Linux

Debian 12.9

I just downloaded a 30 MiB epub file, but I can discard the images that make most of this space.

Another epub file includes unsolicited advertising with a link to a subscription. I'd like to get rid of it as well.

Is there something I can use?

So all I know that the Linux mascot is a penguin and Arch users meme about using Arch. Jokes aside I’m planning on making to the jump to Linux as I’m planning on getting a tower PC. I recently got a steam deck and that kinda demystified the (unrealistic) expectation I had of Linux was all command line stuff and techno babble. This all very future oriented questions* as I haven’t even picked out hardware (probably gonna go prebuilt since I do not trust me) and there’s also the matter of saving up the money for a new PC.

As for my use case (cus I know some software is wonky on Linux compared to windows) it’s mostly between games running on steam, which most of my games play fine on the steam deck, and essays and note taking for my college classes, which I use libre office and obsidian (with excalidraw to hand write my notes) saved to my proton drive and also sync those documents between my surface laptop and home laptop

My ideal OS would be plug it in, let it do… things… and it’s ready to be a PC to install steam and stuff

But first question, as someone who isn’t tech inclined and tinkering is pretty much just a few VERY basic settings in the settings app on windows, so is there a Linux… idk what to call it, type? OS? Thing??? that runs out of the box without me having to install additional software manually or at least automatic setup wizards because like hardware, I do not trust me with setting it up. As for installing it after I wipe whatever computer I choose I assume I’m gonna have some OS installer on a USB and let it work its magic.

Second question, is there any specific hardware that works easier with Linux, I can’t really think of any examples cus with installers and updaters I just the computer handle it, like updating Nvidia stuff in the GeForce app for all I know it’s genuinely performing dark magic during the automated updates

Anyways I probably have way more questions that I have no idea I had, but to wrap up I’m not super tech inclined since I let automated stuff do its thang on windows (if the computer can manage and install it I’m gonna let it do that) and my pc mostly just plays games and do documents on libre office and obsidian

MGLRU.

On my low RAM/CPU netbook it is a game changer; thanks to ZRAM the netbook is perfect for browsing the internet/light work. When running my backups (creates big tarballs) or Ansible though, my desktop/applications would freeze/stutter noticeably. Enabling MGLRU simply solved the problem of freezes/stuttering, it feels like magic and besides ZRAM, I don't know of any other lever with this massive impact on desktop performance.

Just wanted to share this, for other users with low RAM/CPU hardware. I would assume the observed difference is less dramatic, once 8GB of RAM are available, but I would love to hear about other experiences.

I would also love to hear/learn about other levers with high impact to tweak for low RAM/CPU desktop devices. Anything else to tweak under /sys /proc which has impact on performance?

I've been suggested to use a tiling window manager like Sway since it allows for controlling windows with hotkeys, but I'm having trouble getting started. I installed it in Fedora and tried logging back in with SwayFX (since it has features like blurring) but after I'm just shown a wallpaper with a top bar, the top left shows a 1 and the top right shows the time. I don't know what to do there. I tried looking up guides but didn't find anything, can you link me some if you know of any?

Hey! It's time for me to go back to Linux, I used it a lot about 15 years ago, Ubuntu at the tjme, but I haven't really kept up with everything. I have pretty specific needs so I hope someone knows the best option for me.

I have an old and shitty laptop so I only do a few things with it. Here's what I use it for, needs and preferences:

• I use Shadow for most things like gaming, creative stuff and anything else my potato can't handle, so the Shadow app needs to work well.
• I exclusively download entertainment via MEGA so the MEGA app needs to work.
• I use Spotify for music.

As for wishes about UX and UI. I like a MacOS style more than Windows, but I'm happy to try and play around with anything. I'm not huge on keyboard navigation, my back is kinda bad so using only the mouse or even a gamepad is what works best. I use a couple of different gamepads, but since it's mostly for Shadow and I forward the USB directly to it, I hope it should work no matter what distro.

I tried Pop!_OS but both the Shadow and MEGA apps were almost completely broken, both the ones from the Pop!_Shop and apps from their websites. I also didn't like the UX that much.

I have downloaded Linux Mint, but thought I should ask here before going ahead with installing it, it looks nice thought!

I want something that's as "ready to go" as possible, not too much fixing with drivers etc. I should be able to handle most things that come up, but I have limited mental energy to sit and fix stuff for hours and days.

I'm a sucker for good design and eye candy like blurred transparency etc. But it's definitely not a must, especially considering the limited hardware.

So, any recommendations and/or thoughts?

Thanks!

debian 12.9 with ffmpeg.

The mkv file is 68 minutes long, I want to get rid of minutes 05:50 to 11:00 and 58:00 to 68:00. I want the resulting parts (00:00 to 05:00 and 11:00 to 58:00) bind together as a single mkv file.

the ffmpeg command I've always used for similar but easier purposes:

ffmpeg -i "E01 - Part One [x265].mkv" -ss 00:00:00 -to 00:07:28 -c copy output.mkv

can I do this with ffmpeg or do I have to bind the 2 resulting files with mkvtoolnix?

ETA: would it be a better idea to use ffmpeg installed from flatpak instead of debian's default sources? I don't know if ffmpeg is updated regularly

Besides Marcan resignation, not much on other recent turmoils, or, more importantly in my view, the use of "Thin blue line" in the language of the anti-rust dev

So I wanted to watch a movie with another person and we both using our own bluetooth earbuds. So I found this code to be placed inside context.modules in the PipeWire config file:

{   name = libpipewire-module-combine-stream
    args = {
        combine.mode = sink
        node.name = "bt-broadcast"
        node.description = "A combined sink to all bluetooth devices"
        combine.latency-compensate = false
        combine.props = {
            audio.position = [ FL FR ]
        }
        stream.props = {
        }
        stream.rules = [
            {
                matches = [
                    # any of the items in matches needs to match, if one does,
                    # actions are emitted.
                    {
                        # all keys must match the value. ! negates. ~ starts regex.
                        # matches all bluez sinks
                        node.name = "~bluez_output.*"
                        media.class = "Audio/Sink"
                    }
                ]
                actions = {
                    create-stream = {
                        combine.audio.position = [ FL FR ]
                        audio.position = [ FL FR ]
                    }
                }
            }
        ]
    }
}

I am using Debian 12 stable so the PipeWire config file was the one at /usr/share/pipewire

I did that, then systemctl restart wireplumber and maybe restarted some other services don't remember. It worked.

We watched the movie, I turned off the laptop. Now I picked it up again and there is no sound at all, whatever output device I choose on the Gnome config UI or on the EasyEffects UI, I can't get sound on the built in speakers, can't get on the bluetooth earbuds either (selecting the virtual device or the actual single earbud).

Help?

Now that windows 10 is end og life soon I want to update my gaming PC to Linux but I am very unsure on how to approach it, even though I'm pretty proficient in Linux. I daily drive Debian 12 on my laptop and have Ubuntu server and truenas on two other devices but those are all for very different use cases than gaming. I'm not afraid of the terminal (I actually often prefer it over GUI) but since this setup is for gaming for both me and my girlfriend I want this experience to be as easy and hands off low maintenance as possible.

My desktop is about 6 years old and consist of an MSI Tomahawk B450 motherboard with an Ryzen 5 2600X and an Asus Nvidia 1660ti and 16GB of RAM. I just recently installed 1TB nvme SSD so I have a decent amount of capacity available, but I'm generally not interested in dual boot since I have bad experience from the past with windows suddenly deciding to take over and ruin it all. For temporary testing it is of course an option but I really don't like it due to the maintenance of it.

Important games for me is Sims 2, 3 and 4 (with almost all expansions packs on Sims 4) and they are currently purchased through the EA game store. I also have a few steam games and Minecraft but I'm fairly sure they all work decently since I've tried on my laptop.

I use steam remote play to stream the desktop to a MacBook on the local network when Sims is played and it works quite well at the moment and it is important that it continues to work or an alternative remote play function to mac is easily available.

Sims is my biggest worry to get working since my girlfriend is playing it a lot and with a lot of custom content (mostly just assets) added along all the expansion packs. Rebying everything through steam is not an option (way too expensive) so I really hope there is a way to get EA GameStore to work without too much effort using wine or some other workaround.

I hope you guys have some ideas on how to approach this and keep the most important functions for me up and running.

So recently I just come across Earlyoom and it has completely resolved my desktop crashing and better handles my memory, I was wondering if there is any other software that I’m missing that could potentially improve my systems resource handling?

Distro = Debian 12, KDE Plasma 5

I am running Chimera Linux which I really love for a bunch of reasons. I have a need to run a few applications that are not going to work with MUSL, and are not presently offered via flatpak. Thus, containers I think are my go-to. II was thinking of spinning up a minimal Void linux to use these apps. I don't have experience running containers at this point and have struggled to understand how to interact with them.

I like simple, and Chimera offers the following solutions -

• Containerd
• Podman
• Bubble wrap
• Chroot

I am pretty sure I can get away with a terminal only setup for these apps, but what if I need a GUI? Is there a good choice among these for security? Resources are not at a premium on my laptop. What do you prefer and why?

TIA!

I frequently use KRunner to do simple sums when doing my accounting. I keep a ledger with numbers formatted as e.g. 1,000.00. My system settings in KDE for number formatting under Region & Language is set to British English, i.e. the way I want it. However, whenever I copy a sum from KRunner, e.g. "1000.25 + 1000.25", it is copied as "2000,5" (i.e. no thousands-delimiter, wrong decimal point and only one decimal number). It gets a bit annoying to change this manually.

I can't seen to find any specific settings for this in KRunner or the Calculator plugin, and I would expect it to respect KDE's own settings.

Does anyone know how to force KRunner to do my bidding here?

Hi everyone, I use Linux on all my machines since a decade. Unfortunately my laptops are getting older and I will probably have to change them soon. Which Laptops would you recommend me to buy in 2025 a part Librem?

I don't have a high budget but I'm still looking for something relatively recent. I looked on H-node but it seems that there are not a lot of recent things.

I use Debian as a distro.

I hear this is a rite of passage. I made it 4 weeks before I rekt all my shit (it was nvidia related). Where do I claim my sticker?

In all seriousness, now that I understand better these commands that I've been haphazardly throwing around, Id like to do a clean install. God knows what else Ive done to it. Can i just reinstall to my root partition and have my home partition work as expected?

I mean I feel stupid typing it now, but I've been using Windows since I was 5 years old, and Linux for about 30 days. It was not apparent to me that many of my folders were actually shortcuts to stuff in my user directory, and now that I know to look out for them the location of my applications make sooo much more sense.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/25857381

Hellwig is the maintainer of the DMA subsystem. Hellwig previously blocked rust bindings for DMA code, which in part resulted in Hector Martin from stepping down as a kernel maintainer and eventually Asahi Linux as a whole.

TLDR: I want to be able to set specific window sizes and positions of the current window with hotkeys, as well as focus on specific apps with hotkeys, but I'm overwhelmed.

I've been trying to switch to Asahi Linux Fedora, and trying Gnome as my desktop environment since it can be customized with CSS, and with Wayland. I tried looking up how to change window layouts with hotkeys and it's confusing on what solution(s) I would end up wanting to use. Would I want to use a window manager?

Ultimate I want an alternative to Rectangle Pro app on Mac, which let's you set many hotketys for changing the current window's size & position: like use up the left or right halves or thirds of the screen, or corners and taking up a quarter of the screen. You can also make custom window layouts and bind those to keys.

I didn't find many results while looking up how to focus on specifc apps with hotkeys. For instance, I'd want to press CTRL Shift Z to switch specifically to Zen Browser or open it if it isn't opened, and CTRL Shift O to open or switch to Obsidian. I looked this up and didn't find options other than wmctrl or wlrctl. I tried the later: wlrctl window focus firefox, but got the error Foreign Toplevel Management interface not found!. on macOS there are many apps for this like BetterTouchTool & Hammerspoon.

But for new code / drivers, writing them in rust where these types of bugs just can't happen (or happen much much less) is a win for all of us, why wouldn't we do this? C++ isn't going to give us any of that any decade soon, and the C++ language committee issues seem to be pointing out that everyone better be abandoning that language as soon as possible if they wish to have any codebase that can be maintained for any length of time.

Rust also gives us the ability to define our in-kernel apis in ways that make them almost impossible to get wrong when using them. We have way too many difficult/tricky apis that require way too much maintainer review just to "ensure that you got this right" that is a combination of both how our apis have evolved over the years (how many different ways can you use a 'struct cdev' in a safe way?) and how C doesn't allow us to express apis in a way that makes them easier/safer to use. Forcing us maintainers of these apis to rethink them is a GOOD thing, as it is causing us to clean them up for EVERYONE, C users included already, making Linux better overall.

And yes, the Rust bindings look like magic to me in places, someone with very little Rust experience, but I'm willing to learn and work with the developers who have stepped up to help out here. To not want to learn and change based on new evidence (see my point about reading every kernel bug we have.)

Rust isn't a "silver bullet" that will solve all of our problems, but it sure will help in a huge number of places, so for new stuff going forward, why wouldn't we want that?

How does rebasing work? If Universal Blue were to shutdown and Bazzite/Bluefin/Aurora were to suddenly stop development and updates, could I rebase to any other atomic distro without losing my files/apps and continue to get updates there? Using the same DE (since I heard there are some issues, fixable, but annoying)
Or is it just a way to swap to a new distro while still being able to swap back to a backup of your old one if you need to?

(It doesn't matter if them shutting down is illogical, being able to move provides a sense of security.)

What makes Linux appealing to me is the extent of customizability, but I didn't find many answers when looking up with desktop environment is them most customizable. Some say KDE is most customizable than say, Gnome, but doesn't Gnome support CSS customization while KDE doesn't?