Yo linux team, i would love some advice.

I’m pretty mad at windows, 11 keeps getting worse and worse and I pretty done with Bill’s fetishes about bing and ai. Who knows where’s cortana right now…

Anyway, I heard about this new company called Linux and I’m open to try new stuff. I’m a simple guy and just need some basic stuff:

• graphic stuff: affinity, canva, corel, gimp etc.. (no adobe anymore, please don’t ask.)
• 3d modelling and render: blender, rhino, cinema, keyshot
• video editing: davinci
• some little coding in Dart/flutter (i use VS code, I don’t know if this is good or bad)
• a working file explorer (can’t believe i have to say this)
• NO FUCKIN ADS
• NO MF STUPID ASS DISGUSTING ADVERTISING

The tricky part is the laptop, a zenbook duo pro (i9-10/rtx2060), with double touch screens.

I tried ubuntu several years ago but since it wasn’t ready for my use i never went into different distros and their differences. Now unfortunately, ready or not, I need to switch.

Edit: the linux-company thing is just for triggering people, sorry I didn’t know it was this effective.

The tl;dr is: pretty much Silverblue for RHEL

Disclaimer: I know there's a lot of questions and posts like this but generally they're aimed at noobs. I consider myself an intermediate user, and I know generally distros don't matter much and you can have anything another distro has on any distro but I'm looking for something a little "specific" that better suits my need from the get-go, I guess we could say that yeah. Plus hey some discussion won't hurt Lemmy.

I come here to seek your advice oh Great Council of Linux. Please hear my cause:

The problem

Right now I use NixOS and I'm mostly happy with it, I like having everything declared on a config file I can audit to remove stuff I don't use anymore, I like the stability it provides and the rollback feature (I only sued it once but glad to have it), automatic updates that apply when I shut down my PC (I do that often) and won't bork everything, and I like that it generally has very up to date software even on its stable branch. I also like the possibility of using nix-shell to test a program and remove it immediately afterwards even if it leads to a messy .config folder sometimes.

However, there are some pain points especially when it comes to customization. Now, the system itself is very usable and have little complains there, it's very rare that a package I want isn't in the repo, and when everything works it's great, but when it doesn't work it's very frustrating (mainly due to the lack of documentation and troubleshooting via the unofficial discord can be a pain). Namely on my laptop I have issues with the cursor sometime going from the catppuccin theme (on plasma 5, laptop is 23.11) to default on some context menus on X11 or only shows the theme in windows if using wayland (tho I can wait to see if it's fixed on 24.05). I never had this on my desktop gaming PC (which used 23.11 but now switched it to unstable to have plasma 6) but I have other problems there, for example the catppuccin SDDM corners theme doesn't apply anymore for some reason. Now I'm someone who likes to customize the looks of my desktop and I want to have consistency in my theming as much as possible so these issues are very annoying to me. On top of that to resolve the latter the official git repo of the package says to use flakes, now I know many fans of NixOS will swear flakes are cool and all but I absolutely hate them: I find them confusing, I don't like having to deal with more stuff than just my config file and home-manager and I want to have nothing to do with them I just want to use the official packages.

Now I'm sure most of these issues aren't exactly NixOS's fault and maybe in 24.05 they'll all be fixed but I'm getting very annoyed both by these problems and I found it hard to solve other problems in the past as well, and I hate that searching stuff up on ecosia, the wiki, etc doesn't work most of the time due to how different NixOS is and while the (unoffical) discord is generally useful sometimes it cannot provide the help I need, plus most of the stuff I learn troubleshooting NixOS is specific to NixOS and doesn't translate to other linux distros. So that's why on one side I'm considering that maybe it's not worth waiting till the end of the month to see if 24.05 fixes my issues (I don't plan on staying on unstable after the release of 24.05 that's certain) or if I should stick with it instead of wasting a day reconfiguring everything (granted home-manager is cool af but a lot of stuff I use don't use it so it's a one-time pain).

What I look for

Generally in a distro I look for something minimal, easily customizable and where I can use the terminal a lot for installing software and stuff (I just like the progression bars and seeing all the text go weeee accross the screen it's so cool) tho I'm fine using some GUI stuff like the KDE settings for other stuff where the alternative is a very complex set of config files (I generally prefer keeping wonky GUIs to a minimum though so I'm fine with some config files).

More specifically, I require a distro to have out of the box:

• Plasma 6: I am moving to wayland, I love KDE Plasma for its customization and a lot of the stuff I made myself uses Qt. Maybe one day I'll try Cosmic but rn I just like plasma 6.
• Easy to theme and configure: particularly with catppuccin
• Proton VPN: the official apps, doesn't matter if the distro is officially supported or not by Proton
• Steam, discord, gaming stuff & proprietary stuff directly on the repo: or at least easily enabled during the installation, without jumping through hoops
• Rollback feature: be it what NixOS has, snapshots or whatever that btrfs thing is, it's ok if I have to set it up myself if needs be, I need to learn how, but I prefer if it's there out of the box
• Big repo

What I'd like to have but isn't a must have:

• Minimal amount of pre-installed packages: I want to choose myself what goes on my system and don't want to uninstall lots of things
• Being able to leave it untouched for months without risking to brick it when I update
• Decent information and help available: if I'm leaving NixOS I'd rather not deal with poor documentation
• Immutability: I generally like the stability this provides, the atomicity of the updates, etc etc just as long as it doesn't make theming stuff like KDE (with plugins), Grub, SDDM, etc painful.

As for what I don't like:

• Flatpaks: I prefer using system packages in general, plus I don't like their terminal commands and I hear they're not exactly good at following system themes. I guess I could live with them if I have to with flatseal and maybe a better terminal way to install them though.
• Snaps: I hate snaps and in my experience worked terribly, like steam not being able to detect game libraries on other hard drives etc, graphical bugs, plus their backend is proprietary and handled by canonical, see following point.
• Corporations: I don't want my OS to be handled by a corporation, I don't trust them so I'd rather minimize their control over the OS.
• Custom theming: this isn't too important since I'll customize the theme myself regardless, I just generally try to stick to a distro's theme if there's one cause why not. I'm only putting this here to signal I prefer something unthemed (but possibly with a cool logo)

What am I considering?

Right now I'm considering the following options:

• Stay with NixOS: Wait for 24.05 see if that fixes my issues etc
• Bazzite + Aurora: Both are Fedora uBlue spins with KDE. I'm planning on putting Bazzite on my gaming PC since everything is already set up for that and Aurora (KDE spin of Bluefin) on my laptop (I use it for gaming on occasion but it's more for other stuff). They look cool but I'm not too familiar with them, the gripes I have, or think I will have, are flatpaks, some pre-installed stuff like vscode (I use neovim) and also that it's a spin of Fedora, which IMO is a bit too close to Red Hat but I can live with this given these two are different from fedora and further away from RH. Also, can I use ujust to install/uninstall things? What does it do?
• OpenSUSE: I hear good things about Tumbleweed, I also know they have an immutable version but I know very little about it. I tried it in a VM for a few minutes to check out YaST and I was positively impressed but it comes with a lot of pre-installed stuff like a graphical package manager (yes I know there's zypper and that it's slow, I don't mind too much if it works and isn't too bad) and I heard it has something similar to the AUR which I'll need to check out as I saw the normal tumbleweed repos missed some packages I like.
• Arch: I used Arch (btw) for a long time and generally liked it, I didn't have many issues with it and when I did it was usually my fault (tbf that's often the same on NixOS) and I generally could fix them easily (only once did my system break after the power went out during an update requiring a reinstall), the thing I don't like is having to update it weekly manually (I don't trust automatic updates on non-immutable distros much) and this is fine generally but it's a problem for my gaming PC because I have to move away from the house it's in for months on end and telling people to turn it on weekly so I can ssh and update it remotely into it is bothersome. Also, while I like seeing the little pacmans eat the dots, after using NixOS I learned to appreciate updates that don't require me to rtfm, that I don't have to care about too much and don't risk borking something in my system even if it's a small thing. Plus I figured I could try something else knowing that worst case scenario I can always go back to the trusty old Arch. Maybe I could try Arco instead of Vanilla Arch in this case.

I'm open to suggestions for other options though, there's trillions of distros.

What am I excluding

• Debian & co: nothing against Debian, but I used it once and found it very frustrating to use, the packages are fairly outdated (and I don't see that as more stable than say NixOS with the rollback and everything), I had to manually install every proprietary thing, add repos here and there, etc and overall I didn't like it. Also I don't think it has plasma 6 yet. I don't see much point in using any of its derivatives either.
• Gentoo: I don't want to compile everything
• Fedora itself: too close to RH, its derivates I can tolerate but I'd prefer to avoid Fedora and RH stuff if possible

That is all that comes to my mind right now. Thanks in advance.

https://forum.garudalinux.org/t/garuda-linux-bird-of-prey-240428/36387 - Garuda Linux “Bird of Prey” (240428) released.

I recently updated to fedora 40 and enabled the experimental setting to get VRR running. But I am an idiot who has been playing at frames rates between 30-60 on screens without VRR for almost all of my life so I can't even know if VRR is actually working or not. Is there some rest I can run to see if VRR is functional¿? If not, which parts of the game should I concentrate to see the difference between VRR and no VRR¿?

Edit : I am on a laptop with the integrated screen being the one being used. I am currently using ublue-main

Something as simple and as convenient to use as internet download manager

If you have ever used IDM before then you know what I mean, I'm yet to find an alternative that's on par with its ease of use and convenience

Here are my requirements:

• I don't have to copy-paste any links or right click on any links (just like IDM)
• it works on all sites, well except for mega.nz (just like IDM)
• it can scan the website and show me a download button on top of the media if it detects media like a YouTube video or an audio file playing, etc... (just like IDM)
• It works perfectly with Firefox (just like IDM)
• it doesn't have to keep running in the background, starting a direct download link should initiate it and show me a pop download dialog/window (just like IDM)

I have tried:

• Persepolis: it has failed me miserably, the download fails 99% of the time (like from GitHub) so I ended up disabling the browser extension because it was getting in my way.
• Motrix: I have tried it on Windows with Firefox, but it doesn't auto-detect the downloads and I have to copy and paste the download links and in some cases this is very difficult as many websites don't show the direct download link to the user.
• Varia: tried it quickly yesterday, and it failed to auto capture the download link and Firefox built in download manager started instead.
• FDM: I have tried to download it off the package manager (a flatpak from Linux mint software manager) but it failed to install for some reason and now the download option doesn't load at all! But I have used FDM on Windows before, and it is not as good as IDM.

I just downloaded KGet, and it doesn't seem to be what I'm looking for, but we will see.

Some notes:

• youtube-dl: I never used it before but from what I know about it, I'm pretty sure it doesn't fit my criteria
• I'm using 1DM+ on my android phone, and it is so damn good, it's almost perfect, it is the golden standard for download managers on android, this app is another example of "it just works".

• I think I'm losing hope, and I'm going to see if IDM can run perfectly using WINE

final update

Tested JDownloader2 with the Download with JDownloader Firefox extension vs FDM and the winner is FDM because it just worked out of the box no configuration was needed beyond just installing the browser extension, and it did a better job at meeting my requirements except for the 3rd one, but thankfully I found this great extension so it's alright

• ah I almost forgot, yes I tested DownThemAll, and it didn't automatically capture downloads, so this was an instant no

I need some help figuring out how to install all the DKMS drivers, and firmware manager, firmware daemon, etc on Silverblue.

It's easy on Fedora but I haven't found a single instance explaining how to do it in a Fedora atomic distro.

These are the instructions for Fedora.

https://support.system76.com/articles/system76-driver/

The issue at hand: My /var/tmp folder is stacking up on literary hundreds of folders called "container_images_storage_xxxxxxxxxx", where the x's present a random number. Each folder contains the following files called 1, 2 and 3 as seen in thumbnail. Each folder seems to increase in size too, as the lowest I can see is the size of 142.2 MiB, but the highest 2.1GB. This is a problem as it is taking up all my disk space, and even if I do delete them, they come back the next day... I believe this has something to do with podman, but I'm really not quite sure. All I use the PC for is browsing and gaming.

Is there a way to figure out where a file or folder is coming from on Linux? I've tried stat and file, but neither gave me any worthwhile information AFAIK. Would really appreciate some help to figure what causes this, I am still new to the Linux desktop and have no idea what is causing this issue. I am on atomic desktop, using Bazzite:latest.

stat:

stat 1
  File: 1
  Size: 1944283388	Blocks: 3797432    IO Block: 4096   regular file
Device: 0,74	Inode: 10938462619658088921  Links: 1
Access: (0600/-rw-------)  Uid: ( 1000/    buzz)   Gid: ( 1000/    buzz)
Context: system_u:object_r:fusefs_t:s0
Access: 2024-05-06 12:18:37.444074823 +0200
Modify: 2024-05-06 12:22:51.026500682 +0200
Change: 2024-05-06 12:22:51.026500682 +0200
 Birth: -

file

file 1
1: gzip compressed data, original size modulo 2^32 2426514442 gzip compressed data, reserved method, ASCII, extra field, encrypted, from FAT filesystem (MS-DOS, OS/2, NT), original size modulo 2^32 2426514442

I think I get the idea of Fedora Atomic (Silverblue, Kionite, etc.), but I do not get what uBlue is about.

Are those just another "ooh it's distro X but with preinstalled Y" or are those some soft of overlays on top of Fedora? Can't they just be some install scripts? Why not just base Fedora Silverblue? Maybe I don't get the idea, because people seem hyped.

Very interesting and understandable explanations of low level architecture and filesystems, namespaces, userspace, kernel functions, drivers etc.

Highly recommend!

I was reading GitLab's documentation (see link) on how to write to a repository from within the CI pipeline and noticed something: The described Docker executor is able to authenticate e.g. against the Git repository with only a private SSH key, being told absolutely nothing about the user's name it is associated with.
If I'm correct, that would mean that technically, I could authenticate to an SSH server without supplying my name if I use a private key?

I know that when I don't supply a user explicitly like ssh user@server or via .ssh/config, the active environment's user is used automatically, that's not what I'm asking.

The public key contains a user name/email address string, I'm aware, is the same information also encoded into the private key as well? If yes, I don't see the need to hand that info to an SSH call. If no, how does the SSH server know which public key it's supposed to use to challenge my private key ownership? It would have to iterate over all saved keys, which sounds rather inefficient to me and potentially unsafe (timing attacks etc.).

I hope I'm somewhat clear, for some reason I find it really hard to phrase this question.

Hello, I've installed Fedora 38 (KDE spin), about the time it came out and need a little help updating it.

I got a system update through Discover when 39 came out, I updated it restarted, and I didn't think much of it. Now that Fedora 40 came out, I did the same thing, but this time, after the update, I checked the system information in the settings, and it says that I am still running Fedora 38!

I have a dual boot system with Windows 10 (ugh, but I need it for work) and I noticed that in grub the option to boot Fedora also says 38. There are also some recovery boot options.

I'm confused and don't know what to do to update to 40? Would really like to avoid doing a fresh install.

I'd say I'm a novice Linux user, but this is the first time in dealing with something like this, so sorry if I missed some crucial information, will provide anything needed to help fix this issue.

Thanks in advance!

https://chaos.social/@ktemkin/112392108881500298

~https://chaos.social/@ktemkin/112392108893774195~

This isn’t just a fork of Nix—this is the work of a team of 10+ people near-constantly since early February. (Technically, us too — but our task is really just enabling others.)

Some serious work has gone into ensuring it improves on upstream without having the regressions that have plagued them last three major versions!

And, since this will matter to some — it’s not a project of the NixOS foundation, but an independent organization that takes its responsibility to its community seriously.

I've been running Tumbleweed for a few years now. It's great, but it's not 100% autopilot, updates often require manual intervention (resolving small problems) or updates try to add 50 packages I don't need (recommends) all the time despite them not being in a pattern. I've been looking for a distro on which I could set up automatic updates and forget mostly about it, while still having recent packages; reliability and peace of mind while being on the bleeding edge. Due to having an NVIDIA GPU, LTS distros are a no-go. I've debated on the following

• Debian: packages too old, ideal for my server though.
• Ubuntu 24.04: Plasma 6 not available until next release. Snap is still a problem.
• Fedora/Ublue: DNF is painfully slow. Immutable variants are interesting but download full GBs worth of images
• Arch: insanely fast package manager, but can require manual intervention. Automatic updates aren't recommended for arch. It also lacks my printer driver on the repos (only available on the AUR). One of the only distros that can truly satisfy my minimalist itch.
• KDE Neon: Snaps, no nvidia graphics
• NixOS: Never tried it but apparently the unusual file structure causes many problems

So I ended up trying again OpenSUSE Kalpa. I had completely forgotten about it, and I really like the concept. It's like the Fedora immutable variants, but instead of downloading whole GBs of images, it creates BTRFS snapshots between normal zypper updates. So you can have the benefits of offline updates without having to wait at boot or at shutdown. Just like silverblue, the concept is to try to install everything through flatpak/distrobox and avoid adding anything unnecessary to the base, so that system updates can be snappy and unproblematic.

I was really tired of opening my laptop, updating everything and then rebooting. I just want to open my pc, have all updates automatically applied in the background through systemd units so that the next time I boot, I have an updated system. No "updating" during next boot. I finally found a distro perfect for me in that regard, and for everyone else who's tired of babysitting their linux desktops, you should give a shot to Kalpa/Aeon.

I'm using Debian 12, Ryzen 7 5700X processor, and Radeon HD 5450 graphics card. I have tried uninstalling and reinstalling VLC but it didn't resolve the issue. Here's an excerpt from the VLC's log file:

glconv_vaapi_x11 error: vaDeriveImage: operation failed

main error: video output creation failed

main error: failed to create video output

avcodec info: Using G3DVL VDPAU Driver Shared Library version 1.0 for hardware decoding

How do I resolve this issue?