I've been using ArcoLinux i3 flavor for a while, but they recently discontinued their flavors and instead just let 3 basic flavors, but as far as I know none of them comes with i3 already preconfigured. And yes, I know I can simply do it by myself with Arch Linux, but I don't have enough time to do it.

I have already tried Garuda Linux i3 flavor, but there's something in it that feels too mature to be user-friendly.

Can I change the location of BTRFS snapshots. I installed CachyOS, and it automatically setup BTRFS subvols.

This is the layout 👇

According to Arch wiki https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Snapper#Creating_a_new_configuration

Create a subvolume at /path/to/subvolume/.snapshots where future snapshots for this configuration will be stored. A snapshot's path is /path/to/subvolume/.snapshots/#/snapshot, where # is the snapshot number.

From which I understand that if I created a snap of /home (@home), it will save in /home/.snapshots (@home/.snapshots).

So, CachyOS configured to save snaps to separate subvol.

But, what I want to do is, Instead of just saving it in separate subvol, i want snaps to be saved on different btrfs partition. Maybe @home/.snapshots but on different partition.

Is that possible ?

Title. In other words, make a .dot directory, make it as $ROOTFS, in a distroless image, chown it to a specific user and group and then pack everything in it.

I'm not sure how widely known this is, I'm hoping at the least some other beginners will benefit :)

SSD caching is when an SSD stores the most frequently used contents of a slow (but usually larger) hard disk. When attempting to access something from your hard disk, it will be fetched from your SSD if available, otherwise getting it from your HDD. All the while you will be shielded from this complexity and pretend to work off of the HDD (transparent caching).

Linux comes with lvmcache, which lets you do this with surprisngly few incantations in your terminal.

I had fun installing a distro making use of this (as expected performance has benefited quite a bit). If you are, too:

• Guides on lvmcache assume you already know the basics of Linux's logical volume manager (lvm). There don't seem to be any that bring it all together.

• On setting lvmcache up, the lvmcache manpage was nice and clear. RedHat's guide was good too. Other sources meanwhile were lacking in one way or another.

• A volume with lvmcache set up, I learn that Ubuntu's nice-looking new installer doesnt support installing on lvm logical volumes. Frustratingly, everything online was on using the old installer, leaving me wondering where I had messed up so that my lvm volume wasn't showing up on my installer. Heads up.

Thanks for reading!

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/41741300

As a lifelong Windows user I've just for the first time switched to Ubuntu and I'm learning how to navigate the system but I haven't found an easy way to update my Carbon's X1 Gen 6 BIOS from its hard disk and would appreciate any advice.

I'd be also happy to hear what I should do as a newcomer to Ubuntu to make my experience with it better and have an easier time overall.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/19303104

I have an old HTPC that hasn't been used in about 4 years with Windows 7 on it. It ran fine with Windows 7 but didn't work well with 8 when that came out (or at least the Windows Media Center that we used as a DVR with a cable card didn't) so it's stayed on 7 ever since. I haven't actually used it in about 4 years and now of course don't want Windows 7 where it can connect to the Internet.

Recently I had the idea that I could install Linux on the computer and use it as a media server with Jellyfin, Plex, or something similar. Long-term when I have the finances I'd like to set up a NAS and server to build a self-hosted media library, but this should be a good starting point for now.

What I'm Working With

It's a pretty old computer. I bought most of the components in 2010/2011 anticipating moving out from my parents although I didn't actually assemble it until early 2012 when I finally moved out (and my brother actually assembled it as he moved in with me). Key components:

• Intel Core i5-750 (this is the original Intel Core i5, generation 0 as it were)
• Asus P7P55D-E Pro
• Zotac ZT-20404-20L (Nvidia GT240 R)
• 4GB DDR3
• 64 GB SSD
• 1.5 TB HD
• 1 TB SSD <- this is blank, purchased last week and what I planned to install Linux on

What I'm Trying To Do

I searched the main components on linux-hardware.org and they all showed results for running Linux, usually several varieties. I downloaded the Live CD/Installer for Linux Mint 22 Cinnamon and burned it to a DVD. I went with Mint since it seems to be one frequently recommended for Linux beginners and has a "just works" reputation. I want to install it on the new 1TB SSD I picked up and be able to still dual boot into Windows 7 for now (and in any case I'm not sure I'd do much with a 64 GB drive anymore). This is an old motherboard; it only supports BIOS, not EFI, but it almost sounds like that will be easier for the dual boot because I won't have to worry about Secure Boot. Once that's installed I'll try out Jellyfin, Plex, and Emby to see which work best with the various devices I have on our TVs. I'll also probably use the computer to rip some of our DVDs/Blu-rays to use with the server.

Problems I'm Having

I've run into two main issues so far:

First, while the computer boots and runs from the DVD, about 5-and-a-half minutes after the taskbar appears and I can start trying to do anything it locks up. Usually it would just freeze and become totally unresponsive, but last night the two times I tried it actually rebooted the computer. It's really slow to load; when the taskbar appears I try to click the Installer as fast as possible and it takes a little over 3 minutes to reach a state where I can start clicking options for the install. It's also really slow just to boot. From the time I click to start Linux Mint from the Isolinux screen until I reach a usable desktop in Linux Mint is at least 10 minutes, if not more (haven't timed that directly). I'm really not sure what the problem is here; just slow from reading the optical disc? Should I try to find a USB stick and boot from there (the computer has a couple USB3 ports but I'll have to find a spare thumbdrive)? Does this all run in RAM and 4GB isn't enough and that's why it crashes? Is Cinnamon too much for the system and I should try the Xfce or MATE versions of Mint?

Second, I thought with the Linux Installation it would be able to format and install to the new SSD without needing to do anything else, either by selecting "Erase disk and install Linux Mint" or "Something else" but the time I was able to do it fast enough to get to "Something else" the disk doesn't show up at all. It looks like I should use a GParted live CD first to partition the new drive, and then I can install Linux Mint? As I'm looking at various documentation it looks like I should put 3 partitions on the SSD, one for "/" (100 GB recommended by the Linux Mint docs), one for "/home", and one for "swap" (4 GB to match the RAM size)?

I guess as a bonus third question, it looks like once I have Linux installed the Linux installation process should also give me a boot manager that I can use to switch between Linux and Windows? Or does that require extra steps to enable? I'm comfortable editing the boot order in the BIOS. My only prior experience with dual booting a computer is an old Mac Pro that could change the Boot system in Settings/Control Panel, or hold a button on startup to bring up a menu that would allow selecting the boot OS.

How to install ProtonVPN in Arch Linux (CachyOS) ?

Should I follow https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/ProtonVPN ?

OR

from flathub https://flathub.org/apps/com.protonvpn.www ?

This flatpak has Unverified tag, but according to this, this flatpak is safe.

Which one should I follow ?

Asking this because I'm because I'm a bit lazy to configure OpenVPN and all that stuff. (pls don't kill me :)

Also do you think using VPN from flatpak is a good idea?

Solved

I just installed aur mentioned in the wiki and it worked just fine. Didn't need to install anything else in my case.1.

Title. Because I just did it on my Orange pi zero 3 and performance feels a bit slower albeit more stable compared to making a tmpfs out of both directories. That, or I might be speaking gibberish, idk. Just curious.

Thanks in advance.

There’s a lot of detailed information if you’re dealing with running a git server (/srv/git) or dealing with development (follow your company’s policies), reams of information about how to organize files inside a repository, and some apps will handle their own repository location (chezmoi), but not much about just keeping your personal git repositories organized without cluttering up your home folder:

• a lot of Youtube videos are just grabbing a couple files so end up cloning into ~/Downloads and cleaning up later
• GitHub and GitLab tutorials just mention clone into the folder of your choice
• Codeberg’s “Your First Repository” has you cloning into ~/repositories
• so, what have you found to be the cleanest/simplest/most comfortable?
  • “top-level” folder like ~/repositories or ~/repos ?
  • move down a level like ~/Documents/repos ?
    • (make use of an unused XDG folder like ~/Public ? (doesn’t seem likely))
  • something else that everyone adopted ages ago ?

//Solution:

I installed this driver (https://github.com/morrownr/8821au-20210708).

The driver however, did not work until I ran a script called remove-driver.sh from the driver that I used to use (https://github.com/morrownr/8821cu-20210916). Then the wifi adapter started working again :)

Thanks a lot for the help - I am still not really sure what the problem actually was, but I'm very thankful for having my internet connection back :)

//Original post below:

Hey :)

I've been using a wifi adapter for my computer for about a year. A few days ago, it suddenly stopped working. It no longer shows up when I run 'nmcli device' in the terminal. When running 'lsusb' it still shows up as 'Realtek Semiconductor Corp. 802.11ac NIC'.

To my knowledge I hadn't updated anything before it stopped working. After it had stopped working, I used usb-tethering from my phone to do a system update, hoping it would fix the problem. I think one of the updates was a linux firmware update. Anyways, it didn't fix anything.

The adapter didn't work out of the box. It arrived with a driver called 'RTL88x2BU' and a document stating that it was compatible with the following chip drivers for linux: RTL8811AU RTL8811CU RTL8812BU RTL8814AU

I couldn't get the driver it arrived with to work, so instead I downloaded this driver and have been using it until it stopped working. https://github.com/morrownr/8821cu-20210916

this driver only states that it supports some linux kernel version. I'm using '6.8.0-40-generic', which it does not claim to suppport. I download this driver, which should support my kernel, but it didn̈́'t work either. https://github.com/morrownr/8821au-20210708

I've tried running lsmod on my system, and it seems to be, that no wifi driver even starts. The only thing I can remember doing just prior to my internet not working, was running 'systemctl disable jellyfin.service'. I doubt that has anything to do with this, but I'm not sure what else it could be. My only other theory is, maybe the usb wifi adapter hardware just gave up.

Any help is appreciated ^^

I want to copy (not move) my Timeshift Snapshots (Rsync) from my existing drive to another drive. Both drives are ext4. As far as I searched I am not able to find any viable results.

If not possible, just why?

Solved

https://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/linux-unix-apple-osx-bsd-rsync-copy-hard-links/

TLDR

sudo rsync -az -H --delete --numeric-ids /path/to/timeshift path/to/destination/

Where,

-a : Archive mode (i.e. recurse into directories, and preserve symlinks, file permissions, file modification times, file group, file owner, device files & special files)

-z : Compress file data during the transfer

H : Preserve hard links (i.e. copy hard links as hard links)

--delete : Delete extraneous files from the receiving side (ones that aren't on the sending side), but only for the directories that are being synchronized i.e. keep exact replica of your /path/to/timeshift directory.

--numeric-ids : Transfer numeric group and user IDs rather than using user and group names and mapping them at both ends.

--progress : Show progress during transfer.

--log-file="/var/log/my-rsync-script.log" : Log what rsync command is doing to the /var/log/my-rsync-script.log file.

Thanks to @[email protected]

Original Comment: https://lemmy.world/comment/11611743

Well, wasn't expecting this...

I rebooted my laptop, and it keeps booting to the grub shell.

I was going to arch-chroot into it and update grub, and rebuild intarimfs, however, I guess I don't know how to with BTRFS subvolumes that are LUKS encrypted.

I would appreciate any help, and am willing to learn.

I could even jump on a call of some kind if anyone has time to help...

Arch

BTRFS encrypted with LUKS (No LVM)

GRUB

I live booted into the live usb

cryptsetup luksOpen /dev/nvme0n1p2 arch
mount /dev/mapper/arch /mnt
arch-chroot /mnt

Output:

mount: /mnt/proc: mount point does not exist
dmesg(1) may have more information after failed mount system call.
=> ERROR: failed to setup chroot /mnt

So I browsed /mnt and it lists subvolumes. However, I am not sure how to go about arch-chrooting into this.

Hello everyone,

Back again with more questions maybe you all could help with.

So currently I am running Arch with BTRFS, and for a few specific programs that aren't all that graphically intensive (Specifically Line 6 applications for my Helix and PowerAmp) and the Windows VM I am running through QEMU is using qcow2 for the disk. I do have another Gen 4 NVME that is unused in my system I could use for the VM itself.

How much of a performance gain would I notice using a separate NVME for my Windows VM over qcow2?

Title. I'm trying to come up with a bash script that starts playing gregorian chants when a live stream is not playing sound. And to stop playing when the live stream stars playing audible sound again. Maybe something that monitors the volume of a specific command? I've no idea, honestly.

Being a bit more specific... the live stream is being played via ffplay/yt-dlp and I'll use mpv to play the gregorian chants. Alsa.Thanks in advance.

How to update BIOS on a system that only use Linux as OS.

Asking this because some clowns at Acer decided that they will only provide BIOS updates through Windows Update.

Edit: I'm not talking about installing the BIOS file. They don't even provide BIOS file in the first place.

I was able to setup a debugger using a launch mode using Visual Studio Code with the Bash Debug extension. Is it possible to setup the debugger in VSCode to be able to debug a bash script using a attach debug mode?

For debugging scripts on the host machine and scripts inside a docker container?

I have a NTFS drive for Storage, which is shared between WIn 11.

I want to change the location of (or replace) ~/Downloads, ~/Music, etc..,.

Note that the link to made is between NTFS and EXT4.

I found two ways while searching.

   1.Creating **Symlinks** in `~` with target pointed to folders in NTFS drive.

   2. **Mounting** the NTFS folders **directly** to`~/Downloads`, `~/Music`, etc..,.

Which one should I do? Which one is more beneficial?

Also how to mount folders to other folders (option 2) ? (I would really appreciate a GUI way)

I can't change directory and file permissions which is in /mnt/ through elevated Nemo. But can change in /. Why?

Apparently, this happens due to Automount. Because when I mount manually, this problem doesn't occur.

I also changed /mnt/Storage to /media/user/Storage/ on auto mount, still the same problem occurs.

uploaded on reddit because lemmy doen't allow videos .sorry for the quality reddit squashed it. Also my user name is blurred.

Also this an automounted NTFS partition, if it has to do anything with this,

I know about chown and chmod. But I wanna do it in GUI.

SOLVED

Include uid= and gid= as part of your mount options.

For More info look at this.

Thanks to this Chad @[email protected]

So not sure where else to ask, maybe someone here knows?

I am using Heroic Launcher to play Control which I own through GOG.

There are a few mods I wanted to add to the game:

• Loose Files Loader
• No Intro Screen
• Better Physx
• Better Character Illumination

The first mod is a requirement for the next 3.

So the first mod for Windows I would need to add the DLL to where the game is installed. This is where I run into issues. I did that, put the DLL in the games install directory, however it is not loading the DLL.

I investigated using Winetricks GUI from Heroic Launcher to see if there was a way to add a DLL and register it. However, it doesn't give me an option to install a custom DLL.

All of my searching has not lead me to see how I could register the DLL for my Control Prefix.

I could be going about this all wrong, so if anyone has any tips or suggestions I would very much appreciate it.

Thank you!

So I switched to Arch full time last month, and that got me thinking: How do I update the firmware of my devices?

I know about fwupd, however from my understanding not all vendors support linux.

In this case, I have an Asus motherboard, and after brief searching I seemed to come across results that would point that Asus isn't one of the manufacturers who support firmware updates from linux.

That being said, how do you all update your firmware if you know the vendor doesn't support linux?

I can't imagine that I could update the firmware from QEMU, and nor do I want to try. I don't want to have windows installed on my system at all. So then I thought, can I go about this via Windows to Go? And that is the solution I am going to investigate trying...

What are the packages that comes default with Linux Mint Cinnamon that I can remove without any problems.

Linux Mint comes with lots of packages installed by default to give full experience to new users. But not everyone needs everything. In my case for example, I don't need celluloid, pix, hexchat, hypnotix, rhythmbox, LibreOffice, etc,... Those applications has their own audience and Linux Mint including them is a good thing but I personally don't want them.

Mini Rant or QA maybe?

I searched the internet a bit for the answer, on various forums, and subreddits. And All the people who asked this question got obliterated as far as I've seen. The common answers are:

if you remove the applications that came installed with Mint by default, it will cause Dependency issues.

If I remove an application and the dependencies shold be removed UNLESS some other application need those dependency, right? If that's the case, why removing packages can cause dependency issues?

Why would you want to remove essential applications like LibreOffice, pix etc. ? (this question is asked in the sense of "what sane person would want to remove those?")

Cause why not? Maybe I like GwenView more than Pix, maybe I don't need office applications at all. Why this even matter?

If you want don't want Mint's default applications, then what's the point of using Mint? Just use something like Ubuntu server or something. People need to realize that lot of people (at least me) using Mint for it's System management (updates, apt source list, etc..) via GUI ability. Just because I want to manage my system with ease, that doesn't mean I need everyt applications it offers me.

I honestly feel bad for the person who asked the question in the first place. They didn't got the answers till the very end. All they got is Criticism and it's not constructive one.

Why this kind of behaviour even exist?

P.S.: I'm using Mint inside VM for testing purposes. I don't want my VM to take a lot of space. That's why I don't need lot of applications.

I have a VPN daemon that needs to run before the client will work. Normally, this would have been set up automatically by its install script, but the system is immutable.

I've created the systemd service via sysyemctl edit --force --full daemon.service with the following parameters:

[Unit] 
Description=Blah
After=network-online.target

[Service]
User=root
Group=root
ExecStart=/usr/bin/env /path/to/daemon

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

I've verified that the daemon is actually executable, and it runs fine when I manually call it via sudo daemon. When I try to run it with sudo systemctl enable --now daemon.service, it exits with error code 126.

What am I missing?

Edit: typo

Edit 2: Added script modifications. Daemon appears to be some kind of pre-compiled binary.

Solution: ExecStart wanted /usr/bin/env to launch the binary. The service file above has been edited to reflect the correct solution. See this post for further discussion.

Where should I mount my internal drive partitions?

As far as I searched on the internet, I came to know that

/Media = mount point for removable media that system do it itself ( usb drive , CD )

/Mnt = temporarily mounting anything manually

I can most probably mount anything wherever I want, but if that's the case what's the point of /mnt? Just to be organised I suppose.

TLDR

If /mnt is for temporary and /media is for removable where should permanent non-removable devices/partitions be mounted. i.e. an internal HDD which is formatted as NTFS but needs to be automounted at startup?

Asking with the sole reason to know that, what's the practice of user who know Linux well, unlike me.

I know this is a silly question but I asked anyway.

Which folders and files do I need to exclude from TimeShift?

Also is there a way to also exclude programs installed as .deb ?

I doing this to reduce Backup size as I have limited storage.

100GB - Windows 11
400GB - Storage
400GB - Mint
100GB - TimeShift

So which one is actually official one? I can't describe what "official" mean here, maybe the one that actually came from reddit or the one with more subsscribers or one with more activity ?

Also Why there are multiple copies of same community in different instances? Isn't the whole point of lemmy is that it is federated?

There is also three linux4noob communities 🥲