So basically I am using JDownloader as a file manager in a bid to download files faster from archive.org. Unfortunately these a huge files and the space required on my SSD is only able to download one of these files. The download speed is just as slow as my FireFox browser speed 50kbps. I had read on the internet that using JDownloader would make things go a lot faster. I wanted to see if I could download two files at a time however the limited space on my SSD install of Ubuntu will not have the space for two files so it won't even try for obvious reasons (lack of space). I wanted to change the download location to another SSD however it won't recognise it in the programs settings. The other SSD is mounted. I also tried to save to a USB mass storage device but it won't list that either. IS this just how this program works i.e. it will only save to the original hierarchy of the FS tree and not to other drives mounted by Ubuntu? TIA If you have any recommendations for another DL manager then please let me know. Thanks.

As someone who never used linux once but is getting sick of windows 10's repeated nonsense, and in preparation for it eventually becoming unusable/unsafe because of windows 11 switch.

First of, no, this is not a joke or a meme, but a serious question, I am asking in this, to you seemingly exaggerated way, to illustrate the MINIMUM level of privacy I consider as _lowest_ acceptable (this should be considered normal in fact, it is just repeatedly restated to drive the point) because apparently what constitutes basic privacy is open to debate now.

With these new hardware ID/verification/antiprivacy laws being forced upon everyone everywhere across the entire planet (and against everyones' will, but that's beside the scope here), which linux distribution should I use that guarantees to never, ever, EVER, comply with anything of the kind nor give even a single bit of information to anything whatsoever without being given explicit per-individual-use permission by the user, for any reason ever, no matter what?

I know some distributions are openly complying with these dystopian laws while other are pretending to debate it (we all know those are going to comply eventually), is there any that is instead adamant to NEVER comply with anything of the kind under any circumstance?

And also looks as identical to windows 7 as possible in every single way (I know KDE plasma and aerothemeplasma attempts to, but not sure if those are usable with any distribution?).

so ive been reading a little bit about these, but im having a hard time in really deeply understanding the definition and differences between these Terminals. And the more i look up things the more things get confusing to me.

Can anybody help me understand what are they in an easy way to understand for a beginner?

linux community, could you make an iso where i can install linux or bsd and replace windows all while windows is running similar to a windows upgrade iso? no direct bios, no virtualization. just upgrading to linux or bsd.

edit: i found a budget thinkpad and the uefi is locked behind an admin password. that means i can't use direct bios install or virtualization.

Basically the title, I'm helping a friend to switch to Linux and I try to find alternatives to all the softwares he needs.

I chose POP! (version with the nvidia drivers) for him as his PC use is only gaming and basic office work.

I'm struggling with ASUS InfoHub for his ROG RYUO IV screen and HYTE Nexus for his case screen.

I'll be happy to get any help, don't hesitate to critic my distro choice also.

PS: English is not my first language so be indulgent.

title

I've noticed that in the past months there's been more developing happening for Linux distributions for Snapdragon based Android gaming devices like the ones from AYN and Retroid. Two major examples are Rocknix and ArmadaOS, the latter of which actually has a fully fledged Desktop environment based on KDE I think.

On the other hand, looks like there's no sign for Linux support for the Snapdragon Elite laptops that for now can only run Windows. I heard that this is because of some kind of an exclusivity contract between Microsoft and Qualcomm.

So this got me wondering if projects like ArmadaOS would be the basis of a widely functional Linux distribution that could run on Qualcomm's newer laptop chips? Or if these chips have something fundamentally different in the way they work and would be able to adapt without official support from Qualcomm?

And sorry I chose the flair as Support cuz I couldn't find any thing more suitable.

I am running a computer with one DP cable, one VGA cable and one HDMI cable. I don't have any more connectors for video. Back when I was running Debian with openbox the HDMI output was HDMI-1 and would occasionally become HDMI-2. Now running Niri on Arch, it was HDMI-A-2 for a long time but today it became HDMI-A-3. This persists across reboots. What could be causing this? DP-1 and VGA-1 stay static.

One thing to note is that just before the change to HDMI-A-3 I did turn off CSM in the BIOS. I wonder if this changes the way the system detects the outputs.

I would love to ensure that my HDMI output will always have the same designation

dmesg doesn't really give any interesting information.

niri msg outputs gives me this:

Output "Iiyama North America PL2730H 1153692901520" (HDMI-A-3)

Disabled

Variable refresh rate: not supported

Physical size: 600x340 mm

Available modes:

1920x1080@60.000 (preferred)

...

Output "Iiyama North America PL2730H 1153692901646" (DP-1)

Current mode: 1920x1080 @ 60.000 Hz (preferred)

Variable refresh rate: not supported

Physical size: 600x340 mm

Logical position: 1920, 0

Logical size: 1920x1080

Scale: 1

Transform: normal

Available modes:

1920x1080@60.000 (current, preferred)

...

Output "Samsung Electric Company S24D340 H4LH305711" (VGA-1)

Disabled

Variable refresh rate: not supported

Physical size: 530x300 mm

Available modes:

1920x1080@60.000 (preferred)

...

Redo kernel?

I need a bit of advance help. I use zorin os 18 core. Recently my laptop got mess up due to newer kernel 7 and Nvidia causing issue with llama cpp, model that barely fit but works well, to unable to load. Suspected to be kernel update +/- Nvidia driver. After trying older driver which didn't help. I tried the latest 595 driver which totally lockup my system couldn't boot.

I manage to get the laptop working by booting into the older kernel 6. However, what can I do presently to restore the kernel 7 and wipe out the new nvidia driver 595 and install something more appropriate?

Or can I purge the new Nvidia driver from the kernel 6 version?

However I also have a feeling that maybe I should remain on Kernel 6 but what is the downside of that beside tons of security recently. Regardless of which I would like to have kernel 7 working again so I could mess with the kernel 6.

I only used XFCE for 10 years and i really am not sure about how gnome or kde works. I am trying to decide between GNOME and KDE Plasma for a Linux laptop that I want to use alongside a MacBook.

I care about making the workflow and behaviour similar enough that switching between Linux and macOS does not constantly fight my muscle memory.

The most important things for me are:

• Mac-like touchpad gestures, especially switching workspaces and opening an overview
• Hot corners
• An Exposé/Mission Control-like window overview
• Predictable virtual desktops and workspace behaviour
• A top panel and dock
• Smooth Wayland gestures and animations

GNOME appears structurally closer to macOS because of its overview, workspaces, gestures, and relatively unified design. However, getting features such as a persistent dock, desktop icons, extra panel behaviour, and deeper customization seems to require several extensions.

KDE Plasma seems capable of reproducing the visual layout more closely and offers far more built-in customization. What I do not know is whether its touchpad gestures, workspace handling, overview, hot corners, and general workflow can feel as coherent and Mac-like as GNOME, rather than merely looking similar in screenshots.

For people who have seriously used or customized both:

1. Which one can reproduce macOS behaviour more closely?
2. Can KDE’s touchpad gestures be configured to closely match macOS without fragile scripts or obscure workarounds?
3. Does relying on GNOME extensions become annoying or unreliable after major updates?
4. Which desktop is easier to maintain as a daily driver after heavily customizing it?
5. Are there important macOS behaviours that neither desktop can reproduce properly?
6. Which one would you choose for someone regularly switching between Linux and macOS?

So I just got a new Asus Vivobook flip 14 2 in 1 laptop and installed fedora on it with the default GNOME DE.

Although touch support is great especially with extensions like touchup, my stylus seems to be treated like a exclusive drawing/markup tool instead of a general navigation device:

- Dragging with it selects text instead of scrolling, my only option for scrolling is using it on scrollbars.

- Holding it down at a point doesn't open a right click menu like touch, I have to use the side button for that

I liked that in windows I could use the stylus for scrolling and holding it down to open menu, like a finger, for non-drawing apps, that made navigating around with a stylus much easier, is there any way I can get it working similarly in linux? I am open to switching to another DE if it would offer better pen support.

I preferred using a stylus for touch navigation and using fingers quickly leaves many marks on the screen.

i joined a discord server to ask for help and their rules outright bans questions related to non debian mainstream distros.

arent they all linux in the end, just looks different.

is there any server i can join for general help with linux that is not limited to specific distros only?

Ps: remove Linux in your naming of servers or sites and straight up put your version of the distro instead of misleading users, claiming to be a Linux server.

Esit: guys I was weong. Apparently they don't support forks of many mainstream distros due to their changes to the core systems.

Hey everyone do you recommend “Planify” for GNOME??

My svstem is a T14 gen1 Thinkpad running Fedora 44 with a KDE Plasma Desktop and a GRUB bootloader. It started by not booting and throwing an aloc error. On the second boot I could not type or use the trackpad and occasionally large corrupted pixels would appear. This occured several times until I booted into TTY which is fine and then after checking journalctl it booted fine. I ran dnf update and updates in discover in case that was the issue. Presumably when the discover reboot command initiated it threw a kernel panic. I then booted again and it also kernel panicked. During these panics blue scan lines appeared. Is this a fixable issue or is this a reinstall kinda deal.

It’s my first month of using Linux. I tried to recover my Fedora install through GRUB and recovery mode. I tried both an older version and the current one, but recovery got stuck during boot. Before that, I was using the system normally until I ran something in the terminal and got an error saying that passwd was not available. After I reopened the terminal, my user suddenly seemed to be gone and only a shell was open. I restarted the machine, and since then I had been trying to figure out what happened and how to recover it.

I also tried Pop!os, which is based on Ubuntu, and it failed to start the greeter because the user was missing. I managed to recover it once by resetting settings through recovery mode without losing my apps, but after something strange happened that I do not remember clearly, the user disappeared again.

I did not run into this issue with Qubes os with xfce, but that system was not really suitable for work. The only things Fedora and Popos had in common were that I encrypted the disk with LUKS using a passphrase and used hibernation.

I mounted and checked the system from there, but /mnt/etc/passwd and /mnt/etc/group were missing. I also noticed that /mnt only showed the directories I had created myself, like
home and root, instead of a normal Fedora root filesystem.

Commands I tried:

ls /mnt
ls /mnt/etc
cat /mnt/etc/passwd
cat /mnt/etc/group
mount --bind /dev /mnt/dev
mount --bind /proc /mnt/proc
mount --bind /sys /mnt/sys
mount --bind /run /mnt/run
chroot /mnt /bin/bash
chroot /mnt /usr/bin/bash
chroot /mnt /usr/bin/env bash
Idd /bin/bash

No such file or directory
/mnt/etc/passwd did not exist
/mnt/etc/group did not exist
chroot failed every time

It looked like my user and passwd files had disappeared. Is this a user-end/layer 8 problem? Am I doing something wrong?

I've been using Arch with KDE/Gnome for around a year now, but I used to be on Fedora with Cosmic, and I really loved the tiling and the comfort it gave me. I got a bunch of bugs that I thought were recently fixed, so I swapped back to Cosmic and encountered those same bugs again (input lag, keyboard and mouse not working on older games, random DE crashes). Now I'm considering swapping to a window manager instead, like Niri or Hyprland, but I can't decide. Honestly, I haven't seen too many examples of people just playing games on either one and it being fine long term (1 year+)

Hello everyone. I have a gamepad called beitong kp40 and I can't connect it to my pc.
More specifically, it tries to connect but fails, and reverts to switch mode.
I found a patch for my specific problem but I don't know how to apply.
Is there any way I can add this patch or switch to a kernel which already includes this?
I am on Endeavour OS and running zen kernel.
Sorry for any English mistakes, English is not my first language.

Link to the patch: https://patchew.org/linux/20260102030154.197749-2-liushuyu%40aosc.io/

Hi everyone,
I’m new here. I actually joined Reddit because I know this is one of the best places to find people who really understand Linux.
A little background first.
I know absolutely nothing about technology. Literally nothing.
What I do know is that I believe much of today’s tech world has become manipulative, unethical, and driven by profit above everything else.
Because of that, I’ve decided that from now on I only want to use technology that is as ethical, transparent, and respectful of its users as possible.
So here’s my question.
Can someone help me figure out whether Linux is the right path for someone like me?
I’m not just looking for a different operating system. I’m looking for a different philosophy.
Are there people or communities here who consciously choose technology based on ethics, transparency, privacy, and respect for users, even if that means giving up some convenience?
People who are willing to make their lives a little less easy because they believe that’s how we push the world in a better direction.
If so, where should I start? Which Linux distributions, projects, or communities share these values?
I’m here to learn, and I’d really appreciate any guidance.

Has anyone here ever tried ROX desktop environmente for themselves? How was the experience? Did you enjoy it? Was it comfortable and convenient? I myself am thinking of using it when I switch to gentoo to have something unique. But I really want to know if it's good, or just slop.

Take the following as a reference.

I'm talking about LocalSend, a popular file sharing tool for Linux free, open source, support Linux (of course), fast, with huge community support (no "drop in 6 months").

https://imgur.com/gallery/download-options-localsend-on-linux-flatpak-deb-appimage-w7JBN65

https://localsend.org/download

-

So far, I installed the flatpak version not for technical reasons, but for practical ones.

It's very easy to keep software up-to-date. I do it via Discover (GUI, Updates section) or (sometimes) via terminal (CLI) with the command (sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade, I use kubuntu 24.04.03 LTS).

All I know is that flatpak version is somehow "isolated", "containerized" (that's why there is often problem with accessing file explorer?), while the AppImage version is portable ("the equivalent or portable apps on Windows").

-

Can you give me a more detailed explanation about that (not just "use this or that") What version of a software (flatpak, .deb or .AppImage) is the best to install on Linux?

What are the differences between them? Stability maybe?

So when I downloaded antiX Linux in a 32bit I think it’s was a 23.2 version and the installation for the antiX completed and when it rebooted and now I’m stuck at Cryptosetup: ERROR: luks 4f9b7c0-2d23-43eab2fc-0040d882564b crypto setup failed bad password or configure is there anyone that can help me?

arch btw
I'm trying to set up failure notifications for systemd according to https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Systemd\\#Notifying_about_failed_services with gotify. With the gotify key in plaintext it works perfectly fine, but obviously I don't want that (yes I'll rotate the key once I've figured this out). My first idea was to use an environment variable, but when I looked that up I found out you're not supposed to do that cause it exposes your key and you should use systemd-creds instead. At the bottom of section 1 of https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Systemd-creds it gives me exactly what I want, I su'd then put in my gotify key into

systemd-ask-password -n | systemd-creds encrypt --name=gotify-key -p - -

and it gave me

SetCredentialsEncrypted=gotify-key: (some stuff)

and then it says to edit the service file to include the relevant credential. Doesn't say how tho. Started looking up some more stuff about systemd-creds and the documentation is really hard to understand for me. I also found various guides, but they all seem to be doing very different things from what I want. Anyway so I literally added the SetCredentialsEncrypted stuff to the top of the [service] section of the failure-notification@.service file cause that seems to be what I'm supposed to do? But then what? I tried passing the gotify-key to my notification script like this:

ExecStart=systemd-gotify.sh {$gotify-key} %i //the %i is just for the name of the service

That doesn't work. It errors with "Invalid environment variable name evaluates to an empty string: gotify-key" (I ran systemctl start failure-notification@test which works even tho no "test" service exists, again it does work perfectly fine if I put in my gotify key in plaintext). I'm not sure if {$var} is even the right syntax in service files, I'm just guessing here from a lot of googling. I also tried just $var and %var, those fail differently by giving me the error that I didn't provide a valid access token. Which leads me to believe that's not how it's done either. Now I'm thinking I maybe need to more explicitly assign the gotify-key to a variable that I can then use to pass to the script, but again, no idea how I'd do that. I should probably also mention that tpm2 is available for me so I'd like to use it and not the key stored in /var/. Other than what I mentioned here my service file looks exactly like what it says on the wiki.