I’m not sure how to stop the DAC from shutting down when Mint goes to sleep, but maybe you can avoid the problem by making Mint not go to sleep in the first place? There’s an option for it in the System Settings program, in the “power management” menu (under the “Hardware” heading).
Try doing that and see if the problem keeps happening. If it keeps happening, the DAC shutting down was probably caused by something else.
If you’re using your computer for work and can’t afford to spend some time figuring out how to do something that would be second nature for you on Windows, you shouldn’t switch. It would probably be more expensive than just buying a Windows license.
That said, you shouldn’t expect too many problems. You can try out your Word templates right now in Libre Office. Or just run the web version of Microsoft Office in Linux. Video codecs are usually just one command away.
In terms of what distribution to choose, I would choose something popular that’s stable and comes with sane defaults. Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora or OpenSUSE Leap.
The main difference for a newbie will probably be how to install software. On Linux you usually don’t go to the manufacturers website and download an installer. Instead you go to your software center and search there for what you need. Similar to the App Store and Play Store on phones.
Agree. Linux isn’t that hard but there is a bit of a learning curve and you shouldn’t gamble your business on your ability to pick up a brand new OS. If you can afford support or an “IT Guy” then take the plunge. For general clerical stuff there should be zero compatibility issues.
Since Word documents are one of your bigger concerns, you can download LibreOffice on one of your current machines and try them out. That’s the same program you’d be using on Linux.
It’d have to be a pretty unusual video format to have issues. Similar to above, you can try VLC on Windows and see if there’s any issues.
Based on your description, I’d be surprised if you encountered any major issues. I’d recommend trying either Pop! OS if you’re OK with a slightly different UI from Windows, or Mint if you want something more comfortable. Note that you can create a LiveUSB stick of either of those, or any other distro. You can then boot your computer from it and take it for a spin to see if there’s any obvious issues.
Yeah some counties use pointlessly complicated programs to distribute videos. I often have to try a few different players on windows to find one that works. If VLC has trouble with something, are there others you’d recommend as well?
VLC can pretty much play everything - avi, avi+mjpeg, mov, mpeg, 3gp, flv, you name it. In some cases it can reconstruct corrupted videos and try to play them (typically AVI files)
There’s another player called MPV if you want a second option just in-case though!
VLC usually can handle everything you throw at it. The other popular and capable media player is MPV, though it’s not as user friendly as VLC but has tons of advanced features.
VLC is the sort of software where if it can’t play it, I don’t know what else could. I guess I’d also try the ffmpeg command line tool to see if it can figure out what the video file even is, and maybe it could convert it to a regular format.
Also TBH such a video file would be interesting enough that you could probably post it here (if possible, or any metadata you can extract from it) and see if anyone knows how to play it.
Its possible using homedir backup etc. Or on Fedora Atomic simply switching desktops. But yeah Desktops are all over the place, having a ~/.kde folder where EVERYTHING is stored would be great.
Oh, I am on Fedora Silverblue with Gnome. If it is easy to switch, I think I will give KDE a try!
I like Gnome, and I definitely need to tweak some behavior I find annoying, but I feel I never gave KDE a proper chance because I seem to mess up the panel whenever I look at it wrong, and have no idea how to get back to default.
Yeeah that panel. The only problem is opening the start menu with “super” though. You can always add a “default” panel.
Maybe do it like this: create a keyboard shortcut ctrl+alt+t for konsole, whyever it is not default. Then remove all panels and run qdbus org.kde.ksmserver /KSMServer 0 0 1 (alias that to “logout” in your .bashrc, its a horrible command).
Then remove all panels and logout. Log back in, add a default panel and maybe you are already good. Maybe log out again. The only default panel normally always gets the correct start menu. Its a bit messed up.
To switch between silverblue and kinoite you can just rebase, but make sure to backup all your “dotfiles” (the hidden configs for all the apps) and start plain, as you dont want to mix these.
There is a youtube video on exactly that somewhere.
Ah, thank you for the write up. I will actually do that because KDE something I know I will like and enjoy more than GNOME once I get past some of the weirdness. Mostly, I want to customize it in certain ways, and while GNOME surely is customizable, it is not as easy as KDE.
Yeah, rebasing feels like some scifi future tech and I am ready to play. It is like resleeving ala Altered Carbon.
I am not sure. KDE is very customizable and I like the… regular way apps work, trays work, decorations work and all that. Also GNOME is like the anti-poweruser desktop. I like its style, but its like “use a terminal or nothing”. Needing extra apps for every small thing and all…
The downside maybe is stability… and Gnome does some things well, like quicksettings and all.
I also like that GTK is easier to develop for probably, with Gnome Builder and similar tooling. But at the same time, the UI would be pretty much unusable for complex apps like Dolphin.
I tried Gimp 3.x prerelease and well, GTK3 is weird, its already this step away from the more similar styles.
Well rebasing is pretty nice, its swapping out the foundation while keeping the top intact. For things like Kinoite->Ublue-kinoite-main its just a reboot.
Do you need to pin the last working ostree before rebasing? I guess I want an easy way to switch between working environments without a lot of rebasing.
in a terminal, type flatpak remotes. If it lists flathub, you’re good.
Try installing a random app like flatpak install flathub de.haeckerfelix.Shortwave
It shoud work. If it doesn’t, post your logs.
I have to type a password in the terminal every time I want to use sudo
This is the intended behavior and should not be changed, it’s a basic security feature. Once you’ve finished setting up you system, you shouldn’t need sudo everyday anyway, except for updating/upgrading the system.
I’m used to a desktop interface with a toolbar/start menu that I can pin frequently-used programs to, but with Debian it seems like I need to click “Activities” to do anything. Is there a way to set up the interface so it’s more like Windows in that regard?
Assuming you’re using Gnome, this is easy to solve using Extensions. First if it’s not installed already on Firefox, install Gnome Shell Integration. It’ll let you manage Gnome Extensions directly from extensions.gnome.org
Then, install dash-to-panel for a “windows-style” experience, or dash-to-dock for a “macos-style” experience.
After that, you can go wild on the extensions you want to use ;)
If I need to do a clean install, I’m thinking of switching to Ubuntu, since I’m more familiar with the interface.
Don’t. Ubuntu will teach you nothing but the Ubuntu way. Debian is as Standard Linux as conceivable. If your only concern is the Ubuntu-style interface, configuring dash to panel to appear on the left side is all you need.
Why did you choose this architecture? Almost all x86 CPU architectures from the last 20 years are 64 bits, you should reinstall using the AMD64 image. This will solve a lot of issues and insure you get the most of your hardware.
I was under the impression that it’s old enough to only work with the 32 bit OS. I’ll double check that and try installing the 64 bit version if I can.
If the 32 bit version is all that will run, am I shit out of luck when it comes to running any modern software?
It’s an intel core 2 duo t9300, which I’m pretty sure is 64 bit. I guess I was confused because it was previously running a 32 bit version of windows 7.
Edit: I’m not sure if it’s amd64 or aarch64 or mips64. I think it’s amd.
Fun fact: AMD started out making licenced products based on of Intel’s x86 architecture, and in the early 2000s the roles were reversed when intel had to licence AMD’s 64 bits extension of this architecture.
aarch64 are for ARM processors like the one in your phone, mips64 are embedded processors most likely found in a car or a router.
Thanks! I did a fresh install of Debian (64 bit) with KDE, and it seems to be working for me, except it’s already frozen up and needed a reboot twice. I might go with a more lightweight DE if that keeps happening.
I’ve just googled Dell XPS M1530 and it seems like it shipped with a Core 2 Duo CPU, which is 64 bit.
For reference, the last mainstream 32 bit desktop processors were launched over 20 years ago. As a rule, if you’re trying to run a 32 bit machine in this day and age it is probably an antique, and running modern software on it would not be all that sensible even if you could.
Variable refresh rate (VRR), HDR, OLED (e. g. I’d like the panel to become grey and move items around a bit to lessen burn-in) all involve GNOME for hardware support.
Yeah I forgot about monitor support. Guess that’s pretty important. But is pixel shifting gnome’s responsibility or should that be done through monitor firmware so that it’s OS agnostic¿?
Your’re right, ideally wear reduction should probably be done by the display itself. But considering how little manufacuters often care about OS-agnostic approaches, it might be necessary to have software workarounds?
The overall attitude of the devs regarding user opinions, resulting in the plethora of extensions available, and the tone deaf attitude regarding all of them.
Trundle on over to KDE-land, and you find a very different tone. They’re not too proud to adopt paradigms that conflicted with core design principles if they’re widely beloved (look at Overview as a prime example). Fractional scaling is miles ahead of Gnome in functionality and performance impact, solved in both X11 and elegantly in Wayland so that xwayland apps have a hook to get correct DPI info without looking blurry. The deep customizations available have negated the need for much of their session modifications, as they rapidly adopt good ideas (floating panels anyone? Ahh yes, Plasma has got you).
They’re also extremely nimble when it comes to changing course on their backend. They went from having a buggy Wayland session to having the most stable one by far. They also take criticism far better, either taking it in stride or recognizing then they did something off-base.
Gnome can go to hell, and fuck the stupid ass GTK which is objectively inferior to QT. Redhat can nibble on my shit too for all I care.
How so? I miss the old gnome, but I have accepted gnome 3 for what it is. Kde was quite interesting for me back in 2012, but it didn’t perform well with my old setup. What’s new with kde? Id like to give it a try, but I’m too old to break my SO by having both gnome and kde on it.
The KDE guys have been on fire for the past two years. Between their theming, color selection, and session handling they’ve come a long ways. They’ve also implemented some gnome-only features such as the overview, albeit in a very optional way. As opposed to eliminating a panel and forcing you to use the overview to see what applications or windows you have open, or available to launch, it’s just a window management tool instead of a UX paradigm.
Their wayland session is stable and also deals with xwayland in a very different way. If you set a custom scaling factor, the QT apps and GTK apps are talked to in a way that makes the same scaling factor consistent across all your applications, even under a wayland session with xwayland. The Gnome devs hand-wring about how the world has to be perfect before implementing an idea, where the KDE devs try something and then iterate if it’s successful.
Thanks for the reply. What’s weird is that I’ve done what the endeavouros forums said (and, looking through them, they did similar steps as the ones outlined on the archwiki: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/NVIDIA/Tips_and_tricks#Preserve_video_memory_after_suspend and I still get that black frozen screen with just a cursor. I’m guessing this is exclusively NVIDIA’s fault… or KDE’s as I never had this problem on GNOME. Thanks anyhow
Yes that’s the right way to block root login. An added filter you can use the ‘match’ config expression to filter logins even further.
If you’re on the open network, your connection will be heavily hit with login attempts. That is normal. But using another service like Fail2Ban will stop repeated hits to your host.
Ssh listens on port 22, as soon as a connection is made the host moves the connection to another port to free up 22 for other new connections.Btw: I wasn’t thinking clearly here. Out going connections won’t be using port 22, but the listening incoming port is always 22.
Yes that’s the right way to block root login. An added filter you can use the ‘match’ config expression to filter logins even further.
Not sure what you meant about the ‘match’ config expressions here. Could you elaborate a bit further?
If you’re on the open network, your connection will be heavily hit with login attempts. That is normal. But using another service like Fail2Ban will stop repeated hits to your host.
Hehe, yeah, I’ve noticed… The reason I get a little anxious whether I did this correctly, is that 95% of the login attempts are to root, so I want to make sure it is disabled. I have set up Fail2Ban, but I am using default settings, which may be a bit laxer than they need?
I’ve also been advised and considered moving to ssh keys, but I have not gotten to that yet.
Ssh listens on port 22, as soon as a connection is made the host moves the connection to another port to free up 22 for other new connections.
Makes sense. One question that comes from this is: is it possible to disable that? I would never need two ssh-logins at the same time on my server. And the second question is what I asked above regarding whether I should change the port ssh listens to in order to reduce unwanted malicious login attempts?
Match blocks allow you to restrict who/what is allowed or not allowed to connect to the server. There is a large number of options to utilize. Put this near the bottom of sshd_config. There should be an example there.
Ssh listens on port 22, as soon as a connection is made the host moves the connection to another port to free up 22 for other new connections.
There’s no limit on the number of concurrent connections on a single port, and SSH runs completely on the one port it is configured to use. Otherwise allowing just the port 22 in firewall wouldn’t be enough to have a functional SSH connection with default settings.
You can verify that quite easily for example by spinning up three barebone Debian VMs connected to a single virtual network, configuring the firewall on the “server” VM to drop everything other than port 22 and then connecting from both client VMs - it will work just fine.
Maybe you’re confusing it with the fact that only one process can listen on a given port at a time? But that’s only for establishing new connections. Existing connections can be passed off to another running process or a child process just fine, and that’s how SSH handles separation between connections.
Edit: oh, you’re talking about the high port OP is wondering about. That’s just the source port, which is chosen randomly by the client OS when making a connection. Using port 22 (or any other port below 1025) as a source port would require root privileges on the client and would also conflict with the SSH server that could be running there. Still, it has nothing to do with SSH “moving connections over”
Edit: oh, you’re talking about the high port OP is wondering about. That’s just the source port, which is chosen randomly by the client OS when making a connection. Using port 22 (or any other port below 1025) as a source port would require root privileges on the client and would also conflict with the SSH server that could be running there. Still, it has nothing to do with SSH “moving connections over”
Ah, I see, so the port numbers shown in auth.log are all client side ports. I guess I thought that the listening port would be in the log and assumed that the port listed there would be it, but when I read the lines again, it clearly says “from ip.ad.dr.ess port 12345”
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