Hi, I've been fiddling with PopOS the past year on an old laptop and I like it. I'm getting ready to convert my windows 10 desktop to Pop and leave windows behind entirely, before I do I want to be sure I understand a few security concepts.

I've read suggestions that say don't run as root, create a separate user account and only use root when necessary. Do you give that user account sudo privileges? If so, is that any different from just being root?

Also I've installed the ufw firewall but left it with default settings. Is that something I need to look into more?

Thanks in advance!

I often want to read output from the terminal from the beginning but by default I have to scroll back up. This can be laborious when there is a lot of text. Is there anything I can do about this?

Thanks :)

For a long time, when using my computer (Arch linux), I would sometimes run into this problem. When trying to open an application in a new window, I'll be met by:

Invalid MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE-1 key
cannot open display: :0

I've tried a lot of "solutions" without luck, but I've finally found a way to consistently reproduce the error. It happens everytime I connect to a new wifi.

I found this 9 year old post about the same problem, but it does not include a real solution or the cause of the problem.

I'll try asking it here, to see if anybody knows why it happens and how to solve it, and perhaps to help others with the same problem find the cause of this error. It is such a relief for me, knowing that it is caused by changing wifi.

In advance, thanks for the help/feedback :)

I digged out my dad's old business laptop from 2006. This Asus rust is almost as old as me. But it booted up a horribly slow Windows 7 Home Premium that is totally unusable. Takes 30-40 minutes to open Chrome. Here are the specs: 40 gb old hard drive that is suprisingly healthy (96℅ according to HDDsentinel, more than 1000 days left) 1.73 ghz Intel Celeron M single core cpu that wasn't exactly the fastest even in 2006 1.25 gb of terribly slow RAM American Megatrends BIOS from 2006 I know Linux can't do miracles, but are there any still supported distro i could install that would actually run better than this shitty windows stuff?

I found puppy slitaz antix tahrpup ArchBang Slax Delicate Damn Small Linux Absolute FunOS LegacyOS exe gnu/linux Do you know others? Or from these which you recommend if my goal is to create a relatively useable, faster computer, preferably while it doesn't look that awful (the desktop or wm). So usability>speed>looks But all these are very important, just in this order. Also recommend a desktop enviroment or a window manager that runs well, but doesn't look that awful and can be installed on these distros

I haven't updated my Arch (Plasma) for some time.

When I updated it yesterday, suddenly all the exe icons started to show up ( I'm dualbooting with Win ), which is not the case before.

As far I looked up, I can't find anything on internet.

I don't know if it's whether WINE or Dolphin or some other package.

So, what's changed ?

Debian 6.1.99-1 and nzb360. It couldn't be less consequential, it just annoys me.

I'm having network issues on Arch Linux, particularly with Steam download speeds, which fluctuate and are slower than usual. Additionally, I've noticed that things sometimes take longer than normal to load but usually load up after refreshing which makes me think the issue is not specific to Steam.

Here’s what I’ve tried:

• Tested on a Windows laptop which showed normal speeds.
• Reinstalled my system using Bazzite, which resolved the issue and showed normal speeds.
• Reinstalled Arch Linux, but the problem returned.

Other Info:

• Installed Arch with Archinstall using NetworkManager
• I'm on a wired connection
• DNS set to my router, which uses Quad9 DNS
• Steam installed via Flatpak

Any troubleshooting ideas or suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

I want to hide the about tag in rEFInd. So, I did according to the info in config and website, which is to add a showtools line with no options.

And, nothing happens. I still see About, Shutdown, Reboot, Firmware tools in the rEFInd screen

# Default is shell,memtest,gdisk,apple_recovery,windows_recovery,mok_tool,about,hidden_tags,shutdown,reboot,firmware,fwupdate
# To completely disable scanning for all tools, provide a showtools line
# with no options.
#
#showtools shell, bootorder, gdisk, memtest, mok_tool, apple_recovery, windows_recovery, about, hidden_tags, reboot, exit, firmware, fwupdate
showtools

Eventhough the previous showtools line is a just a comment, I removed it too. And still nothing happens.

Does anybody have any idea?

I only want Shutdown, Reboot.

SOLVED

It seems like a rEFInd problem in latest version.

https://lemmy.frozeninferno.xyz/comment/16257252

Looks like I have to edit and rebuild it myself. Unfortunately, I'm not really that familiar with building packages myself.

Guess, I have to wait it out.

What do I do, when my PC freezes?

Windows has ctrl+alt+del, does Linux Mint has something comparable? The only thing I know about is REISUB, but that borked my PC, so I am hesitant to use that again.

Are there any remaining alternatives to waiting and/or using the power button?

Edit: Thank you all for your insights and possible fixes. Crashes usually happened when I was running (cpu/ram?) heavy workload. Increasing swap space was not even on my radar, so I did that now. :) Hopefully Mint will run more stable now.

Windows keeps reminding be that I have to switch to Linux if I want to keep using my computer. It's a rugged tablet from about 2011 that I still use daily for internet and some light Photoshop. Core i7 1.2 GHz, 4GB RAM, and the important part, a built-in touchscreen and Wacom digitizer. Keyboard is an external device that I don't generally have attached. I grew up on DOS, so I'm not afraid of fiddling, but I'd rather this machine just worked. Any recommendations?

I installed CachyOS with Plasma DE and found it has no discover in it. When I searched on their sub lots of people say that one shouldn't use Discover with any Arch distro as it will break the system. Can anybody clarify why?

Also if I am not supposed to use Discover, can anybody suggest an actual GUI application store? Unlike Octopi (which I consider just as a TUI with check boxes and columns)

Edit: I only use Discover for find and install new apps.

For updating, I just use paru.

I run Debian 12 with KDE on my laptop. It is set up, that it locks the screen after 10 mins of inactivity. And that is typically want I want. But some times I use it with an external screen like a TV over HDMI to watch some videos, and forget to overwrite the setting to not lock the screen.

Is there some way to not lock the screen when connected to an external screen (and preferably to AC) but resume the previous behavior if no HDMI connection is made?

I've been migrating to linux recently and next headache on the list are my starr apps (sonarr, radarr, etc). On windows I just had them installed as background services but I wanted to give (rootless) podman a try on linux since everyone kept recommending it and saying how much better the experience is than on windows.

Anyway, I've set everything up and some of the services work, but specifically sonarr and radarr can't write to the main media folder with the error: Folder '/data/media/tv/' is not writable by user 'abc'

So, first of all, I didn't make user 'abc', it is some internal docker/podman/starr user allegedly and it's supposed to be mapped to my real user, which I did by providing the PUID=1000, PGID=1000 env variables.

Second, I tried to give read and write permissions to everyone for the placeholder folders but it didn't change anything. I don't think this is the issue since other services like the one for sabnzbd or jellyfin had no problems using folders I created.

Googling for the issue brought up some topics about NFS shares but I don't know anything about this - this is not a NAS or even some external drive, it's just podman installed on fedora.

Any help is appreciated, here's a pastebin of my compose file if it's relevant https://pastebin.com/uX9Saqvj

Hi. I read somewhere that you need to tinker with bios / secure boot? In order to install NVIDIA drivers on Linux. Is this true?

I could swear that my mouse is lagging on my second monitor but I don't how how to actually "prove" it, if there's even a way. I am dual booting windows with fedora workstation gnome and there is a noticeable sluggishness to my mouse control whenever I switch back and forth, but only on the secondary monitor. It is slight but it's messing with my muscle memory and constantly making me overshoot clicks and buttons. The main display seems to be fine, or at least it's less pronounced due to higher monitor refresh rate.

Is there any way I can measure it objectively and find the root cause? A diagnostic tool or an app that could test if something is wrong? It's a recent fedora installation and I've gone through all the nvidia driver and media setup steps at this fedora post-install guide but honestly I don't even know if this is a fedora, gnome, driver or wayland issue (or something else completely)

This is my disk layout:

500 GB Linux - BTRFS

100 GB Windows - NTFS

400 GB Storage - NTFS (shared between linux and windows)

I want to encrypt everything. For Linux I can use luks2 but what I'm supposed to do for Windows ? (No bitlocker please)

Will veracrypt replace refind boot manager?

Note: I am talking about the one that asks password before boot (full encryption)

I installed lots of OSs on my PC. The mistake I did was not backing up my EFI partition beforehand.

Now I deleted all the OS except CachyOS (Arch) and Windows.

Now I want to tidy up my EFI partition. I want to delete everything (even rEFInd) except Windows and Default ones like OEM. (I am gonna reinstall CachyOS ) Can anybody please assist me?

I already deleted the obvious ones like ubuntu and fedora. Anything else?

I know this is not necessarily a linux question but anyways 😅

Solved

Before proceeding with any of the following, I STRONGLY suggest you to make a full backup of your ESP (efi) partition.

I deleted everything on boot folder, since I didn't need grub or any of those files ( after searching everything individually on internet)

I deleted refind folder, since I didn't need refind boot manager.

I kept insyde folder, since they are my uefi provider.

I kept OEM , microsoft folders because I need windows and whatever my OEM provides.

I kept tools folder since that's just an empty folder ( I didn't know which OS created it)

Trying to set tight permissions on my future NAS.
The essential on what I have:
TrueNAS NFS storage <- mounted via NFS -> Proxmox VE Host <-> Debian 12 VM
That's all fine and so on.
My little Debian VM:

NAME   FSTYPE FSVER LABEL  UUID                                 FSAVAIL FSUSE% MOUNTPOINTS
sda
├─sda1 vfat   FAT32        A5D7-88E3                             505.1M     1% /boot/efi
└─sda2 ext4   1.0          3c43a477-51fd-425b-aee8-a6e75224f781   48.5G    16% /
sdb
└─sdb1 ext4   1.0   media  e3e0eac5-806a-44e9-a0e9-07fb99a18281  933.2G     0% /srv/dev-disk-by-uuid-e3e0eac5-806a-44e9-a0e9-07fb99a18281
sdc
└─sdc1 ext4   1.0   nas    0f3a3d74-901d-4243-b20b-59210c1cee18   46.4G     0% /srv/dev-disk-by-uuid-0f3a3d74-901d-4243-b20b-59210c1cee18
sdd
└─sdd1 ext4   1.0   backup fbe21b9f-2339-4223-ac7e-00e75374fc32   46.4G     0% /srv/dev-disk-by-uuid-fbe21b9f-2339-4223-ac7e-00e75374fc32
sr0

Background:

• media = media library for Jellyfin
• nas = small (future) file server for my PC running Windows
• backup = used to store backups of various services like Firewall backups with SFTP etc.

The storage on the debian VM will be mounted by a NUC running bare metal Debian due to hardware acceleration. The proxmox host is unable to do it due to it also being a NUC. But I like the flexibility I will soon have because I can just nuke my bare-metal NUC without loosing any data.

Anyway my real problem is with permissions on my media drive.
My permissions right now are as following:

1. /srv/dev-disk-by-uuid-e3e0eac5-806a-44e9-a0e9-07fb99a18281# ls -l media
drwxrwxr-x 3 nobody nogroup 4096 Oct 12 20:45 media

2. /srv/dev-disk-by-uuid-e3e0eac5-806a-44e9-a0e9-07fb99a18281/media# ls -l data
drwxrwsr-x+ 6 mediaU serviceG 4096 Oct 13 00:21 data

3. /srv/dev-disk-by-uuid-e3e0eac5-806a-44e9-a0e9-07fb99a18281/media/data# ls -l *
drwxrwsr-x+ 7 mediaU serviceG 4096 Oct 13 00:21 media
drwxrwsr-x+ 2 mediaU serviceG 4096 Oct 13 00:21 recycle_bin
drwxrwsr-x+ 2 mediaU serviceG 4096 Oct 13 00:21 torrents
drwxrwsr-x+ 2 mediaU serviceG 4096 Oct 13 00:21 usenet

4. /srv/dev-disk-by-uuid-e3e0eac5-806a-44e9-a0e9-07fb99a18281/media/data/media# ls -l *
drwxrwsr-x+ 2 mediaU serviceG 4096 Oct 13 00:21 anime
drwxrwsr-x+ 3 mediaU serviceG 4096 Oct 13 00:22 movie
drwxrwsr-x+ 2 mediaU serviceG 4096 Oct 13 00:21 music
drwxrwsr-x+ 2 mediaU serviceG 4096 Oct 13 00:21 soundtrack
drwxrwsr-x+ 2 mediaU serviceG 4096 Oct 13 00:21 tv

Current directory tree:

srv-dev-disk-by-uuid-XXX/
└── media
    └── data
        ├── media
        │   ├── anime
        │   ├── movie
        │   ├── music
        │   ├── soundtrack
        │   └── tv
        ├── recycle_bin
        ├── torrents
        └── usenet

What I am trying is:

• Docker host mounts /srv/dev-disk-by-uuid-e3e0eac5-806a-44e9-a0e9-07fb99a18281/media via NFS
• The docker containers should only be able to access the the data directory inside it (2. ls -l) as mediaU:serviceG
• In addition I wanna access, modify and move files with my windows user without being part of the service group. Because of this I have setup SGID and ACL on the /media/data/media folder. The ACL was set recursive as follows:

/srv/dev-disk-by-uuid-e3e0eac5-806a-44e9-a0e9-07fb99a18281/media/data# getfacl media/
# file: media/
# owner: mediaU
# group: serviceG
# flags: -s-
user::rwx
group::rwx
group:extUserG:rwx
mask::rwx
other::r-x
default:user::rwx
default:group::rwx
default:group:extUserG:rwx
default:mask::rwx
default:other::r-x

So far so good. mediaU:serviceG has RWX permissions (2775).
My user is part of the group extUserG also with 775 permission.

My issue and how I tested it under the root user executing commands via su:

• Works:
  root@NAS01:/srv/dev-disk-by-uuid-e3e0eac5-806a-44e9-a0e9-07fb99a18281/media/data# su mediaU -c 'mkdir dir-mediaU'
• Doesn't work:
  root@NAS01:/srv/dev-disk-by-uuid-e3e0eac5-806a-44e9-a0e9-07fb99a18281/media/data# su appoxo -c 'mkdir dir-extUserG' mkdir: cannot create directory ‘dir-extUserG’: Permission denied

BUT if I enter one level deeper inside the freshly created dir-mediaU folder I am able to create files with my personal account:

root@NAS01:/srv/dev-disk-by-uuid-e3e0eac5-806a-44e9-a0e9-07fb99a18281/media/data# cd dir-mediaU/
root@NAS01:/srv/dev-disk-by-uuid-e3e0eac5-806a-44e9-a0e9-07fb99a18281/media/data/dir-mediaU# su appoxo -c 'mkdir dir-extUserG'
root@NAS01:/srv/dev-disk-by-uuid-e3e0eac5-806a-44e9-a0e9-07fb99a18281/media/data/dir-mediaU# ls -l
total 4
drwxrwsr-x+ 2 appoxo serviceG 4096 Oct 13 00:45 dir-extUserG
root@NAS01:/srv/dev-disk-by-uuid-e3e0eac5-806a-44e9-a0e9-07fb99a18281/media/data/dir-mediaU# getfacl dir-extUserG/
# file: dir-extUserG/
# owner: appoxo
# group: serviceG
# flags: -s-
user::rwx
group::rwx
group:extUserG:rwx
mask::rwx
other::r-x
default:user::rwx
default:group::rwx
default:group:extUserG:rwx
default:mask::rwx
default:other::r-x  

So dear Lemmy Community:
Have I done something wrong in my setup or thinking? I have no problem as it is right now but I am sure it will be annoying to troubleshoot in the future so might as well fix it while still setting it up.

Thanks in advance for helping slowly escaping the windows world :)

I installed CachyOS with BTRFS, LUKS2 , REFIND.

After successful installation I'm not seeing any prompt for password nor the linux boot entry on refind.

Note: I didn't do any lvm or raid.

What should I do?

Solved

I just forgot to create a boot partition 😮‍💨

Let's say i made 10 snapshots on top of the base.

Now can i delete snap no. 5? Will the snaps after 5 will be affected?

Solved

Yes, one can delete consecutive snapshots. The data won't be deleted unless all snaps ( reference points ) get deleted.

Note: If you delete the original file and delete all the snapshots made when the file is still there, the file will get deleted permanently.

Yesterday I tried to install the latest NVIDIA drivers on my Linux Mint laptop (version 21.3, Cinnamon Edition) and my Driver Manager said that, since i have Secure Boot enabled, I had to create a Mok key for my drivers so I could use them with Secure Boot. So I created a password and restarted my PC. However, I didn't know what to do in the MokManagement screen, so i turned off my PC and then turned it on again to be able to start over. After turning my PC on and off a few times to try a few different buttons thqt I ended up not understanding, I looked up a tutorial and tried to follow it. But when i clicked "Enroll MOK" this time, instead of showing "View Keys", it asked if I wanted to delete my existing keys.

What should I do to get this to work? I turned off my PC after this and switched back to the open source drivers because, again, I had no idea what to do. Did I fuck up my drivers? Can I try to redo the process to make it work? What about the extra keys I created? I'm really confused. Thanks in advance.

P.S.: I also just remembered I made some Timeshift backups before I tried to switch drivers. If I rollback to the backup will my keys be "overwritten" and I'll be able to try to switch drivers again with no consequences?

Dumb title but I didn't know how else to put this into words, bear with me for a sec - I am not just looking for the definition.

Years ago I tried Ubuntu which used GNOME and assumed that its desktop layout was "the default" GNOME. I later tried PopOS which also uses it and it was the same, and when eventually I installed Mint I saw that it's still fundamentally the same with some slight tweaks or different tools.

Well, few days ago I installed Bazzite (Fedora) which is also GNOME. It doesn't look anything like anything I've seen before, either in terms of mindset or technical layout. I've gone from an admittedly old-fashioned, but efficient and reliable!, layout and workflow to something that reminds me more of an apple product - its stylish, minimalist yet inefficient and utterly frustrating to get anything done with because of how opinionated it is.

When searching for common problems I often found comments saying stuff like "but try it out! it's in the spirit of gnome, it takes a while to get used to it but the philosophy is valid" and frankly I don't understand anymore what exactly gnome is and what are its design principles, if there even are any and every distro just does whatever the f it wants and call it "a gnome experience".

I'm running it on a 32-bit emulator, maybe that's the issue here? i don't know honestly

I need to remote desktop connect to a windows PC on a local network. This works flawlessly when done from my windows PC but I'm having issues on Linux Mint.

I'm using Remmina since it was the most common answer to a linux RDP client. I imported the RDP file from windows but I also created a connection with manually filled info.

First issue is that linux can't connect to the machine by its name - on windows ping MYPC-321 works, on linux mint it throws an error. However, ping MYPC-321.local does work, but if I try to use that as the address in Remmina, it fails again. Is there a way to connect using just name since I dont want to have to recheck the IP address every day?

But let's say this is for now resolved if I just use the local IP address. The second, main problem, is authentication. No matter what I put into the username and domain fields of Remmina's authentication GUI, it always instantly fails and Remmina reloads the screen without giving me any error. The credentials are the same as when connecting from the windows PC (although I dont have to specify the domain there) so I have no idea what could be the problem here.

Is there something else I'm missing, something fundamentally different about how this works on linux? I wasn't expecting for such a simple and straightforward thing to instantly cause issues.

Since I installed the official fan script, and it did nothing, I kept searching. I found a second user made script for controlling the fan, however I'm too inexperienced with linux to even understand what's being asked.

Full page is listed at

https://gitlab.com/DarkElvenAngel/argononed

How To Install Firstly you need to have a build environment setup, that includes the following gcc dtc git bash linux-headers make git NOTE : The package names will be different depending on your OS so I've only given their binary names. Refer to your distribution for what you need to install. I've tried to make the installer as simple as possible. After cloning this repo simply run ./install You may need to reboot for full functionality.

What does he mean "build the environment setup"? And how do I clone a repo?

I'm trying this out on raspberry pi OS 64 bit, which is listed as compatible. If I can learn HOW to do this, I'll do it on my main SD card OS, TwisterOS, which is also listed as compatible.