Linux

I really like its format over Dolphin's, I find it much more intuitive. It shows the whole filetree from root and double clicking a folder just expands the it further. This is different than how Dolphin works, which only shows one folder at once like how Windows does in the main windows of File Explorer.

I think I might be autistic.

Specifically qBittorrent used with Debian and KDE. Not sure of it looks different elsewhere.

Background

I use Mac as my daily driver for my work and personal machines, but for gaming I use my Playstation 5 for online or supposedly AAA games (think Call of Duty or Helldivers 2) and I use my Steam Deck for more indie titles. I've got some Linux experience, primarily via my old Mac Mini running Proxmox with mostly Debian VMs and messing around briefly with NixOS.

I love our Steam Deck, but it does feel a little underpowered, the battery isn't as strong as it once was and I don't love the docking experience with the official dock.

My wife is really into Civilization and similar games and I'd love to setup a desktop connected to our TV to use with a keyboard and mouse on our LG CX. Although I'm tech savvy, I'm not great with knowing what hardware/software to get. It's especially more complicated with the looming tariffs and trying to make sure I don't overspend on something I don't need.

Question

Looking for some guidance on hardware and software to setup for this living room gaming desktop. It's only purpose is to play games, primarily from Steam and it should have hardware which would benefit speed and performance for the type of games I'm going to list. Obviously we want the graphics to be good, but I don't need a beast RTX 5090.

What are some hardware and software recommendations in today's financial climate for playing these games on Linux?

What other accessories would you recommend for couch based keyboard and mouse gaming?

Honestly the game I'm most eager to get into is Dwarf Fortress, but for my wife it's having a smooth experience with Civ6 (she was playing the Switch version for far too long!)

Games

• Civilization games
  • My wife loves 6 and I'm a fan of 5, but we do want to eventually try 7, hoping it'll improve with DLC updates
• Dwarf Fortress
• Rimworld
• Battletech
• Into the Breach
• Brotato
• Vampire Survivors
• Balatro
• FTL
• Caves of Qud
• Persona 5 Royal (although I'm struggling to get into it, pushing through)
• Blue Prince
• ANIMAL WELL
• Factorio
• Return of the Obra Dinn
• Anno 1800
• Project Zomboid

This is a partial list of some of our libraries and wishlists. As you can see, some of them are more graphically, memory and processor intensive, but a lot of them are low performance indies.

Please let me know if there is already an accepted way to do this.

Early in the install process, you'd have a field to type a hostname of a local machine that you'd like to install like. The installer would download an "Install facts" file and install the new machine like the model machine.

The "install facts" file is created at install time. it contains things like timezone, language, percentage of disk space for each partition (to handle disk space of differing sizes) Optional files selected, username/password for root and for first user - anything needed to make the install a two click operation.

Note that this would be a full new install - not a clone of a machine that has been in use for a while.

I've been feeling gushy about my setup lately, I think I've finally found my home on Linux. For decades I've distrohopped each year and never was really happy with it all, but Fedora Atomic has changed that.

Some things I can do with Fedora Atomic that I cannot do with other Linux distros:

• I can rebase to Bazzite for gaming performance when I feel like having a long gaming session.

• I can rebase to Secureblue when I think I will not be gaming and would prefer a more secure linux setup.

• I can update my system and not have to worry about special instructions, its extremely stable. Many times in the past, running a small ma-and-pa distro with most things pre-configed for performance would end with it breaking after a couple of major updates. This isn't true for configs like Bazzite and Secureblue, they are remarkably stable across many major updates due to how rpm-ostree functions.

• Distrobox and Flatpak are more than enough at this stage for most programs and they help you avoid making too many alterations to the base image, greatly speeding up the swaps between major images.

The kicker? Your user configs and home files are never changed when you 'image hop'. It always feels like you just installed a fresh distro whenever you upgrade, and the performance benefits are noticeable. You don't have to tinker and do the same changes over and over, its all handled for you by rpm-ostree.

10/10 this is the future of Linux. I hope for a future where I can rebase entire Linux distros while maintaining my configs with one simple command, but for now, Fedora Atomic is fantastic.

The downsides:

• There is one major downside, and its that all of your system files are read-only. Personally, I've found a dozen ways to get around this, it requires thinking inside the Distrobox. It is a notable issue for many people, though. This means you cannot make specific tweaks without making a whole new image for yourself. Though in practice, I have found the ecosystem has grown a lot. Other people have already made the best tweaks available for you with only a few simple commands.

• Rpm-ostree also is slow to update because its essentially building a whole git tree to make sure your updates never break and are as stable as possible. You also have to reboot each time you alter it, which can be annoying, but if you stick to flatpaks and distroboxes, this issue is mitigated significantly.

I've got a whole bucket full of old hard drives, CDs and DVDs, and I'm starting the process of backing up as much as still works to a 4TB drive.

It's gonna be a long journey and lots of files, many prone to being duplicates from some of the drives.

What sorts of software do you Linux users recommend?

I'm on Linux Mint MATE, if that matters much.

Edit: One of the programs I'm accustomed to from my Windows days is FolderMatch, which is a step above simple duplicate file scanning, it scans for duplicate or semi-duplicate folders as well and breaks down individual file differences when comparing two folders.

I see I've already gotten some responses, and I thank everyone in advance. I'm on a road trip right now, I'll be checking you folks recommend software later this evening or as soon as I can anyways.

Since Some of you guys asked about more details of how I migrated the entire school's infrastructure into Linux Mint, I made a small neocities website where I retell the story with a bit more details as much as I can remember them, took me around a week to make it so go have fun there and enjoy (the website is under the AGPL license, if you are interested you can check out the source code under "License" in the website or go here https://github.com/Ace120C/my-personal-website ) there is more things to improve upon so lemme know if there is anything I should be adding etc.

once again, cheers!

For me AutoKey is absolutely essential to my workflow. I have tons of text expansions and shortcuts to "remap" keys. E.g., respectively, typing dAt expands into 2025-05-08, 13:47:40 CEST, and pressing alt + k simulates the arrow down key.

Secondly there's XScreenSaver which has so many wonderful (mathematical) visualizations that it would be a damn shame if these eventually get lost as Wayland gets more adoption.

None of these have Wayland alternatives as far as I know. For text expansion there's Espanso, but it doesn't support keyboard shortcuts yet.

cross-posted from: https://feditown.com/post/1318835

If I have installed flatpak gtk themes from flathub, what do I do, so that my flatpak gtk apps can use it? Is there any command line action or anything that can be done by using flatseal? I am using i3wm on Ubuntu 24.

#flatpak #gnu #linux #gnulinux #desktop #gtk #app #foss #libresoftware

The author addresses the issue.

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/21842806

Recently came across this magazine from the Linux Format on a second hand vintage shop and obviously had to go for it! These magazines are still produced these to this day btw. However, when I went to linuxformat.com after receiving my magazine to check out some of their other ones, I saw that they were in fact just celebrating their 25-year anniversary and have put out a digital version of the very magazine I bought - for everyone to view digitally!

Their announcement:

25-years ago in this month of May, back in 2000 (just after the giant Y2K meltdown that flipped every plane upsidedown) Linux Format was first published. To help celebrate and remember this momentous pinnacle of publishing prowess (and while we still have server access) we'll be popping out a few classic issues of Linux Format in PDF format. As we already have it to hand here's issue LXF001 with a very young looking Nick Veitch.

The magazine can be found digitally at: https://linuxformat.com/files/pdfs/LXF001.pdf

Either way, I had no idea of the timing but thought it was a fun experience and worthy to share here. Enjoy a step back into memory-lane!

Have a great rest of your day!

Like y'all keep posting about it, praising it, giving it free advertisement, and what not.

But the dev is a fascist, the discord server is a fascist bar, and the project thus is fascist.

I've met people who were harassed, I browsed through now deleted messages of Vaxry using slurrs and more.

So I wonder is if the people who post constantly about it know and are complicit, or just don't know and would act otherwise?

It gets tiring to see the project be given "fame" when I know the roots of the plants are founded in toxicity & abuse.

Hello dear Linux enthusiasts!

I switched all my devices to linux (yes, it works perfectly fine for gaming) but my old tablet remained.

The Fedora 41 Spin with KDE Plasma Mobile worked shockingly well (for linux on touch devices) but the autorotate was off/broken.

The linked blog post (tries) to show how I came up with a fix and I want your opinion what could be made better / clearer in my writeup. Its a balance act between explanation of what I deemed necessary for a (somewhat) technical user and not repeating entire subjects that are well explained elsewhere.

My goal was to provide a rough orientation that I would have found useful on the subject.

I'm trying to find a replacement for NaturalReader in Linux but I'm not finding anything as good.

I have played around with different engines, such as Espeak (too robotic), Mozilla TTS and Coqui, and Piper. But I'm looking for an application, not just an engine, something that would allow me to open up a PDF, pick a spot and read from there, then be able to move back and forth on the document. Ideally, I would like to also be able to tell the application how to pronounce certain words.

I haven't figured out how to make Okular use The best I have found is ReadAloud, but it's just a browser addon. Okular doesn't seem to be able to use something like Piper EDIT: but Pied exists: https://github.com/Elleo/pied which makes it work.

Any ideas?

(I use Debian btw :P )

Fellow open-source enthusiasts,

We all have that mental backlog of promising projects — those distros, tools, and systems we keep tabs on but haven't yet deployed. Perhaps you're waiting for that mythical free weekend, lacking a spare/compatible device or just holding out until that one killer feature drops.

FWIW, my 'someday' list includes:

Operating Systems/Distros:

• Gentoo – Source-based meta-distribution driven by Portage and USE-flags for near-granular control; binary packages also available if you'd rather skip marathon compile sessions.
• Guix System – GNU's functional, declarative distro built with Guile Scheme.
• MocaccinoOS – Image-based, container-built distro that originated from Gentoo/Sabayon but now uses the Luet package manager and OTA-like updates.
• NixOS – Declarative Linux distribution using the Nix package language.
• Qubes OS – Security-focused OS that uses Xen virtualization to compartmentalize your digital life into isolated environments with a unified desktop.
• Spectrum – In-development security-oriented OS built on Nixpkgs using KVM-based microVMs for compartmentalization.

Desktop Environments/Window Managers:

• COSMIC - System76's comprehensive Wayland-native desktop environment written in Rust.
• Hyprland – Dynamic tiling Wayland compositor with scriptable layouts and impressive animations.

System Security/Firmware:

• coreboot – Open source alternative to proprietary BIOS/UEFI firmware (though recent x86 still needs vendor blobs such as FSP/AGESA).
• Heads – coreboot + Linux payload providing TPM-measured, tamper-evident boot for select laptops.
• nix-mineral - NixOS module for convenient system hardening.
• TrenchBoot – Framework for dynamic root-of-trust (DRTM) launches via Intel TXT, AMD SKINIT, or SEV-ES.

Applications/Tools:

• Android Translation Layer - Run Android apps natively on Linux (still in early development).
• Emacs – The self-extensible Lisp machine masquerading as a text editor; someday I'll embrace the config rabbit hole.
• Olive – FOSS non-linear video editor in alpha.
• systemd-sysext – Overlay read-only /usr and /opt (or /etc via confext) with extra images; extensions auto-activate at boot or can be merged/unmerged/refreshed live with a single command. Handy for immutable distros, though it’s additive-only and not a full package manager.

What open-source projects are you admiring from afar? Time to compare notes!

I've got these things locally available in the $50-60 range. This being a generic brand, I imagine a buncha those are available globally. Anyone tried 'em, do they work OK with modern desktops (gnome, plasma)? Touch? DP-Alt or are they DisplayLink? Do they have PD?

Sellers are helpful nada, same with youtube videos, just marketing fluff.

Hey all - what’s your experience with refurb Lenovo laptops for Linux from companies/shops that specialize in this as a service? I’m looking at LinuxPusher.dk but am also curious about other EU-based shops. It seems like a good, affordable way to get a Linux machine if you’re a novice, like me (some experience with Ubuntu and Kubuntu about 10 years ago).

Hi all,

The quick and dirty questions is: Which distro should I try next?

I tried Debian X11 and Fedora with Wayland, but I did not have a great experience with them for my Lenovo Legion 5 Pro RTX3060. I installed proprietary drivers on both systems since people say that they're better than Nouveau, but the framerate stutters even in simple browser game.

I use some software to slice 3d models for printing, and that one stuttered too. I tried various fixes but none of them worked, and I'd really like to switch to Linux from Microsoft for my daily driver.

What distro can I use to have a better experience? Any advice is welcome, but please make it as specific as possible and if you can, address why that distro would be better than Debian 12 and Fedora 42.

Thanks in advance!