There’s a distro called NixOS that is created for this purpose. It also has a tool called home manager that will manage your dot files for you. Once you back up like two or three configuration files you can recreate your system (minus any actual data)
When you do this in Arch there’s no guarantee you get the same package versions and there’s no guarantee everything works
To add to this, another viable path is using Nix, the package manager, on its own. That way you can get Home Manager to manage your applications and dotfiles independently of your base system, as long as you are able to install Nix.
It’s my general workflow, run Determinate Nix Installer, install Home Manager, clone my config and I’m off to the races. Been sharing that config between Debian, Ubuntu on WSL and Bazzite for a while and it’s served me well so far.
Linux Cast is…okay. The long form conversation format episodes are usually better than when its just Matt.
Brodie should definitely be at the top of this list. He works in tech, devotes himself emphatically to the subject of Linux, has some really amazing guests on his Tech Over Tea Podcast, and is imho THE Linux YouTuber atm.
Chris Titus Tech is more an honorable mention, as his channel focuses equally on Windows and Linux, but he has some amazing scripts for iptables configurations, and optimizing gaming on Linux, amongst other related topics.
The Linux Experiment is great for quick recap of Linux News. Learn Linux TV is great for Linux sysadmin tips.
I don’t care for Distrotube, I won’t go into details except to say I don’t support Trump. Similar sentiments go for the Bible thumper, Luke Smith, whom doesn’t really post much Linux content any more afaik. I will admit they did post useful bash scripts from time to time though.
Trafotin and Bugswriter are interesting channels in the Linux Youtube space that I think are worth checking out.
Overall though, if you’re looking for quality Linux content on Youtube that keeps you informed and up to date. You can’t go wrong with Brodie Robertson, The Linux Experiment, and Learn Linux TV. That’s all you really need imho.
I got to be on the Tech Over Tea podcast! I really enjoyed talking with Brodie and would definitely recommend his main channel as well as Tech Over Tea. There is another podcast I sometimes watch called Linux Game Cast too.
Yeah I kinda lost interest in Distrotube when he started randomly pulling out guns in videos…
Like, I don’t care what your political views are as long as you make good content and stay on topic, and keep your views and work separate yaknow. Like hell, if you want to make separate videos about that then by all means, but I’m watching a tutorial on how to set up openbox I don’t care about your guns and freedoms
I like to think of (and recommend) three of the channels on the list based on one’s experience and how “deep” they want to go with Linux:
Linux Experiment is great for the “average desktop user” (like myself), someone who’s not too interested in programming or development and just wants to keep up with Linux-related news that relates to the average user and find cool tools to use with whatever distro or system you’re running.
Brodie is “mid-level”, I’d say, he looks at some of the more technical stuff but presents it in a way that relates to how a more average user would be interested in the thing he’s talking about. He talks about a good amount of dev stuff, but It’s still useful information generally for most Linux users out there, from folks who are just above " beginner level" to more advanced users.
DT (DistroTube) is for “power users” mainly, I think. He says he doesn’t really do development or programming, then makes a bunch of scripts to change up a bunch of window manager settings and goes hardcore into writing stuff for Emacs. He says he’s not a distro maintainer, then goes and takes his scripts and makes them into his own distro. For most of his videos, even if he takes you through what he’s doing step-by-step, you kinda have to know what you’re doing with the tools he’s using to know what’s going on. He talks about a lot of things like window managers and development and configuration tools the “average user” who just wants to do basic stuff on their desktop probably won’t know a whole lot about.
No. None of it is worth the effort. None of it works well, you’ll fight with payments, and shit is going to be buggy and unless you really want to learn you don’t sound too technical.
Why did this not come to my head. My idea was to use video capture card, connect that to another computer or phone, set screens to mirror and then take snapshot of the video.
This is what I do, I can’t speak for Mint’s screenshot tool, but Spectacle for KDE will indeed freeze the whole screen after a set timer - allowing you to open context menus and whatnot. Then on the “frozen” image you can highlight only a specific section of the screen to screenshot, make annotations, etc.
Spectacle is one of the things I miss the most every time I try out GNOME again for a bit.
With the MATE screenshot tool, you can set a timer and set it to either capture the active window or the whole desktop. It will capture context menus when using the timer.
if you just need software to set up virtual machines you might look into Gnome Boxes or virt-manager which don’t require external kernel modules like Virtuap Box to work
anyway these issues typically happen on Ubuntu based distros (like Linux Mint) because your linux kernel is to new for the Virtual Box version (or the Virtual Box version is simply too old)
I’ve used VirtualBox for years and only just tried virt-manager. I wish I had tried years ago, so much simpler and it is in my distro’s default repository.
I tried virt-manager but it’s giving me an error message about not being able to connect to "libvirt qemu:///system" and it wont let me install a virtual machine. I’m assuming that I’m supposed to download “libvirtd”, but I can’t figure out how to install it. I think it wants me to build it from the source but there doesn’t seem to be a guide on how to do that.
It stated that they were already installed so I went through the process of re-installing them and rebooting the computer, which seems to have fixed the problem. I wont really be able to test it much right now because of how late it is for me but I was able to at least start the installation for Windows XP.
I’m currently installing virt-manager but I ran into a problem with Gnome Boxes where I’m trying to run a Windows XP virtual machine but I can’t figure out how to get files from my host to the guest. Apparently, I need some software to be running on the guest but the website that I need to download the software from doesn’t work in internet explorer and I obviously can’t just download it on the host and transfer it to the guest.
Yes this seems to be a Gnome Boxes Flatpak problem. I like that it works as a flatpak, but unsure if this can be fixed, I think its a known limitation.
Oh yes, the spice guest addition. This will be needed on every Spice VM
So I tried virt-manager but it’s giving me an error message about not being able to connect to "libvirt qemu:///system" and it wont let me install a virtual machine. I’m assuming that I’m supposed to download “libvirtd”, but I can’t figure out how to install it. I think it wants me to build it from the source but there doesn’t seem to be a guide on how to do that.
Are you using a package manager or downloading everything from virtualboxs website? When I installed virtual box earlier today it all worked fine so that’s why I ask.
I installed it through apt with just sudo apt install virtualbox-7.0. I also downloaded the deb file from their website but, at least when installed through apt, it just ignores it and uses the version from Mint’s repository anyways.
Edit: Because I just checked and you can’t install it directly like that anymore, I first tried installing VirtualBox a few months ago, with an older version of Linux Mint. When I tried installing it several hours ago, it was with the deb file but for some reason apt still selects a different version when it actually installs it.
I read that you installed a specific version months ago, but now installed it from a .deb file recently.
I’m asking why you don’t just sudo apt install virtualbox now?
I literally stated in my comment that you can’t install it like that anymore. The reason why is because you get an error saying “E: Package ‘virtualbox-7.0’ has no installation candidate”. This means that in Linux Mint, you have to install it via the deb file.
And I literally wrote in the comment above yours to install the version in the repo instead, with sudo apt install virtalbox. NOTsudo apt install virtualbox-7.0
6.1 is the newest version included in your OS. That’s just how Linux works.
Downloading newer versions from somewhere else is sometimes possible, but can lead to a lot of headaches, especially with packages that interact with the kernel.
If you notice you keep running into this issue and using the newest stuff is important to you, consider switching to OpenSUSE Tumbleweed. It’s the most beginner-friendly rolling release distro.
I already tried that yesterday and it didn’t work. It’s not that big of a problem though because both Gnome Boxes and virt-manager are working fine. So I wont need VirtualBox anymore.
I’m a software engineer, and I’ve used Linux on my computer for work before when my company allowed Linux installs on their computers (most don’t in my experience). I don’t recommend it for you.
For me, my main productivity tools, even proprietary ones, run natively on Linux. I very very rarely have to do anything involving word processing. When I do open source or in-browser word processors are enough. Windows can also be a constant headache to use in a lot of software development settings. It’s a horrible development environment. I try to avoid working on Windows as much as I can.
When something breaks (and on Linux, something eventually will), I have more than a decade of technical experience in computing I can fall back on to fix the issue myself. My work computer has failed to boot before and all I had to diagnose and fix the issue was a black screen with a terminal prompt. Even my company’s outsourced IT company had very little experience with Linux and I was largely on my own to fix it when things went wrong.
For you I don’t think it would make sense for basically all the opposite reasons. I imagine you’ll be doing heavy word processing and editing a lot of documents that need to be formatted correctly. Browser based and open source word processing are probably not going to cut it. I’m not sure if there are any proprietary file formats you may come across in the legal field, but if there are do you want to have to ask people “could you send that in a different format? I can’t open that on Linux.”
If something goes wrong on your machine you may not have all the experience to resolve it quickly on your own which could impact your business. Windows can break too but there’s a lot more support out there and the barrier is much lower to fix most issues (I can’t remember the last time I had to bust out a terminal to fix something on windows)
For all its faults, windows is pretty well set up for your typical use case.
If there’s a compromise here, you could try having a computer running windows and another running Linux. Having a backup in case something goes wrong isn’t a bad idea anyway. Dual booting is also an option. I made it through college for a CS degree with a dual boot Windows+Ubuntu laptop.
Whatever you end up doing, be sure to have a really good plan in place for backing up everything you need, especially files. Your computer can fail you at any time, Windows or Linux.
Counter point, Ubuntu specifically has so many old posts and answers that aren’t necessary in modern systems, deprecated, or straight up no longer correct. Also a lot of recommendations that can screw up a system in strange ways. I feel like many issues (ie. Bluetooth, USB, Wifi) are due to people stumbling on old posts with configs and tools that have changed and blindly applying them
BlendOS. You can easily switch between DEs without any conflicts or dependency hell, as they’re all containerised (and would therefore perform better than running them inside a full-fledged VM).
I just spent an hour trying to get this installed in a Proxmox VM. No dice. After install, it just boots to the GRUB rescue prompt. Oh well, seems like a cool idea.
The problem with older machines is the web browsing, not the system itself. You could use a browser with Java script disabled but a lot of websites will refuse to work.
You have to sacrifice with browser functionality to improve performance.
I’ve had good experiences with Midori and Dillo as alternative browsers on low-memory machines. Obviously features will take a hit but they’re surprisingly functional. Don’t expect to be able to open many tabs but you can do the usual things including YouTube etc.
Yep. All this optimization you see here about “minimal installs” and which DE to choose is completely moot, if opening Firefox takes up more RAM than the entire operating system.
Even 4gb are really low these days, if you actually want to do something in the browser.
If you want to kill x86, you need to do what Valve and the Wine foundation did with Proton/WINE (mostly proton at this point though), but for x86 to ARM and maybe other architectures like RISCV (especially because the milkV pioneer is a thing).
There is too much legacy software that will never be converted that people still use to this day. Once you make it easy to transition, it will slowly but steadily start to happen.
Box86/Box64 are promising, but need help from contributors like you. If you want it to happen, go make it happen, or continue to live in the world you have now.
Well, you do have qemu, which can run x86 programs on other architectures (not just running x86 virtual machines on top of hosts of other architectures).
Well legacy software is fine, that stuff mostly runs on old machines/servers/etc. ARM will be more easily to move towards by focusing the consumer market, where legacy issue is less of an issue because their programs are frequently updated. Some old server using outdated software that people are afraid to touch, we don’t need to worry about converting that lol.
I’ve tried basically every mainstream-ish distro there is, I just want some outside opinions because I’m bad at picking stuff and I want to stick with something for a while
Hi there. I know what is a meta distro (Gentoo, bedrock, LFS), and an immutable distro (NixOS, Fedora Silverblue, MicroOS, VanillaOS) but what is a transactional distro?
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