Ever had a question about Linux but felt too afraid to ask? Well now’s your chance, ask any question about Linux, no matter how noob or repeated it is, and I and others will help answer them.
Previous noob question thread: https://lemmy.ml/post/14261893
I’m always too afraid to ask… Is this year finally the year of Desktop Linux? Is next year the year of Mobile Linux?
trolololo.jpg
I kid, this year has been the year of Desktop Linux for well over two decades for me. Obviously! And I think this megathread is great idea :)
Year of mobile linux
[ astronauts meme ]
Always has been
I’m on Linux mint 22 and my audio outputs don’t change automatically. When I plug in USB headphones, audio won’t output to them unless I manually change it in settings.
Also, why can’t I interact with the panel applets (on the right side) while I’m in game? For example: I’m playing a game, I plug in my headphones, I have to manually change the audio output so I hit the “windows” key to bring up the panel, but I can’t interact with any of the applets on the right side of the panel (I can’t select the audio icon and change settings from there). I have to search audio settings in the panel then alt tab to it. It’s really cumbersome
I have an old (2017) Windows 10 box that is ineligible for Windows 11. Originally purchased to run my Oculus Rift, it now just streams YouTube and Twitch and plays some old Steam games and occasionally school related stuff (Lexia, Scratch, stuff like that).
I started thinking that, rather than worrying about an unsupported Windows OS on my network, I might upgrade to Mint or Ubuntu.
So, my question(s) is/are, how much of a hassle will such an upgrade be? Will I need to wipe the drive, or can I keep my files without having to back them up first? Can I run Windows games on Steam with Wine? Are there good 3D card drivers nowadays?
I’m reasonably versed in using Linux as a user, less so as an admin, in case that affects the way you answer.
Everything people are saying here checks out, but you might struggle with VR. I haven’t tried VR on Linux yet, but I’ve heard some things about support being pretty janky. Maybe others with experience can weigh in.
I’d be interested to see what people have to say regarding VR setup, but the Oculus gets little use anymore. I have a few games that were never ported to the newer, self-contained systems (I have a Quest 3), and we’ve downloaded a bunch of custom Beat Saber levels that I might feel bad about, but the sensors are a big enough pain to set up that I don’t know that I’d feel that bad.
Yeah, I’ve considered VR for a long while, but between the already existing headaches, and the Linux related headaches I’ve heard of, I’ll just wait until I’m retired for VR space games, VR racing, and VR porn. Hopefully it’ll get better before I’m dead.
That was half the reason I upgraded. I don’t know if my old box would’ve been compatible (probably was), but I wanted it off Microsoft territory so bad and heating about Copilot sent shivers all over my spine.
I’ve never heard of installing any new OS without having to back stuff up. That’s just wishful lazy thinking lol.
You probably won’t have to do anything manually about Wine. Steam has Proton built in and it works great. As others always mention, check ProtonDB.com for user reports on how a specific game will work out.
I haven’t run into any problems in my library, but I honestly haven’t installed a ton of games.
I’ve used Heroic Games Launcher and Lutris for some other launchers (like Battle.net or Epic Games), and those have been a little hit or miss, but I think the main problem is something I’m missing. Not a huge priority but I’m still working on it occasionally.
I haven’t heard anyone call or 3D card since the 90s. They’re video cards or GPUs these days man. AMD has open source drivers that work just fine with Linux and should work just the same as the Windows version I believe.
Nvidia has open source ones, but they seem to be pretty terrible compared to the closed source ones. I had one issue with them last week but I think that was more related to KDE than it was the drivers’ fault.
I don’t really have any fancy hardware to describe how easy that was to get to work. Just a mouse, kb, headset(with mic) all of which worked fine without doing anything. I have a physical dongle for the controller, so I had to get a driver for that so I didn’t have to use a Bluetooth connection (pretty shitty comparatively speaking) or gasp plug it in. Had a few issues with it for a while, there was an updated version under a new name and such but it all works now. Just turn the controller on and it’s working instantly (unless I forget to charge it lol).
With the recent Microsoft garbage, I’m giving Linux another try. I’ve been running a laptop for a while, no issues. My main rig, however can’t read all of my um…?hard drives
A live USB of Mint 21 reads 2 of 5 drives fine. The rest are recognized from GParted, but can’t access them. It looks like NTFS-3G is installed.
I’ve duck duck go’d (which apparently is just Bing) for a solution, but haven’t succeeded. Long term, I can probably pick up another drive, copy, and reformat everything to something Linux friendly. For now, I just want access.
I’m lazy and burned out. I don’t want to use the terminal- which I did try. I just want to make a few clicks and have access to all of my files.
If it matters, the drives (roughly) show up as: 500 gb, 4 TB NTFS (readable) 3, 12, 16 TB unknown (not readable)
Windows says they’re all NTFS.
Is there an easy way to easily mount my drives?
I think the disks could be Dynamic Disks on which it would not be a good idea to install a linux distro.
Unfortunately Microsoft’s own advice to change it to a basic disk (since it considers dynamic deprecated) WILL RESULT IN DATA LOSS.
Since you only want to access them it seem to be possible with ldmtool. While it is a cli tool there is a corresponding service that at least according to some askubuntu posts and arcwiki should make them behave like normal filesystems.
Double checked and all of the drives are basic. I’m very confused as to what is different between the disks that readable and the ones that aren’t.
I’ve even tried multiple distros. Same scenario.
That’s a bummer. Unfortunately I can’t think of something else since fast startup has been suggested by another user and it’s also not the case.
The drives are shown as NTFS by Gparted right? Also can you confirm that the sizes should be those sizes? As in do you remember from when you bought them? 16 TB is still a big drive. Additionally can you confirm that they are all different drives and not partitions on the same disk.
Do they show up on the file explorer sidebar or if you go to “Other Locations” (in the file explorer)? If so do you get an error when you try to access them?
If they don’t unfortunately you probably will have to use the terminal to try and mount them so we can hopefully get some error message and hopefully some clue to what is going on.
If you can boot back into windows, turn off quick startup/shutdown, run chkdsk or whatever on the drives, reboot back into windows then boot back into Linux and you’ll be okay.
Quick startup is a kind of weird sleep/hibernate mutant that leaves drives in an unclean state when it turns off, so the Linux drivers for ntfs say “I’m not gonna touch that possibly damaged drive”.
It was a good theory, but no luck. I’m perplexed on this one.
Can a windows boot usb also not read them? If so and if you have the space to do so, it’s worthwhile to backup, reformat and repopulate the unreadable drives.
I got one!
What constrains access to an rpc socket in the file system? Is it just the permissions of the socket or is there more to the whole process?
E: I originally wrote port instead of socket because it was early lol.
I don’t know if this is specifically possible. I’m not quite rookie-level new (been using it about a year now) but I have something I would love to have convenience-wise.
It’s a desktop machine with regular speakers, and I have a wireless headset that connects to its own dongle (not Bluetooth). It’s there a way to switch to the headset automatically when I power it on, and revert to speakers when I turn it off?
I feel like it’s possible hardware-wise, but I’m not tryna learn how to code to make it happen, and I don’t know how to find a software solution. I don’t even know what to call what I’m looking for.
i’d suggest starting by finding out what package in your distro actually decides where audio goes - mostly it is pulseaudio (older) or pipewire (newer).
depending on the details of how your distro and the dongle work, it could either be a simple “pactl set-default-sink <headset-name>”, or a more complicated set of udev rules or pipewire/wireplumber scripts.
note that distros using pipewire still often support a lot of pactl commands, so it may be worth looking at the simple option even when not using pulseaudio.
They can also use pavucontrol, whether they use pulse or pipe, for a GUI to select default audio interface as well as easily switch apps to different outputs if needed
I wanna install Linux on my Desktop as main OS after years of windows, last time I tried desktop was Fedora and Ubuntu back in the late 00s, back then all I remember is playing around with Gnome and KDE and compiz…
Most of what I know about Linux distros today is from memes…
How can I quickly learn about the best distro for my needs, (general use, some development, and some gaming, easy hardware support). With a toddler and demanding job, I don’t have too much time to just experiment with different distros and draw my own conclusions.
Thanks in advance.
Ubuntu and Linux Mint are ideal for people who just want to ignore the OS and get work done.
If you are a Dev you should be clear of such problem, unless you need a very specific tool, but, many people can’t switch because the programs they work with are not supported on Linux. Take a look into that, and in the worst case scenario you can dual boot windows.
Gaming wise proton is a bless and let’s you play most games, check protonDB for compability. Major portion of the games that don’t work are due to crappy anticheat solutions.
Good luck, any other questions feel free to ask.
Is there a way to assess which packages on my linux distribution aren’t open source? I’m planning on having a secondary machine which is exclusively open source, but not sure how I would go about ensuring that is the case.
The language you want is “nonfree” in Debian derivatives.
Depends on the distribution, many package managers can filter by license. So you can find anything that doesn’t have an open source license.
Depends on the distro. Some have a configuration setting to allow unfree software or not, others have separate repos.
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Is it that much better to have a Desktoo Environment, on my desktop computer? I’m still halving it with Windows trying to get my games to run on arch lol
Howdy. I have a “homeserver” that I’d like to actually start using. What’s currently keeping me from it are… Permissions.
I have TrueNas Scale running on top of Proxmox, and I can’t for the life of me not access NFS Shares from other VMs (specifically a Debian VM that I use as Docker Host) that I host in Proxmox. Plox hlp.Will it blend?
Depends on the hardware, but generally, yeah.
(It’s a joke)
I’m familiar with Proxmox, virtualbox, and KVM/KVM manager.
If I want to set up a PC to virtualize multiple operating systems, but with the feel of a multiboot system, what virtualization software would you suggest?
My goal is for the closest I can get to a multiboot system (windows, Debian, fedora) but virtualized so I can make snapshots. It should feel like I’m on baremetal when inside the VM.
Virtualbox is clunky with lots of pesky UI cluttering the screen and Proxmox doesn’t seem great for this use case.
Is OpenRC meant to be faster than systemD as a process system? I’ve been thinking of spinning up some non systemD distros like Artix on a VM on a mini DELL tinbox.
I will say though, I am not an advanced Linux user as the distros I’ve used were :
Ubuntu Endeavour OS SpiralLinux (Easy Mode Debian)
Would I need to make configurations in openrc or can it just run without messing with it like systemD?
Thank you
I have read that it is faster, though I have not tested it myself. Personally, my initial reason to use it was just to try something new and explore the unix world. My reason for staying is that it is a very simple init system that is pleasant to work with. It made me understand what an init system is and use it a lot more.
Systemd is good if you just want something invisible and you do not want to mess too much with an init system unless you have to. Everything integrates with it
OpenRC is nicer if you want to write your own init scripts. It is very well documented also.
