I posted this as a comment in another post but when I got done I realized it would probably just be better as its own post. I’m sure I could find the answers I need myself but frankly I trust the userbase here more than most online articles....
In addition to the other comment re. LibreOffice, I’d also recommend trying out OnlyOffice - generally, it has better compatibility with MS Office formats compared to LO, and the UI is very similar to MSO which may make it easier to use.
I’ve been seeing all these posts about Linux lately, and looking at them, I can honestly see the appeal. I’d love having so much autonomy over the OS I use, and customize it however I like, even having so many options to choose from when it comes to distros. The only thing holding me back, however, is incompatibility issues....
Web apps (for MS Office/Teams), Wine (mostly for games and random apps), and for everything else, an optimized Tiny11 Core VM + WinApps for seamless windows/integration with Linux. My Tiny11 only uses 0-1% CPU and 600MB RAM on idle so I’ve got no issues running it in the background, besides it takes only a couple of seconds to launch, if I wanted to start it on demand.
I’ve also got a portable SSD with a copy of Windows installed on it, just in case I need it for some firmware updates or something (although I’m on a Thinkpad so pretty much everything can be updated via LVFS, but I keep it around just in case + it’s portable so there’s no harm in having it around).
Ooh, Win 3.11? Which version of Linux did you switch to at the time?
I don’t recall the kernel version, but my first was Red Hat 5.2 in the late 90s. I didn’t switch to Linux permanently though, had it on dual-boot. But eventually it was SuSE that won me over, with their YaST tool and polished KDE implementation - seemed lightyears ahead of Win 9x and ME at the time.
As title says. Obviously I could setup different virtual machines or spend the time and install all the DEs in one VM if it is even possible without breaking the OS. I’m wondering if there is an already made iso or something that installs all the maintained DEs for trying.
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).
All come with a browser, a PDF reader, and some word doc/spreadsheet program.
Strictly speaking, “All” is a bit of a stretch - Arch doesn’t come with any of those by default, neither does Gentoo, or for that matter, nor do any of the minimal/netinstall/server variants of other distros.
it’s quite difficult for me to get things working for now. […]
Where do i learn more about linux system so i can get more familiar with it?
You said it was difficult “to get things working” - identify what exactly is it that you’re finding difficult, then type that into Google/DuckDuckGo and check the results. If there’s anything in that results you don’t understand, Google/DDG it further. Keep doing that until you understand everything that you want to about that topic. Then proceed to the next topic.
There are also IRC, Discord and Matrix chat rooms for most Linux distros out there, so if you’re unable to find an answer, feel free to hop into one of those channels and ask a question.
ChatGPT is also a decent resource for general understanding - but don’t type any commands it suggests (unless you know what you’re doing!).
My GTX-1080 is getting a little long in the tooth, I’m thinking of going all AMD on my Linux Mint gaming rig here, but…is there anything I need to do or install or uninstall to switch to an AMD card from an Nvidia one?...
Also, unless you’re very dependant on some specific X11 apps, you don’t need Xorg any more so I reckon you should switch to Wayland for a better experience (smoother, no screen tearing, high refresh rates, better multi-screen / multi-DPI handling etc).
If an application only ships with Wayland, then… well, I guess you’re using Wayland now.
If you wanted to though you could run Wayland apps under X11 - you could use something like cage to run the app within it’s own Wayland window. Kinda similar to running X11 apps using XWayland, but not as seamless or pretty, so I wouldn’t recommend it of course.
toolbox is preinstalled on fedora silverblue/kinoite whereas distrobox isn’t. What’s the advantage of one vs the other? Why is toolbox preinstalled and not distrobox?...
Because Toolbox is a Red Hat/Fedora project and Distrobox isn’t. Also, Distrobox is a much more recent project (2021) compared to Toolbox, which was developed back in 2018. When Silverblue came out, there was a need to make it easier to install apps, and thus Toolbox was born.
Since Toolbox is a Red Hat/Fedora project, it means that it’s officially supported, whereas Distrobox isn’t. Not that it means much from a community support/home use case of course, but that might matter if you’re an enterprise and you want support from Red Hat or official Fedora communities.
But both use podman behind the scenes so internally they aren’t that different, but you can think of Distrobox as a more distro-agnostic and user-friendly version of Toolbox. If you’re a home user then stick to Distrobox.
what if I, for example, had a job in Google and I liked Linux so much I install Ubuntu on my Chromebook, would that be illegal/send me to prison?? Or, if I had the job, would I be kicked?? I like Chromebooks because they are so smol and nice. But I don’t know if it’s legal to install a Linux distro on it. Thank you!!
I have a Samsung Galaxy J3 (2018) smartphone which currently has the stock Samsung Android OS installed on it. I wanted to install an Android “distro” that doesn’t spy on me, like Graphene OS, but I couldn’t find a ROM for it. Since I would probably need to compile AOSP from source code anyways, I though, why not install...
If I’m not mistaken, I believe the 2018 J3 has a locked bootloader. The fact that I can’t find even a SINGLE custom ROM on XDA for this model means it’s highly likely that the bootloader is locked, and/or the device isn’t dev friendly (no kernel sources available etc).
so I guess doing the same on my smartphone wouldn’t be too hard.
Mate, you’ve no idea… Smartphones are a completely different ball game to desktops. You could try and compile your distro, but without the kernel sources and drivers for your specific model, nothings gonna work. You won’t even be able to boot the damn thing. And even if you did have those, it’s going to take a LOT of effort just to get basic OS functionality working. Forget getting actual phone stuff working, like making calls etc - that’s next to impossible. Even large projects like PostmarketOS struggle to get basic functionality going even on dev-friendly phones.
But you can stop dreaming about all the above if you can’t even unlock the bootloader.
Basically, what all this means is that there’s no point wasting your time on the J3. Stop right now and don’t waste any further time on this.
If you’d really like to run GrapheneOS / Linux on your phone, your best option is to sell your J3, and get a used Google Pixel from Swappa/eBay or something.
Mine was Mandrake 6. RedHat 5.2 was my first, and I was surprised how much easier Mandrake was in comparison. But the one that really wowed me was SuSE (before they became OpenSUSE), I was blown away how polished and user-friendly it was. Windows 9x/ME felt like a joke in comparison at time. And some people still claim Linux isn’t user friendly… and I’m like, bruh it’s been user friendly for about three decades now…
As others have said, there’s Vanilla and Endless, but both use GNOME.
Is there a reason why it has to be Debian? With an immutable distro, you won’t be using traditional package managers anyway (like apt), all have the same stability factor, and with the same systemd + KDE, it’s more or less the same experience regardless of which distro you go for.
One of the key usage patterns of an immutable distro is using a container to install your extra packages. So you could go for a Fedora-based immutable KDE distro like Kinoite, and set up a Debian container where you can use apt and other Debian tools.
Plasma Panels have now gained a new visibility mode: “Dodge Windows” aka “intelligent auto-hide!” In essence, the Panel auto-hides when touched by a window, but is otherwise visible
Finally! With this, we can now have a panel behave like a proper dock.
I installed endeavourOS 2 days ago and then, the next day, there was a newnrelease of endeavourOS. It’s supposed to have better encryption. Is it possible to upgrade encryption on Linux? An unrelated question: is it possible to change the password of an encrypted partition? I’m a beginner, so please explain your magical...
That patch looks promising. But I wouldn’t recommend PBKDF2, I mean if you’re going to go thru the trouble of converting to LUKS2 for stronger encryption, might as well go for Argon2.
If you’re a beginner then don’t worry about the encryption. Unless you’re hiding from some three-letter agency or being targeted by hackers or something, LUKS1 encryption is more than good enough (for an average home user).
But just so you’re aware, whilst it’s trivial to convert to LUKS2 using cryptsetup convert, you’ll need to first switch your bootloader to systemd-boot from GRUB, and that may not be a trivial process as there’re multiple variables involved - is your ESP big enough, have you mounted your ESP to /boot, whether you’re using secure boot or not, whether you’re dual-booting or not etc. Plus you’ll also need to manually create a bootloader config file that’s specific to your system, and maybe even add a line to load a CPU microcode file if you’re on Intel… there’s a lot of things to consider here.
Honestly, I wouldn’t recommend EndeavorOS to you as a newbie, because it’s basically Arch, but by making the installation easy, you’re skipping all the knowledge you’d get of your system and how it works. And when it comes to situations like you’re in, you reach a roadblock because you took the easy path.
If you’re really interested in Arch then I’d recommend wiping your system and install Arch manually, the Arch way.
Hello Linux people, I need a bit of help. I wanted to leverage the new 545 NVIDIA drivers, but no other OS that I know of has them yet, so I installed Arch Linux using the handy archinstall script. I followed an external guide on how to get NVIDIA cards up and running. This one specifically:...
Based KDE 🗿 (lemmy.ml)
Sell Me on Linux
I posted this as a comment in another post but when I got done I realized it would probably just be better as its own post. I’m sure I could find the answers I need myself but frankly I trust the userbase here more than most online articles....
How do y'all deal with programs not supported on Linux?
I’ve been seeing all these posts about Linux lately, and looking at them, I can honestly see the appeal. I’d love having so much autonomy over the OS I use, and customize it however I like, even having so many options to choose from when it comes to distros. The only thing holding me back, however, is incompatibility issues....
What is the easiest way to try all the DEs?
As title says. Obviously I could setup different virtual machines or spend the time and install all the DEs in one VM if it is even possible without breaking the OS. I’m wondering if there is an already made iso or something that installs all the maintained DEs for trying.
Is PopOs a good option if i don't want to tinker much with the OS and do some basic tasks as web browsing etc?
Basically the title
What's new in Fedora Workstation 39 (fedoramagazine.org)
deleted_by_author
Do I actually need to do anything to go from GeForce to Radeon?
My GTX-1080 is getting a little long in the tooth, I’m thinking of going all AMD on my Linux Mint gaming rig here, but…is there anything I need to do or install or uninstall to switch to an AMD card from an Nvidia one?...
This week in KDE: Wayland by default, de-framed Breeze, HDR games, rectangle screen recording (pointieststick.com)
deleted_by_author
toolbox vs distrobox. Which one to use?
toolbox is preinstalled on fedora silverblue/kinoite whereas distrobox isn’t. What’s the advantage of one vs the other? Why is toolbox preinstalled and not distrobox?...
would it be illegal to download Ubuntu on a Chromebook?
what if I, for example, had a job in Google and I liked Linux so much I install Ubuntu on my Chromebook, would that be illegal/send me to prison?? Or, if I had the job, would I be kicked?? I like Chromebooks because they are so smol and nice. But I don’t know if it’s legal to install a Linux distro on it. Thank you!!
Should I install Linux on my smartphone?
I have a Samsung Galaxy J3 (2018) smartphone which currently has the stock Samsung Android OS installed on it. I wanted to install an Android “distro” that doesn’t spy on me, like Graphene OS, but I couldn’t find a ROM for it. Since I would probably need to compile AOSP from source code anyways, I though, why not install...
Mandrake Linux 10.0, from 2004. They still work too. Had to buy them on disc, slow dialup internet in those days. (mastodon.africa)
Debian based immutable OSes
prefer KDE. Currently testing Nitrux. Any other options
This week in KDE: Panel Intellihide and Wayland Presentation Time (pointieststick.com)
EndeavourOS encrypted partition
I installed endeavourOS 2 days ago and then, the next day, there was a newnrelease of endeavourOS. It’s supposed to have better encryption. Is it possible to upgrade encryption on Linux? An unrelated question: is it possible to change the password of an encrypted partition? I’m a beginner, so please explain your magical...
system freezes when waking up from suspend
Hello Linux people, I need a bit of help. I wanted to leverage the new 545 NVIDIA drivers, but no other OS that I know of has them yet, so I installed Arch Linux using the handy archinstall script. I followed an external guide on how to get NVIDIA cards up and running. This one specifically:...
Customising keyboard layouts Fedora KDE Wayland
Hey there fellas!...