Linux

I like the concept of sandboxing, of device manager and restricted user, in certain cases it can be really useful to implement, and I'd like to try doing something like that on desktop.

I would install Android directly but desktop apps are usually superior in many ways.

At the same time I think stuff like qubes OS is too much..

Maybe leveraging flatpaks or docker can be a solution, toolboxes too?

I've also tried Nixos but I don't think it is what I'm looking for.

Hello all,

after updating to Gnome 47.4 on openSUSE Tumbleweed, all my extensions are disabled and missing from the Extension Manager, even though they're still available in ~/.local/share/gnome-shell/extensions.

Has anyone else experienced this? Any solutions?

Edit: I can install extensions, even existing ones, and they show up again with all their previous settings. Until I logout. After a fresh login I get a vanilla Gnome experience again. The permissions of the extensions folder are fine (755). I'm stumped.

Cross posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/55958455

EDIT: Making the specs clearer as my long-winded breakdown is causing confusions:

• Motherboard: Asus ROG STRIX X870-F Gaming Wifi
• CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 9700X
• RAM: 64GB (DDR5)
• GPU: Nvidia RTX 3070 Ti
• Storage: (2x) WesternDigital Black SN850X (2Tb)
• OS: Dual-Boot: Arch Linux with KDE Plasma 6 and PipeWire on one drive, Windows 11 IoT LTSC on the other.

Problem: "Line In" from the Mac Mini to the PC described above does not receive any audio whatsoever on Linux, but works perfectly fine on Windows. Trying to get Audio Loopback working on Linux so audio from the Mac Mini plays out from the PC described above.

cross-posted from: https://programming.dev/post/25416188

Hey all, I have a bit of a weird issue I’ve been struggling to fix for a little while now and am hoping a kind soul here might have the knowledge to help me figure it out.

A couple of years ago i switched from a single-system-dual-display setup to dual-system-single-display (as in one screen per system). I’ll spare the long winded explanation for it, but the gist of it is that the new system (a Mac Mini) is connected to the original, main system (custom built PC) via the motherboard’s audio jack so I can get the audio from both systems to play on the same speakers. That way the main PC focuses on the game or whatever else i’m doing, while the Mac Mini focuses on tools/streams/movies/etc. and both share the same set of speakers.

So it goes: Mac Mini (audio out) > (line in) Main PC (audio out) > Speakers

The way I had it work on Windows was by simply going to the audio settings, going to the Line In item’s properties, and checking the “listen to this device” box.

On Linux (Arch, KDE 6 if that helps at all), it was as simple as running either pactl load-module module-loopback or pw-loopback and it would work the same way as Windows out of the box.

Problem is, my motherboard (Asus TUF Gaming X570-Pro (Wi-Fi)) in the main PC died recently, so I had to get a new one (Asus ROG STRIX X870-F Gaming Wifi), and ever since, I’ve been unable to get audio loopback to work even after a clean, fresh install. Listening to device on Windows works fine still but I’m looking to completely get rid of Windows.

By default, running pw-loopback with no tinkering (which worked on the previous build) cut the audio from the main PC and replaced it by what sounds like slow steps in a very echo-y cave.

With a bit of tinkering trying to follow online guides and documentations which i’ve since undone (but the changes remained somehow) it changed to just duplicating the main PC audio with a tiny bit of delay (or at least the audio from one app on the main PC).

One thing I’ve noticed is that when I boot up my main PC, a couple of errors do show up:

Hub 10-0:1.0: config failed, hub doesn’t have any ports! (err -19)
hid-generic 0003:1532:0292.0008: No inputs registered, leaving
Bluetooth: hci0: Opcode 0x0c03 failed: -16

While seemingly unrelated to my loopback issue (hid error being my keyboard), looking those up made me realize that the motherboard IS fairly new and therefore driver support might be lacking (specifically the Bluetooth error, which I don’t care much about in all honesty), which might potentially be the root cause of loopback not working as expected.

Here are the results of some commands I see are asked about often when troubleshooting the same problem: ‘lspci | grep -i audio’

01:00.1 Audio device: NVIDIA Corporation GA104 High Definition Audio Controller (rev a1)
73:00.1 Audio Device: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Rembrandt Radeon High Definition Audio Controller

Neither seems to be the motherboard (the first one being my 3060 Ti which I don’t pull audio from, the second looking like the CPU’s (AMD Ryzen 7 9700X) iGPU.

‘journalctl -p err’, or simply ‘journalctl’ don’t return anything relating to audio (essentially only returns the same keyboard and bluetooth errors mentioned above).

‘pactl info’ does return something interesting which might be the cause of the issue:

Server String: /run/user/1000/pulse/native
Library Protocol Version: 35
Server Protocol Version: 35
Is Local: yes
Client Index: 128
Tile Size: 65472
User Name: thelvadam
Host Name: CoreDynamics
Server Name: PulseAudio (on PipeWire 1.2.7)
Server Version: 15.0.0
Default Sample Specification: float32le 2ch 48000Hz
Default Channel Map: front-left, front-right
Default Sink: alsa_output.usb-Generic_USB_Audio-00.analog-stereo
Default Source: alsa_input.usb-Generic_USB_Audio-00.analog-stereo
Cookie: 6a69:7312

The weird thing is that the Sink and Source are labeled as usb-Generic_USB_Audio despite being the audio jack ports on the back of the motherboard. Maybe I’m just dumb. The motherboard BIOS settings do have an option for “USB Audio Controller” which is enabled by default under Advanced > Onboard Devices Configuration, but disabling it completely disables any and all audio devices.

I also tried using alsamixer to see if anything was disabled. I found a “Microhone” and “Line In” that were disabled, enabled them, but no change.

Does anyone have any idea why I can’t get audio loopback to work again? I’ll gladly provide more system info if I didn’t provide enough.

Thanks in advance!-

This will be a bit long, so feel free to skip to the end tl;dr.

I've been a long time user of Linux. Back in the day I would burn live CDs like Slackware and Mandrake to try out. There was even that one distro that fit on a floppy, Damn Small Linux. More recently, I manage several Debian-based servers and a Raspbian system. However, I felt stuck daily-driving Windows due to game support. Thankfully, that is no longer the case, so I decided to make the switch. Just wanted to share some observations I've made in the course of that.

A little while ago, I setup a laptop for a family member with Mint, primarily based on popularity and community recommendation. At the same time, I installed Mint on a laptop and used it for a bit. It's basically a backup laptop, so the intention was to have something stable and easy to use/update. I found Mint nice at first, but some cracks started showing after a bit, and eventually I became frustrated with Cinnamon. Since I am familiar with Arch, and it allows for choice of DE (if any), I decided to stick with it for the foreseeable future.

Current Setups

• Desktop: Arch, BTRFS, KDE, Wayland
• Laptop: Arch, FDE, BTRFS, Hyprland
• Home "server": Arch, Gnome, Wayland (mainly run headless, for AI workloads)

KDE

I hadn't used KDE since the days when Plasma was in beta. It was a complete mess then. Things have matured quite a bit since then, so I decided to give a shot again for the desktop. I think, mainly, I wanted to familiarity of tray icons and such.

KDE has been great! I love the amount of pointless eye-candy I can enable, and the things that can be customized. Over the last few months, I've experienced a couple crashes which seem to be related to kwin. There's also a weird issue where powerdevil (or something related to it) is resetting one or more of my monitor's brightness when it shouldn't be.

Hyprland

Since I don't recall using a tiling WM seriously, I thought it'd be fun to try out Hyprland. It also fits well with the laptop, a Thinkpad X390, having an older intel processor and constrained thermal/power situation. Because I'm lazy, I chose a mostly pre-configured setup from JaKooLit. I like the look of it, and the other ones I considered require Network-Manager, so they were a no go.

Like with KDE, Hyprland has been great! It took less time than I expected to get accustomed to it, and everything mostly just works as expected. The main hiccups seem to come from software which renders in a fixed size, which isn't surprising. I also like there is a tree-sitter plugin for the DSL.

Gnome

I hadn't used Gnome much since the old days. It was a lot different then. It's hanging out on the so-called server, but I've only used it enough to get everything setup the way I like. GDM is disabled on startup.

My experience with Gnome is mixed. I like how "sleek" it is, but not that I need to install extensions for everything. If I were to use it daily, I'm sure I'd get used to it. Even then, GSettings/dconf sucks. I really don't get the design decision to create what is essentially the Windows registry, but on Linux.

BTRFS

Previously, I mainly stuck ext2/3/4, because it was familiar and easy. In this recent switch, I was looking for some more advanced features. After looking into ZFS a bit, I decided it wasn't for me. Too complicated, not in mainline kernel. So, BTRFS it is.

After some initial confusion, I'm really happy with BTRFS. I have automated snapshots with yabsnap, which has already proven helpful when I may have clobbered a system library and everything was messed up. The transparent compression is great as well.

nvim

Having used vim for several years, it seemed fitting to migrate to nvim. I quite like the support for Lua, and the wealth of themes, plugins and so forth. Using Lazy means I can pretty much just copy over a config and be up and running on a new/remote system with no fuss.

Lutris

Lutris is what I'm using to help facilitate running Windows-only games. Ultimately, it's a very nice piece of software, but is lacking in detailed documentation and sometimes requires reviewing logs to see what might be going wrong. Something I really like is the ability to wine/proton runtimes if the default isn't working. The simple GUI layout with box art is refreshing as well.

systemd

Some people really dislike systemd, and I get it. But I like it. I've fully embraced it alongside extras like networkd, timesyncd, and resolved. Need to do something on a schedule? Write a quick service and timer, then check on it once in a while. It's not quite as succinct as cron, but I prefer the consistent declarative syntax. I was very happy to discover wg2nd, which allowed me to convert my wireguard config files into networkd configs.

Backups

I'm using borgmatic, which automates borg, for backups. This is done daily, for all important files and the system partitions. Really couldn't be easier. In contrast, there are not a lot of advanced FOSS backup solutions for Windows, so I would manually run system partition backups there.

Hardware Support

I was pleasantly surprised to find my printer, an older Canon AIO, was supported by Gutenprint. My plan was to buy a new Brother laser printer, but I managed to get the existing one to work both via USB and wireless. This is great, as the Canon still technically works and I can get random "re-manufactured" cartridges on the cheap. I say technically because it's getting more noisy over time, squeaking, and really seeming to struggle. We'll see if it holds up.

All the other stuff, aside from fingerprint reader, work as expected. This is a far cry from 10-20 years ago. Great to see.

Overall Thoughts

Linux Desktop 2025 Edition has been awesome. Basically everything works better than I expected. Crashes less than the competition in my experience. I have the freedom, as a power user, to customize the experience. There are also no ads.

That said, I still have a Windows laptop for school, because they require it. I'm hating it more every day. There is one particular piece of software that only exists for Mac/Windows which means I can't retire that system, yet. This particular school has recently bought even more into MS. I'd drop them if I knew of any alternatives that weren't caught up in the same thing.

Should you switch to daily driving Linux? Yes, especially if you have some prior experience.

tl;dr

Linux has come quite a ways in the past couple decades and now is a great experience outside of some very specialized software/hardware.

I have heard that linux doesn't play as nice with nvidia as others. So what type of graphics card is best for both linux and windows. And what other hardware considerations are there that I should consider when building my new PC? I machine is mainly for day to day stuff, web browsing, games, taxes...

I want to develop a game and am considering collaborating with others, potentially even making it open-source.

To make this process smoother, I need to establish an easy-to-replicate development environment—one that can be set up by non-programmers (such as artists) but is also simple for me to configure so I can focus on actual development.

I’ve explored various options (Docker, Podman, Anaconda, NixOS, VMs), but the choices are overwhelming, and I’m unsure which one is best for my needs.

I’ve had partial success with a Fedora+i3wm virtual environment (VM), creating a plug-and-play experience. However, this setup requires extra space (~3GB for the OS) and includes software already installed on the host system. It also requires users to learn i3wm and possibly use the command line, which may not be ideal for everyone.

I would appreciate any advice on how to approach this effectively.

Edit: An example of things to setup:

• The right .Net Sdks version
• Git
• Git LFS
• Format Checks
• VScode (+ extensions)
• Godot (+ extensions)

Final: I have read your recommendations, researched your suggestions, and looked at what other projects use (Luanti uses docker). And I have finally decided that at least for now this might be a bit overboard. I will start with a simple setup script and setup files (such as for vscode) with instructions. And if I need to in the future I will most likely use Docker.

I'm on Arch (btw.) and I have a Intel i5-14600K CPU with a iGPU (UHD Graphics 770) (GPU 1) in it and a dGPU from Nvidia, the RTX 3060 (GPU 0). I have one monitor connected to the 3060 via display port 1.4.

I can see both GPUs in GNOME Mission Center, but hte iGPU has always Clock Speed 0 and Utilization 0. So anything which is done on the GPU is done on the 3060.

I want to seperate what is done on the iGPU and what is done on the 3060:

dGPU (RTX 3060):

1. Video editing
2. video transcoding
3. AI stuff (ollama)
4. Machine learning
5. Blender
6. Steam games

iGPU (intel):

1. Firefox (especially YouTube video decoding, it has hw acceleration for that)
2. Chrome
3. Libre Office
4. GNOME
5. etc.

I wonder if this or at least parts of it is possible. I need the whole 12 GB VRAM on the 3060 for ollama, and the iGPU is just sitting there doing nothing. Is there a way to distribute the work? Do I need two screens for that or something?

It might also be that I'm misunderstanding how the whole thing works or over estimating Linuxes capabilities.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/25786274

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/25786273

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/25765733

general {
  after_sleep_cmd=hyprctl dispatch dpms on
  before_sleep_cmd=loginctl lock-session
  lock_cmd=hyprlock
}

listener {
  on-timeout=loginctl lock-session
  timeout=300
}

listener {
  on-resume=hyprctl dispatch dpms on
  on-timeout=hyprctl dispatch dpms off
  timeout=330
}

listener {
  on-timeout=systemctl suspend
  timeout=600
}

Guys I feel like there's something wrong or odd in this config, cuz, I don't know whats responsible for this but, it looks like things aren't working well together, I said it looks like cuz I never caugth an actual error. So what happens is that after I leave my laptop idle, the hypridle starts doing its thing and most of the times it works, my laptop is suspended, hyprlock works etc, but sometimes, after I press any button on my keyboard to wake my laptop, I can see that my laptop is up, but all I can see is black screen, and then I have to hard shutdown the laptop, so somethings is not adding up here.

What would you reccomend/use for an alienware laptop m17r5 with amdcpu (idr) and gpu 6850mxt. Idc about adjusting the keyboard lights, I changed it once and never touched it again. I play games like cities skyline, noita, etc. and some vr stuff rarely like vtolvr and warthunder. I use blender and houdinifx.
I've seen PopOs reccomended for Blender users but I think thats because it comes with a lot of stuff you need for Nvidia, which isn't relevant to me with an all amd setup.

Cachyos seems to be the move for best performance with rendering and simulating, was wondering about other options I have since I dont need to worry about nvidia drivers.

I dont like the idea of using ubuntu because of snap packages, but its not a big deal.

While I like tinkering, I do want it to be relatively stable, not suprising me with issues when I need it.

Currently Interested in: CachyOs Debian (leaning towards here if I go the stable route) EndeavorOs Mint (seems popular, is it just simplified?)

EDIT: Went with CachyOs for now, works well, only issue was auto install didn't work and I needed to manually partition and set the flags for boot and the os drive, other than that it's been very fast and intuitive using KDE plasma. Recently tried Hyprland with the JaKooLit config, since ML4W didn't want to work and had bugs, , I like it more than I thought I would.

Might try EndeavorOS and Bazzite on another ssd, they also look interesting.

I've recently stopped using tmux in favour of relying fully kitty's built-in windows and tabs, and I'm a fan.

The real killer app for me was the "pass_keys" plugin that allows you to navigate vim and kitty splits all with the same keys. I think there are plugins that allow you to do the same between vim<>tmux<>kitty as well, so it's not like you would need to drop tmux to take advantage of it.

Anyway, so that's been a big shift in my daily workflow. I've been using tmux for well over a decade, and GNU screen before that (I was never able to train myself away from the C-a prefix.

The one thing I miss a lot is being able to quickly detach and re-attach to existing sessions. Especially when doing some work over an ssh connection. But then I can always just shove the terminal into scratch space, or another i3 workspace.

This isn't me trying to sell anyone on ditching tmux. I love tmux, and if it works for your flow then it's perfect for you. More just curious what kinds of setup other people have.

Is there some hot new thing that I've missed that blows both kitty and tmux and i3 out of the water? Idk, but I'm always on the lookout. :p

I've just got a new laptop with a high resolution display and am having some trouble with scaling, particularly audio plugin GUIs which cannot be resized in Ardour (audio workstation) and are consequently too small to use. In the past I have launched qt apps via a script with something like 'packagename QT_SCALE_FACTOR=1.5’ (I don't have the exact command to hand).

Can individual gtk apps also be launched in this way? Is this a valid approach to the problem?

I'm using GNOME on Fedora 41 and an Intel Arc iGPU.

For some time I missed the notification icon of discord. I mean the little number in the taskbar icon that appears, when you get a message.

Today I found a fix for it in the archwiki.

You need to have libunity version packaged for your distro installed. For me on debian it was libunity9. After installing it, you get the notification icon again!

I need MySql Workbench on my daily driver OS, which is Fedora 41. But I can't seem to find a way to install it.

I first tried this, but dnf can't find the package even after adding the repository.

Same issue with this.

And this.

For all the tutorials I tried searching my dnf for the workbench and trying different variations of the name, but it just doesn't seem to exist as an installable package.

I even installed the snap package version (after installing snapd for the first time), which does install on the system, but it seems to have some kind of dependency issue because keeps saying could not execute child process dbus-launch no such file or directory when I try to do anything (even though I have dbus installed according to dnf).

So now I'm stumped. Does anyone know how you're "supposed" to install MySQL Workbench on Fedora 41?

Here's the setup:

• Fedora 41 Server host
• Libvirt/QEMU
• Alma 9 guest running ssh

My goal is to forward ports from the guest to the host, but change them. I set up a hook(as in the libvirt docs) and it worked on my last server. My hook looks like:

#!/bin/bash

if [ "${1}" = "Jellyfin" ]; then

   # Update the following variables to fit your setup
   GUEST_IP=192.168.101.4
   GUEST_PORT=22
   HOST_PORT=2222

   if [ "${2}" = "stopped" ] || [ "${2}" = "reconnect" ]; then
    /sbin/iptables -D FORWARD -o virbr1 -p tcp -d $GUEST_IP --dport $GUEST_PORT -j ACCEPT
    /sbin/iptables -t nat -D PREROUTING -p tcp --dport $HOST_PORT -j DNAT --to $GUEST_IP:$GUEST_PORT
   fi
   if [ "${2}" = "start" ] || [ "${2}" = "reconnect" ]; then
    /sbin/iptables -I FORWARD -o virbr1 -p tcp -d $GUEST_IP --dport $GUEST_PORT -j ACCEPT
    /sbin/iptables -t nat -I PREROUTING -p tcp --dport $HOST_PORT -j DNAT --to $GUEST_IP:$GUEST_PORT
   fi
fi

However, when I ssh to my server:2222, it doesn't work, "Connection refused." I can ssh from inside my server to my guest's ip address, so I know it's not an issue with ssh itself. The guest's iptables rules are:

-P INPUT ACCEPT
-P FORWARD ACCEPT
-P OUTPUT ACCEPT

so that's probably not the issue.

My server's iptables rules include:

-A FORWARD -d 192.168.101.4/32 -o virbr1 -p tcp -m tcp --dport 22 -j ACCEPT

, so it appears the forwarding happened, but an nmap scan reveals the port is closed:

2222/tcp closed EtherNetIP-1

I'm baffled by this issue. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

This is just me celebrating a small win. I've been slowly learning bash scripting, and just now I was able to quickly write a simple bash script to automate a file moving task without referring to my notes or the web!

It's not a super complicated script, I'm just happy I'm starting to internalize the knowledge I've been building.

I've been organizing my media files after ripping our DVD collection. I had all the files for The Smurfs cartoon (love the Smurfs) in the main Smurfs show folder. I wanted to put them all into their respective season folders (Season.XX). Here's the script:

#! /bin/bash

for number in {01..09}; do
	find . -type f -name "The.Smurfs.S$number*" -exec mv {} Season.$number/ \;
done

I could have done it as a one liner, but I like to keep things like this for future reference.

Any recommendations for a linux distro that i can set up and be reasonably sure my non techy SO won't break accidentally? The set up doesn't have to be easy it just has to not break once I leave her alone with it. My first thought was popOS.

My plan is to have 2 profiles and not give her access to sudo. I just don't want to have to go into it unless she needs a new program.

I'm running KDE on Nobara, and every time I power on my computer, there's something in the clipboard leftover from the previous session despite that setting being turned off. I'm not 100% sure, but sometimes I think that it's not even the last thing I copied. I'd have to make a mental note to check every time.

Is there something I can do to fix this besides the basic system settings dialog?

So far it looks like KDEConnect may be passing my clipboard back and forth between my PC and my phone. I'll have to wait and see how it changes after disabling clipboard sharing.

EDIT: The next day, I'm going to say this solved the issue for me. For anyone else wondering, in the KDEConnect settings, you can either disable clipboard sharing entirely or prevent automatically sharing the clipboard, which lets you manually share the clipboard only when you want to.

Good day nice people.

I, like many I'm sure, am taking Microsoft's discontinuation of Windows 10 support as an opportunity so switch over to Linux. As such, I have some questions about various things. I have included some context as to my personal use case at the end of the post should it be relevant.

1. Does the distro I pick matter? There seems to be a lot of debate around which distro is best but a lot of the discussion I've seen breaks down to what each distro comes packaged with. This confuses me as if a distro doesn't come prepackaged with something can you not just install it? Or is there some advantage to preinstalled packages other than mild convenience? Are some components difficult to integrate into your local environment?

2. One of the more salient differences I've seen between distros has been what the various companies and teams include aside from installed packages (such as snap and rolling out amazon search as a defult search), and the data they choose to retain/sell. Part of the reason I'm switching is due to Microsoft's forcing in of unwanted features and advertising. Is the company that owns whatever distro I choose likely to be a problem in the future? Are there particular ones to avoid/ones to keep an eye on?

3. I am the sort of person who does like to tinker with things from time to time but I do also want to use my computer most of the time so I'd like to end up using a mature distro. I have identified a few frontrunners in my search but I have seen conflicting information on which of them is "mature" (sufficiently stable so I spend less time fighting my computer than I do using it as well as having a large enough community and resources to help me remedy issues I might come across). Do any of these seem like they wouldn't fit that bill? The frontrunners are: fedora, kubuntu, mint, pop and tuxedo.

4. Does linux have issues interfacing with multiple monitors? Does it handle HDR okay?

5. In terms of UI and workflow I really don't mind putting in some time tinkering with the DE, exploring it and getting it how I like. It seems Plasma KDE might be good for this? Please let me know if this is an incorrect assessment. If it is, does it matter what DE I choose? If so, is there something you could recommend for my use case.

My use case: I have a Nvidea build (RTX 2080). I have heard this can be an issue with Linux. I also have intermediate experience with linux through university and my job (with servers) as well as tinkering with SteamOS.

Things I use/do on my PC (roughly ordered in terms of priority):

• Gaming including emulation
• Firefox
• VLC
• Spotify
• Discord
• Godot
• Visual Studio
• Git
• Photoshop cs6, audacity, davinci resolve
• Misc "Tinkering" (Handbrake, dvd burners/rippers, Really any weird thing I come across that I want to tinker with)

Thank you very much for your time and help in cleaing up my confusion.

Following the R4L debacle "you are cancer, you are the problem, we are the thin blue line", another maintainer steps down from the Linux Kernel