Linux General Thread

[plumpan]

It was going to happen sooner or later.

Debian Trixie has a tentative release scheduled for early August now. I'm looking forward to those updates hitting MX Linux, my distro of choice.

Is anyone else here enough of a to get excited about new Debian releases? Do you compile your own kernels? Do you use a tiling window manager?

In contrast to the above, Linux generally just works for me nowadays. I don't mind being in terminal to run things but other than that, there's usually little Linux specific nerdery I have to engage with. Which is great! Though I think also the result of me going out of my way to avoid certain pitfalls.

[CyanSorcery]

we've been messing around with debian 13 and it's really nice. the version of kde it comes with it good too. overall, it's just a nice experience

[Micolithe]

I've been on the linux mint train for a while.

My personal opinion can be summed up as: Linux is great, except for all the problems.

[Xinjinmeng]

I have a variety of legacy Intel x86 machines here from circa 1998 to 2010. What is the linux distro that is best friendly to older machines? My go-to used to be xubuntu but I'm willing to entertain others.

Ease-of-installation would be the top priority. Able to use Wintel wireless hardware is preferred, which I understand tended to be very closed-source proprietary at this time. Thanks in advance.

[plumpan]

I have a variety of legacy Intel x86 machines here from circa 1998 to 2010. What is the linux distro that is best friendly to older machines? My go-to used to be xubuntu but I'm willing to entertain others.

Ease-of-installation would be the top priority. Able to use Wintel wireless hardware is preferred, which I understand tended to be very closed-source proprietary at this time. Thanks in advance.

As a former Xubuntu user I've found myself on MX now. I believe it has options specifically for older hardware (read: 32 bit release) but the general "Debian + XFCE + some optional newer packages" should be pretty lightweight. AntiX is specifically designed to play well with older hardware so most of that should translate over. I also like it as a recommendation since it has a lot of GUI frontends for common Linux "Time to go edit a config file" things.

I used it recently when doing some extensive benchmarking of Core 2 Duo era hardware and had no issues, I'm not sure if older/more ram limited systems would benefit more from using the Fluxbox version or a different distro entirely. I've not used the Fluxbox version myself... I should.

Can't say I've had any Wintel/iwlwifi specific issues before though so I have no idea if MX would suffer them or not. But they explicitly include non-free software for reasons of usability so, probably? Is the hardware you use not supported by iwlwifi?

[carrowccino]

I finally kicked Windows 11 to the kerb recently and am fully on team Linux now, but I'm ready to float around on different distros for a while. Using Ubuntu 25.04 currently and it's served me well. Will poke around with other flavours and OSes in due course but it makes Windows look bloated as hell. Which, I mean, it is, with AI nonsense and stuff literally nobody asked for.

[Southpaw]

I've had the highest reliability and ease of use with Nobara, although GloriousEggroll has definitely made some questionable decisions such as including AI-generated wallpapers that can be ignored. I like that Nobara includes a drive auto-mount tool, an all-in-one updater, a modified OBS and a whole bunch of gaming-related installers already sourced and ready to run. Uses KDE Plasma and Wayland by default but with X11 legacy support.

I also have a Lenovo Thinkcentre 'gaming box' running CachyOS but it just launches to Pegasus, a frontend, and is controlled entirely with a gamepad. Have run into a few issues getting it to be as reliable as it is but it's been really solid since.

A Macbook Pro M1 with Fedora-Asahi Remix as well that I don't use very often, but it seems to get a lot of criticism that I feel isn't deserved. I've been really impressed with it for what it is, and the installation process was the easiest I have ever seen for a Linux distro and any OS ever. Even has touchbar support!

[MewMus]

I'm a long time Mint/Debian with XFCE/Window-Maker/Cinnamon enjoyer, but unfortunately am currently on Windows on my main system for two reasons:
1. I upgraded hardware recently and due to my shiny new 9060xt a lot of my fave distros require kernel updates and just aren't very stable for me
2. My entire social life atm requires getting into VR with no complications at least once a week. No matter what I tried across multiple distros, I just could not get any Linux system to play nice with my Index and new hardware. Which was a fundamental deal breaker.

On the bright side though, nearly 100% of my software used for work these days are open source or extremely Linux friendly :3

Hoping that by early next year my preferred distros will be running new enough backends for my system and that Valve or someone else puts some serious effort into fixing the VR situation and experience on Linux overall so I can ditch Windows for good.

[Azuli]

It was going to happen sooner or later.

Debian Trixie has a tentative release scheduled for early August now. I'm looking forward to those updates hitting MX Linux, my distro of choice.

Is anyone else here enough of a to get excited about new Debian releases? Do you compile your own kernels? Do you use a tiling window manager?

In contrast to the above, Linux generally just works for me nowadays. I don't mind being in terminal to run things but other than that, there's usually little Linux specific nerdery I have to engage with. Which is great! Though I think also the result of me going out of my way to avoid certain pitfalls.

I'm sure that before the year ends, I'll be using debian trixie and/or a new twisterOS on a raspi5 lodged inside a Pilet. I'd say "can't wait", but I have to :') Pilet is still in production (hell), I still don't have the pi5, and I now have to waste money on a new screen anyway because my current monitor got some dead pixels.

Glad I don't have to waste money on windows anymore tho

[lilpaladin1]

I've been kind of off and on with Linux for the past few years, mainly because of it's lack of good video editing tools (that actually have mp4 support for free, davinci), but last year I got a job and was able to save up to get a MacBook Pro to circumvent that hurdle, and now I've been daily driving Arch Linux for months since then.

Only problems I've run into was screen sharing being a pain in the ass still, not as much as before and sound does work, but I can't use Hyprland specifically for some reason if I want to screenshare, so I've been using KDE instead. The other I've described in the Linux Gaming thread of not being able to use my VR headset.

Other than those two things I've just been loving using Linux, it just feels so much nicer to use compared to Windows at times. Honestly, I think that the reason people are scared of the terminal in part is because the Windows CMD is kind of too barebones and Powershell is hell to use in general.

[Mandrake]

I'm planning to move to Linux Mint in the coming months ahead of Microsoft killing support for Windows 10. For a start, my hardware isn't officially supported by Windows 11 so it would be hugely wasteful to get rid of a PC that works perfectly fine. Secondly, Windows 11 has yet to offer anything that Windows 10 doesn't already have other than security updates, so there's nothing to motivate me to force the upgrade. And finally, Microsoft is no longer a company I wish to support due to political reasons and because of how aggressively they've forcing invasive AI garbage that nobody asked for. Besides, I'm sick of having to disable invasive settings and crapware, having massive security updates automatically install themselves without warning every other Tuesday, and seeing this PC gradually becoming slower over the past nine years.

Since my hard-drive has plenty of unused space and because this is the perfect time to switch OSes, my plan is to set up a dual-boot so that I can use Mint for my everyday tasks while keeping Windows 10 solely for compatibility purposes. It's been more than a decade since I last seriously considered getting into Linux, but from what I can tell it seems to be easier to switch than ever. Being able to just download software via the console or Flatpak really appeals to me, as is the prospect of having an OS that doesn't take forever to start up. I've already burnt the latest Linux Mint distro onto a USB stick, all I have to do is put some time aside one weekend and install it.

[ihddn]

I'm writing this message from my Pi400 which I just resetup to muck about on. I've been running some *nix as my main desktop os for at least a decade probably closer to 15 years - to the point that all my storage of photos, and docs and music where store in ext4 not even something compatible with windows anymore. Though this years I've transitioned all that into trueNAS so I can feel free to break my computer even more now. Partially I'm on here because I've semi broken my install of Budgie on Ubuntu by upgrading to their test candidate and I'm waiting on some upstream fixes to see if that gets solved meanwhile see how this goes!

Overall on a daily basis, I'm just using a browser and then telegram/discord, sometimes games, or software for my photography but mostly, listening to some music or youtube, and chatting. 4 GB on the Pi400 is about about enough to handle that daily usage, if the SOC isn't quite amazing at video. Though maybe VLC might work better if I stream the youtube videos directly to that, something to try!

[JarylGaren]

so one thing I kinda sorta regret what I did during my installation of Bazzite is checking both of my SSDs in my computer at the same time here

because that caused it to basically view both SSDs as one in the Dolphin file manager, and for some reason it still shows an unmounted second SSD

is there a way to revert this, or do I have to reinstall the entire OS again?

[plumpan]

so one thing I kinda sorta regret what I did during my installation of Bazzite is checking both of my SSDs in my computer at the same time here

photo_2025-06-23_16-19-55.jpg

because that caused it to basically view both SSDs as one in the Dolphin file manager, and for some reason it still shows an unmounted second SSD

photo_2025-06-23_17-04-16.jpg

is there a way to revert this, or do I have to reinstall the entire OS again?

What does "lsblk" say in shell?

[JarylGaren]

so one thing I kinda sorta regret what I did during my installation of Bazzite is checking both of my SSDs in my computer at the same time here

photo_2025-06-23_16-19-55.jpg

because that caused it to basically view both SSDs as one in the Dolphin file manager, and for some reason it still shows an unmounted second SSD

photo_2025-06-23_17-04-16.jpg

is there a way to revert this, or do I have to reinstall the entire OS again?

What does "lsblk" say in shell?

Sorry, I should've edited my post, because I got it taken care of with the help of a friend of mine already.
I reinstalled bazzite entirely, but we also had to do some advanced shenanigans with the Blivet-GUI during the OS installation, because both drives were, like, combined into one RAID1 thing.

[plumpan]

I reinstalled bazzite entirely, but we also had to do some advanced shenanigans with the Blivet-GUI during the OS installation, because both drives were, like, combined into one RAID1 thing.

Weird! Did it explicitly say it was doing that or just, do it?

[JarylGaren]

I reinstalled bazzite entirely, but we also had to do some advanced shenanigans with the Blivet-GUI during the OS installation, because both drives were, like, combined into one RAID1 thing.

Weird! Did it explicitly say it was doing that or just, do it?

It basically said "the selected medium nvme0n1 contains the medium nvme1n1, which isn't selected. Mediums must be selected together as a set" when I just clicked on only one of my SSDs to reinstall bazzite to.

So basically, if you wanna install an operating system to one drive, make sure you do only pick one drive when it asks you to choose which one(s) you want to install it to xD

[plumpan]

Very weird. I wonder whose installer Bazzite is using?

[JarylGaren]

Very weird. I wonder whose installer Bazzite is using?

well, the installer looks like this, and I think it's the Fedora installer!

[JarylGaren]

so yesterday, out of boredom, I decided to give Linux Mint a try on my small mini-computer that I still had lying around.

and not gonna lie, I think I already kinda prefer Cinnamon over KDE Plasma (which is what I went with on my bazzite installation on my big gaming PC) when it comes to the desktop environment.

it also just feels rock solid and a bit more polished. and nothing too fancy, but I do like that. what I do kinda miss about Linux Mint is that there doesn't seem to be VRR yet. At least, out of the box. I think that's where I might stick with bazzite for my main computer for now, because VRR is pretty nice (so my monitor adjusts to the framerates of games by itself, so it looks good regardless)

but I'm pretty sure if I didn't shift over to PC gaming last year, I think I'd probably stick with Linux Mint for general computer daily driving, because based on the couple hours I've played around with it so far, it feels stable and easy to use.

sidenote:
I did try out one game on my Linux Mint installation (namely MegaMan Battle Network Legacy Collection Vol. 1, because of course xD), and aside from the title screen's background being static for some reason (which may be related to this mini computer not having a dedicated graphics card, if I had to guess?), it ran perfectly fine and like it should!

[Mandrake]

so yesterday, out of boredom, I decided to give Linux Mint a try on my small mini-computer that I still had lying around.

photo_2025-08-22_01-26-05.jpg

and not gonna lie, I think I already kinda prefer Cinnamon over KDE Plasma (which is what I went with on my bazzite installation on my big gaming PC) when it comes to the desktop environment.

it also just feels rock solid and a bit more polished. and nothing too fancy, but I do like that. what I do kinda miss about Linux Mint is that there doesn't seem to be VRR yet. At least, out of the box. I think that's where I might stick with bazzite for my main computer for now, because VRR is pretty nice (so my monitor adjusts to the framerates of games by itself, so it looks good regardless)

but I'm pretty sure if I didn't shift over to PC gaming last year, I think I'd probably stick with Linux Mint for general computer daily driving, because based on the couple hours I've played around with it so far, it feels stable and easy to use.

sidenote:
I did try out one game on my Linux Mint installation (namely MegaMan Battle Network Legacy Collection Vol. 1, because of course xD), and aside from the title screen's background being static for some reason (which may be related to this mini computer not having a dedicated graphics card, if I had to guess?), it ran perfectly fine and like it should!

Having installed Mint Cinnamon on a separate partition since my last post in this thread, I agree that it's great! The UI feels intentionally reminiscent of Windows 10 (especially the start menu, task bar, right-click menus, and files app), so it's perfect for anyone who just wants something "like Windows but better". Everything feels more consistent (Windows 10 recycles lots of UI elements from previous versions of Windows) and loads much more quickly. For example, File Explorer had a really annoying bug where sometimes I would right-click on a file and then the program would inexplicably freeze for ages before displaying the context menu. So I'm very glad that I don't have to deal with that any more. And I really like how you can customise the appearance to make it feel more like the version of Windows 10 that you actually wanted.

I haven't tried out many games in Linux yet, since I simply haven't had the time, but I might just stick to Steam games for now. Most of them seem to boil down to "run it through Proton Experimental, if that doesn't work try a different version". Worse case scenario, I can always switch to Windows 10 and wait 10000 years for it to finish booting up, but if it can run in Linux, I'd rather save myself the inconvenience.

[JarylGaren]

I haven't tried out many games in Linux yet, since I simply haven't had the time, but I might just stick to Steam games for now. Most of them seem to boil down to "run it through Proton Experimental, if that doesn't work try a different version".

Yeah, that's basically how Steam games have worked for me on bazzite, and I assume it's probably gonna be similar in Linux Mint. Although I've set the default compatibility tool to Proton 9.0-4 in my case for now. But a buddy in a discord server I'm on mentioned that they put theirs on Proton-GE Latest, so I might also give that a try and see how that'll work out for me
and according to protonDB, the majority of games I have there should work fine, too!

[sertimus]

Adding myself to the 'kicking Win11 to the curb' train and proud to say that I primarily use Linux Mint for everyday computing! It's been kind of a rough history though..

I first got into Linux through an old version of Ubuntu in '09 and I was in my late teens at the time. I'd started using a computer that was rescued from a defunct business and.. well, it'd seen better days. I nonetheless installed Ubuntu on it and enjoyed it for some time until I heard the HDD click of death. So I got turned off by that, but eventually got back into using Linux on a laptop, then my interest had waned once again. Many, many times after that were repeats with frustrations related to dual boot and partition management.

Fast forwarding to today with a certain technology conglomerate making very questionable decisions with their telemetry platform--erm, operating system, I then tried configuring Linux Mint under secure boot and made it dual-bootable with much success. Getting unsupported drivers working is a bit of pain, but DKMS handled everything else from there, including kernel module signing. I also obtained an external HDD this year which I use as a backup drive, so I'd been making extensive use of Timeshift and Back in Time in case I screwed something up (which, I already did once with a successful restoration). I also primarily create art on my desktop using Krita, with my Huion Kamvas 13 (Gen 3) tablet working with it.

Outside of that I also use Ubuntu Server for my shared VPS, which I mostly use as a web server but also kind of my own Linux playground, too. X>

[Mandrake]

Adding myself to the 'kicking Win11 to the curb' train and proud to say that I primarily use Linux Mint for everyday computing! It's been kind of a rough history though..

I first got into Linux through an old version of Ubuntu in '09 and I was in my late teens at the time. I'd started using a computer that was rescued from a defunct business and.. well, it'd seen better days. I nonetheless installed Ubuntu on it and enjoyed it for some time until I heard the HDD click of death. So I got turned off by that, but eventually got back into using Linux on a laptop, then my interest had waned once again. Many, many times after that were repeats with frustrations related to dual boot and partition management.

Fast forwarding to today with a certain technology conglomerate making very questionable decisions with their telemetry platform--erm, operating system, I then tried configuring Linux Mint under secure boot and made it dual-bootable with much success. Getting unsupported drivers working is a bit of pain, but DKMS handled everything else from there, including kernel module signing. I also obtained an external HDD this year which I use as a backup drive, so I'd been making extensive use of Timeshift and Back in Time in case I screwed something up (which, I already did once with a successful restoration). I also primarily create art on my desktop using Krita, with my Huion Kamvas 13 (Gen 3) tablet working with it.

Glad to see that I'm not alone making the switch from Windows to Mint ahead of Microsoft killing support for Windows 10! Perhaps 2025 really is the The Year Of Linux Desktop

It's probably no surprise that the general advice for any dual-boot setup seems that to install the partitions on completely separate hard-drives because there's so many things that can go wrong, such as accidentally overwriting your existing partition, Windows "fixing" your boot order after installing updates, or in my case, having to deal with a BIOS that outright refuses to run anything except the Windows Boot Manager (which I fixed by manually editing the boot entry so that it thinks it'll run WBM but actually runs GRUB instead). Considering that my current hard-drive still had more than 1 TB of free space nearly a decade after I first got it, it seemed a bit pointless buying and installing a second one. My Linux partition is currently set to 200GB, but I might end up extending it in the future, which hopefully won't be too scary.

[gaiety]

been linux fulltime for some years, luckily just was able to switch at work as well

love PopOS! not that it's objectively the best thing in the world, it's just well supported, tile manager out of the box, great for amd gaming and i dunno it's my jam haha

i'm your transfemme vim nerd... have written many a dotfile repo's in my time, once gave a conference talk live-coded in vim i'll admit i was impressed i pulled that off ha