Linux

I use the following oneliner to switch sinks:

wpctl set-default $(pw-cli i $(pactl list short sinks | awk '{print $2}' | sd 'easyeffects_sink\n' '' | sd "$(pactl get-default-sink)\n" '' | rg '.' || echo "$(pactl get-default-sink)" | tofi --prompt-text " " --height 40% --width 40% --auto-accept-single true ) | rg -oP 'id: \K\w+') && notify-send --urgency=low --icon=/usr/share/icons/Flat-Remix-Red-Dark/panel/audio-volume-high-symbolic.svg "$(pactl list sinks | rg -A 1 "Name: $(pactl get-default-sink)" | rg Description: | sd ' Description: ' '')" -h string:x-canonical-private-synchronous:sink-state && pw-play --volume=0.2 /usr/share/sounds/freedesktop/stereo/audio-volume-change.oga &!

This is great, however, i'd like it if the sink menu showed the descriptions for selection instead of the actual sink names

I've started a script like the following:

RET=$(pactl list sinks | rg Description: | sd '	Description: ' '') | tofi
case $RET in
	pactl list sinks | rg Description: | sd '	Description: ' '') pactl list short sinks | awk '{print $2}'
esac

but that doesn't seem to work at all, any ideas for how to get this working?

edit: I found a better solution

$sinkswitch = wpctl set-default $(pw-cli i $(pactl list sinks | rg --fixed-strings -B 1 "$(pactl list sinks | rg Description: | sd ' Description: ' '' | sd 'Easy Effects Sink' '' | sd --fixed-strings "$(pactl list sinks | rg -A 1 "Name: $(pactl get-default-sink)" | rg Description: | sd ' Description: ' '')" '' | rg '.' || echo "$(pactl list sinks | rg -A 1 "Name: $(pactl get-default-sink)" | rg Description: | sd ' Description: ' '')" | tofi --prompt-text " " --height 40% --width 40% --auto-accept-single true )" | rg Name: | awk '{print $2}' ) | rg -oP 'id: \K\w+') && notify-send --urgency=low --icon=/usr/share/icons/Flat-Remix-Red-Dark/panel/audio-volume-high-symbolic.svg "$(pactl list sinks | rg -A 1 "Name: $(pactl get-default-sink)" | rg Description: | sd ' Description: ' '')" -h string:x-canonical-private-synchronous:sink-state && pw-play --volume=0.2 /usr/share/sounds/freedesktop/stereo/audio-volume-change.oga &!

tl;dr

Editing;

$photoortexteditoryoulike $(find / -iname incompletefilenam*)

Running;

exec $(find / -iname incompletepackagenam*)

Interacting (copying, moving, etc);

$desiredinteraction $(find / -iname desiredfileorpackag*) /desired/output/directory

It may be a "not-so-attractive" tip for most of you, but I find it really useful when I want to edit a specific file (that is located alongside several ones, like a picture or a text file). Or when I've finished compiling something and I want to find the binary file asap. Saves me lots of time on really slow pcs (like a rpi zero).

I just bought a new computer. I'll install fedora silverblue. Do I just need to copy the home directory? And crontab. What else do I need to move?

I need some help finding a distro for a very old machine.

It's my family's old desktop with 2001 components (bought in 2004) and a Pentium CPU that is NOT i686. I checked the exact model and architecture once but I don't remember it now. The only thing I remember is that it's not i686 so 99% of modern 32 bit distros don't work on it (stuck right after grub).

The machine has 1 Gb of DDR1 RAM though so I think it may be useful or at least fun to play around with.

Now it's on Windows XP that runs quite well but doesn't support modern SSL certificates so it can't browse the internet (idk how to fix it ok?).

A long time ago I tried to run multiple distros in live mode on it and got only one (Puppy) to work. Display, sound, ethernet and pretty much everything worked fine. GPU seemed to be an issue though because NVidia and I couldn't install the driver (it was skill issue and I think it's possible to do). But now it doesn't work for some reason.

Are there any Linux distros or other operating systems (preferably not deprecated) that I can install on it? And btw it does have bootable USB support.

EDIT: There are way too many answers and a lot of ones that don't mind the architecture limitations. I'm grateful to everyone who replied but I have to close this discussion now and I will not reply to further answers. I have received enough information and I cannot physically read so many replies.

I took some photos at an event and I need to go through them and get rid of the bad ones (eyes closed, things in the shot, out of focus, blurred etc.) I'm not a pro photographer so no idea where to begin with photo apps. I've used RawTherapee and Gimp a bit.

What app will let me quickly browse the photos and handle (delete/tag) photo formats together (both the RAW and the JPG)?

I have a fedora with GNOME. When i want to use a mod key in virtual machine in GNOME Boxes my main os captures it and shows workspaces. What should I do to use mod key inside a virtual machine in GNOME Boxes?

I'm running OpenSUSE leap 15.5, When I was on the linux mint, I was using warpinator but using it on openSUSE is troublesome and I wish there was a linux version of blip but unfortunately there is not.

I setup a Dell Inspiron 2-in-1 for my Dad with Fedora 40 Kinoite. He wants a basic stylus but I don't know anything about them. All the info I can find on the product page is saying that you can use an "active pen." What am I looking for in a stylus to let me know if it'll work? The Dell and Wacom stylus' say they're for Windows. Do these stylus' need software to work and thus be stuck only working on Windows? Do they actually work on a firmware level? If you know of any that work I'm down for suggestions too.

I am running Kubuntu 24.04 and I have an issue I can't seem to figure out. I am using my onboard intel sound card with optical output. The sound is great, but every 5-10 minutes the sound turns into a loud mess of noise (its hard to describe, kinda like static).

After some tinkering I have determined that what is happening is the sound card is outputting volume much higher than expected. If I turn the volume down to just above mute, I can hear the sound normally its just badly over-driven. The volume levels in my mixer look fine, so I'm really confused. If I am in firefox, muting the sound for about 10 seconds will resolve the issue when I unmute, but if I am playing a game, I have to quit to fix it.

I've been searching the web for several days and found a couple possible solutions that involve disabling snd_hda_intel powersaving modes via module options. But they have had no effect.

I also found one article with a nearly exact description of my issue on Archlinux forums, but the guy never figured it out, it just started working after an update one day.

Is there anything else I can try to fix this?

It's a merged pull request made by a member. Dunno which release it'd be in. This means people can double-click deb files to install again (with a warning).
c.f. https://news.itsfoss.com/ubuntu-24-04-disappointment/

For those who don’t know what I mean:

• LMDE = Linux Mint Debian Edition, https://www.linuxmint.com/download_lmde.php
• xfce and cinnamon = desktop environments (DE)

target hardware for LMDE is an 8 year old nuked mac notebook with an intel chip.

I’ve always used xfce because it’s easy on the hardware and I don’t care that much about looks, but functionality.

I’ve never used cinnamon and I don’t know if it’s going to slow the notebook much.

Neither do I know if I can install LMDE and then change the DE to xfce.

Is LMDE being updated like the other mints? LMDE is version 6, whereas the other DE are version 21.3

I have a 2nd generation XP Pen Artist 13. It's a great tablet and I've managed to make it work with my Steam Deck too.

But...

It's basically an external monitor with pressure sensitive surface, so still less portable than an actual stand alone table. So I'm wondering if there is a tablet with a pressure sensitive screen and battery free pen that either comes with Linux or can install Linux on.

The programs I use for making art are Krita, Gimp, and Blender 3D.

Solved: The files are encrypted, see stackoverflow

Hope it is ok to ask technical questions in this channel!

I found a folder of files on one of my back drives which was copied from a very old Sony Ericson cell phone or a SAMSUNG Galaxy S2.

The folder is called DCIM and in a sub folder called Camera there are files with a .jpg extension.

This files are not standard JPG files. They start with the following header:

0000000 0000 0000 3900 c0d8 ac5f d196 2d63 2421
0000010 0003 0200 0000 0010 0200 2d8c 0904 0103
0000020 0000 0000 0000 0000 e960 2861 7025 ba0e
0000030 2424 dcfa 3e3b ee64 0800 c87b a43a a90d
0000040 7287 b815 7ca4 9680 ed65 6216 5f08 4f43
0000050 534e 4c4f 0045 0000 9000 b3e9 1333 92b9
0000060 0002 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000
0000070 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000

And the last bytes look like this:

039fea0 60ff 01fa 6b1e 8ef5 7c6f e69f fd9e 1589
039fef0 2199 dbd9 13fe 337d 2e9f d862 e252 080d

(obtained via hexdump -n 1024 filename.jpg).

The file command just returns 'data'.

The jpgrecovery command simply does not process this files.

The strings command finds an embedded string "_CONSOLE" !

If I open the file in a file viewer (shotwell, GIMP, Firefox, Google Chrome), I get the error that the file starts with 0 0, which is correct, as seen in the above hexdump.

Using identify from the imagemagick package results in:

20140207_142030.jpg JPG 0x0 16-bit sRGB 3.625MiB 0.000u 0:00.002
identify-im6.q16: Not a JPEG file: starts with 0x00 0x00 `20140207_142030.jpg' @ error/jpeg.c/JPEGErrorHandler/338.

All this commands were executed on Debian 12.

I have hundreds of files with this JPG extension and for each file the header is starting with 0 0 in this folder, so I assume the problem is not corruption of one file.

My questions:

1. What kind of file format is this?
2. How can I convert the files to JPGs?

Edit: Added the output of some suggested data/commands to questions Edit: Mark as solved, thanks to @hades@hades@lemm.ee .

Thanks a lot to everyone helping to figure this out/pointing me in the right direction! <3

I recently downloaded linux mint and I wanted use a live wallpaper so I found out I can do that with hidamari.

I've downloaded from the software package manager but it doesn't launch when I click launch.

What am I doing wrong?

~Anti~ ~Commercial-AI~ ~license~ ~(CC~ ~BY-NC-SA~ ~4.0)~

Hello everybody, I'm using an Asus S56C with Lubuntu 22.04.4 and for work I use Photoshop CS6 and Vector Magic with Playonlinux. I was wandering - just for curiosity - if there are any good alternatives to Playonlinux to use these Windows programs. Thanks in advance!

I feel like I'd use my file browser if it was easier to get around. ctrp-p like zoxide/fzf would be game changing.

Edit: sry tbh I wasn't clear.. I was asking for a GUI file browser, sry ranger covers my tui needs

I'm interested in trying out OSMC because I'm really tired of my smart TV being well...not that smart. It crashes a lot of we have to reboot it manually because one of the apps isn't working.

How is it? Is it still pretty easy to use streaming apps? We mostly use Netflix, Disney+, and Apple TV. Occasionally some others as well

Does it work well with Chromecast?