Gnome is so that you might have an easier transition from Windows to Linux. Once you have a hang of this, you can later use a pen drive to load other distro with other DE like Gnome, XFCE, Cinnamon, Cosmic, etc and test them out by live booting.
- Speaking of pendrives, make sure to always have one with Ventoy installed and the distribution you're using. This will be handy if you want to troubleshoot your system anytime.
And I say Ventoy over others because it makes loading distro easier. You can just drag and drop the ISO files instead of having to burn with Balena Etcher or Rufus everytime.
- Rufus is great, but if you're moving out of Windows, you don't need it.
- And I have seen a lot of people have trouble with using Balena Etcher. So, avoid it.
- Turn off Secure Boot in BIOS. (And maybe also fast boot).
- And if your disk is on RAID instead of AHCI, you might have trouble installing. So, you might want to set your SATA configuration to AHCI mode in BIOS if you face issues.
- If you end up choosing Fedora, you may want to follow this.
Fedora only comes with FOSS by default. So, you'll have to install Nvidia driver and proprietary multimedia Codecs separately by including RPMFusion repo.
- You can download the free and non-free repo files from the RPM-Fusion site(Graphical Setup) and install them through the Software Center. After adding the repo, you might have to enable them in the Settings of Discover Software Center.
Enable all of them except those containing the words 'testing', 'Test', 'Source', 'Debug' and 'google chrome'.
- After that, it's just a few lines you type in the terminal (Konsole by default) for installing driver and codecs. Make sure to update the system and restart first before doing these.
For Nvidia driver, type:
sudo dnf install akmod-nvidia
For optional CUDA support, type:
sudo dnf install xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-cuda
For Video acceleration support, type:
sudo dnf install nvidia-vaapi-driver libva-utils vdpauinfo
For Codecs, type:
sudo dnf swap ffmpeg-free ffmpeg --allowerasing
Steam is also included in the non-free repo. You may install it by typing:
sudo dnf install steam
- Other than these, most applications can now be installed directly from the store as a Flatpak. You can select them in the store between Flatpaks, Fedora managed Flatpaks and Fedora Linux app for a particular one.
- For flatpak apps, you'll see a tick next to the developer if they are verified. So, you can look out for that if necessary.
- Make sure 'Flathub' repo is enabled in the Settings of Discover Software Center for the Flatpak apps to appear.
NOTE: Every time the video driver updates, you will have to do a follow-on update for flatpak runtimes. You might see a bunch of 'Application platform' and 'Freedesktop' stuff which you'll have to install.
If you fail to do this, you might suddenly find flatpak applications not working properly.
- Troubleshooting tips:
- If Steam doesn't launch the first time, type:
__GL_CONSTANT_FRAME_RATE_HINT=3 steam
- If your system is frozen, try switching to TTY by pressing (Ctrl+Alt+F3) and going back to GUI by pressing (Ctrl+Alt+F2)*.
*Could be F1 in some cases. - To check what errors you got during the recent boot,
journalctl -b 0 -p err
Apart from the driver installation and some troubleshooting, you generally won't have to use the terminal if you're averse to it.
- In terms of deGoogling, I'd recommend the following:
- Buy a pixel and install Graphene OS.
Switch to
- Tuta/Proton Mail for email,
- Proton/Tresorit Drive for storage,
- Mullvad (or i, proton) VPN or (Rethink DNS for firewall)
I am not sure if you can use both Rethink and VPN at the same time. I assume there is a way.
- OsmAnd for maps,
- Newpipe for youtube frontend(Grayjay on Linux),
- Bitwarden/KeepassXC for Password management,
- Aegis for TOTP
- Fdroid, Accrescent, Aurora for App store.
- Molly FOSS for Messaging.
Can't forget Zen Browser for best productivity browser. Also Ungoogled Chromium
OP if you want to use AI locally but privately then use Ollama with Open Web UI
Also HuggingChat is an AI Chatbot that can do all kinds of stuff with the 1-tap community extensions, models, and assistants avilable. Website is free with an account. Use as a web app for it to be even better experience
When you are more advanced learn distrobox to add apps only available on other distros natively to your laptop
If you have any questions feel free to ask me whenever
I'd suggest to stay away from Brave for any serious purposes 'cause you never know what shady things they might be doing.
Case in point, they had previously been changing regular URLs to include affiliate links on their own.
They also have that crypto bloat.
This is graat info. Didn't know about Ventoy before, it sounds really cool.
Just wanted to add that if you're running multiple monitors on an nvidia card, you may find that the second monitor has low fps/stutters on wayland (common on dual graphics laptops). The fix is as follows:
Add these 3 lines to /etc/modprobe.d/nvidia.conf:
options nvidia-drm modeset=1
options nvidia NVreg_UsePageAttributeTable=1 NVreg_InitializeSystemMemoryAllocations=0 NVreg_EnableGpuFirmware=0Add this line to
/etc/environment:KWIN_DRM_DEVICES="/dev/dri/by-path/pci-0000\:01\:00.0-card:/dev/dri/by-path/pci-0000\:00\:02.0-card"You may have to modify the part that says
pci-xxxx\:xx\:xx.x-card with the appropriate values for your graphics card.Run lspci | egrep VGA to list installed PCI graphics cards and try to map the values from there
Disclaimer:
I don't know why this works but it does and it isn't malicious as far as I can tell. If anyone knows what exactly it's doing, I'd like to know please.
Thanks for that info.
I just want to add that the drm modeset is enabled by default ever since the 560 drivers. You only need to do that for the older ones, if I'm right.
Previously, you also had to disable nouveau yourself and Nvidia driver installation used to be a headache. Things have gotten better over the ages. I'm sure this multi-monitor issue will also be fixed soon as well.
Huh, this was definitely a fix I used on an older version that I just moved over to a new install with the new drivers so the drm modset line may not be necessary anymore yeah. I'll check next time I connect to my monitor.
And yeah, it's def gonna get better. I've already seen both wayland and nvidia improve significantly over the last 2-3 years so at this rate, things should "just work" pretty soon (insert meme about year of the Linux desktop).
I vividly remember struggling to get proprietary drivers working on Fedora 37 (or 38, it's been a minute) only to have them break on the next version on my previous laptop. It was definitely much MUCH easier to install on Fedora 42 on my current one and updates haven't broken anything for me since 40.
Well, it's just 4-5 lines that you're going to have to type and it's just a one-time thing. Surely, it's not that intimidating.
Bazzite seems to be based on Fedora Kinoite, an atomic desktop. Now, I haven't used atomic desktops. Although I wanted to, I ended up not doing that for the following reason.
From what I understand, you can't easily alter the base image of the system and everything else is a flatpak. This seems fine, but if you end up having to install an application for which there is no Flatpak, how would a non-tech savvy user do that? Still have to use the terminal at that point, I'd bet.
Case in point, even the other day, I came across this application called 'syncplay' for which there's no flatpak alternative and thankfully, Fedora repo had it.
I also hear that if you end up installing apps this way(Layering as it's called?), the update times become slower. You may shed some light on this.
Also, while it may not be as good as a snapshot system of the atomic desktops, the regular Fedora nonetheless shows the last two kernel installations on every boot so you could revert back to one if an update goes wrong.
I also have to mention that I always have my important files backed up on HDD or cloud that in the worst case scenario of losing my files on any update, (which hasn't happened so far btw), I can always restore them. In case of Steam games, it shouldn't be a problem if you have a fast internet connection. You should download them back in no-time.
That is another reason I can still live without having to use a stable atomic desktop.
New users find the terminal very intimidating, I've seen that come up time and again. It's kind of the whole point of Bazzite.
If you're already learning terminal to install software though, at that point you can use a distrobox, install whatever you want in it, and then export the application to your usual application menu. It'll launch the container in the background when you start the application, and shut it down automatically too. It's a little slower than a usual launch but it's still just a stripped down container so it's fine.
I tried two distros in the past week after your recommendation - Bazzite and Nobara.
Bazzite is just like you say and all's good most of the time and I'm getting used to an atomic distro too. The only problem I seem to be having is that my GPU Freezes very often even while just browsing and I have to force-restart to recover.
journalctl shows me this error.
[drm:nv_drm_gem_alloc_nvkms_memory_ioctl [nvidia_drm]] ERROR [nvidia-drm] [GPU ID ....] Failed to allocate NVKMS memory for GEM object
I don't know if this is because Bazzite uses a slightly older Nvidia (open) driver(570.64) and kernel(6.14.6) or because of something else.
However, I don't have this issue on Nobara and it uses the latest 6.15.4 and Nvidia (proprietary? akmod) driver (570.153).
Correlation is not probably causation, but this might be one thing to consider.
And I've had issues with nvidia-open drivers in the past, but surely a lot of them seem to have gone now.
Thanks. The downloader gives me an option to rebase, which I find easier to use. It shows me an option to download from ostree-unverified-registry, but I chose to do it from ostree-image-signed:docker instead. Don't know why the signed image is not shown on the downloader by default.
That said, after switching to nvidia from nvidia-open, the driver version still remains the same. Let's see if I get freezes again in the upcoming days.
Also, there are two applications that I use outside of flatpak - a firewall(Safing Portmaster) and another password manager, for which I have to install using the rpm installer.
The password manager has no problem installing using the rpm-ostree install <name.rpm> command. However, Portmaster installs, but won't work because of the following error which I found from journalctl.
<br />Jul 05 16:28:23 bazzite systemd[1]: Started portmaster.service - Portmaster by Safing.
Jul 05 16:28:29 bazzite portmaster-start[5786]: Error: failed to exec lock: open /opt/safing/portmaster/core-lock.pid: read-only file system
Jul 05 16:28:29 bazzite systemd[1]: portmaster.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=1/FAILURE
Jul 05 16:28:29 bazzite portmaster-start[5860]: Error: please set the data directory using --data=/path/to/data/dir
Jul 05 16:28:29 bazzite systemd[1]: portmaster.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.Someone has supposedly a work in-progress script to make this work, but I don't think I'm qualified to scrutinize if doing this brings down the security of the system in any way.
And I don't know if many other rpm installers have the same trouble installing in atomic distros because it's a read-only file system.
For now, I'll have to live without my favorite firewall.
Update:
Okay, I keep getting the same freeze again with the proprietary nvidia driver too. My suspicion is now heavily on Secureboot being enabled. Some Arch people kept warning me about this back in the day.
I'm going to use Bazzite without it and probably rebase again to open driver if there is no more freezes.
Update 2:
Unfortunately, even with secureboot disabled, I kept getting freezes. Got 3 freezes and I felt done with this. Replaced Bazzite with Nobara again.
Nvidia driver worked for a while. But, after I temporarily switched back to another atomic distro I'm dual booting on a completely separate drive(which requires secure boot for nvidia driver to work and it did work), Nobara stopped loading nvidia driver despite clearing all secure boot keys and installing the default one in UEFI/BIOS and turning off SecureBoot.
Apparently, the efi also has to be modified again. I didn't bother doing it and reinstalled Nobara again since that will reset the efi anyway.
Now, the driver is working again.
I swear to any seemingly non-existent higher power that I'll never use any distro that requires secure boot. Lol. I'm gonna reinstall Arch on my second drive now.
That said, I'd probably recommend Bazzite to anyone not having Nvidia GPU and it's a pretty impressive project. It even comes with Wallpaper Engine baked in.
My friend and I were having a hard time making it work on their system. We were trying some solutions we found on github and some C++ file didn't have a particular header or something. Took a while to get it work and it was kinda messy later on too with the plasma shell crashing cause of it.
Having additions like this would surely make life easier for regular users who would not want to deal with that mess.
People are afraid of the terminal because Windows has a shitty, unfriendly terminal. One of the things that brought me back to Linux was the cool-looking terminals. They make me feel like I'm Hackerman.
Linux isn't just a different operating system. It's a paradigm shift. Windows is always going to dominate as long as people are trapped in a Windows mindset.
I was you 18 months ago. It's certainly achievable, even with a crazy busy schedule. Highly recommended that you go for it.
Here are the unpopular opinions that attract downvotes:
* adopting Linux is painful. Stuff breaks. Stuff doesnt work. You will be battling uphill, but hopefully you'll find it worthwhile in the end.
* moving to Linux permanently wouldn't have been possible for me without AI. Now you can ask AI and it will almost always solve the problem for you. In the old days, you'd just have forum posts saying "just compile the driver and do a 10 step process with terminal that you need to figure out from the wiki....noob". But now, these previously system breaking problems are now easily solvable without spending the whole weekend on a single issue.
* don't let go of Windows to start with. Put Linux on a secondary machine. Do not dual boot, you will break your installation and won't be able to troubleshoot it and will have to do a full wipe (along with the time and data loss that comes with that).
* Don't get caught up in the distro wars. Pick Linux Mint, or a similar very beginner friendly distro. I prefer KDE desktop so I would recommend something else..... But don't go for anything with even moderate difficulty.
* Check protondB.com for the games you play. Some don't work on Linux (e.g. Apex Legends).
There might be a reason they are unpopular.
Stuff breaks? What breaks? I don't have stuff that breaks. Windows has been far more breaky to me over the last decade than Linux has ever been. What have you been doing? This may have been true 20 years ago, but not today.
AI? Look, I helped a friend fix a new install. It wasn't Linux fault, it was a setting in the bios that needed to be changed. But the AI had them trying all sorts of things that were unrelated, and was never going to help. Use with a grain of salt. You shouldn't really need to do much if you can get through the install anyways.
I am really curious what "system breaking problems" you have? My latest laptop over the last 2+ years has been so uneventful and boring. Never used a command line on it, but don't forget when you see people share command line fixes, it is because it is the easiest way to directly share information. Not the only way to do something. My desktop has had a few hiccups over the last 5, but that is what I get for running Arch on it.
Stuff breaks? What breaks? I don't have stuff that breaks. Windows has been far more breaky to me over the last decade than Linux has ever been. What have you been doing? This may have been true 20 years ago, but not today.
I've been trying to adapt to Linux Mint/Cinnamon as my daily driver and yes, stuff breaks. My sata and nvme connected drives kept disappearing every time I started my computer so I had to learn about mounting and auto mount (they are just there on Windows). My game and program installs on Bottles and Lutris kept going "missing" and losing their .exe's. I downloaded 70gb of Guild Wars 2 files at least 8 times because I thought each time I had fixed the "files missing" problem only to have them disappear on reboot. I still didn't figure out what was happening and am only able to play now because I found out how to use the provider portal on Steam. I can't make launcher short cuts from the actual executable, I have to go to the desktop and do it and when I do, it won't let me drag it to my panel for some reason. When I thought I had found a solution, I reactivated some launcher applets and ended up with three different instances of my panel launcher icons and still no ability to add new ones. My systems connected to the same ethernet used to show up in my network panel and I was able to access my shared folders and media files but they all stopped showing up a few days ago and I had to learn all about Samba share and minimum and maximum server protocols and still am trying to find a solution.
Yes, Windows breaks stuff too, but Linux is NOT a perfect product that works flawlessly for everyone and [@cRazi_man@europe.pub is right. All of their points are things I've been struggling with and would warn a Linux noob about. I personally would rather trust those random forum posts than LLM summaries (and have solved some issues that way) but otherwise I agree with each of their bullet points.
Yes mounting is different, but that is not a Linux issue. Same as when you boot into windows, but an EXT formatted drive will not appear AND it will never mount. Windows helpful choice is "unknown" and offer to format. These are just OS differences, not breakages.
Cinnamon might be part of your problem with shortcuts.....
Yeah SMB shares can be tricky. I have issues with them in Windows as well, not linux specifically.
I am not saying linux is perfect. All computers rely on a person being able to deal with them. I just find it much more stable then windows ever was. You add bottles and Lutris into the mix, and now it is a third party software issue: just like plenty of software in windows as well.
when introducing new people to Linux it’s best to acknowledge there may be some tinkering and adaptation needed to get things working as they should.
Depends on what "should" means. My printer for example will not work with windows. It works fine with linux. So.... that really is a printer driver issue. No matter which one it works with.
As for the OS out of the box, everything works on a fresh install of either - although linux is far more loaded with ready to go software, and windows requires you to add it. And any of the software you add to either can cause breakages, that is computing.
I noticed over the years that Linux works fairly well for people who did not start with windows first. Both have learning curves, but habits are habits.
I am going to take my linux laptop for an example: 2 years. No tinkering. There is nothing to do, it just works.
My other laptop (windows): damn thing need tinkering all the time: turn off this, regedit that, just to get the nagware and crap out. Won't allow remote desktop with the license, needs drivers to be updated, software that came with it is bloatware garbage.
I've been tinkering with my Linux machine for the past 8 months or so, and having random issues like the ones I listed and more besides that I've already solved. Meanwhile my old Windows 7 machine has been working flawlessly for about 8 years, no regedits or crap software issues. I think I had a driver issue with my mouse a couple years ago that I clicked a button and it fixed it. My laptop running Windows 7 also has been working flawlessly since about 2016 beyond prompting me to format media that I connect to it, but I press a button and that goes away. Recently I've been having compatibility issues with software because it's such an old OS but as you said, that's a 3rd party software issue, not a problem with Windows 7.
Glad your Linux experience is so smooth though. Must be nice!
This is a pointless conversation man. There are clearly plenty of Linux zealots on Lemmy. Noobs like me have had a hard time with Linux. I've never understood the argument that "my experience was different, so your experience is invalid". Once someone learns about something, they forget what it's like to have no knowledge of the thing.
The Linux community was reacting like this when Linus (from LTT) installed PopOS and tried to install Steam and it somehow wiped his desktop environment. Shit happens in Linux and the noob experience is brushed aside, while touting "the year of Linux". I really don't get it.
I agree with your overall point, as a long time Linux, Windows and Mac poweruser who has shepherded many into a new OS in the past. People who don't like to explore new/different technologies as a hobby get quite comfortable with whatever they're used to and the way that it works and then quickly lose empathy for those that are earlier in their journeys.
Just to clarify on the Linus Pop!_OS thing, he didn't read the prompt that said he was about to uninstall his desktop environment and then typed in "yes I understand this can break my system" or something like that, which had been added as a prompt to keep people from not reading the warning. Anyways people got mad that he did that because he literally ignored the warning and *the meaning of the words he had to type* that had been added to idiot proof the thing.
I'm glad it worked smoothly for you and it sometimes is a smooth effortless experience for some people; but if you want to "convert" people then you've got to be honest about the fact that people commonly face difficulties. I've commented about my Linux issues before and I can paste the comment again here to give an example:
One of the first issues I had problems with was figuring out what was wrong with Street Fighter 6 giving ultra low frame rates in multiplayer, but working fine in single player. It needed disabling of split lock protections in the CPU.
A recent update in OpenSUSE made the computer fail to boot half the time and made the image on the right half of the screen garbled. I rolled back to before the update and am using it without updating for a few weeks to see if the GPU driver problem gets ironed out (AMD GPU).
I installed VMware Horizon for my job's remote work login and it fucked up my Steam big picture mode and controller detection. I didn't bother trying to figure that out and just uninstalled VMware remote desktop.
I managed to install my printer driver, but manually finding the correct RPM file to install would not be tolerable for normies. Update: I'm using CachyOS now and the Brother website says Arch plainly isn't supported. When I install the driver from AUR that's specific to my printer, then it doesnt print and just spews out endless blank pages.
I still can't get my Dualshock 3 controller to pair via Bluetooth despite instructions on the OpenSUSE wiki. I've stopped trying to troubleshoot that and use my 8BitDo controller instead.
I still can't find a horizontal page scrolling PDF app.
Figuring out how to edit fstab to automount my secondary drives is not a process normies would be able to execute. I still can't figure out how to use this to auto-mount my Synology NAS.
Plasma added monitor brightness controls to software and these seem to have disappeared for me now, and I can't figure out why. It reappears intermittently, but then disappears when it feels like.
My KDE Plasma task bar widgets for monitoring CPU/GPU temp worked till I reinstalled OpenSUSE, and I can't figure out why they've decided to not work on this fresh install. System monitor can see the temperature sensors just fine still. Update: this seems to have fixed itself (maybe through am update?).
Flatpak Steam app wouldn't pick up controllers for some reason. Minor issue, but unnecessary jankiness.
My laptop fingerprint reader plainly isn't supported.
Trying to set up dual boot kept destroying (I.e. making unbootable) either the Linux install or the Windows install. I have up eventually as I couldn't figure out how to fix GRUB from the command line.
I've been trying to find a solution for keeping a downloaded synchronised copy of my online storage (Mailbox.org). Can't figure out rsync. I get an error with Celeste and it doesn't sync after the initial file install. Having a 2 way sync for online storage could be considered a pretty basic requirement these days and something Mailbox can easily suggest an app for in Windows.
People do not tolerate this amount of jankiness. And this doesn't include the discomfort with relearning minor design differences between OS's when switching. Linux is a bit of a battle with relearning and troubleshooting things that would never be problematic on Windows. I know we all love Linux, but allow people to be honest rather than being dismissive. I had over 2 decades of experience with Windows and it had its quirks and problems, but my preexisting familiarity with it made it much easier to use and troubleshoot.
Sure I know I'm a noob and not doing this right. But that's the point.....can someone with limited knowleddge still work this OS?
Yeah, this. In fact, going with hardware that's too-too new can lead to a different problem on Linux.
OP, if you're buying hardware, it's worth web searching to make sure people have tried it on Linux and are having good experiences with it. Since most manufacturers only care if their stuff works on Windows, it can take a little while for Linux devs to write drivers and get them shipped in Linux distros.
I agree. Arch has been my current favorite distribution for several years now, but it's almost impossible to maintain without having to drop into the shell occasionally. I have EndeavourOS installed on my wife's laptop and she's been happily using it for nearly a year; bauh helps with software installs, but I still generally drop into a shell for the full -Syu upgrades, and you have to use the shell at least once just to install bauh as it's not a core package.
You might be able to avoid the shell to use bauh if you use the AppImage; I haven't tried that. bauh can apparently do system upgrades, but I haven't tried that yet and I need to see how it handles news; Arch is fairly cavalier about pushing out breaking changes that require extra user steps which need to be discovered by reading the news posts.
I agree that Arch isn't the best "first linux" distribution.
GitHub - vinifmor/bauh: Graphical user interface for managing your Linux applications. Supports AppImage, Debian and Arch packages (including AUR), Flatpak, Snap and native Web applications
Graphical user interface for managing your Linux applications. Supports AppImage, Debian and Arch packages (including AUR), Flatpak, Snap and native Web applications - vinifmor/bauhGitHub
Not so much help but hope: I got rid of Windows 11 and switched fully to Linux Mint a few weeks ago. I had no idea what I was doing but I tested things on USB and also on a very old laptop I had laying around before I made it my daily driver.
I'm not particularly a tech person. I own a small creative business and have a toddler, but I figured out what I needed to quickly. I don't game and didnt use Winsows exclusive software so have no opinions about that.
What I didn't expect: to actually be genuinely interested in my computer again for the first time since I was a teenager (which was not recent...). I love customizing my desktop. I love discovering new open source software. I'm learning more than I expected and it's just a totally different relationship with the tech I use every day, in a nice way. And no more BS ads / bloat when I'm just trying to exist on my computer.
The desktop environment is all the stuff like the taskbar, the settings menus, the application launcher, the login screen, that kind of thing. It’s the system level user interface.
You choose which one by which distro you download. Linux mint uses cinnamon, Ubuntu and fedora use gnome. There are “flavors” of Ubuntu and fedora that use KDE. That’s why I suggested ventoy: you can download a few different ones and boot into them without making a new thumb drive.
If you don’t feel like bothering with any of that, just use Linux mint. It’s good.
Okay, so the Linux ecosystem is more modular than Windows. Windows is synonymous with its Graphical User Interface (GUI) for reasons I'll get into later.
With Linux, there are several GUIs available to choose from. These tend to fall into two main categories: Tiling Window Managers, and Desktop Environments.
Tiling Window Managers have minimal on-screen UI elements, usually they're meant to be used with keyboard combos with little usage of the mouse. A major feature is everything that is running is visible on the screen, when you open a new window, another window divides in half to give it room, "tiling" the screen. Some examples of TWMs include i3 and Awesome.
Desktop Environments are going to be more familiar to newcomers from Windows or MacOS. They're made more for mouse control, several have what you would recognize as a taskbar, start menu and system tray. Windows can be stacked on top of each other like papers on a desktop, exactly like MS Windows does. Some more closely resemble MacOS though none behave exactly the same way. Some examples of DEs include Gnome, KDE, MATE, and Cinnamon.
Cinnamon is a DE made by the Linux Mint development community, and the default/flagship DE for Linux Mint. It is designed to be familiar and easy to use for Windows users. KDE's Plasma DE is similar in many ways to Mint although it's based on different tech; KDE is based on qt, Cinnamon is a distant fork of Gnome and based on GTK. Some are designed to be more minimal so they take up less system resources, like xfce and LXDE, others are trying mostly to resemble MacOS, like ElementaryOS' Pantheon DE. Then there's Gnome, which I goddamn hate.
For a beginner, the choice of DE is going to present most of the differences you'll notice when trying out distros. It can be instructive to try, say, Kubuntu and Fedora KDE. Both ship with the KDE Plasma desktop, but the underlying OSes are different. Then try out, say, Fedora Workstation (with the Gnome desktop) and Fedora KDE. That exercise will give you a good understanding of distro vs DE.
Edit to add: It's kind of like launchers on Android. You can go in the Google Play store and install a different launcher on your phone, you can make a Samsung Galaxy look like a Google Pixel. Linux DEs work the same way, you can install KDE or Cinnamon the same way you'd install a normal app, you can have multiple and switch between them. It's not a great idea but you can.
There is hope lots of YouTube channels, articles by bloggers such as Its Foss, and guides to Linux all over
Especially for Linux Mint (Similar to Windows), Pop!_OS (Similar to MacOS), and Bazzite (Gaming-Productivity Distro, Similar to SteamOS)
The latter 2 work out of the box for gaming if that's your thing
You got this. Learn little by little each day and engage with community as much as you can. Maybe join some Voyager for Lemmy, Bluesky, Discord, etc communities
I'd say try Kubuntu. It's like Ubuntu but with KDE (Windows-like user interface) instead of GNOME (shitty Mac clone turned tablet like interface). It's well-supported and is easy to use. Also supports new technologies like HDR which Mint is lacking. Though you can install KDE on pretty much any distro (Mint included) but it's a good starting place.
Note to fellow Linux veterans: Yes, I know snaps suck but it is not something new users need concearn themselves with. Kubuntu is a great distro except for snaps which aren't going to affect OP's use-case (or most use-cases. Also sorry for shitting on GNOME so much. If you like it that's cool, I just don't think we should be recomending it to people coming from Windows.
Consider your library: most games will be able to run fine on Linux. However, if you predominantly play online multiplayer games which require anticheat you should check compatibility on ProtonDB.
Second, consider your hardware: if your GPU is AMD you're good to go. Nvidia might have issues (not sure if this has been resolved since I last had to look into it).
Finally, choose a distro: I'd recommend Ubuntu or anything Ubuntu-based. There's a lot of mixed answers in the Linux community and definitely a ton of hate for Ubuntu. However, as someone who has been running Linux for nearly a decade at this point, there are a few key points:
- Ubuntu is debian based, so it's extremely stable(but not as slow to update)
- Ubuntu is very beginner friendly, and you won't need to touch the terminal if you don't want to
- Everyone hates on snaps, but for you I don't think you'll run into an issue with it.
Personally, I steer towards debian based distros for my devices as well because I'd rather spend time messing with the software I'm running or other things NOT debugging why my config is suddenly shitting the bed
Distro: short for distribution. Linux is not an operating system. It's a piece of technology (specifically something called a kernel) you can use to create an OS. Those Linux based OSs are referred to as distros. We are usually not calling them "Versions" because the Linux Kernel is also frequently seeing updates and that would just cause confusion.
Debian and Ubuntu: Popular distros. Ubuntu tends to be a bit more user friendly than Debian and was the default recommendation for new user for a long time. In recent years its popularity among enthusiasts declined because of a series of unpopular decisions, mainly the adaptation of something called snaps which is not completely open source and takes a bit more time to launch apps than alternatives. Debian on the other hand really values stability. Updates arrive less frequently than on other distros but undergo really rigorose testing.
Lots of good advice here. I’ll add a bit about dual booting.
1) the problem with dual booting is when you use the same physical hard drive. Windows doesn’t play nice sometimes on the same drive. Just do yourself a favor and buy a second ssd. Then you can break linux six ways to Sunday and always have a windows backup. (And if you want to be extra safe - you can just unplug your windows drive during Linux install and you can’t f up and pick the wrong drive by accident)
2) dual booting is nice just in case something doesn’t work - you can easily switch back to windows.
3) dual booting sucks because there’s very few things that don’t work in Linux - it just requires a little elbow grease to figure out. But having a windows partition right there leads to many people giving up way too early with fixing their issues.
My recommendation is always to have more than one drive in your computer. It’s YOUR computer. Regardless of what you pick as your “main” OS, you always have another spot to screw around in. Distro hop, extra storage, set up a hiveos miner, whatever. Its flexibility and screwing around with other things helps you understand what’s YOUR computer vs what is Microsoft’s OS.
Hey, I'm glad that my Obviously Sprcial Idea of getting another ssd just for linux have legs. I decided this is my plan going forward to learn Linux as daily driver and gaming.
Now there's only the first step that I have to make.
Garuda is actually my daily driver these days, and I quite enjoy it. It does mostly just work, and I also like their desktop theming. The GUI installer is great for easy hardware detection and setup. But, that's coming from a more experienced old tinkerer who was initially looking for some lazy troubleshooting with NVIDIA graphics on a new gaming laptop, and liked the distro enough to end up switching over.
I wouldn't necessarily recommend any rolling release to someone completely new to Linux. The devs have done a pretty good job at making some things more user friendly, but we are talking about Arch with some extra tools bolted on. You'd better be prepared for things to break occasionally, and to need to do some tinkering around under the hood.
On the plus side, you ARE dealing with Arch with all the info resources/user community built up around that, plus the Garuda community tends to be pretty helpful from what I've seen. You are going to periodically need to figure out how to fix stuff, however--and better to be aware of that going in. Some people are going to be more fine with the idea than others, but it is liable to provide a steeper learning curve for someone just getting started with Linux.
I have 15 years of experience and do free infinite troubleshooting on matrix, feel free to add me. I recommend you go with aurora, because it is immutable, kde based, and well documented.
immutable means the base system is read only and updates are applied ontop of it, meaning you can easily roll back an update that went bad, and the apps are separate from the core operating system and thus can never break them (unless you try really hard).
kde is a desktop environment, it is most similar to windows and the rate of development dwarfs almost everything else, please whatever you do for your first system use kde.
aurora is a slightly modified fedora and fedora is one of the most commonly used options, the reason not to use base fedora is that aurora includes some QoL features, for example because of issues with patents twitch doesn't work on fedora but does on aurora.
Not who you asked, jumping in until they reply: Windows and most GNU/Linux distros are much further apart than most GNU/Linux distros are to each other. Unless you're doing a lot of manual meddling or using hacky tools, the biggest change between Mint (Ubuntu/Debian-based) and a Fedora-based distro, in my experience, was that apt is replaced by dnf, so if you install apps from the command line instead of a prettier software manager (I did lots of programming so this was normal for me) then the names of programs and libraries were a bit different. I'd also make a list of things you've installed (VPN software, chat apps, etc.) and look them up in the Fedora packages site or their own website and make sure they're all available. I would assume they would be, Fedora is popular enough.
The desktop environment (Cinnamon vs. KDE) will be an initial change, but they're both familiar enough with a program menu, task bar, like how Mint lets you carry over some of that same basic surface-level intuition that Windows taught.
That the worst linux distro would be vastly better than windows (not that mint is the worst, that'd be manjaro)
honestly it isn't much to learn but the returns are very diminished if you're already on a linux distro, I mostly make this recommendation if you're just starting out, if you're perfectly happy there isn't much need to switch, but more up to date software, kde over cinnamon, and immutability are huge advantages for many people.
like, just for an idea of why kde is better for beginners, the kde text editor alone gets more code changes than all of cinnamon combined per month, and by a lot. Kde is always rapidly improving.
basically on aurora you just use discover for all software and updates and don't even need the cli, it's pretty easy to learn honestly, and if something goes wrong that a simple google can't fix feel free to message me I do free infinite linux troubleshooting.
here's a copypasted post I made on mint and beginners "A lot of people are going to recommend you mint, I honestly think mint is an outdated suggestion for beginners, I think immutability is extremely important for someone who is just starting out, as well as starting on KDE since it’s by far the most developed DE that isn’t gnome and their… design decisions are unfortunate for people coming from windows.
I don’t think we should be recommending mint to beginners anymore, if mint makes an immutable, up to date KDE distro, that’ll change, but until then, I think bazzite is objectively a better starting place for beginners.
The mere fact that bazzite and other immutables generate a new system for you on update and let you switch between and rollback automatically is enough for me to say it’s better, but it also has more up to date software, and tons of guides (fedora is one of the most popular distros, and bazzite is essentially identical except with some QoL upgrades).
How common is the story of “I was new to linux and completely broke it”? that’s not a good user experience for someone who’s just starting, it’s intimidating, scary, and I just don’t think it’s the best in the modern era. There’s something to be said about learning from these mistakes, but bazzite essentially makes these mistakes impossible.
Furthermore because of the way bazzite works, package management is completely graphical and requires essentially no intervention on the users part, flathub and immutability pair excellently for this reason.
Cinnamon (the default mint environment) doesn’t and won’t support HDR, the security/performance improvements from wayland, mixed refresh rate displays, mixed DPI displays, fractional scaling, and many other things for a very very long time if at all. I don’t understand the usecase for cinnamon tbh, xfce is great if you need performance but don’t want to make major sacrifices, lxqt is great if you need A LOT of performance, cinnamon isn’t particularly performant and just a strictly worse version of kde in my eyes from the perspective of a beginner, anyway.
I have 15 years of linux experience and am willing to infinitely troubleshoot if you add me on matrix."
This is the book that got me on the train. I have so many tech books but they all started with this. I'm a terminal afficianado now; this got me started. Anyway, good luck and I hope you have a good time.
Yes, ez one (if you have installed operating systems before and know how to paste an error passage into google )
-4hours and your done start to finish. (Given you have standard hardware and don't want to set up something crazy like dual boot with raid and nas)
Moderate complexity if you have never done anything like that, plan 2-6 evenings to get it fully working with everything you need
Also: consider your scopes. For most cases Linux will just work, you just have to get used to some different interfaces.
BUT: some things will not run under linux no matter how hard you try --> google if stuff you can't live without will work
(for me I still have a dual boot windows for playing league of legends and running my vive wireless adapter, as those will not run under Linux.
For games use protonDB
I may be oldschool, but for people not comfortable around terminals I would suggest Debian KDE as it never breaks and the transition from windows is easy. You can do everything from GUI (clicky button interfaces)
For the installation of steam you might need a terminal, but there are good guides online (and you really dont need to be a wizard for that) from where you can just copy paste (when searching just add your distro e.g. "install steam Debian", and once you've got that running you can just run every game from within steam.
Since Steam has done a lot of work with proton, most games just run under Linux. In steam: Install-->play
For nearly all games not directly running, you can just force them to run with proton. It will say:
"Game not compatible" in steam, you just click the gear icon on the right to open settings, go to "compatibilty" and tick "force use of compatibility layer" and select the newest proton from the drop down
The button where steam previously said "not compatible" magically turns into the blue "install" button we all know and love. And nearly all games run with only minor inconveniences (like showing keyboard hotkeys even when playing with a gamepad) or no issues at all.
You need to be aware that some games using kernel level anticheat (e.g. league of legends, valorant) can not and will never run on Linux, if the developers of the games don't add the possibility.
EDIT: for programs not related to gaming its often easier to use an alternative, if the program is not available for Linux. Most times its also more privacy foccused, open source and free
Adobe light room --> darktable
Microsoft office --> libre office
Adobe Premiere pro --> davinci resolve/shotcut
Paint/Photoshop --> gimp/davinci/dark table
Edge --> firfox
Notepad --> Kate
Fraps/relive/shadowPlay --> OBS
Etc. Pp.
GitHub - atar-axis/xpadneo: Advanced Linux Driver for Xbox One Wireless Controller (shipped with Xbox One S)
Advanced Linux Driver for Xbox One Wireless Controller (shipped with Xbox One S) - atar-axis/xpadneoGitHub
Can I tell you off from Arch Linux?
There are around three Linux families to choose a derivative Linux OS from,
some are more obscure ones and then some really obscure ones.
Choose one of the Linux family OSes and choose the most popular derivative of that one.
So for example Aurora is a derivative of Fedora, which is a derivative of RHEL (derivative-(in)ception).
The reasons to choose derative OSes and not one of the basic main three is that:
- The Linux derative OSes have bells and whistles build on top of the parent OS. This is especially true for the extremely bare bones Arch Linux, that will throw you back into 1985.
- And this is most important... community support! You will at some point have issues and a forum where developers and experienced users can help you out are a godsend. Derivatives tend to have better community support than the bare bone ones. I've experienced this with the Arch Linux community. I'm not sure if Debian or RHEL communities would haved fared better, but to me this community felt like having a conversation with a real life Sheldon Cooper. I am really thankful for the excellent expert level help I did get there, but I will not go there back again. And I don't know if I even can, because the last time I was there, I got banned for a third time.
I've had great experiences on the Ubuntu, Linux Mint and Manjaro communities. Other communities from less popular Linux OSes have been too small in my experience to get help on time.
For Debian, the most popular one right now is Linux Mint, a derivative of Ubuntu (derivative-(in)ception).
It used to be Ubuntu, but Ubuntu tends to take big moves and risks that don't always pay off.
Linux Mint I consider to be the safe option for beginners.
Debian is known for stability.
For Redhat it's Fedora. I haven't used it that much.
Redhat is known for good security.
For Arch it's Endeavour OS and recently Cachy OS.
It used to be Manjaro, but they fumbled a lot on security issues.
Arch is known for having the best documentation,
and the largest amount of software available,
especially made by fellow users,
and if I may add myself, having the best package manager.
I still use Manjaro myself, because I don't feel enough need to switch to a new one,
and I like the community there.
So while techie absolutists stayed at Debian/Arch/RHEL,
the commons folks have gone to Linux Mint/Cachy OS/Fedora?
As others have mentioned, use Mint. Since you game, some games won’t run on Linux because of their anticheat, and to that I decided to use a dual boot system. I gave 500gb to windows, the rest to Linux. Anything that won’t run on Linux (some early access games, COD, Tarkov) goes on the windows partition. 500gb doesn’t seem like much when COD takes about 1/2 of that, but everything else I’ve played runs fine on Linux.
I also like the smaller partition because it makes me be choose what I leave installed, and if I’m not playing, I just uninstall whatever game needs to go
- As others have said, it's possible to play most steam games, but not all. You have to decide if you like those games more than you dislike MS and Goo. I find there's so many great games out there that I'll never get to all of them, so I'm ok with dropping some bangers that usually want too much access to my system.
- Here's a useful resource if you need to understand slightly technical linux foundations linuxjourney.com/ It might not be necessary but it does help to have a foundational understanding, and honestly, the command line is awesome, powerful, and one of my favorite things about linux. Beyond having a basic understanding (and maybe having one of the books the site recommends on hand), before going to an LLM as others have suggested, have official sources of various components bookmarked and go there first. There's so much BS out there now, I actually like the fact that I can read technical documentation, test it out, and know if it's true.
one other tip: I'd recommend some kind of personal knowledge management (PKM) system to take notes. Linux gives you a lot of freedom-- that's what's great about it-- it can be complex and have a learning curve at times. It's absolutely worth it though. It's a totally different paradigm than windows. After a while you can really start crafting the whole system to your needs as an individual. I'm 3 years in and was using my first setup that whole time, i didn't realize how customized I had made it until trying to set it up exactly on a new workstation. Now I'm writing a script so to automate my setup (os settings, program installs, configs) by running a single command. Then I can really start experimenting.
Everybody's different and with a little basic knowledge, everyone's setup can be tweaked to their individual needs a little better than other "user friendly/polished" operating systems. I hope you find as much joy and freedom in it as I do.
That's a big question, but I'll try my best to answer without getting too deep in the weeds.
I'll probably sound like a fanatic, but I use my PKMS for notes, logs, journaling, project and task management, snippets, and documentation. They all have their own structure and flow. It's a Gall's Law kind of situation where I started simple and it worked, so it was extended and slowly evolved to reach it's current complexity.
The beauty of PKMS over a notepad is the loose set of basic features (Wiki-links, tags, templates, etc) that be used in a personalized way to quickly capture, organize, and retrieve info that works best for you and no one else.
As a simple, but detailed example, in the context of learning linux, i might make a "linux" note and dump info there. I put everything in my own words unless I use md quotes (> quoted text) and I add useful links that I also bookmarked in my browser.
When the "linux" page gets bloated, I migrate clusters of info into new notes, wiki-linked in the "linux" note. For example a "distros," note which might have some high level comparisons. I favor making new notes over md headers so it's easier to find and open notes by name (a "quick switcher" hotkey as it's called in obsidian).
When I settle on a distro I might make a note for it to contain wiki-links of default components EG "apt (package manager)," "gnome (desktop environment)," "x (windowing system)" and dump relevant notes there.
If I try wayland, I'd make a "wayland" note but also a "windowing system" note that both wiki-links "x (window system)" and "wayland," and is wiki-linked in each of those notes.
It could get very meticulous, and some folks setup is too much for me, and I'm sure mine is too much for others, but start simple, experiment, find what works, and add to it. In the beginning I had dedicated time just to developing my PKMS. The important thing is quickly recording and retrieving info.
Sometime i do have crazy scrawlings where i just need a notepad to dump info during a deep dive. That would be loosely zettelkasten style with a time-stamped name, sometime with a few extra works for context/search. Sections could be extracted into their own note later. The note itself could be linked to more organized, related notes.
As a more complex, but shorter example, to show how similar tools can be used in a different manner: I'll make a note for a command line program, for example, cat. I have a CLI template with a Useful Flags (options) section. Kind of like a personalized tldr. I'll also have specific notes for complex snippets (AKA one-liners. Real note example: "list-and-sum-all-audio-file-durations") and if it uses cat, i'll tag it #cmd/cat. The CLI template also has a Snippets section that uses dataview to automatically list, in this case, all notes with the #cmd/cat tag. I also have a "command line programs" note that uses a dataview query to list all notes that used the CLI template. Also, a Snippets note using dataview to list all pages created with the snippets template.
There are tools specifically for snippets and personalized tldr, and I may migrate to those eventually-- especially after I have my install script up and running with linked configs-- but the simple tools in PKMSs are really adaptable and make it easy to customize and integrate. Plus it's all md files in a folder, so it's easy to sync and access on multiple machines, including mobile.
I hope that's not TMI. Starting linux can feel overwhelming and I don't want to add to that. Quiet the contrary. I started my PKMS right before my last, permanent switch linux and I think it helped it stick, and 3+ years later I still use [my PKMS] all the time. As I said before, the simple tools that turn a notepad into a PKMS can add a personalized structure to the insane scrawings, making it quick and easy to navigate, find, edit, and add info. You just have to start simple and take your time. I hope that helps. Good luck with the switch!
Here are three variants of Linux Mint with different Desktop Environments: (click their example image to make it larger)
- Linux Mint (Cinnamon Edition) - the default, I'd use that until you have a reason not to
- Linux Mint (MATE Edition)
- Linux Mint (XFCE Edition)
All of those are Linux Mint, they use pretty much the same core tools under the hood, but the desktop environments change how you engage with them. Mostly the way things look, the way you organize programs on your screen, and the default apps (like which text editor it comes with by default). This can change your experience a lot, I think Cinnamon looks nice and is smooth, while MATE and XFCE are more lightweight and might be better for older computers or if you don't like something about Cinnamon.
Now, those are all somewhat similar, they have a program start menu in the bottom left, a taskbar on the bottom, the basics are familiar. There are some (not officially supported by Mint) which are more different, like GNOME (Ubuntu's desktop default) which has a different app launcher instead of a start menu and a different way of switching between programs. Then, as others mentioned, some people choose to not even install a pre-designed Desktop Environment and only install some of the more core components of a DE, like the Window Manager. People who really love the keyboard might use a tiling window manager, these tend to make you think "wow, this person's a hacker", where they'll rapidly switch between programs using keyboard controls, with the window manager automatically shifting and dividing new windows so that they tile together to fill the screen. Loosely speaking, the opposite of a tiling window manager is a floating window manager, where windows just float and you move them around with your mouse, just like Windows (well, apart from the tiling options in more recent Windows versions when you can drag a window into the corner and it tiles to fill the screen.) I think the "best of both worlds" midpoint is a dynamic WM? I'm not sure. hyprland is an example of that.
Ubuntu Desktop PC operating system | Ubuntu
Fast, secure and stylishly simple, the Ubuntu operating system is used by 50 million people worldwide every day.Ubuntu
Just remember to turn steam play on for all titles in Steam -> Settings -> Compatibility.
As others have said, Mint is a great starting option. It looks familiar when coming from Windows, and almost everything works without having to touch a terminal.
AAA games with anti-cheat may not work, but just about everything else will. Check Proton DB for each game's compatibility.
You can add non-Steam games to Steam to take advantage of Proton. Lutris can also work for some Windows games.
If you want to try Linux distributions to see what they're like before committing, VirtualBox or other virtual machine programs can give you a risk-free preview.
Another option is a live preview. Install Linux Mint on a USB using Rufus or a similar program, then boot your computer from the USB. So long as you don't access your computer's hard drive (under devices on the left of the file manager) or run the installer, no changes should be made from your computer. You can simply reboot and remove the USB to go back to your usual OS.
If you are going to dual-boot, install Windows first. Windows has a habit of overriding or deleting Linux if it's installed second. If you just want to shrink your Windows partition to allow room for Linux, shrink it from Windows. Linux can move "unmovable" Windows files resulting in Windows not booting.
Always have a backup of everything you are not prepared to lose before you play with installing operating systems (and make sure it's disconnected from that computer). Data loss from software issues is rare, but mistakes are difficult (sometimes impossible) to reverse, particularly as a beginner.
Rufus - Create bootable USB drives the easy way
Rufus: Create bootable USB drives the easy wayrufus.ie
You have received tons of useful responses, so I will not add more, except to tell you that the change is extremely worth it, easier than it seems and extremely entertaining.
I personally use Kubuntu (I love the KDE environment) and sometimes play Steam games by using Proton.
Good luck on your Linux journey!
thanks! right now the primary obstacle is arranging adequate backup before maling my first attempt.
I have a laptop with Win 11 for troubleshooting so I'm not worried about that. and I have most of my stuff on externals, so there's not much to backup. I just gotta figure out a good way to back up my C drive and a plan for reverting if necessary!
yeah adobe isn't something i use regularly. not sure whether you mean photoshop (never) or pdf viewer (which i use adobe for and also hate)
Um, on any given day I'm running Steam, VLC, and Firefox. yeah it seems that those are all better than fine
TL;DR: Try installing some on virtual box, by all means try Linux mint cinnamon but also try Ubuntu and Fedora KDE.
Linux has some jargon and since you want to learn I'll give you a quick rundown of how a variation of Linux is composed.
"Kernel" is what makes Linux Linux. It's a way of interacting with the hardware.
A "distribution" or "distro" is a one of the many flavors of Linux.
They are usually "based" on a common foundation like Ubuntu, Fedora, Arch, Nix and whatever. These also work like an onion where Mint is based on Ubuntu which in turn is based on Debian, all of which use some version of the Linux kernel.
A that's just a base will just get you a terminal (also called a shell or console) and is very useful to make a server for example.
What most people think of as an OS is the user interface (i.e. clickable shit). The terminology in Linux for that is "desktop environment" (DE).
You'll see a lot of distributions mix and watch between a base and a desktop environment such as Fedora with KDE, Ubuntu (Ubuntu with Gnome), Kubuntu (Ubuntu with KDE), Bazzite (Fedora silverblue base with either gnome, KDE or deck DE).
You mentioned Cinnamon. Cinnamon is a desktop environment for Mint so a Linux Mint Cinnamon contains the code of the following:
Linux kernel, Debian, Ubuntu and Mint as a base and Cinnamon to interact with it by using a mouse and keyboard.
There are currently three bases that are really popular right now, Ubuntu, Fedora and Arch. In the DE there are currently two that are most advanced, namely KDE and Gnome but Cinnamon is not far behind.
In all honestly, none of this matters all too much, just install a couple of popular distros on a virtual machine like Virtual Bok and do a vibe check.
Take a couple of these, install some programs and fuck around with the settings for a bit, install themes and whatever or watch a quick YouTube video on it:
* Ubuntu (gets hate for being corporate but is solid, uses Gnome)
* Linux mint Cinnamon
* Fedora KDE
* EndavourOS (an arch based distro that's supposedly easy, haven't tried it)
* Bazzite (weird way to install programs through the package manager but hard to fuck up beyond repair)
* Something with the Xfce DE just to see the "lightweight" look.
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:::
Google’s emissions up 51% as AI electricity demand derails efforts to go green
Google’s carbon emissions have soared by 51% since 2019 as artificial intelligence hampers the tech company’s efforts to go green.
While the corporation has invested in renewable energy and carbon removal technology, it has failed to curb its scope 3 emissions, which are those further down the supply chain, and are in large part influenced by a growth in datacentre capacity required to power artificial intelligence.
The company reported a 27% increase in year-on-year electricity consumption as it struggles to decarbonise as quickly as its energy needs increase.
Datacentres play a crucial role in training and operating the models that underpin AI models such as Google’s Gemini and OpenAI’s GPT-4, which powers the ChatGPT chatbot. The International Energy Agency estimates that datacentres’ total electricity consumption could double from 2022 levels to 1,000TWh (terawatt hours) in 2026, approximately Japan’s level of electricity demand. AI will result in datacentres using 4.5% of global energy generation by 2030, according to calculations by the research firm SemiAnalysis.
Google’s emissions up 51% as AI electricity demand derails efforts to go green
Increase influenced by datacentre growth, with estimated power required by 2026 equalling that of Japan’sHelena Horton (The Guardian)
ah, but on the flip side, ai can conjure up an email summary within seconds that can shave off up to 5 whole minutes from someone's extremely busy day.
surely that's adequate recompense for all that energy spent?
I'm looking forward to 10 years from now, when this new novelty called, WRITING YOUR OWN SHIT (and reading it!) comes back into prevalence, and everyone thinks it is such an original idea.
(If we, or the Internet, are all still around then, anyway.)
conjure up an email summary within seconds that can shave off up to 5 whole minutes
... but can it? Like actually, can one do that?
Sure an LLM can generate something akin to a summary. It will look like it's getting some of the points in a different form... but did it get the actual gist of it? Did it skip anything meaningful that once ignore will have far reaching consequences?
So yes sure an LLM can generate shorter text related to what was said during the meeting but if there is limited confidence in the accuracy and no responsibility, unlike somebody who would take notes and summarize potentially facing negative consequences, then wouldn't the reliance on such a tool create more risk?
This is great. /s
AI will never be able to do the stuff Sam Altman pretends is just around the corner. But it’s great at giving the Right plausible fake news machines. Let’s torch the earth for that!
Inside a plan to use AI to amplify doubts about the dangers of pollutants
Risk analyst Tony Cox’s work has been backed by the chemical lobby, and some health experts are alarmedDharna Noor (The Guardian)
the company also said AI could have a “net positive potential” on climate
It's going to get us Net Fucked by 2030
Google CO2 emissions were 1.5 MTo in 2010. By 2018 they were 13 MTo. In 2023 they were 14 MTo.
I'm sorry but there's more to the story that what's being told in the article. For starters any dataset that takes 2019/2020 as their base line is skewed, we all know what happened that year.
And, on the other hand, Google emissions increased by almost a 1000% in ten years before AI.
Truth is more important than that agenda or the dogma. That article does the wild assumption that a big share of the increase in electricity usage is because AI. It may be, or it may not be, but the article presents zero evidences for that claim. And data in hand we know that google can use a ton of electricity without AI. So the impact of AI may or may not be as big as portrayed by the article. And it also disregards completely the massive increases in google emissions before 2019.
But it's critically necessary for functionality.
Got a question? Google it an boom there's an AI summary for you. Now you're engaged in scrolling past the dubious response and the sponsored links before you can get to the results you want.
It's called 'enhancing the user experience'. It was tedious to ignore the paid ads where you were likely to be misled for profit, but now it's enhanced tedium where you're likely to be misled for no fucking reason.
you're likely to be misled for no fucking reason and to juice up a few executives quarterly bonuses, because Google faces no real competition, because existing anti-trust laws haven't been meaningfully enforced anywhere in the world for the entire time that Google has existed.
If Google had built nucler power plants 10-years ago, there would be zero emissions. If California had done it instead there would also be zero-emissions, if the federal government had built nuclear power plants we'd also be at zero emissions. If all anti-nuclear people had killed themselves in 1979 we'd be net negative with emissions.
Practically unlimited demand is fine if the source doesn't use fossil fuels to begin with, so I don't see how this is an "AI" problem. It is, of course, a capitalism problem though.
I have to go return some videotapes
By the way, this comm is for memes about the fediverse, rather than just memes posted here on the Fediverse more broadly 😅
This is probably not the right comm unless I'm missing something
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I have one or two YIFY movies that I haven't been able to find on multiple private trackers (that usually cover all my needs) and the seed ratio is over 1,000 (since early 2021).
Public torrents of course get a lot of action (even relatively niche content).
I'm coming up on 10000 for linux mint that I started nearly 300 days ago. 2.7GiB download, 24.8TiB upload.
My next highest is GIMP 3.0 at a little over 400.
Tixati.
I use it mostly because it has a lot more options and flexibility, and also just because i'm already using it and it's a pain in the ass to switch
Pirating to train AIs is legal^†^.
^†^ in some jurisdictions only; you may need to be a rich corporation for that to apply.
'Meta Torrented over 81 TB of Data Through Anna's Archive, Despite Few Seeders' * TorrentFreak
Freshly unsealed court documents reveal that Meta downloaded significant amounts of data from shadow libraries through Anna's Archive.Ernesto Van der Sar (TF Publishing)
If you're willing to take the time to learn a bit of podman/docker, you should check out my recent post on I2P torrenting. There's no problems with port forwarding on the I2P network. There are other ways to torrent over I2P without podman/docker too, you'll just have to research them yourself
self-hosted i2p+qbittorrent beginner quickstart
Thought I would share my simple docker/podman setup for torrenting over I2P. It's just 2 files, a compose file and a config file, along with an in-depth explanation, available at my repo codeberg.org/xabadak/podman-i2… And it comes with a built-in "kill-switch" to prevent traffic leaking out to the clearnet. But for the uninitiated, some may be wondering:What is I2P and why should I care?
For a p2p system like bittorrent, for two peers to connect to each other, at least one side needs to have their ports open. If one side uses a VPN, their provider needs to support "port forwarding" in order for them to have their ports open (assuming everything else is configured properly). If you have ever tried to download a torrent with seeders available, yet failed to connect to any of them, your ports are probably not open. And with regulators cracking down on VPNs and forcing providers like Mullvad to shut down port forwarding, torrenting over the clearnet is becoming more and more difficult.The I2P network doesn't have these issues. The I2P is an alternative internet network where all users are anonymous by default. So you don't need a VPN to hide your activity from your ISP. You don't need port-forwarding either, all peers can reach each other. And if you do happen to run a VPN on your PC, that's fine too - I2P will work just the same. So if you're turning your VPN on and off all the time, you can keep I2P running throughout, and continue downloading/uploading.
I2P eliminates all the complications and worries about seeding, making it easy for beginners to contribute to the network. I2P also makes downloading easier, since all peers are always reachable. And it's more decentralized too, since users don't need to rely on VPN providers. And of course, it's free and open source!
A fair warning though, I2P is restricted in some countries. And in terms of torrenting specifically, torrents have to explicitly support I2P. You can't just take any clearnet torrent and expect it to work on I2P. And the speeds are generally lower since there are less seeders, and the built-in anonymity has a cost as well. However I've been surprised at the amount of content on the I2P network, and I've been able to reach 1 MB/s download speeds. It's more than good enough for me, and it will only get better the more people join, so I hope this repo is enough for people to get started.
"Trainwreck - Poop Cruise" is my current #1 ratio.
I usually delete after watching so this is just among recent downloads.
MacOS Ventura - 327
Placebo - Without You I'm Nothing - 263
Monkey Island 1 - 243
ACE - 165
AmigaPower - 154
Weekly Famitsu 1993 Complete - 141
I tend to stop torrents when they hit 1000, I feel like that's a "good enough" contribution on public stuff, except when I notice less than 100 seeders, then I tend to keep it going.
::: spoiler Top 58 I guess. Especially proud of the 800+ ratio on a 78 GB one.
:::
I remember using Cent OS (dual booting it alongside Debian) multiple years back. I think it had more or less feature parity with RHEL then and meant for personal use case unlike RHEL.
Too bad it was discontinued. I think the closest fork of it is Rocky Linux.
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~50x
My policy is double my download, minimum. But I almost always hit much higher than that, my average is probably between 5-10x
All my torrents are public sites, and I only torrent pretty common stuff, so I don't feel too bad about killing a torrent after a week or two. I figure 5-10x average on easy-to-find, mid quality media is plenty in the karmic sense lol.
As far as I am concerned, always give better than you get, even if that's 1.01 but try to aim higher.
Of course, if you're seeding a rare or otherwise hard to find piece of media, then you should keep it alive for longer. I am in the process of upgrading my torrent machine, and once that happens, I will be able to hold far more active torrents, and my average ratios will be significantly improved.
Happy sailing!
My thinking is that i'll start deleting stuff when i run out of space, which it turns out will never happen because 4Tb is apparently enough to store more movies than i'll ever want to watch.
So 2k+ movies are just sitting there passively seeding in the background and i just kinda let them. I really don't know which ones are rare, but surely i must have saved a couple torrents from dying over the years. I know there's a lot of churn in seeders so i feel good being long-term
4741
One small old book that used to be hard to find in good quality. I've it seeding for years, and being so small and in risk of being lost I've never taken it down.
I have no mouth and I must scream.
It was originally published as part of a book compilation, and it was kind of hard to find a file with just that story and without typos all over the place.
Same lol, this is MIDV-120, Found this at 1 seed with 100 KiB/s upload speed, I think it's safe to say I single handedly revived this torrent.
1 is my goal, though I think I might have reached 2 once. Because shitty ADSL 😭
My very grateful thanks to people who can afford to do more.
I'm on VPN so my highest is like 6.
I'm got a 100Mbps upload but nobody wants it through a VPN. 😢
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Summer's well on its way in the Northern Hemisphere. Here's a visual representation of how incredibly important tree cover is, especially in cities.
ActivityPub Client API: A Way Forward
@stevebate wrote a good article on ActivityPub Client-to-Server adoption..
stevebate.net/activitypub-clie…
See also discussion on fediverse to Steve's article announcement..
social.technoetic.com/@steve/1…
To follow up on my #ActivityPub C2S post from a few days ago, I wrote a blog article on my thoughts about improving the C2S protocol and a description of some related experimentation I've been doing.
stevebate.net/activitypub-clie…ActivityPub Client API: A Way Forward | Steve Bate
The ActivityPub Client-to-Server (C2S) protocol was envisioned as a cornerstone of the decentralized social web, along with the Server-to-Server (S2S) protocol.Steve Bate
Thank you comrade ❤
The US government causes so much suffering across the world. The ability of the world to still distinguish between estadounidense and our institutions is cherished.
Sen 1960-talet har 15 klaner dominerat Sverige. Sammantaget utgör dessa klaner det största hotet mot demokratini Sverige. Genom sin ekonomiska dominans och genom sina politiska företrädare i Sverigedemokraterna, Moderaterna, Liberalerna, Kristdemokraterna och Centern.
blog.zaramis.se/2025/07/06/de-…
blog.zaramis.se/2025/07/06/tur…
Daniel Radcliffe – „Jungle“ (2017)
Normalerweise bin ich bei einem „Survival-Drama“ immer etwas ambivalent. Schnell gelangweilt, weil sich die Überlebenskämpfe eigentlich zuverlässig wiederholen. So auch hier. Doch weil hier Daniel Radcliffe mitspielt, dachte ich, schaue ich mir das doch mal an. Und das war mal absolut kein Fehler! (ZDF, Wh)
reagansrottencorpse
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