Linux

My father asked me to set up a Raspberry Pi with the essentials to try out Linux and potentially ditch Windows if he likes it enough. He specifically requested YouTube, Amazon Kindle, GIMP, Audacity, KeePass, and a text editor like Notepad. I've installed Armbian Debian with the Cinnamon desktop environment. What would you have chosen?

As for the essentials, I'm not sure where to find a list of the most commonly used programs to install. I've just installed what I think he would appreciate, for example, Firefox with uBlock Origin, SponsorBlock, KeePassXC-Browser, and G App Launcher extensions. Now I'm going to see if I can install Amazon Kindle and Notepad using Wine, along with a couple of alternatives like Calibre and gedit. Then I'll set up a Google Drive folder so he can share his files with his main computer until he decides to switch. Finally, I'll use Timeshift to create a snapshot after I've finished setting everything up.

What essentials am I missing? Do you have any suggestions?

edit: I've realized that this is a bad idea. I'll just install Linux on one of his spare x86 computers and explain that many programs aren't available for ARM. Then, after he gets used to Linux, I can install it on his current laptop and maybe move his Windows installation to the spare computer, if I can figure out how to do that.

Hello! I am on Fedora 40 KDE Edition (Wayland). I have monitor with two supported refresh rates (60, 50 Hz). How can I set custom refresh rate? I know, on Windows you can use CRU.

I see the raise of popularity of Linux laptops so the hardware compatibility is ready out of the box. However I wonder how would I build PC right know that has budget - high end specification. For now I'm thinking

• Case: does not matter
• Fans: does not matter
• PSU: does not matter
• RAM: does not matter I guess?
• Disks: does not matter I guess?
• CPU: AMD / Intel - does not matter but I would prefer AMD
• GPU: AMD / Intel / Nvidia - for gaming and Wayland - AMD, for AI, ML, CUDA and other first supported technologies - Nvidia.

And now the most confusing part for me - motherboard... Is there even some coreboot or libreboot motherboard for PC that supports "high end" hardware?

Let's just say also a purpose of this Linux PC. Choose any of these

1. Blender 3D Animation rendering
2. Gaming
3. Local LLM running

If you have some good resources on this also let me know.

• Price: 370$
• Model: Asus ROG Strix G15 (G531GV)

• CPU: Intel I7 9th Gen
• GPU: Nvidia RTX 2060 6GB
• Ram: 16GB
• Storage: Samsung SSD 980 Pro 1TB (NVME)

I need a tablet for uni and I want to run Linux on it. It doesn't need to be the fastest but it should be able to run Rnote and a web browser comfortably. It doesn't need to come with Linux, I am comfortable with installing and managing my system. I thought about buying a Microsoft Surface since they seem to be supported prettty well but I want to see what alternatives there are.

It needs to have a Stylus for writing. I have around 450€ to spend and would go a little higher. Also I will probably buy a used device

So I've never actually used a machine with UEFI before I've always been on older machines with BIOS.

I got a Dell Optiplex 3070 Intel core 9500T (gen 9) 2.1 GHz 16GB ram 256gb SSD but it has windows 11 on it.

I hate Windows, and I don't want any trace of it left on my machine. I'd prefer Debian but would even take Ubuntu over Windows What is the best guide for this for someone who has never messed with UEFI before?

They have adopted Cloudflare and used IP blocking. This does not impact their repos, just the forum.

What's the easiest way to make external USB drives automount, without adding them to fstab? It should just work even if someone else hands me their flash drive.
I'm running sway on Arch if that matters.

There's no mpv community to share this to, so I figured the next best place was here.

I wrote a script that does two things:

• Saves the watch_later file for the currently playing file every X seconds, if the file is not currently paused.
• Saves a "watched" dummy file when the currently playing file exceeds a certain percentage of watch time.

Normally mpv saves the watch_later file for the currently playing file only if you gracefully quit. This isn't reliable enough for my tastes, so this timer makes better sure my last position is saved.

The second addition is purely for the benefit of additional scripting, inside or outside of mpv. The mpv-created watch_later files are intended to be impermanent, and I believe depending on settings are automatically removed once a file is played to 100%. I personally still want to keep track that I watched a specific video, even when the watch_later file is reset.

It probably goes without saying, but this script has only been tested in Linux.

My parents are fed up with windows 11 slowing down their old HP desktop to near unusable levels. It is so bad that the right click menu can take up to 6 seconds to load. Anyway I created a free 900GB ext4 partition that I want to install to but how do I get the fedora KDE installer to detect that free space (sda6)?

Hey there, As per title while in Advanced mode prior the step "Install Base System" I cannot access the terminal. Instead, it goes straight to install.

It did work before...did I somehow corrupt the iso..?

I'm having trouble to find a bluetooth dongle at least 3.0 that needs no propietary firmware. It's easy to find dongles advertised as linux compatible or users that claim that an specific brand works fine in linux, but the problem is that many of them are using propietary firmware without their users being aware because their distributions have already installed propietary drivers or firmwares, or ask users to install them and they just do it. I use debian main repository (without non-free software) in which I failed to make work a couple of linux compatible advertised dongles because debian ask me to install a propietary firmware. So if anyone knows for certain that some brand that needs no such a software in linux I'll apreciate your help.

Can you please share your backup strategies for linux? I'm curious to know what tools you use and why?How do you automate/schedule backups? Which files/folders you back up? What is your prefered hardware/cloud storage and how do you manage storage space?

Solus is a stable rolling distro, making it somewhat special in the world of Linux. A new ISO just dropped.

Ventoy is a tool to make a USB with multiple ISOs bootable, letting you select which ISO to use on boot. Another newly-created account claims to be the dev's friend and translator and has received no contact from the maintainer.

I noticed Debian does this by default and Arch wiki recommends is citing improved security and upstream.

I don't get why that's more secure. Is this assuming torrents might be infected and aims to limit what a virus may access to the dedicated user's home directory (/var/lib/transmission-daemon on Debian)?

Im giving a go fedora silverblue on a new laptop but Im unable to boot (and since im a linux noob the first thing i tried was installing it fresh again but that didnt resolve it).

its a single drive partitioned to ext4 and encrypted with luks (its basically the default config from the fedora installation)

any ideas for things to try?

This happened at a very inopportune time so apologies for the text being a bit bad. background: framework laptop 13 with 7640 u running fedora 40. ran great for a few months. issue: played some games on battery power. battery health went from mid 90's to 43. i know playing on battery is bad for it but that is more what i'd expect if I took a hammer to it. what i've tried: rebooted, cleared upower history, removed 90% charge limit in bios then shut down and charged.

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Edit: I ran it out of battery while on the bios screen then charged it to full before powering it on. Battery health is now showing 91%. I'll see if it lasts, but I'm glad I didn't just go out and buy a battery without troubleshooting first.