GNOME Software tells me that there is a "Secure Boot dbx Configuration Update;" in the description below it reads:

"UEFI Secure Boot Forbidden Signature Database"

"This updates the list of forbidden signatures (the "dbx") to the latest release from Microsoft."

"An insecure version of Howyar's SysReturn software was added, due to a security vulnerability that allowed an attacker to bypass UEFI Secure Boot."

GNOME Firmware tells me that this update is not removeable or reversible, and I dimly remember there being something bad (perhaps incorrectly) about Secure Boot. So, what do you think, should I update it or ignore it?

I can install gnome-software on mint from the repos and get them that way, so it doesn't really matter I guess, but I was just wondering . . .

cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/37943447

Hi all, I'm planning to do a clean install of Linux Mint on my laptop and completely remove Windows. I have about 300GB of personal data on the system and only one SSD, so everything is currently stored on that single drive.

Here’s what I want to do:

1. Back up all my data safely, without losing any metadata (timestamps, folder structure, etc.).
2. Wipe Windows and do a clean install of Linux Mint.
3. Restore my data with everything intact—timestamps, folder structure, and metadata.
4. Be able to open or run file types that are only supported by Windows, like certain .exe, .msi, or specific file types.

I don’t have a second internal drive, so I’ll probably use an external hard drive or cloud storage.

What i want to know is:

1.What’s the best way to back up and restore my data safely while preserving all metadata?

2.What tools or methods should I use for backup and restore?

3.How can I access or use files that are only supported by Windows once I’ve switched to Linux? Are there workarounds or compatibility layers?

I’m fairly new to Linux, so beginner-friendly advice would be awesome.

Thanks in advance!

I'm running Mint, and have an external USB drive plugged in. It is not powered - it gets its power from the mini-PC.

Occasionally I get this message and I've no idea why. It might be after rebooting the machine but I'm not sure (sorry).

The only thing I did with the drive is rename it (to "1tbDrive"). Could that be the problem? (I did that in the Disks application).

Hey guys

As you can see in the picture, I have the problem that my programs always open in half size windows.

Obviously I'm just trying to improve my quality of life, but is it possible to change this setting? I would prefer the programs to start in full screen.

REGARDS

I used to torrent a lot many years ago, before the rise of streaming services, and back then relied on what people told me: you don't have to worry about malware when you have a Mac.

I've been thinking about torrenting a few things that are pretty much unobtainable any other way but I worry about the security aspect. I've seen people say that with Linux there's no need to worry but simply trusting this seems careless to me now and I wanted to ask your views on this.

Do you torrent and are there any additional precautions one should take? Thank you :)

I've been using Mint for about 5 years now and want to explore the 'nuts and bolts' side of it a bit more

I can use the terminal a bit- copy/paste code to install programmes etc, but I'd like to now understand what the code actually means

Can anyone recommend either a book or online guide to exploring this? Also can any recommendations be geared towards newbie and 'moron' level

If this community isn't the right place let me know and I'll repost elsewhere.....

also many thanks in advance for any help 👍

Trying to install mint on my PC, but I just get this error, then a few minutes of loading screen with the mint logo, and then it just reboots.

Hi guys,

I am currently using Linux Mint with automatic updates installed and I keep seeing application updates from LibreWolf, LibreOffice etc.

I have downloaded these through the application manager as well. But what about applications that I install outside of the management, such as the Mullvad browser, are they also automatically updated via the update manager?

I've got a Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon 10th generation, which, from the start, IIRC was criticized for not having the best battery life, I think, because of its processor (12th Gen Intel Core i7-1280P × 14).

I thought I had read that using a more recent kernel might help the lowish battery life problem (I'm using 6.11.0-24-generic at the moment), but it doesn't seem to help much, if at all.

I tried using tlp, which meant uninstalling power-profiles-daemon, but this just made my laptop run hot, and also screwed up my battery when I tried to set charging thresholds (had to reset it by using the emergency pin hole), so I probably won't be trying that again. Reinstalled power-profiles-daemon, and now have it on power saver; so back to normal now, not running hot, but battery life still isn't great.

Anything else I could try? There's auto-cpufreq which I used for a while on an older laptop, but that was quite a while ago . . .

I've been keeping an eye on the github and the board and it doesn't seem to be moving that much. We're nearly halfway through 2025 and I thought the plan was for Wayland to be supported on cinnamon early 2026.

Wondered if anyone had any more insight into progress/blockers/delays

Thought I'd ask before installing it and potentially messing things up.

According to Brother (printer company) I need to set a rule for my firewall.

brother printer instructions

as you can see at that page it says :

To scan using the Scan Key Tool, open the following ports in the security/firewall software you use:

• UDP: 54925
• TCP: 54921

I think I have it correct. but i'm new to linux and to creating rules in firewalls.

Those screenshots of how i created the firewall rule. I have the incoming set to "Deny" but I would assume that means that normally deny incoming BUT the rules I created should be exceptions. At least that's how I would read that. If I am wrong please let me know.

The important part is that according to the instructions ports

• UDP: 54925
• TCP: 54921

must be opened and allow incoming traffic.

my end goal is to have the ability to push the "Scan" button on my printer/scanner and have a document scan and pushed to the computer. I am running Linux Mint 22.1

If you need more information to help me I'm happy to reply. The big item is :

is the firewall rule created correctly?

I should add that I did create a previous post about my brother printer and I went through brother to make sure the drivers are installed and setup . so that issue has been solved, now it's just the firewall.

I'll be the first to admit that I still have a lot to learn, but isn't it kind of dangerous to rely on repositories with software that is often months out of date? I understand that security is a moving target, but I see so many people saying that getting apps from the official repositories is the safest option. This just seems incorrect to me. Can someone please illuminate?

How cool would it be to have an official version of LMDE that tracks sid/testing

Ok first let me state I thank everyone for all the help over these last 7+ months. I'm on my final item ( I think ) to be fully on Linux. If I can get this working I'll wipe windows 10 from my pc and just be using Linux. So here's hoping someone can help me on this problem.

It's not so much of a MAJOR issue but more of an annoyance.

If I go to Document Scanner in Linux Mint 22.1 I can click the scan button. The scanner will active and scan the document putting it into a pdf or picture. No issues there, so I know the computer can see the scanner. I can also print to the printer. (Should note that the scanner is a scanner/copier)

So the system works in that direction.

If I go to the scanner and using the controls on the front of the scanner and hit scan it will say "No PC Found". So it's (in my opinion) a driver issue. I believe the linux system isn't announcing to the network that "hey I'm here and ready". Could be easily wrong there.

I went to the bother printer web site where thankfully they have actual linux drivers.

brother linux site

I downloaded the Printer drivers from there. I also downloaded the scanner drivers. Also the Scan-key-tool 64bit drivers.

I can't remember where I found it, and I tried looking in my history but sadly no luck.

But I do remember a post that asked what the output of

brscan-skey

and

brscan-skey -t

when I type them into the terminal I get no real result, it just looks like

andrew@linux:~$ brscan-skey

andrew@linux:~$ brscan-skey -t

so no real output there but sadly I can't remember why it was important or even where the webpage was at.. but at least you have the output of the commands.

I'm pretty sure that it's just something simple that I'm missing.

Oh yes, I also turned the firewall in Linux Mint off. Just in case there was an issue there, but no luck. To turn it off what I did was bring up the GUI for the firewall and click the slider / button next to Status. Normally it as a check mark and I set it so the shield is just greyed out.

If you need me to run a command to check something or need more info, please ask.

The printer/scanner is wirelessly connected to the router.

Thank you

It's still April 1st somewhere...

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/27678244

" The team at StonedCode is very proud to present the fork of the future. We have finally developed an operating system intended to be useable at any skill level and levelmof conciousness!

We have used the latest breakthroughs in minimal integrated graphical interfacing technology to ensure our custom open source high-flo software and streamlined operating system is bullet proof."

Seems really promising you guys I’ll post a link to the github soon.!

Most times the computer will turn off when I click shut down, but randomly it does not turn off. The screen shot is the output as the computer is trying to shut down. Any ideas of why the system randomly doesn’t turn off? How to fix it?

I think I might put a pin in this one until I do a re-install and put it on the hard drive actually in the computer. Maybe the external drive is causing the problem ..

Edit: Found answer here: https://groups.google.com/g/tigervnc-users/c/c4mihwmz_bI
Apparently only local sessions have access to certain HW. Audio devices are also in group audio, so I added my main user to that. Might be the fix for other stuff if I figure out the exact issues.

So I have a Mini PC running Linux Mint (headless) that I want to (sometimes) access over VNC remotely.

Using just TigerVNC has issues. First, XFCE got reset to its defaults. I don't mind this too much. There are some password prompts and all power options other than "Log Out" are inaccessible (DBus seems to be running if that's related. But also, more just annoying than an issue.)

The biggest problem is with audio. There appear to be no audio devices with aplay -l when run as regular user, but they do show up for root.
I tried running a session as root, but...
User
Root
I don't even get the Dummy Output.
It seems to have a problem with connecting to PipeWire (maybe because root can't use DBus? (just a guess, remembering errors of some apps when run as root))

So that's what happens before logging in with LightDM.

If I do login in GUI, things will magically work

(The Mint customization stays broken after it happens once)

So I am guessing some more stuff is started when using LightDM, and I'd like to know what exactly it is, to reproduce it.

As for why not keep using autologin:

1. I don't want a GUI session running when unnecessary
2. x11vnc is somehow extremely slow compared to tigervnc even with same compression, quality and resolution

Thanks.

For example, I just purchased mass effect legendary edition in steam in mint Linux.

I also have a Windows computer Windows 10, if I installed steam onto the Windows 10 computer and logged into my steam account. Would mass effect legendary edition show up there? I’m asking here rather than trying it , which sounds kind of odd, Because my Windows 10 computer isn’t working really well right now so it’d be kind of a pain to make the test myself.

The second half the question is, if I were to buy a steam deck, would my steam purchase of mass effect legendary edition show up on the steam deck?

I realize this not a Linux specific question, But I wasn’t sure exactly where to post it out.

So my big questions are :

is there a way to get an equalizer installed.

Is there a way to fix the audio so the player Rhythmbox doesn't try to create a surround effect in music during playback? It seems like the music system is trying to "shove" the music from the left and right speakers further out to the left and right. Kind of an artificial surround sound.

I have 2 speakers and sub plugged into the computer via a usb cable that runs directly to the sub with the speakers plugged into the sub.

I'm running linux mint. it comes with rhythmbox preinstalled. I used the software manager to install

Rhythmbox-plugin-alternative-toolbar

but didn't see any real change to the interface of rhythmbox .

When I go to the 3 lines on the upper right corner (which I assume is the menu) and click that it shows (view) (tools) (preferences)

When I click preferences and then the plugins tab it doesn't show the plug in that i just installed ..

I was hoping that the plugin might give me some control for how the audio is played (some sort of equalizer)

i tried going to the package manager to see if there is an equalizer that i could add to this program. doesn't seem to be any.

any help is appreciated.

I want to use this for work, and it needs to have the following features:

1. It should be light on resources without a lot of bloat.
2. A calendar view where I can set tasks and repeatable reminders.
3. Reminders should pop up on my screen with an audible alarm.
4. It would be really nice if it sat in my system tray with a nice icon.

solved: answer in comments. short answer is Piper needed to be installed.

I installed solaar.

It calls my mouse a m500s. In Solaar i set key/button diversion (there are 2 drop down menus) one i set to forward button the other i set to regular. This causes one of the buttons on the side of the mouse to act as the forward button on a web browser.

key/button actions drop down menus (2 drop down menus) I set to back button and mouse back button.

when i run

xev -event mouse | grep -b2 button

4319-ButtonPress event, serial 25, synthetic NO, window 0x3000001, 4381- root 0x1e5, subw 0x3000002, time 13605046, (43,38), root:(75,102), 4452: state 0x10, button 9, same_screen YES 4494- 4495-EnterNotify event, serial 25, synthetic NO, window 0x3000001,

4708-ButtonRelease event, serial 25, synthetic NO, window 0x3000001, 4772- root 0x1e5, subw 0x3000002, time 13605214, (43,38), root:(75,102), 4843: state 0x10, button 9, same_screen YES 4885- 4886-LeaveNotify event, serial 25, synthetic NO, window 0x3000001,

that is the result if I hit the forward button on the side of the mouse in the test window. but no result of hitting the other side button (the back button).

I know that the o/s isn't recognizing the button press but not sure how to get linux mint to recognize the pressing of the button.

any thoughts on how to fix this issue?

TL;DR: Lost internet mid update, decided to be an idiot and restart my laptop. Turns out it was in the middle of a kernel update, took some puttering to make things work again.

Story time. I have a Mint laptop that I use rarely because of my openSUSE desktop. Because I use it so rarely, every time I turn it on, there will be a kernel update. So today, I turned it on and ran my update script only to have it lose internet halfway through (it was a VPN issue).

Because I can be impatient, I said, "Surely nothing will go wrong," and hard powered off the laptop. Reboot it, and my desktop background is gone. Also, Ctrl+Alt+T isn't working. Actually, nothing except for my desktop icons are accessible. Turns out when I powered off my laptop, it was in the middle of specifically the kernel update (or at least some portion of it).

Through trial and error, I figured out that I got to open exactly one program and have it work as intended. Once I opened a second one, I could no longer go back to the first, and once I opened a third, my keyboard would no longer work.

But I got lucky because I had a folder available on my desktop. I was able to open the file manager, navigate to /usr/bin/gnome-terminal to get that open, and re-run the update script. After rebooting the computer, everything worked as normal, but it was a terrifying moment. Cautionary tale, I guess?