No, Nobara is a random remix of mutable/traditional Fedora. They even remove SELinux and replace it with Apparmor, which I can umderstand but assume is less secure. The better OS imho is bazzite.gg
On Bazzite/Atomic Fedora the base OS is already snapshotted on every update. I dont use multiple drives, but mounting them somewhere in /var like /var/home works
COSMIC is not so much “testing” as in “many bugs”, I basically found none. But they just lack maaany essential features. It is really breat to get a desktop that implements nice fancy stuff from Plasma etc. straight from the beginning.
I am not sure how ready it will be when it launches, as in features. But it is pretty nice and the apps are damn fast. I use the appstore on Fedora Kinoite when searching Flatpak apps. It has no native package integration so it does what I want, really nice.
I was Nobara user, then I am using Fedora right now. I want to use things like Hyprland etc. and ya know, Its damn cool to say I am using arch btw. So I’ve decided to use Arch Linux. But everyone says its always breaking and gives problems. That’s because of users, not OS… right? I love to deal with problems but I don’t...
Hey, so I just put this part up first because this is the one I urgently and importantly need answered even tho I wrote that hideous text block first (sorry English isn’t my first language )....
Both use Ubuntu LTS so they have the same packages
Zorin has a more sustainable model of modifying GNOME, so Wayland support, modern stuff etc. But it lacks behind in versions and still simply is a hacked GNOME with inconsistencies.
Mint with Cinnamon has buggy Wayland support, Apps that are often really nice but dont really change much. Cinnamon and the apps are not often used outside of Linux mint.
Both are buggy in some cases.
I would honestly recommend Fedora (or if you want stability as in “the bugs dont change”, Debian, Ubuntu LTS) with KDE Plasma or GNOME.
I use Fedora Kinoite myself, it is modern but the base model is soooo much better for stability than the traditional distros. I use most my apps as Flatpaks, QGis and RStudio through distrobox. All apps apart from QGis are using Wayland.
It is really really good and I hopped a lot.
I do not recomment Mint or Zorin. Same as with ElementaryOS, or stuff involvinf XFCE, Mate, Budgie, LXDE/LXQt.
Is it guaranteed that everything that works on a live USB will also work as the main OS ?
No but the packages are there. Example Fedora: if you install the minimal variant, the installer OS has wifi, but the install without a desktop will not.
If you install any reasonably packaged distro with a desktop, the packges for Wifi will be there.
But why worry? You have a phone and a data cable, even if it would not work, connect over usb, on the phone enable “usb tethering” and you will use it as a wifi or cell network dongle.
This works everywhere, I tested on a 12+ years old Laptop that didnt even have SATA drives or USB 2.0.
Also how do I switch back to windows lol ?
Linux is easy to install, windows is not.
Get 2 or 3 usb sticks/pendrives. On Windows download the “windows media creation tool” and create a boot media. Or download the ISO from their website and use rufus, which is better but you may not have needed drivers.
Unlike Linux, missing random vendor drivers are an issue on Windows and even blocked me from installing it once. This never happened on Linux.
So the better option, get a second SSD. Used one, SATA, as big as you need. 256GB is okay. A SATA-to-USB adapter is cheap. “External SSDs” are often a scam and overpriced.
If you want an NVME, I recommend the enclosures by Inatek which I use, had many nice parts and cables added and even heatpads. Really nice build quality.
Install linux on there and use it. Run it there. This will run on your hardware, if it works it works. The only component you wouldnt test is support for your SSD. I have a really modern NVME but Fedora supports it, so this is very unlikely.
A newer kernel supports more things, another point against Mint, Zorin, ElementaryOS, MXLinux, Debian, etc.
And if you like Linux and want to get windows to the external SSD, boot into a live USB of linux, and use dd to clone your windows drive to the external SSD. This works best if the drives have the same size, otherwise a tool called gdisk will help you very well. But please research before using those.
This will clone the drive bit by bit and it will be bootable, but Windows may not boot from USB because Windows. There is a tool called “win2usb” that can modify whatever is needed, and it worked for me.
And this was all without even opening the laptop. You could just switch drives. Still if you need windows it is always a pain to install, make bootable externally etc.
2 Also what is the message on mints website talking about having to do something else for newer devices ? I now use an old thinkpad and it isn’t an issue but I’m planning to do an upgrade real soon
Linux, the kernel, has all the drivers. It is the core component of every distro.
Linux is developed by a biiig amount of developers, working for Google, Samsung, Microsoft and more. They all develop the kernel and produce different versions:
unstable and testing versions: dont use these
stable: This is what Arch testing, Fedora Rawhide, Debian unstable, etc. will ship. It is the latest, tested and working kernel with the newest features and hardware support. But it may have breakages, that only come out when it gets shipped to the public. So most distros will wait a bit to ship it and have testing versions for the very latest hot stuff.
LTS kernel: more stable, more tested. Does not get feature upgrades until the new release, 2 years of support
Even very “leading edge” distros will not ship the latest “stable” kernel, so you will be somewhere in between.
When developing software, normally you would just have security fixes, bug fixes and features in a new version. But with these products developers may backport fixes to older versions.
Even though the kernel only has 2 years of support, many distros will increase that, maintain their own version and do more backported fixes.
The stable kernel only supports hardware that was supported when it had the “feature freeze”. After this point it is stable, no new features, only fixes.
Release of hardware ≠ linux support. So if your hardware is newer than 2 years you should not use a stable kernel with it. It may be on the market for longer though.
I recommend Intel, all Intel for Latops. If you need graphics intense workloads, use AMD. They have good Linux support, Intel having by far the best in my experience. Avoid NVIDIA and Acer, Asus, Microsoft Surface, or anything you never heard of.
3 Also how does the process vary with RISC-V architecture ?
Jeff Geerling on youtube also makes many videos about it.
In general it is not ready. There are good ARM motherboards and Laptops are just starting. SiFive does a lot of Risc-V stuff, but really this takes time and money.
4
I dont recommend these “beginner distros” with custom easy Desktops. I tried it and really:
ZorinOS: just use vanilla GNOME with the extensions “dash to panel” and “application menu”
Mint: just use KDE Plasma
I love KDE Plasma, the new Plasma 6 on Fedora Kinoite is already great and doesnt really have bugs? And it has sooo many more features than anything else.
I highly recommend the atomic variants, for beginners or just anyone wanting a really well managed system (cant say stable as that is what I explained above) but modern and with a good Desktop.
I use uBlue Kinoite-main, it is a base image and they somehow just removed the guide on how to rebase it.
<span style="color:#323232;">rpm-ostree rebase --reboot ostree-unverified-registry:ghcr.io/ublue-os/kinoite-main:latest
</span>
After the reboot just a short fix:
<span style="color:#323232;">rpm-ostree rebase --reboot ostree-image-signed:docker://ghcr.io/ublue-os/kinoite-main:latest
</span>
They use a different method for signing, the tool is in the image, so the verified version only works after rebasing to it.
From that on, you never have to manage updates again. The system will update and version upgrades automatically. You may never need to touch the terminal again, even though I recommend it.
If you want a more “specialized” version of their distro, you can use Bazzite or Aurora. They have even more “nice to have” things included.
You install the apps as flatpaks, or through distrobox, or via homebrew (yes the thing they also use on macs) or via rpm-ostree.
You will likely find all you need in the software store.
For the meantime when buying a new machine look at Novacustom (EU) or System76 or Starlabs (US). They support and ship coreboot on some devices, but on very powerful machines.
I dont think switching not officially supported desktops on Ubuntu base is easy. You need to uninstall the packages, remove the repos, add the new repos, install the new packages and hope you got all the configs. On Fedora Atomic desktops for example this is waaaay easier.
Dualbooting with Windows works but causes many common problems. I always recommend at least using a separate SSD, to avoid having GRUB being overwritten by some janky “security cleanup” during “windows update”
rufus is way better on windows with “debloat windows” options
Keep in mind windows doesnt ship many drivers in their ISO. So use their shitty media creation tool and hope this will add the needed drivers automatically, at least when creating the media on the same machine
Otherwise, ChrisTitus’ “WinUtil” has “microWin” integrated. A utility that can convert that Windows ISO to a more minimal variant and also allows to include drivers.
Mint is 95% Ubuntu LTS. That means it is a stable base, used in maaany companies, for servers etc.
Linux Distros are a puzzle of packages.
Just in my experience, especially desktop linux struggles a lot with instability and development.
In my Experience, at least KDE Plasma on Ubuntu base was always horribly unstable. But I want to stay with Plasma :D
Linux Mint also has their own desktop, forked from GNOME 2 or 3 idk, because they didnt like what they did. A lot didnt like it, Budgie, Cinnamon, Mate are the same here.
And as GNOME is still the biggest Desktop on most distros, that says a lot about the state of these “protest desktops”.
I have the feeling Mint has an extreme difference between “how much is it used and recommended” and “how much is it developed”, unlike many other projects.
They are doing kinda fine (no idea when they will ship with Ubuntu 24.04 LTS) but they also simply dont really change much.
All these old Desktops base on a big huge core, XOrg, handling all the display, input, output etc. That is made for terminals and mainframes, is fundamentally insecure and just got patched and patched over the years to support things like multiple screens.
As XOrg is not really maintained since years, Wayland really is the new alternative.
Wayland is waaay better, just still incomplete for some use cases.
Any Desktop without Wayland support is unmaintained and insecure. XOrg is not magically patched by some mint developers.
GNOME, KDE Plasma and some window managers have good wayland support. COSMIC, a very cool new alpha-stage desktop, is wayland only.
Cinnamon does its own thing but I have no idea how they want to compete with GNOME, KDE Plasma and now COSMIC. Every desktop does its own thing (they dont need to but do anways, reading code is less fun than writing code).
And once the core component is unmaintained, Desktops with less developers are struggling hard.
Okay, XOrg is still maintained then. I dont know if RHEL 9 already defaults to Wayland but can imagine not.
I agree on the points with missing support, various things, especially remote desktop, need to be adapted to switching was not easy.
Still, they are too late. These things are doable now and it is still an incomplete implementation.
I think their work is good, their desktop and apps have a clear scope and work well in that. But I wouldnt recommend it, because I dont recommend Ubuntu base, and because I think currently there are better desktops.
Yes that is true. Especially when buying stuff used you can get way cheaper prices.
I mean you are financing coreboot development, a Linux Desktop, an OS and more.
Btw Pop!_OS is another distro recommendation if you want to stick with Ubuntu base. I dont personally like their style that much, but the new COSMIC desktop is already usable, and the old one is based on GNOME, so modern and solid.
I can just imagine that they could switch to it a bit fast.
For example Mint has skype from an APT repo. This means users run creepy proprietary Microsoft garbabe. Not as a Flatpak and not on Wayland, meaning it can do whatever it wants, autostart, run in the background, record everything, scan everything.
Dont ask yourself if it works, but how it works.
but there is no too late at this point.
There is, as developing Wayland, Pipewire, xdg-desktop-portal support etc. takes time and testing.
XOrg may be officially maintained, but it is extremely insecure by design and also RedHat is not fixing that.
This is the dead deadline. And just because that is the point when even the last, paid developers will jump off the XOrg ship.
I would call the time toward that point “perfectly working”. It is basically life preservance.
less an issue with atomic desktops
Updates are really stable (dont have much experience with traditional fedora) but you will still get all the new changes that may surprise you.
Ubuntu base is optional. Debian base also works fine
I wouldnt use either. They ship outdated packages which is not a good model.
I think OpenSUSE Slowroll is a reasonable model, ship stuff that comes out, but wait a bit until the Tumbleweed people have tested it.
Fedora is not bleeding edge either, thats what Fedora Rawhide is for.
But using 3 years old outdated packages for basic stuff, like mesa, or the kernel, or… xscreensaver ;D
For sure it is nice for servers that have one purpose, but general desktops, I dont think so.
The biggest problem is that the Distro makes the cut, not the devs. Stability is fine, but if there is no ESR version of a product (like Firefox ESR, Thunderbird ESR, the LTS Kernel etc) you will just freeze packages of random versions.
If you then dont backport fixes, like with xscreensaver, you get these issues.
I also dont like GNOME but their desktop is pretty nice. It is waaay to minimal
clipboard history
copy addresses
links
But many of these are also true for cinnamon.
KDE Plasma has a bit many features, on Kinoite I only use the bare minimum. But currently it works great and only more and more bugfixes will come. I havent had issues in a long time, and really wish that it stays like that.
Their software is powerful, and with great power comes… many bugs.
I just randomly found a OnePlus with a community build of PostmarketOS (Alpine).
I would not use something based off Ubuntu, but the general Linux Desktop is either insecure (traditional apps) or too resource intensive for phones (flatpak).
Also the boot process is way less secure than on a Pixel with the separated Secure Element and all the verification mechanisms.
In general Android uses hardware encryption, profiles are seperately encrypted, and it uses an equivalent to the TPM for that. Many Linux distros are just catching up on that.
Updates can be equally stable and in the background when using rpm-ostree.
Idle battery life is worse. My old GrapheneOS phone that I use as an mp3 player lasts for 2 weeks.
Tons of Apps rely on Android libraries and Waydroid is very outdated currently. If they update to Android 14 and if you use a base OS with SELinux, the Android security model is intact. (The Android sandbox relies entirely on SELinux, without SELinux Apps can break your phone or invade it).
On Android you have the work profile, which allows you to run a set of isolated apps next to the others, apart from the normal App sandbox.
Android is pretty great and GrapheneOS is the best variant of it, if your priorities are
Stability (reliability, not some weird Debian stuff)
Fast updates, often faster than Googles or slightly behind (as they are no Google certified OS they dont get early access, UNLIKE Fairphone which still manages to not ship updates for months)
This is also about the App ID, actually mainly. So they keep K9 so that users can get a popup “export your settings, uninstall and install TB Android”. As Android only allows updates with the same app ID and developer key.
Interesting, they renamed their org from thundernest to thunderbird. Makes more sense tbh.
I changes the URL to this in Obtainium and removed the old one. It seems they are still not changing the App ID as updates worked normally, but that version should get the redesign soon.
IPC? I mean it can export and import settings, sending that data via the share portal and opening it for import (autodetecting the extension) is really possible.
Not that I know how to write a single line of Android app code.
Really great. But I would love that the “edit rounded corners” would not apply to the workspace number circle and to the switches, as it makes no sense.
I think CentOS Stream, Debian or a tweaked Ubuntu LTS are good for stability and all free also as in freedom (after replacing snap with flatpak on Ubuntu).
OpenSUSE slowroll is a good model for better tested but not randomly held back packages.
Fedora has the older stable release, currently 39. It is more stable than the current 40.
As a workstation Desktop I can recommend KDE Plasma, but it is not bugfree. Plasma 5 has bugs that will not be fixed, Plasma 6 has those fixed but random other bugs and random missing features.
GNOME is unusable in many parts for me personally, but very very likely the most stable but also modern Desktop.
COSMIC will be pretty awesome. It doesnt really have bugs for me, but simply a ton of missing things. But the way they build the project, how well everything works and implements all sorts of “we have this new shiny thing” from various DEs like KDE Plasma, is really nice.
But that will take at least a year to be really finished.
Novacustom plans Heads Firmware on their Laptops (www.youtube.com)
Alpaca: an ollama client to easily interact with an LLM locally or remotely (flathub.org)
Are all Linux vendor kernels insecure? A new study says yes, but there's a fix (www.zdnet.com)
Anyone running Nobara who can answer these questions?
cross-posted from: lemm.ee/post/32128978...
Help me get AMD HIP to work in Blender
SOLUTION:...
Nvidia to AMD
hi so i recently switched my GPU to an AMD card from an Nvidia one. Im wondering if there is an easy way to remove all the nvidia packages on arch....
Decision of Next Os
I was Nobara user, then I am using Fedora right now. I want to use things like Hyprland etc. and ya know, Its damn cool to say I am using arch btw. So I’ve decided to use Arch Linux. But everyone says its always breaking and gives problems. That’s because of users, not OS… right? I love to deal with problems but I don’t...
16 years of CVE-2008-0166 - Debian OpenSSL Bug (16years.secvuln.info)
Linux mint or zorin OS for layman beginners who just want everything to work and focuses on stability , privacy , security ? Also what to do if I switched to mint and WiFi stopped working ?
Hey, so I just put this part up first because this is the one I urgently and importantly need answered even tho I wrote that hideous text block first (sorry English isn’t my first language )....
Linux 6.9 released (lore.kernel.org)
Back when both Brodie an Nicco feared Wayland (www.youtube.com)
Here is the podcast URL...
Ubuntu Touch OS on OnePlus 6T: is it a viable Android alternative?
youtu.be/FOG3SylqEdc?si=xQXPJvnaXsgohXLv
Thunderbird for Android / K-9 Mail: April 2024 Progress Report - The Thunderbird Blog (blog.thunderbird.net)
Mozilla to protect Firefox users from bounce trackers - Stack Diary (stackdiary.com)
Handbrake/ffmpeg: What free video codec to use for 720p videos?
I have a lot of old movies, most will barely be 720p....
A Blog to Satisfy Your Monthly COSMIC Fix(es) (blog.system76.com)
Stable, consistent workstation recommendations?
First, thanks for reading and commenting....
[YT] How Mozilla Ruined Firefox (www.youtube.com)
Actually pretty good video....