Distrochooser is not a good resource for newbies IMO. There are too many questions, many of which are misleading or hard to understand (NOBODY taking this knows what systemd is)
Many answers are misleasing: “I want a distro that is supported by game publishers” for example implies each distro has its own game compatibility, this is NOT the case.
And when you’re finally done it recommends too many distros, many of which are irrelevant, niche, or flat out not recommended anymore (PCLinuxOS?!?!)
When someone asks for a distro, please just run a random number generator to choose between ZorinOS, PopOS, or Linux Mint. If someone is only gaming, maybe include Nobara too.
Exactly! Many of the criteria included aren’t all that good for new users, and neither are the suggestions. It’s not really a good resource for experienced users either.
Yeah, I disagree. It’s the least subjective resource I can find as nobody asks the questions on that questionnaire here. I’d much prefer it if people used distrochooser and then shared their answers (e.g distrochooser.de/en/d5b60b6e6134/), wrote some extra stuff e.g “I want NVIDIA support because I want CUDA” or something, and based on that, we recommend distros. Instead of the herd mentality of “duh, linux mint stoopeed”
One of us could probably put that together pretty quickly lol
But if we did want to build a new distro recommender… Maybe there are like 5 or so questions that would be relevant.
Just off the top of my head some possibilities:
If you’re a beginner, Mint is a good choice. One could argue Ubuntu (noobs don’t gaf about snap if they even know what it is). I think noobs would want good GUI tools and a very popular, very polished distro. So issues are infrequent but finding answers is easy.
Into gaming? There’s a few distros that come up like Nobara. (I’ve seen Manjaro mentioned but idk).
If you want something that looks kinda like macos there’s Endeavor. Does anyone recommend that one these days? I don’t usually see it mentioned.
Idk.
You’re probably right, an rng that chooses between a few distros might be better lol
Well, Flatseal is using flatpak’s standard way of managing permissions. Everything it does you can also do from the command line with flatpak. It’s just a frontend.
I think KDE wants to add these options to it’s settings as well. That will be great, when it’s better integrated into the whole system.
I’d like to see permission pop ups so I know it wanted permission to do something and didn’t have them, having to ask me. Sometimes it is explained that certain stuff the app does are blocked by the sandbox by default for security, but you can enable it, which is alright. Sometimes you’ll just have to find that out for yourself.
I wish it would be possible now but it probably won’t happen until windows and mac will have similar features. The problem is that processes cannot just read a file, because in the container it doesn’t exist. It’s maybe due to permission. Maybe not. You cannot tell. Android apps are written in a way that they request access, while pc apps are just reading the files directly without requesting permission.
So the app has to be written for flatpak. However, afaik, this is the maintainers goal too. Btw, the file open dialog is a currently working example of the dynamic permission handling. It’s just that the app should use these features which is not guaranteed.
Same. In addition to the prompt-based permissions that @Kusimulkku brings up, I’d like to see more granular control of permissions. For example, a flatpak app’s access to webcams, controllers, etc. are all controlled through just one permission: –device=all (aka “Device Access” in KDE’s Flatpak Permission Settings).
The only amazing thing about it is the dual trackpad typing. Apart from that it lacks keys like Alt, Ctrl, Esc and the F-keys. Sometimes the arrow keys, tab and insert send weird key codes.
So you can pressed accidentally activating the fucking AI and make the numbers go up so Microsoft can then go and say to investors look millions are using my AI. So annoying.
Yes, very. This is not specific to Firefox, but anything running as root gets access to everything. Only one thing has to go wrong for the whole system to get busted.
usually logged into KDE Plasma as root.
Please don’t do this! DEs are not tested to be run as root! Millions of lines of code are expected to not have access to anything they shouldn’t have and as such might be built to fail quietly if accessing something they shouldn’t in the first place. Same thing applies to Firefox, really.
Please don’t do this! DEs are not tested to be run as root! Millions of lines of code are expected to not have access to anything they shouldn’t have and as such might be built to fail quietly if accessing something they shouldn’t in the first place. Same thing applies to Firefox, really.
Could you elaborate on this? I’m genuinely surprised because Fedora just asks you if you want to have the option to log into root from KDE during installation, so I always just assumed that it’s intended to be used that way.
I don’t know the specifics on Fedora’s installer, but normally that question is about disabling root account, not logging into a DE.
Not sure what else to elaborate here. There’s a bunch of code that is not tested to be run as root. A whole class of exploits becomes unavailable, if you stick to an unprivileged user.
Say there’s some exploit that allows some component of KDE to be used to read a file. If it’s running under an unprivileged user - it sucks. Everything in user’s homedir becomes fair game. But if it runs as root - it’s simply game over. Everything on the system is accessible. All config, all bad config, files of all applications (databases come to mind). Everything.
Say there’s some exploit that allows some component of KDE to be used to read a file. If it’s running under an unprivileged user - it sucks. Everything in user’s homedir becomes fair game. But if it runs as root - it’s simply game over. Everything on the system is accessible. All config, all bad config, files of all applications (databases come to mind). Everything.
This is also something I’m thinking about: All the hard drives mounted on the server is accessible to the only regular user as that is what my other computers use to access them. I’m the only one with access to the server so everything is accessible under one user. The data on those drives is what I want to protect, so wouldn’t a vulnerability in either KDE or Firefox be just as dangerous to those files even running as the regular user?
Also, since my PC has those drives mounted through the server and accessible to the regular user that I use my PC as, wouldn’t a vulnerability in a program running as the regular user of my PC also compromise those files even if the server only hosted the files and did absolutely nothing else? Going back to the Firefox thing, if I had a sandbox breach on my PC, it would still be able to read the files on the server right? Wouldn’t that be just as bad as if I had been running Firefox as root on the server itself? Really feels like the only way to 100% keep those files safe is to never access them from an internet accessible computer, and everything else just falls short and is just as bad as the worst case scenario, though maybe I’m missing something. Am I just being paranoid about the non-root scenarios?
You never log in as root. On every new VM/LXC I create, I delete the root password after setting it up so that my regular user can use sudo.
Run as your regular user and sudo the commands that need privileges.
Also if these are servers, run them headless. There’s no need for a GUI or a browser (use wget or curl for downloads, use your local browser for browsing)
You keep your files safe by having backups. Multiple copies. Set up the backups to gets copied to another server or other system your regular user doesn’t have access to. Ideally, you follow the 3-2-1 backup standard if the files are important. That is 3 copies, on 2 different media, and 1 offsite. There are many ways of accomplishing that and its up to you to figure out what works best.
Wowzer, ok, that’s seriously impressive though, like in 2022 I feel we were stuck at 2-2.5% and in 2023 we passed 3% for the first time and now we’re at almost 4??? That’s like DOUBLING the market share in a year
I was thinking the same thing. We’ve actually surpassed Apple on desktop. I know we’re gonna laughingly say “year of the Linux desktop,” but we have to honestly look how far we’ve come in a relatively short time.
People seem to be making this a more difficult job than it needs to be. Yeah I get we’re powerusers but can’t we drop that for 2 minutes while giving advice so a new user can actually get a job done quickly? Windows EXEs don’t automatically update either. Sure it might not be the best way to do it but it’s fast and not confusing. (EDIT: Apparently this specific program actually has it’s own auto updater)
Things take time to learn. Throwing all of the existing knowledge of repo management at a new user at once does not work.
It’s funny how quickly Lemmy turns on a dime between “Linux is easier than Windows” in threads about adopting Linux to “spend some time learning the terminal” when presented with a question that should be a single click (installing an app).
Before the hate train starts, I’ve been using Linux off and on for 30 years now. And I still struggle with making distros do things that shouldn’t be that hard because they aren’t hard in Windows.
The problem is, using a computer is pretty much essential to function in this world, I actually know more people who would run any file sent to them without a second thought because they wouldn’t know better, but they still need to use a computer.
I think a better solution is to give better training to people about computer hygiene at the workplace.
I work for a large IT company so we’ve had numerous such training courses, but then they use third party services for time reporting, manager evaluation, cloud services, personal finance advice, etc. so I regularly get emails with links to domains that I’ve never heard about that I’m supposed to trust…
That’s what happens when executives don’t listen to IT…
The company I currently work for host everything at the building they own. The CEO doesn’t understand much about IT, but his attitude is “I trust your integrity and your expertise, so I’ll approve anything you ask me within reason if it will improve security and reliability.”
I work in a big international company. We regularly have phishing (email) awareness training. But they outsource about everything and regularly change the providers. So we often get totally legit emails from just some random companies and are supposed to visit/ login to some previously unknown domains.
Lazarus’ Operation DreamJob, also known as Nukesped, is an ongoing operation targeting people who work in software or DeFi platforms with fake job offers on LinkedIn or other social media and communication platforms.
Looks like they’re going after desperate job seeking crypto bros. Even if it’s not terribly effective, it’s a spray and pray, so they probably got some people.
Did anyone really think that making UEFI systems the equivalent of a mini OS was a good idea? Or having them be accessible to the proper OS? Was there really no pushback, when UEFI was being standardized, to say “images that an OS can write to are not critical to initializing hardware functionality, don’t include that”? Was that question not asked for every single piece of functionality in the standard?
It breaks the cardinal rule of executing privileged code: Only code that absolutely needs to be privilaged should be privileged.
If they really wanted to have their logo in the boot screen, why can’t they just provide the image to the OS and request through some API that they display it? The UEFI and OS do a ton of back and fourth communication at boot so why can’t this be apart of that? (It’s not because then the OS and by extension the user can much more easily refuse to display what is essentially an ad for the hardware vendor right? They’d never put “features” in privileged code just to stop the user from doing anything about it… right?)
Did anyone really think that making UEFI systems the equivalent of a mini OS was a good idea
UEFI and Secure Boot were pushed forcibly by MS. That’s why FAT32 is the ESP filesystem.
If I had to guess, a brief was drafted at MS to improve on BIOS, which is pretty shit, it has to be said. It was probably engineering led and not an embrace, extinguish thing. A budget and dev team and a crack team of lawyers would have been whistled up and given a couple of years to deliver. The other usual suspects (Intel and co) would be strong armed in to take whatever was produced and off we trot. No doubt the best and brightest would have been employed but they only had a couple of years and they were only a few people.
UEFI and its flaws are testament to the sheer arrogance of a huge company that thinks it can put a man on the moon with a Clapham omnibus style budget and approach. Management identify a snag and say “fiat” (let it be). Well it was and is and it has a few problems.
The fundamental problem with UEFI is it was largely designed by one team. The wikipedia page: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UEFI is hilarious in describing it as open. Yes it is open … per se … provided you decide that FAT32 (patent encumbered) is a suitable file system for the foundations of an open standard.
You may be surprised to learn that they didn’t all run out until 2013. UEFI had been around for 7 years by this time, and Microsoft was doing patent enforcement actions against Tom Tom during this time period.
Sure, they’re expired now, but not at the time. It was supposed to be an open standard at the time.
Q: What shells does Wave Terminal support?
A: We currently only support bash. […]
Seems at least dishonest to advertise it as a "terminal" if it works only with a specific shell. It's okay to have extra features enabled by escape codes emitted by the shell, but if it goes beyond that, I'd say it's not just a terminal anymore.
As someone with 0 investment in this whole ecosystem, I saw and perused this article like a week ago, and my immediate impression was “Why is this guy constantly saying ‘Wayland breaks XXXXX’? Wayland isn’t breaking anything, it’s new tech. Wayland has certain features, or it doesn’t or doesn’t yet. The only folks breaking anything are those swapping use of X with Wayland, within various apps or tech stacks, potentially prematurely, where Wayland doesn’t yet have the full set of features needed.”
Whoever this is seems to have a really poor understanding of long-term software development, despite being way more invested in it than I am.
That is why I never switched to Linux. I mean, it is over 30 years now and it still doesn’t do everything. Sure it does some cool stuff—but not “everything” I could do before. What is taking them so long?
“Linux” is not an entity with well defined goals, it’s a community that mostly does whatever it wants. That has the fortunate side effect of producing labors of love in software, that prove really useful in the real world. But it also ignores things like user experience, which affect things like the desktop the most.
On Linux the user is a second-class citizen, because worth in the community is determined by how much a person contributes (in code, testing, artwork, documentation etc.)
The Linux mindset is best expressed by a quote from Simon Travaglia (which I paraphrase because I don’t remember it verbatim): “We’re tasked with the well-being of the servers, not the users. They’re lucky we even let them log in since users technically upset the smooth operation of the servers.”
You forgot the part where they don’t need Wayland and its reduced features, because everything works fine in Xorg.
Stop pushing people towards Wayland, let it happen naturally when it will be ready and better, and they’ll come. Trying to force adoption will just make people resent it.
You forgot the part where this is what is happening.
The Linux ecosystem is not the product of a giant corporation. It is highly distributed and both built and promoted by multiple players with many different goals and interests.
The people actually building the ecosystem have aligned almost completely on Wayland. The strong implication is that X was not working for them.
Distributions have been slower to move but that is happening now. You can look at this as forcing users to move. My guess is that it is more a case of pleasing some uses and frustrating others where more users want what Wayland provides than miss what it doesn’t.
It is always painful to be a laggard during a technology transition. There is usually a period where the new tech becomes common before it does what you want. That is just what technology transitions look like. When that happens, the problem is that the majority is perfectly happy and maybe happier than ever. That is why things happen when they do.
You forgot the part where this is what is happening.
All I see is a rift in the community over one side pushing software that’s beta-quality at best, and acting very arrogant and dismissive towards real adoption impediments.
Which is par for the course for Linux, naturally, but “it’s happening” is wishful thinking at this stage. At this rate and with this attitude it will take at least another 5 years.
As I like to stay evidence driven, I should say that I use XFCE mostly and, as such, am not typically a Wayland user on most of my machines. I will let other readers decide how that impacts the indictment “Wayland’s worst enemy is its fans”.
I am not sure what the “sides” are here either. If I was to try to draw that line, it seems to be between people providing software and those using it. Because the people writing the software are moving to Wayland.
Which leads us to “at this rate”. GNOME and KDE will both be Wayland only next year. What percentage of the Linux Desktop population do we think that represents right there? Enlightenment has already moved. Ubuntu uses Wayland. Red Hat uses Wayland. The Steam Deck uses Wayland. XFCE and Cinnamon will move next year. Wayland only window managers are appearing and gaining in popularity. What percentage of the Linux Desktop universe are you expecting will still be using X at the end of 2025?
Some people may wait 5 years. Then again, Ref Hat will have stopped contribute to X by then and, as I said, nobody is rushing in to dev X. How long is running X going to stay viable?
I would say that BSD may take a little longer but they are starting to move too.
Liking Wayland or not has nothing to do with any of these facts.
They aren’t facts, again, they’re wishful thinking. I’m a long time contributor and developer and I can assure you that with things as complex as X and Wayland things would move slowly even if everybody was of the same mind, let alone in the “herding cats” style of FOSS.
Wayland has been in development for 15 years and it’s still not ready – please, it’s not, and stomping our feet and claiming otherwise won’t make it so. Another 5 years will probably see it reach a more stable state.
What do I mean by ready? Well the desktop stack [on Linux and *NIX] is extremely complex. Whenever you’re dealing with something extremely complex in software, over the years, you amass a large amount of solutions that solve real world problems. That’s what I call “ready”. Most of those solutions will be dealing with quirks and use cases which do not affect everybody equally, but they’re each crucial in their own way to a varying slice of the userbase.
Whenever you rewrite something from scratch you throw away the bulk of those quirks. It’s a common fallacy for developers to look at the shiny new thing and think that it’s better. In reality it’s worthless without the quirks, and accumulating those quirks all over again takes a long time. X has been accumulating them for 40 years. Wayland is barely scratching the surface.
The fact the protocol places and splits the burden over the various DE and WM teams will NOT help. We will need libraries that solve the same problem once instead of over and over, and most DE/WM will come to depend on those libraries. The end result will be eerily similar to X. Ironically, by the time Wayland will be done it will have spent a comparable time in development to X, and will have accumulated the same amount of baggage that people dislike about X.
What percentage of the Linux Desktop universe are you expecting will still be using X at the end of 2025?
More or less the same that’s using X right now. GNOME, KDE and the various distros will get a bloody nose trying to force Wayland through but if that’s the only way they learn, so be it.
The Steam Deck actually has one of the few use cases where Wayland actually makes sense, it’s a turnkey, highly controlled stack (both software and hardware) where users don’t have any reasons to care about what’s under the hood. I expect them to switch ASAP.
Another place where Wayland can be used straightaway is the desktop graphical login screen (which is the original reason it was created for anyway). It’s a singular application with reduced requirements and simplistic interactions.
… for you. I got the honor to try to find the correct match of specific NVIDIA driver version, desktop environment and compositor to get anything even remotely usable back when NVIDIA only supported Xorg. I was greeted with either an entire crash, black screen, graphical glitches, and/or screen flickering if I forgot to pin package versions. Connecting displays from right to left crashed everything, so I was forced to change my display setup to left to right. Of course, waking up displays from sleep never worked either. So don’t pretend that Wayland is a broken mess while abandonware Xorg is our Lord and savior.
Stop pushing people towards Wayland, let it happen naturally when it will be ready and better, and they’ll come. Trying to force adoption will just make people resent it.
Software vendors drag their feet to adopt Wayland as nobody forces them to adopt Wayland. Again, Wayland works fine. X11 features don’t work in Wayland. But Wayland isn’t X11. Xwayland solves a lot of these problems. Software vendors back then didn’t port their Windows software to OS/2 due to OS/2’s Windows compatibility. Video game publishers today don’t port their games to Linux in part due to Steam Proton. Software vendors today don’t port their X11 software to Wayland due to Xwayland. So the ideal solution is to force a critical mass to adopt Wayland, drop Xwayland, and let software vendors suffer from the consequences of ignoring 16 years of Linux desktop protocol innovation.
If people give up on maintainable solutions like Wayland, then there’s no way in hell anyone picks up Xorg ever again. My Xorg issues remain wontfix. Wayland issues are now wontfix. Nobody works on Wayland and Xorg. Linux desktop is officially dead. I either switch back to Windows or buy a MacBook. I won’t invest time into an ecosystem that’s destined to die a slow, but guaranteed death.
I’m sure a lot of people try to hold onto their beloved abandonware to keep their Linux desktop alive, but why should AMD, Intel and NVIDIA care about Linux desktop now that the Linux community doesn’t have enough fucks to give to maintain Linux desktop? May as well save driver development costs and drop Wayland and Xorg support from future graphics cards.
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