Hello there. Was wondering if anyone had any suggestions for a Linux distro for grandparents? They are over 70 years old, with an old HP desktop and laptop running Windows 10. All they need is a Web browser, so no need for special software or wine to run Windows programs. Would preferably like something that is low maintenance so I don't have to be constant tech support for them (apart from the initial install and setup). Thanks for any suggestions.

I tried the following

sudo cryptsetup luksChangekey /dev/nvme0n1p3 < new passphrase > 

It then asks for the Sudo password, then asks for the old passphrase, but then it prints this error message

Failed to open key file.

what went wrong ?

Edit: turns out using GNOME Disks is way more straightforward.. 😅, thank you all

I am looking for a way to play HDR content on Linux. From what I understand KDE 6 has experimental support for HDR, but isn't available on Pop OS 22.04. Apparently Cosmic desktop will support HDR when it's released, but I don't know if the experimental version will.

Can anybody help me here? Will I need to change distro?

My use case is splitting audio into separate channels in OBS for Twitch Streams so I can play music live without getting my VoDs struck. If my approach is entirely wrong for the use case, I'm happy to scrap the whole thing and sign it off as learning experience.

My solution is to use virtual sinks that I record through Audio Sources in OBS. I've got two loopback-devices (config at the end) with media.class = Audio/Sink, assign my playback streams to the relevant output capture.
The loopback of each is then passed on to the common default (physical) output device, namely my headphones.
So far, this has been working great for me, aside from minor inconveniences:

The first is that I want certain apps or playback streams to automatically be assigned to the capture sinks upon starting the app.
I had a working pulseaudio¹ setup on Ubuntu where I used pavucontrol to set the output once per app and it remembered that setting. Every time I opened that app, it would direct its playback streams to that sink.
I migrated to Nobara and opted to try configuring pipewire (directly)² instead. The devices are created correctly but every time I (re-)start a relevant app I have to go set its capture device again.

The second is that occasionaly upon logging in, one loopback stream will initially be passed to the other sink instead of the default output, which resolves upon restarting pipewire³. Is something wrong with my config?
Both have the same target.object and restarting it fixes it, so I'm guessing it may be some race condition thing where the alsa_output isn't initialised at startup yet, but I don't know how to diagnose or fix that

1: I have since learned that apparently it's actually still pipewire parsing that config, but the point is I configured it through ~/.config/pulse/default.pa

2: ~/config/pipewire/pipewire.conf.d/default-devices.conf

3: Trying to set it in pavucontrol doesn't work and keeps resetting that playback's output to the given sink if I try to select the correct capture device. Repatching them in Helvum does the job, but then pavucontrol just shows blank for the device (doesn't interfere with controlling the volume, but maybe it's relevant for diagnosing)

My current ~/.config/pipewire/pipewire.conf.d/default-devices.conf:

context.modules = [
    {   name = libpipewire-module-loopback
        args = {
            audio.position = [ FL FR ]
            capture.props = {
                media.class = Audio/Sink
                node.name = vod_sink
                node.description = "Sink for VoD Audio"
            }
            playback.props = {
                node.name = "vod_sink.output"
                node.description = "VoD Audio"
                node.passive = true
                target.object = "alsa_output.pci-0000_00_1b.0.analog-stereo"
            }
        }
    }
    {   name = libpipewire-module-loopback
        args = {
            audio.position = [ FL FR ]
            capture.props = {
                media.class = Audio/Sink
                node.name = live_sink
                node.description = "Sink for Live-Only Audio"
            }
            playback.props = {
                node.name = "live_sink.output"
                node.description = "Live-Only Audio"
                node.passive = true
                target.object = "alsa_output.pci-0000_00_1b.0.analog-stereo"
            }
        }
    }    
]

I'm looking for a lowish priced laptop that I can put at least 2 extra monitors on. I want a second landscape 4k and a portrait 1080. Don't need anything special. One monitor has DP and HDMI, but the other just HDMI. Do I just get a DP hub and use a converter dongle for the second?

What would be a recommended laptop for this scenario? I only want AMD CPU and GPU as I can't be arsed to fight with noVideo and Intel doesn't deserve my business.

Yesterday I bought a new laptop that should be arriving to my home sometime next week. In the mean time, I've been digging around and researching some details in order to get Linux running on it as comfortably as possible. My main concern with the laptop is the fact that it has an RTX2050 Mobile on it (I couldn't find any dedicated AMD laptops within my budget), and my concerns include the fact that I prefer using Wayland on my systems and possible impacts on battery life as I know hybrid graphics in Linux are quite a nightmare.

I'd like to use this system for some casual gaming, however other than that my use cases for the laptop mostly consist of coding and web browsing, so I thought of the following idea: Leaving the dedicated graphics card as a pass-through device for a Windows VM where I could play all my games (though I'm not really sure on how VMs impact anti-cheat for multiplayer games and such), and leaving the Radeon 660M graphics on the Ryzen processor for the Linux system itself, which should be plenty capable of handling any DE and accomplishing my daily tasks, while also preserving battery life as the laptop is not running on the 2050 100% of the time

Does this make sense? Does anyone have a similar setup on their laptop and has it worked for them? Are there any possible consequences I should be wary of when attempting this?

If the laptop model is relevant in any way to answering this question, it's an HP Victus 15 with a Ryzen 5 7535HS, an RTX2050 Mobile (4GB) and 16GB of RAM.

Is there a way to move distro without loosing data in /home? I am currently running Pop OS and want to move to Nix OS while keeping the data. Normally I could use an external hard drive or my server, but most of my equipment is in storage at the moment. Current partition setup is using LUKS and LVM with ext4. I am guessing there is a way to manipulate the LVM to make it work by adding another partition and installing into it.

I know this is probably a convoluted idea. I am trying to avoid spending money an another external drive.

I am finding it difficult to fill in forms made with MS Word in LibreOffice. The formatting seems to end up all wrong among other things, and LibreOffice feels slow and clunky to use.

I've tried OnlyOffice, but it tends to crash and be slow as well.

At this moment in time I am trying to get MS Office 2010. Is there a better solution?

Hey all! I've been having an issue I can't figure out. Suddenly, I realized I'm in the heart of Linux users! I can ask here! I'm a total noob, so please be gentle.

I installed Xubuntu and got everything but the touchscreen working properly. The touchscreen works but the cursor is consistently off a bit, with the least error in the center of the screen and increasing as it moves to the sides. I've tried running xinput_calibrator but it doesn't help. I attempted to run libinput.calibrate-touchscreen but keep getting a "is a Wayland compositor running?" error message.

Any suggestions?

cross-posted from: https://lemy.lol/post/24413858

Help Needed: Configuring ASUS Fingerprint Sensor on Fedora

I recently got my hands on an ASUS device equipped with an fingerprint sensor . As a Fedora user, I've been trying to set up the fingerprint sensor on my system, but it's proven to be quite a challenge.

So, I'm reaching out to the community here for some guidance. Has anyone successfully configured an ASUS fingerprint sensor on Fedora before? If so, could you please share your experience and any tips or resources that might be helpful?

Any assistance would be greatly appreciated! Thanks in advance.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/20291268

I recently acquired a Raspberry Pi 5, but I've been having a lot of difficulty in getting LUKS encryption to work. Has anyone had any luck?

Also, I am using an NVMe drive, so Raspbian is really the only OS that works well. NetBSD can see the disk, too, but I found it annoying to use; and FreeBSD ended up breaking itself. I have not yet tried Armbian.

How do I fix my home dir with nix? It seems I have messed something up and now I can't install home manager. Anytime I try to install a package with nix-env it gives this error too:

error: this derivation has bad 'meta.outputsToInstall'

Would someone #help me configure my #WireGuard server to access my home local network?

I've literally been stuck for 6 hours.

https://forum.yunohost.org/t/cant-access-yunohost-local-network-through-wireguard-server/29127/1

@linuxquestions

I have just set up a Raspberry Pi 3B+ with Raspbian "Bookworm", and I have decided that the classic desktop environment, FVWM-Crystal, is the one that feels right. However, I don't seem to be able to change the font.

Ordinarily, you would use the font selector dialog, but for some unknown reason it refuses to launch and I am unable to find it under /usr/bin, so I can't find out what's wrong.

Does anyone know either how to fix the dialog, how to find the binary, or how to change the font without using the dialog?

I understand that this is a very old DE, so if you can tell me about a newer alternative that looks the same and is equally lightweight, I'm all ears. Otherwise, please leave me to my madness.

Ok, so I had 1 ssd with Kubuntu and windows on it. I got a second ssd and I want to put opensuse on it, dual booting (well, triple). The problem is, when I went to install it, it showed the id of my two ssds as opposite of what the partition manager in Kubuntu says. I.e., Kubuntu calls the first one nvme0n1 and my new ssd nvme1n1, while the opensuse installer is calling the old ssd nvme1n1 and the new one nvme0n1. I know because it shows the existing partition sizes on them that way, and recognizes that windows and kubuntu are on the old ssd.

So is this normal? Is this ok? Is it ok to just install it with the ssd names this way? Would that confuse kubuntu at all, or are the two OSes ok with calling them different things? I just don't want the installer to overwrite anything on my existing partitions.

If I have my browser maximized in my center monitor, whenever I go to search on Lemmy or go to my inbox and it is empty, the screen goes completely blank/black. It looks as if it lost power. If the browser is not maximized, it wont happen. This happens whether I use Chrome or Firefox. Any ideas on how to start troubleshooting?

• OS: KDE Neon 6.0
• KDE PLasma: 6.0.2 (happened with KDE 5.x too)
• GPU: Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 6GB
• Monitor messing up in connnected to the HDMI port.
• Other two monitors are connected (a) to the DisplayPort and (b) DVI-D

This will be for a physically small i5 laptop for various programming fun. The candidate linux should be easy to install, and provide a large selection of CLI programs.

I want to sync retroarch save files across devices on my local network using a bash script. Plan is to run the script as a cronjob to keep all machines synced.

This does the trick as a one-off in the terminal: rsync -a /home/localuser/.config/retroarch/states/ remoteuser@192.168.1.12:/home/remoteuser/.config/retroarch/states/

• Copies new save files to remote location
• Updates any save files which were modified

But when I put the same line in a bash script rsync's behavior changes. My bash script looks like this:

#!/usr/bin/env bash
rsync -a /home/localuser/.config/retroarch/states/ remoteuser@192.168.1.12:/home/remoteuser/.config/retroarch/states/

I call it with bash sync_saves.sh

• Copies new save files to remote location
• ~~Updates any save files which were modified~~

Strangely, rsync doesn't update modified files when run as a script. But it's not failing altogether, because it transfers new files OK. What am I missing?

Update: if I do the rsync in the reverse order (remote machine -> local machine) then the bash script works as expected. So my issue exists only when rsync goes local machine -> remote machine. Why would this matter?

Update 2 (Solution): I changed the command to rsync -razu /home/localuser/.config/retroarch/states/ remoteuser@192.168.1.12:/home/remoteuser/.config/retroarch/states/, but I'm not sure that made any impact. The issue was how I was doing my testing. I was doing touch testfile.txt to change the modification date on a file & then I'd try to transfer it with the bash script & watch the modification date on the downstream machine as confirmation that it moved correctly. Problem is that rsync must be smart & doesn't transfer a file if only the modification date changes. It requires the contents to also change. Whenever I tested this way I would never see the file transfer, but when I changed my testing method to change the contents of the file instead (not just the modification timestamp) then all worked fine!

I feel like a dummy for initially mixing testing methods & coming to the wrong conclusion about what was happening, but happy it's working now & maybe I learned a lesson!

Briefly: I'm running Kubuntu right now, just installed a second ssd. If I install another distro (say opensuse) on it, can I tell it to use the same /home that kubuntu is using (which is on a separate partition and drive)? Actually looking to switch distros, but I want to keep all my data where it is on the bigger hdd, while moving games to the ssd.

If you want/need more details:

• ssd1: windows, kubuntu /
• hdd1: kubuntu (opensuse) /home
• ssd2: (goal) opensuse /, second partition for games

Title. Plasma 6 just dropped on my arch-based distro, and it came with an option for a colorblindness correction filter:

Neat little tool that my Protanope ass was very excited about, and it works.

The thing is.

Some time ago Windows also introduced one of those, and in Windows, you can turn it on and off with a key-combination shortcut. I use that a lot on Windows, to keep the filter off and turn it on just when it is necessary (look, every person experiences colorblindness differently, and on my end, these filters while useful for certain kinds of work, are very ugly most other times)

Now, I already know I can set a key-combination shortcut to a terminal command on plasma. Easy peasy.

But for me to do that on plasma I'd need to have a way to switch the effect on and off from the terminal.

I know that I can do systemsettings kcm_kwin_effects to launch the configs app straight into the relevant tab. But now I'm wondering if I could make that even more automatic, maybe using the --args thing, which apparently is literally meant for sending commands directly to the configuration module. But then I wouldn't know what the command is.

I want to configure a Raspberry Pi 4 as a web (application) server.

Although I could of course simply do it via Raspbian, I would love to use an Immutable/auto updating OS like Fedora Core OS/Fedora IoT/OpenSUSE MicroOS.

To my surprise, every solution does not look very turnkey ready for Raspberry Pi 4.

Please correct me, if I am wrong but it seems:

• For Fedora Core OS/OpenSUSE MicroOS it seems like I have to download the firmware for the Raspberry Pi, partition the sd card by hand and afterwards login to configure WiFi and/or use an ignition file on a separate USB stick on boot

• For Fedora IoT it seems I need a running Fedora system first (yes, I know about LiveCDs) and I still need to edit by hand the Wifi configuration How to install Fedora IoT on Raspberry Pi 4. Further, it seems Fedora IoT has 'fixed' version numbers and no automatic updates.

So, my questions:

• It seems Fedora IoT is the nearest fit for my use case and comparatively the easiest version to setup?
  • Am I missing out on Fedora Core OS or OpenSUSE MicroOS?
  • Are there other viable immutable options from reputable sources?
• Does anyone know about an immutable distribution, where the initial setup is basically like Raspbians 'dd image to sdcard and copy user credentials and wifi config to the /boot partition.'?
• How does Fedora IoT handle updates between versions (like Fedora 38 to Fedora 39)
  • Is it a regular update or do I have to tell the OS to update explicitly
• Most important question: Anyone here has experience with running Rasbian and one of my options in practice and can give some advice/recommendations if immutable is worth it?

Solution: I bought a dolphin bar. Its not here yet but it should work better.

Rebooted my computer earlier today and walked away while it did its thing. When I got back to to it some minutes later, I saw a black screen with that "_" text cursor flashing on the topleft corner. Which was, of course, odd.

Hitting Ctrl+Alt+F2 sent me to the TTY. Which is to say: The system was still up, and indeed, calling for a process manager loaded showed that sddm was still running, as were a bunch of other processes.

Still, attempts to get sddm to do its thing failed. I tried to systemctl restart the sddm service, I tried to reboot the computer. I tried to delete customizations to its config files in case they were breaking something.

In all of those cases -- Title happened. The mouse cursor would show up for a second or two. And then it'd kick me back to the black screen with text cursor because something was fucked.

I eventually managed to get to my desktop by entirely disabling the sddm service, rebooting so I'd just get the TTY, and then doing dbus-run-session startplasma-wayland to run Plasma manually once logged in (thank FUCK for smartphones and access to internet search on them for helping me figure this out).

So that's a workaround, and it sorta works but I'd like to get my display manager back, please. :P

Further information:

• I am running EndeavourOS.
• As implied, I use KDE Plasma under Wayland as my DE.
• I have an AMD GPU
• I am at the latest version of every relevant package -- The reboot I mentioned at the start of the thread was just after running a sudo pacman -Syyu
• I did try to search for my specific issue but nothing relevant came up? A lot of older issues, under X11, and most involving NVidia stuff. None seemed relevant to my case.
• Having found the workaround I used the computer all night and had no other issues, which to me signals it's something about sddm and ONLY sddm that is broken, whether it's some config that got fucked up or some bs with my own incompetent package management.
• I am, of course, able to provide logs and stuff if you tell me which ones and where to get them, cuz yeah.

Well, my issue is simple to explain, but I tried everything to solve it without success.

I like recording gameplays, just for fun. The game I currently make recordings for is not resource heavy (it's Doom 2 through GZDoom). I'm using Lubuntu 22.04.

So, here is the command I've just used:

ffmpeg -f x11grab -draw_mouse 0 -framerate 30 -probesize 42M -video_size 1920x1080 -i :0 -f pulse -i default -c:v libvpx-vp9 -r 30 -g 90 -quality realtime -frame-parallel 1 -qmin 4 -qmax 48 -b:v 4500k -c:a libvorbis prueba.mkv

The issue is, if I record without including the audio, then the video plays smoothly after being recorded. But if I record including the audio, no matter what parameters, codecs, bitrate or anything I use, then the video is barely watchable, with lots of choppiness, and even with delay between audio and video, apparently.

SimpleScreenRecorder works fine, but sometimes there are few frames dropped and I don't like it much. OBS is very heavy for my hardware (Mac Mini 2016, Intel Core i5 1.4 GHz 4260U, Intel HD Graphics 4000, 4 GB RAM).

I also tried VAAPI, with same results as above.

And the thing is that I remember recording some years ago, with no issues at all.

I don't know what to do. Any tip or solution?

I feel stupid, but I want to install Kubuntu, as a dual boot for my windows 10 PC. I am a total rookie with linux. Maybe even less than rookie. I have 3 Flash usb sticks, but one of them seems broken, and the two others too small. I also have a USB card reader, where I can put an SD card in but I don't seem to be able to boot from that.

I also tried a trick with Unetbootin, but windows wouldn't let me boot from that either, even though it gave me the option to, on restart.

My question is, can I install a smaller version of Kubuntu from my 3,8Gb usb stick and upgrade to the newest version later, after it has been installed? I am not totally locked to Kubuntu, but I think that i have read that its the best version for beginners. I will easilly be convinved to another version though, if you guys think its better