boredsquirrel

@boredsquirrel@slrpnk.net

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

Any advice for a long-time Linux user, first-time Linux *desktop* user?

I’m a regular user of Linux systems but apart from a couple of test Ubuntu installs many years ago they’ve always been containers or VMs with no DE which I can throw away when I break them. The Steam Deck showcasing how far Wine/Proton has come combined with Windows being Windows has given me the push; I’ve made a Mint...

boredsquirrel,
  1. Just shrink windows and install Linux.

Use either BTRFS (no idea if Mint supports that) or LVM with EXT4 or F2FS. F2FS is used in Android, stable, fast, simple, flash optimized. Ext4 is also based.

Dont separate / from /home if you dont use the above setup. If you do, partitions can resize dynamically so no problems here.

Installing multiple OSses is messy, avoid it.

Windows Updates may remove GRUB and eat the partition. If the partition is still there, you could reflash GRUB with dd.

  1. Disk encryption is a single checkbox in every installer I tried. It doesnt use the TPM so it works everywhere, while not as fancy as Android on a Google Pixel.

Absolutely do it.

Most often you only encrypt the / partition and not the boot. And no you dont touch Windows so no issues.

  1. Tons of people use GDrive and Dropbox. It supposedly works.
  2. On a traditional Distro I would leave the system as it is and install everything from Flathub. It is preinstalled and configured on Linux.

Traditional Distros are extremely messy and build up Entropy, i.e. randomness. You just do random shit everywhere and after a few months or years you have issues that nobody can reproduce and you need to reinstall.

That is why I am happily on Fedora Atomic Desktops (Kinoite, KDE). OSTree is heaven.

If you stick to Flatpaks you will not change the system at all, the apps are separated. So it will likely not break at all.

Ironically, while the “immutable” (managed) systems are used with Flatpak a lot, it is the traditional ones that should use it, as they dont have mechanisms like rpm-ostree reset.

So yes, absolutely.

Have a look at my list of recommended apps (which I planned on updating today and a damn browser crash destroyed 2 hours of work…)

  1. Use an atomic system. Use Flatpaks. Change as little crazy stuff as possible (if you are on KDE, lol).

I recommend Librewolf, great project with good usability.

Meanwhile I will some day fix up my arkenfox automation which makes any Firefox version as secure and private.

boredsquirrel,

Didnt see it so I just keep it here? Idk

boredsquirrel,

These messages are damn useless

Distros take care of the kernel, either ship LTS releases or do the backports themselves. Only rolling release people run that kernel.

So this post is literally only useful for the 4 LFS users that now need to recompile their kernels.

boredsquirrel,

Is has no Wayland support, doesnt support the very well packaged Flatpak officially, and it is kinda big.

I prefer MPV now, using Celluloid and tried Haruna.

boredsquirrel,

VLC is literally the savior of Windows

boredsquirrel,

https://www.davidrevoy.com/data/images/blog/2024/debian-kde/2024-05-30_05_KDE-Plasma-appaerence.jpg

Cool stuff.

Yes the degradation from Plasma 5 x11 to Plasma 6 Wayland Graphics tablet options is bad.

Also the stuff where every Desktop does its own thing kinda sucks.

But we will get there.

An alternative would be CentOS Stream, AlmaLinux or RockyLinux, which has the same stability, X11 support aspect.

boredsquirrel,

Yeah I also tried CentOS Stream 9 with KDE Plasma (see a recent post of mine). And:

  • they messed up the systemsettings order completely in 5.27
  • the tiling is completely broken for some reason too

I havent yet seen any actual backports and fixes. The tiling stuff (Meta + arrows) is known and completely broken.

I like Plasma 6 a lot, it is way more stable than 5, but I am on an all intel coreboot Laptop and I dont use special software.

boredsquirrel,

I think they are just referring to the Ubuntu pro ads.

This is not spam. If you have random outdated packages from the universe repo on your system it will tell you that they would ALSO offer support for those if you get Ubuntu pro.

Maybe too often, idk. But Linux Mint will “fix” this by also running these old maybe insecure packages but not even offering security fixes.

People need to step down their weird Linux-entitlement horses, and get that Free Software is not free as in free beer.

boredsquirrel,

Afaik you will get this message because you use Ubuntu LTS. Which ships outdated, “stable” packages.

The solution is not just silencing that message and continuing to use them, but some way to get updates OR security backports for them.

boredsquirrel,

There is literally not a single useful comment here.

You have packages from outside the official main repo, in the universe repo.

You are using a stable Distribution so packages are frozen and need backported security updates.

You dont get them for the optional universe repos, but if you give them a bit of money (or afaik Ubuntu pro is even free for a few devices) then they will also support these 3rd party packages.

It is an optional service, they warn you that you use outdated packages, and offer a solution.

I dont use Ubuntu and Snaps are crap, but this is totally fine.

boredsquirrel,

they should have included the security patches from the get-go

I dont know how Ubuntu does that stuff, but universe is community supported only. It is required for many normal packages, so yes you could say their service is not good enough but hey, its free Software.

If you dont pay a cent you have like nothing to complain

boredsquirrel,

This is what I dont understand too. No, it is for regular packages, not random 3rd party stuff.

Those are made on Launchpad and available as PPAs, originally meant to be the first step, followed by having them approved to Ubuntus repos.

boredsquirrel,

No. You are using a stable Distro. This is how stable distros work.

If you want upstream updates for all packages, use a rolling or semi-rolling release like Fedora, Arch, OpenSUSE, Gentoo, etc.

boredsquirrel,

I dont know how many packages they share but this seems very unrealistic.

Debian and Ubuntu have different release schedukes and package versions.

boredsquirrel, (edited )

Until then

Also adding the not available Purism Librem Laptop lol.

Or Thinkpads up to T430, they work pretty okay.

Or a ton of Chromebooks (with lots of drawbacks like bad keyboard, underpowered, low storage, bad repairability)

boredsquirrel,

Linux, system:

  • KDE Plasma (Dolphin, Kate, Kfind, Merkuro, shell, Spectacle)
  • Librewolf / hardened Firefox (system app because of user namespaces, which Flatpaks cant create)

Linux, Flatpak:

  • syncthingy
  • thunderbird
  • libreoffice
  • KDE: Okular, Gwenview, maybe soon digiKam
  • Qt: qBittorrent, Keepassxc
  • GNOME/Circle: Celluloid, PDF Arranger, Carburetor, Decoder, G4music, Railway, SimpleScan (or Skanlite), Impression, GIMP
  • GTK: localsend, GPU Screen recorder
  • Electron: Freetube, Signal, Cryptomator, Nextcloud
  • Podman: StirlingPDF

Android:

  • Fossify Gallery, Calendar
  • Material Files
  • Markor
  • Antennapod
  • Florisboard (or maybe Futo, but I dont need the fancy stuff yet)
  • Shelter
  • localsend
  • Obtainium
  • dict.cc
  • Grayjay
  • k9mail
  • soundbound (spotify), seal (ytdl)
  • öffi, kleine Wettervorschau
  • SaveTo…
  • mjpdf
boredsquirrel,

Doesnt work for me lol. But yes, totally.

discuss.kde.org/t/…/1

boredsquirrel,

ufw or firewalld have presets and will automatically open the right ports and traffic types.

Also these are different programs.

boredsquirrel,

You would need to add the flathub repo. But thats already done by default on Mint.

boredsquirrel,

You either added their apt repo and installed it via apt, or you installed the Flatpak

boredsquirrel,

Try the official AMDGPUPro container with Podman and also run the binary in there.

Dont install random amdgpupro drivers onto the main system.

Just like you shouldnt install Davincis random dependencies that are clearly only meant for RHEL

FOSS Media Playback Device

I want to create a minimal install for mpv playback through jellyfin-mpv-shim and macast. this is going to be a base for a FOSS media sink akin to a Chromecast. you attach it to your TV and it plays whatever you send it, like movies from your jellyfin server and youtube/vimeo/piped/etc videos. otherwise, there’s no interaction...

boredsquirrel,

Wayland is the future, but this is one of the things where X11 is like meant for it.

I would still go with Wayland. Use a compositor that just displays fullscreen.

Note that MPV needs XWayland, players like Celluloid/Haruna are Wayland native.

No idea about the rest though.

boredsquirrel,

I dont know it didnt the last time I checked

boredsquirrel,

I dont know the details, but easy remote control, network transparency etc.

This does not apply to a web-client (MPV) getting the media and just displaying it, with the station connected to a normal display.

So no, this is likely unproblematic on Wayland.

Nice recommendation!

My friend didn't have a great experience with Linux

I have been daily driving Linux for over two years now and I have switched distros many times. So, when my friend bought a new laptop, I convinced him to install Linux Mint on it. I asked him if he wanted to dual boot, he said no because it would fill up all his storage. We installed Linux Mint. The other day, he wanted to play...

boredsquirrel, (edited )

He obviously wants to use only proprietary Windows Software.

There is little reason to force him to use Linux. Of course Linux may have less overall tracking, annoying behaviors, better performance etc.

Win10 will be EOL veeery soon. Win11 is really bad on old hardware.

I second uBlue Bazzite and ProtonDB, check what you run first.

Respect that you even came that far lol.

boredsquirrel,

Bazzite also solves this, sometimes.

But you cant change if Roblox etc actively block Linux compatibility

boredsquirrel,

“SeCuRiTy”

boredsquirrel,

OBS is extremely bloated for simple screen recording.

There is GPU Screen recorder which I currently use, and it is fine. But that is pretty much the only one.

boredsquirrel,

I mean I already use a browser all the time.

boredsquirrel,

I didnt understand that statement though.

A browser is simply the bottom line. Its the stuff I always open up. It is always in RAM.

Firefox has more stable screencast capabilities than many recorders.

boredsquirrel,

Too many features, too cluttery UI, made for a complete task I may not use.

I used OBS a lot but would like to find something slimmer

boredsquirrel,

Spectacle only runs on KDE afaik, which is not the problem. But it also doesnt really compress much, I dont know if it uses the GPU too.

Agree spectacle + ffmpeg might be a good solution with postprocessing.

boredsquirrel,

Thanks for an actually useful comment :D

It might be something like Photopea, that can also just be downloaded and ran locally.

boredsquirrel,

Fair points. A video recorder for me doesnt need internet access while a browser obviously has it. A browser needs that for me as I use it for video calls, even though it is a bit strange to do this.

But thats it, browsers are multimedia platforms today and using another tool additionally to that doesnt change anything.

boredsquirrel,

Awesome!

boredsquirrel,

No, it is not a service if it runs locally in the browser.

And even less if you can load it from the system into the browser.

boredsquirrel,

I think I will switch back to OBS Studio or stay with GPU Screen recorder :D

But the idea is interesting anyways as a concept, as it works everywhere, on literally any Linux distro without any dependencies apart from “some” Javascript.

boredsquirrel,

Does Firefox though? The Flatpak needs device access for whatever reason

boredsquirrel,

Cool, will try that!

boredsquirrel,

Ah yes, hard dependencies that are not actually hard dependencies.

That package may just be protected.

@OP to actually help you it would be really smart to record the issue you had when installing. Maybe SDDM setting up alongside GNOME or something?

KDE on Fedora works really well, but mixing the apps was a pain in the past, may not be anymore as the KDE Devs deal with GNOME being GNOME by just packing the needed icons into every app.

boredsquirrel,

You might try to just swap the groups


<span style="color:#323232;">sudo dnf group remove "WorkstationSomething"
</span><span style="color:#323232;">sudo dnf group install "Plasma Desktop"
</span>

Or something, I dont use traditional Fedora anymore and only used it for a a few weeks.

boredsquirrel,

Swapping some packages really shouldnt be a problem.

But learn how to do BTRFS system snapshota before.

Also, discussion.fedoraproject.org

Viruses & Task Viewers

Hello everybody! I can say I’m a newbie at Linux. Wanted to ask about Linux’ task viewers. On the famous task viewers such as bpytop, htop etc., can viruses hide from them? Excluding the injected codes, can virus & tracker/logger softwares hide from classic task viewers of Linux? Do they show all kinds of services and...

boredsquirrel,

Getting the sudo password is pretty trivial.

Just alias the sudo command to catch it and pipe it to the wanted tool.

With the sudo password you can recompile the kernel and add a random kernel module to it.

Only secureboot and verified boot make problems there. These are actually useful!

boredsquirrel,

Heads Firmware

Novacustom will support it soon!

boredsquirrel,

udisksctl for mounting.

boredsquirrel,

Virtualization actually, dont know why though

boredsquirrel,

Btw the “official COPR” for krun on Fedora seems unmaintained, but there is a new one with recent builds.

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • •
  • fightinggames
  • All magazines
    •