I’ve been thinking about this old desktop machine under my desk that hasn’t been used in years. I’m thinking the death of the desktop computer is not too far ahead for me. I can’t see myself buying another in my lifetime and my building days ended in the mid 90s. I don’t really have a need for this thing at all, I don’t game, I’m pretty much off the internet already. Ageing out of all of it I suppose.

My question is, as a bit of a weekend hobby, is it feasible for a bit of an ordinary Joe, middle/a little older aged, to go from a life in MS and never having to run a server or hosting anything, to follow something like this to any meaningful outcome? https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/5911320

I write a bit of vba, do a fair bit of querying to a database someone else maintains for a living. (SQL). Again, never much but basic tables and queries/procedures.

The desktop currently is: OS: windows 10 home Processor: Intel i7-6700k @ 4GHz Graphics: GTX970 Ram: 16gb

Kidding myself? Obviously I’m thinking Linux and learning a new OS to some extent would in theory be in the mix.

Freshly installed Endeavoros, my next goal is to overclock my GPU, so where should I start? My spec is i7-5500u, gpu0: Intel hd 5500, gpu1: amd r5 m320. Thanks in advance

Hi all,

I'm testing out different distros and I'm giving them just 20gbs for the main install partition, with the aim to have everything stored on the NAS. Is there recommended way to do this? I'm thinking just making a symlink to a location on my NAS but I'm concerned that'll cause some unforeseen complications. Would really appreciate any advice!

I have a bigger SSD that I plan on migrating to. Thankfully I have ZFS on the disk, is it as easy as exporting and importing pools? What if I want to increase the pool size?

I have reinstalled my Fedora 38 on an old laptop with only 4gigs of RAM, problem is it allocated only 2gb of tmpfs, and so far it caused me a ton of problems, it runs out of space pretty quickly, especially when installing big size sw, I've read you can modify the size of it by changing the entry in fstab, but I couldn't find a tmpfs entry there, I've searched the Arch Wiki and found this:

Mounting tmpfs at /dev/shm is handled automatically by systemd and manual configuration in fstab is not necessary.

So I believe this is the case for me, would adding a new entry inside fstab work without any issue?

I'm currently trying to set up a self-hosted SearX search engine on Ubuntu 22.04. In order for the search engine to work, I have to manually run the following commands on startup:

#! /usr/bin/bash

sudo -H -u searx -i

cd /usr/local/searx/searx-src

export SEARX_SETTINGS_PATH="/etc/searx/settings.yml"

python searx/webapp.py

This is kind of annoying to have to do, so I put the script into /etc/rc.local and went through all the steps to enable all that. Now my rc.local file looks like:

#!/bin/sh -e

#! /usr/bin/bash

sudo -H -u searx -i

cd /usr/local/searx/searx-src

export SEARX_SETTINGS_PATH="/etc/searx/settings.yml"

python searx/webapp.py

exit 0

However, the code fails, and upon checking "sudo systemctl status rc-local.service" I get the following (abbreviated) error message:

 Loaded: loaded (/etc/systemd/system/rc-local.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
Drop-In: /usr/lib/systemd/system/rc-local.service.d
         └─debian.conf
 Active: failed (Result: exit-code) since Thu 2023-10-05; 55s ago
Process: 8468 ExecStart=/etc/rc.local start (code=exited, status=127)
    CPU: 12ms

systemd[1]: Starting /etc/rc.local Compatibility... sudo[8469]: root : PWD=/usr/local/searx ; USER=searx ; COMMAND=/bin/bash sudo[8469]: pam_unix(sudo-i:session): session opened for user searx(uid=999) by (uid=0) sudo[8469]: pam_unix(sudo-i:session): session closed for user searx rc.local[8468]: /etc/rc.local: 6: python: not found systemd[1]: rc-local.service: Control process exited, code=exited, status=127/n/a systemd[1]: rc-local.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'. systemd[1]: Failed to start /etc/rc.local Compatibility.

I understand that an Exit Code 127 means that the code is failing because it can't access the following directory:

cd /usr/local/searx/searx-src

But I honestly have no idea how to fix my code to make this possible. Please lmk if you have any suggestions

I'm running the nvidia official version, i have a 4090.

journalctl -xe gives "failed to switch root: specificed switch root path /ssysroot doesnot seem to be on OS tree. os-release file is missing"

I've seen some mention to try rebooting into a different kernel. I have no idea how to do that. Everything I have seen suggests commands that do not exist in the emergency mode. and I can't boot at all so I don't konw what to do.

Please advice. I asked in the discord but no one even responded and I'm not sure where to get help with this distro

Hello,

my secondary monitor has a borked EDID. Currently in X11 i use a xrandr bash script on login to set it up.

I tinkered around a bit with wlr-randr in sway (and also gnome-randr in gnome) but i could not get it to work.

Thanks in advance.

If USB flash drive contain any of malware/virus/worm inserted to linux host without being mount (auto mount disabled), does malware/virus/worm will infect host

One can create a file named .bash_aliases in their home directory to create aliases for that user.

Is there a way to create a .bash_aliases that is system wide for all users? I know one can add aliases in the /etc/bash.bashrc file but this is not ideal.

And is there a way to achieve this with other shells such as zsh and fish?

I use a laptop, and have only just been able to finally connect an ethernet cable to it. However, ethernet doesn't work on Linux, returning this "Cable Unplugged" message, whereas it does work on dual-booted Windows.

I tried running "lspci -v" to get a list of where my drivers were located, but I could not find any entry for "Ethernet controller," or something of the like. That being said, I'm assuming I just don't have an Ethernet driver?? and I was wondering how I get one :)

Hi all,

As above I'm struggling to get my home server running Manjaro to be accessible outside my network. I've never messed with domains before but I do have a working knowledge of home networking.

I also have, what most would probably consider, basic working knowledge of Linux. I can work my way around the terminal and follow instructions on things given they aren't using assumptions that the reader is a knowledgeable power user of Linux.

From what I've read I need to add a reverse DNS via something like nginx and setup my Google domain to point to my external IP. Sounds simple enough but I cannot for the life of me configure nginx properly and I'm not even sure I have my Google domain setup correctly outside of payin for the domain name.

What I'd like to achieve is have my home server files be accessible from anywhere and also have jellyfin/sonarr/radarr accessible from anywhere if possible. I'm currently using Plex but that has a plethora of its own issues so would like to try something new.

Any help would be greatly appreciated, especially if provided in an "OP dumb dumb" format!

I'm currently at work at the time of writing so replies may be slow

Hi! I'm trying to sync a local filder with a remote folder on Mega. Copy is working but if Imodify some character in a file (by example fro S1E1 to S1E2) it doesn't sinc since the size is unchanged. Other than using copy how can I sync using date and time and not size? The flag --ignore-size apparenty is not a solution. Thanks in advance for any help

First of all, big surprise, right? Stuck with it for now, though. Not sure if AMD is actually any better at this point, but that's a problem for a different time.

So I've tried fedora now, (can list hardware later in post)and got it to install fine, did the system update, 4gb or so later, that's good to go, so now I figure it's time to get the GPU drivers working so I can make progress on making a daily driver out of this machine.

There's a lot of conflicting information and alternate routes to go with the drivers as I've gone to see, so that's confusing enough already.

So I'm on the KDE version of F38, since I would like to use Plasma.

I found and installed the "latest" dkms driver via cuda.

Haven't made other changes at all yet.

But at this point, it black screens after the grub menu. If I use nomodeset I can access the system, but I'm stuck in 1024x768. This is obviously terrible, I have a GPU for a reason and I would like it to work. Before installing these drivers I could at least use native resolution and native refresh rate.

It's defaulted to Wayland of course, which I hear can be another issue by itself, but I don't know the pros and cons of it vs using X (or X11 it whatever is actually called). I also know the open drivers can have issues, but am not sure if they would be useful for me.

Relevant hardware: MSI MAG Z790 i7 13700K RTX 3070 Ti

So obviously these drivers don't work for me, but I'm not sure what I need to do from here. Google got me this far, but there's not a lot of mentioned of being forced to use nomodeset, and nothing relevant at all if how to get proper drivers installed properly.

I did add the RPM Fusion repo, but haven't used it yet. Or at least the free one, can't remember if I added the non free one yet.

Happy to find outputs of whatever you need, but I'm still very new to using a terminal, so I don't know much about what I can do with it in general, much less what to do with it or try to look at in this specific case. I've picked up bits and pieces, but until I can get a working environment, learning is difficult.

As the title states whenever I try to login and start the desktop environment (xfce4 and dwm) I get kicked back to the login screen with no error message. Beforehand I was messing around with configuring dwm. I've tried updating through the tty and deleting dwmblocks (which is what I was messing with before all this)

Here's the output when running startxfce4:

usr/bin/startxfce4: Starting X server

(EE)
Fatal server error:
(EE) Server is already active for display 0
                if this server is no longer running, remove /tmp/.X0-lock and start again.
(EE)
(EE)
Please consult the X.org foundation support at http://wiki.x.org for help.
(EE)
Authorization required, but no authorization protocol specified

xinit: giving up
xinit: unable to connect to C server: Resource temporarily unavailable
xinit: server error

Is it possible to have the drives weather you use RAID ZFS to be encrypted?

Hello,

Finally built a new rig, and wanted to ditch Windows.

Got KDE neon up and running, booted into it, got my browser mostly back to how I like it, ran an update for my video card. I didn't notice the screen blackout and come back like it normally would for a video update, but I don't think that has anything to do with my current issue. I tried to restart to make sure it was running, and the update part of discover showed up and said I had a couple hundred updates to get, no big surprise there, since it is a fresh install.

Then it hung on fetching updates, and while I could browse my list of programs, I couldn't do anything else. So I did a hard shut down and powered back up.

It sticks on some kennel warnings and won't go any further.

Obviously I can't really do anything from there that I know of.

I also can't even get it to boot with the install media. That just sticks on a black screen. I can tell the monitor is actually showing black, as it doesn't give the "NO SIGNAL" warning. I have no idea what to do from here since I can't get it to react to anything, much less know how to fix anything if I could get in.

As for what the warnings say, there are 6 or so lines saying the same thing: problem blacklisting hash (-13), and one more that says nvme2: failed to set APST feature (2)

I haven't put anything on nvme2 yet, I haven't even formatted it yet, just the primary drive (nvme0). So I'm not sure what could possibly be wrong with it yet.

Hey guys my Fedora install has been giving me trouble lately, and now refuses to boot at all. For a while mullvad and firewalld refused to start on occasion so I just started manually checking at boot and starting them when need be, but now hostname.service fails and the other two fail, and the system gets hung up on some gnome doohicky and refuses to go past it to boot. Yesterday it wouldn't let me update because pipewire i686 (or is it i868? Anyway..) and gnu-utils (or something) i688668 (still can't remember the numbers) kept causing conflicts with the x86_64 versions, and the advice was to uninstall the non-x86_64 versions, but when I tried to uninstall it told me they weren't installed to begin with.

Frankly I'm sick of it, so I'm gonna do a fresh install I guess. This brings us to my question. Currently just transferring my entire /home/ to a drive, then gonna transfer it to the new install. What, outside of that directory, should I also bring for ease of setting up the new system? And what should I specifically exclude, especially anything which would cause issues or conflicts that is in the /home/ dir? Finally, I had a bunch of what appeared to be bash related temporary garbage files, all I really need to bring from bash is .bashrc, right? The rest of those can get trashed? I should add, I'm likely just going to go with fedora again, though I am considering debian.

Thanks for your help in advance. Didn't see my day being this but I guess it's what I'm doing.

So I am hoping to finally get around to installing Linux for the first time. Ideally I would like to eventually replace my win10 installation with it, but for now I plan on dual booting until I am comfortable enough on Linux. This leads me to a couple questions:

• which one is best suited for gaming? I do a couple other things as well but I would expect that any OS could deal with those. I know vaguely about proton / the steam deck improvements that trickled down, but don’t know if and how that affects different Linux versions.

• I read some days ago that ubuntu is being used by Microsoft, does that mean it is more compatible with their other applications?

• I also read that amd is better suited to linux because nvidia refuses to support it, which would be a happy coincidence for me because I just recently built a fully amd computer, is that actually true?

• And lastly, provided there is even a definitive answer to my first question, where should I look to get started? I have never dealt with Linux before but would consider myself reasonably tech / computer savvy.

Thank you

@linux4noobs How to install Fedora on Laptop with FDE via LUKS using TPM. So, It unlocks automatically during boot ?

I've tried many recs from ProtonDB but it doesn't work for me. Both DS1 and DS2 just never open a window.

I use Steam, I switched proton versions and some %program launch options, but no luck.

If you have some ideas, I'd love to hear them.

Linux and its software is constantly under development and the community seems to really be making an effort to ensure that programs work exactly as expected. I often notice little things like glitches or program crashes and I am able to replicate them and I think I should probably submit a bug report or something. Since I am not a dev I have no idea how to do this or where to start. How do I know if its my issue or the programs issue?

For example, Thunderbird 115.1.0 is crashing when I open a specific email. I will put the steps I took to debug it in the comments.

Today's tip is a simple one many experienced users will roll their eyes at, but that is because it is so common and handy to use. When watching and helping people new to Linux, I often see them fail to utilize this powerful tool. They struggle to remember file names and commands and it hurts my soul to watch knowing how much easier it could be for them. Knowing how to use this helps you help yourself. There isn't a day that goes by I don't use this probably a hundred times.

Tab completion

Tab completion is a powerful feature in the Linux terminal that allows you to quickly complete filenames, directory paths, and commands by pressing the 'Tab' key. It can significantly speed up your workflow and reduce the chances of typos.

Benefits of using tab completion:

• Efficiency: Saves time by reducing typing and minimizing errors.
• Discoverability: Helps you discover available commands and file/directory names.
• Accuracy: Reduces typos and potential mistakes.

Using Tab Completion

Completing Commands: Type the start of a command, maybe one you can't quite remember the name of, and press 'Tab' twice to see a list of available commands that match the entered text. If you've typed enough that there will only be one option, it'll complete that one for you.

Completing Filenames and Directories: When typing a file or directory name, press 'Tab' to automatically complete the name. If multiple options match, pressing 'Tab' twice will display the options.

Navigating Directories: Use tab completion to navigate through directories quickly. For example, type cd /usr/l and press 'Tab' to complete to /usr/local/.

Conclusion

It should be noted that tab completion may work slightly different depending on the terminal and other settings you may have. Pressing 'Tab' twice may bring up a full menu to select from for available files or directories, for instance. However, this overview provides the gist of how it works for most any system I regularly come across.

Today's tip is on customizing the terminal prompt. If you're a developer, there is a high chance that you use source control. There's also a high chance that source control is git. You likely find yourself in and out of project directories, navigating different branches quite often. One customization I like to make to my prompt is adding the git branch I'm currently working in, if one exists. This is far from the only customization that can be made, but I'm going to cover because it is so common and relatable to many.

Understanding the Default Prompt

The default prompt usually includes your username, hostname, and current directory. It might look like:

user@hostname:~/current_directory$

The cool thing is you can set this to whatever you'd like - or nothing at all. Some of those things might be an indicator that shows whether you are working on a remote or local machine, cpu load and other system stats, or the time. If you want to pull the water temperature from a buoy in the Gulf of Mexico and you'd find that useful in your prompt, you can add that, too. You can also stylize your prompt with colors. You can even create a multi-line prompt with some of these on each line using the new line escape sequence (detailed below).

The prompt is simply the value of the PS1 environment variable. To view your current one, you can run echo $PS1

Changing the Prompt Temporarily:

You can change your prompt temporarily by assigning a new value to the PS1 environment variable:

PS1="MyFirstCustomPrompt$ "

This will change your prompt to MyFirstCustomPrompt$ until you close the terminal.

Customizing with Escape Sequences:

You can use escape sequences to add color, time, date, and more to your prompt. Here are the escape sequences:

• \u: Current username

• \h: Hostname

• \w: Full current working directory

• \W: Last part of the current working directory

• \d: Date (e.g., Fri Aug 11)

• \t: Time (24-hour format, 14:30:00)

• \n: New line

• \e[x;ym: This sequence is used to set foreground and background colors. Replace x and y with color codes from below.

Color Codes

• 0 : Reset / No color
• 1: Bold / Bright
• 2: Dim / Faint
• 3: Italic
• 4: Underlined
• 5: Blinking
• 7: Inverted colors (swap foreground and background)
• 8: Hidden / Concealed

Foreground Color Codes:

• 30: Black
• 31: Red
• 32: Green
• 33: Yellow
• 34: Blue
• 35: Magenta
• 36: Cyan
• 37: White

Background Color Codes:

• 40: Black
• 41: Red
• 42: Green
• 43: Yellow
• 44: Blue
• 45: Magenta
• 46: Cyan
• 47: White

For example:

PS1="[\e[1;32;41m\u@\h \W\e[m]$ "

This displays your prompt in green on a red background (ugly), including the username (\u), hostname (\h), and current directory (\W).

Git Branch Function and Make Changes Permanent:

To make your custom prompt permanent, add the PS1 assignment to your shell's profile configuration file (~/.bashrc for Bash, ~/.zshrc for Zsh).

To add the current git branch to the prompt, you'll need to include a function that parses the git branch for the current directory. If there is a git branch, the function returns the value to be displayed. This is what you'd add at the end of your configuration file.

parse_git_branch() {
   git branch 2> /dev/null | sed -e '/^[^*]/d' -e 's/* \(.*\)/ (\1)/'
}

PS1="\[\e[1;32m\][\u@\h \W\$(parse_git_branch)]\[\e[m\]$ "

This code defines parse_git_branch that extracts the current branch from a Git repository and adds the branch information to the prompt.

Conclusion

Using this method, there are all sorts of creative prompts that can be created. If you use or know of any handy prompts or come up with any after reading this, please share in the comments.