cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/58911678

The law firm that I work for is has finally decided that we should embrace Linux.

When of the key programs that we use a PDF Editor that has e-sign capabilities. Most people use Adobe and I use Foxit.

The problem with Foxit is that it doesn't run natively on Linux. I have to use WINE which is already going to be a problem cause we need a program that works out of the box. Having a program work out of the box cuts down on IT support and makes it easier for everyone to use.

The features needed:

1. Bookmark
2. Move/delete/insert pages
3. Redact
4. Bates numbering
5. E-sign
6. Change orientation of the page
7. Resize pages
8. Add notes
9. Highlight
10. Charges in Canadian dollars
11. Offline program
12. User friendly

Bonus points: It's a non-American company

The ones that I have looked at:

1. PDF Filler (not a fan of it being almost 100% cloud based)
2. Master PDF Editor
3. PDF Studio

Edit: Distro would most likely be Mint or Zorin.

TL;DR -

Question 1: how bad would it be to mount a NTFS drive and continue using it in NTFS format with Linux?

Question 2: should I partition my drive to have separate / partition and /home partition if I'm planning to distro hop?

Question 3: can I make Steam use game files on my secondary NTFS HDD?

I'm getting fed up with Windows day by day with how slow and chuggy it is.

My initial plan to buy a new 1TB SSD for Linux is out of the window thanks to astronomical prices and I'm upset by it. So is how HDD prices are also impacted.

I have a 2TB HDD formated in NTFS because back then when I built my PC I didn't think to try linux so I let it stay in NTFS. This drive is where all my personal files and data is. This is a separate drive from the 500GB NVME drive I use for Windows, which will be wiped for Linux.

Currently I also have an external portable SSD as a backup / working storage for my work supplied Windows laptop. I am unsure of the parity of my personal data and files is on the portable SSD with my 2TB HDD. So for the forseeable future the HDD will remain in NTFS and could not be reformated into a Linux friendlier format at the moment.

So my Question 1 is, how bad would it be to mount that NTFS HDD drive and continue using and working on it, with Linux?

Question 2: I haven't actually decided really what distro to stick with. I'm in a choice paralysis between trying base Fedora, Nobara, atomic Fedora but not Bazzite, and CachyOS. Regardless what I choose I feel like I might distro hop sooner than later. So should I set a different partition for /home?

From what I understand, the advantage would be I wouldn't have to touch my personal data when I distro hop. As I understand it I can just wipe the / partition for the OS I want try next. The disadvantage is that say moving from Fedora to Arch there could be some binaries or config files that might clash and as a noob I'd be in for a rollercoaster of fixing stuff. Am I wrong in my reading and understanding?

But if I'm already putting my personal data on a separate drive from the OS drive, I really shouldn't be bothering with partitioning the OS drive. The other advantage that I read for having / and /home partitions is that if the system have multiple users, there's a lot lesser risk of a user might fill the whole drive and preventing the OS to update later. So for a single user system like mine, and having a big storage size that is unlikely to happen anyways and I would only have to bother reinstalling programs every time I distro hop.

Edit: further understanding and questions related to Question 2:

2: always, even if not distro hopping. You can use a volume aware filesystem like Btrfs and have @ mounted on / and @home mounted on /home, so you don’t have to pre allocate space for one or another. Many distros will detect this setup and smartly use snapshots to revert upgrades without touching your home dir.

Interesting thing I saw yesterday when I "test run" to install Fedora KDE Plasma on a USB stick. I didn't go through with it, but I noticed that the installer suggest to partition my drive as such:

sdc1 - format as efi - /boot/efi  
sdc2 - format as efi - /boot  
sdc3 - format as btrfs subvolume - /  
sdc4 - format as btrfs subvolume - /home  

Is that a good default? on the page that ask whether to install fedora side by side another OS, full wipe, or manual partition, I noticed that whatever drive I want to use it already have to be non Windows friendly. In my case, my nvme is in NTFS naturally, my HDD is in NTFS as well, and my test USB stick is in exfat.

Question 3: I have a few games that I already downloaded and install on the Windows system. I plan to move the games that's installed on the OS drive to the secondary HDD drive, then use that files for when I install linux on the OS drive. Should I not bother with it instead and just bite the bullet and wipe the game files and download it again? or can I make it work somehow?

I have checked that my hardware peripherals such as my mic, game controller, gaming wheel and my audio card works before when I ran a live ISO, so that's fine on that end, I hope. I don't think I'll encounter problems with my NVidia card; and if I do I think there's enough help out there for me to figure it out. So really it's these 3 big questions that I've thought of the more I research before moving to Linux wholesale. If I need any Windows stuff I always have my work supplied laptop. I only need Windows for work only, and I don't use any Adobe stuff.

I'll admit that I have asked a few AI my questions, but since my personal data is valuable I don't trust what their answers are. So that's why I'm making this post. I'm going to play my ESL card and say that I tried my best to convey what I have in my head as best I can. I'll be happy to clarify further if my wording doesn't make sense.

TIA.

The situation:

• 6.17.7 (last kernel to not break my speakers, but not in history repos)
• 6.18.3 (installed kernel)
• 6.19-rc4 (fix is apparently present)

I would like to either have kernel-default 6.17.7 or 6.19-rc4 and then lock the package.

Unfortunately, my system dumped 6.17.7.

Solution: just download the package directly from openSUSE’s kernel HEAD repository website.

Noobie linux user here trying to get this app to work with bottles/lutris/whatever but the same error pops up that I can't figure out. Any help please?

• Distro: Linux Mint 22.2 Cinnamon
• Apps tried: Bottles (flatpak) and Lutris
• Target app: Ginger (https://github.com/DominaeDev/ginger)

I've tried running it from different drives, in and out of the Bottles created folders, but the same error pops up no matter what gets changed:

Unhandled Exception: System.TypeLoadException: Could not load type of field 'Ginger.SpellChecker:s_Hunspell' (0) due to: Could not load file or assembly 'NHunspell, Version=1.2.5554.16953, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=1ac793ea843b4366' or one of its dependencies

I've also tried running the msi from the github and get the same error, with these extra lines:

02ac:err:msi:execute_script Execution of script 0 halted; action L"_3754A388_689E_46DF_B53A_3A872C23A5F5" returned 1627

02ac:err:msi:ITERATE_Actions Execution halted, action L"InstallExecute" returned 1627

02ac:err:msi:ITERATE_Actions Execution halted, action L"ExecuteAction" returned 1627

The zip file comes with the NHunspell.dll in a folder in the same directory, but i've got no idea how to point the programs at it. And I've gotten other programs running, but not this one. Hoping the solution is obvious and I just am too new to figure it out. Thanks in advance.

*Turns out putting the files in the same folder did the trick. After getting Wine Mono installed, it all works (well enough, at least).

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/41331598

I am trying to use a Thermaltake Blacx Duet (ST0015) HDD Docking Station with my Linux computers (Linux Mint and Ubuntu, all latest).

I have a SATA disk plugged in one of the bays and when I connect it to a USB port with its cable (everything is brand new) nothing happens.

lsusb returns:

Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Bus 001 Device 002: ID 174c:2074 ASMedia Technology Inc. ASM1074 High-Speed hub Bus 001 Device 003: ID 046d:082d Logitech, Inc. HD Pro Webcam C920 Bus 001 Device 004: ID 046d:0ac4 Logitech, Inc. G535 Wireless Gaming Headset Bus 001 Device 005: ID 046d:c53a Logitech, Inc. PowerPlay Wireless Charging System Bus 001 Device 006: ID 046d:c547 Logitech, Inc. USB Receiver Bus 001 Device 007: ID 26ce:01a2 ASRock LED Controller Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub Bus 002 Device 002: ID 174c:3074 ASMedia Technology Inc. ASM1074 SuperSpeed hub

The only message in dmesgrelated to usb is:

[ 474.891877] usbcore: registered new interface driver usb-storage

which I understand means that the usb-storage module is loaded.

Same behavior in Ubuntu.

Does this mean that the hardware is just incompatible or is there anything more I can try?

I'm not a programmer so I'm probably not using the right words but when I'm in Firefox and press F12 to get to the console (?) where can I find the address of the video that's currently displayed on the page (to download with wget or yt-dlp)? I tried element picker but nothing that looks like an address appeared.

TIA!

I just started checking out auditd and made a rule to log file accesses.

auditctl -a always,exit -F dir=/path/to/my/directory -F perm=rwa

From the output, I got some things that might be useful:

• The full path of the executable
• pid
• Parent's pid: ppid
• Process' current working directory cwd

Now if the process was still running when I check the logs, I could open htop and find out what exactly called the process, from the pid.
For example, say I run a git pull on a repository and find out that /usr/bin/ssh is accessing some file, I will get something like:

st
└ bash
    └ git
        └ ssh

I will get the full executable path of each executable (and know if the executable was not in the system directories, but in some unsafe location writeable by another user). This will give me enough context to go by.

But using this same example, what happens if I check the logs after the git operation has ended?
The git process ppid will have been lost(?) and I would have no way to know which process called ssh.

How do I solve this condition?
Ideally, I want to have the audit log contain the whole calling tree with the full executable path of each parent.

I installed 22.2 on my laptop, installed waydroid, it failed to launch, so i logged out, selected ubuntu on wayland, and waydroid works in that DE.

I installed 22.2 on my friend's laptop(way older), and 3 cinammon DEs were included but not the ubuntu DEs, so i can't open waydroid on the second laptop.

I don't remember installing cinnamon any differently in the first or second laptop, did i somehow install ubuntu DEs on cinammon on the first laptop?

I tried cinammon on wayland, but it launches into n unresponsive black screen.

Flatpak & GNU Stow problems (solved)

Could someone tell me how to let #Flatpak follow symlinks? I have #dotfiles managed by #stow and Flatpak apps can't see the #Kvantum config.

So, I've got symlinks in xdg-config and I'd like for Flatpak to follow them to the folder where the configurations actually reside in (~/.config/home-dir). Search results have been unhelpful.

For example, if I do ls in ~/.config/Kvantum it shows this:
kvantum.kvconfig -> ../../.config/home-dir/.config/Kvantum/kvantum.kvconfig

And even if I give Flatpak apps access to xdg-config/home-dir:ro and xdg-config/Kvantum:ro they won't use the config.

SOLUTION: I switched to Tuckr for dotfiles management, which let me symlink the whole Kvantum directory instead of the individual files. This somehow allowed Flatpak to access the themes.

@linux4noobs @linuxquestions

I have found several programs that let me see what hardware I have, but none that manage drivers, allow me to do “custom” stuff to it like … run fans faster, or similar things.

I have run thermald , but even then, running fallout 3 or balatro makes my computer hit 95C (on the gfx card, with CPU not much cooler ~88). I did re-thermal paste and termal pillow my laptop, and it’s the same heating problems still.

I don’t know how to get “hardware profiles” for NVIDIA X server settings.

        _,met$$$$$gg.            
     ,g$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$P.       --------
   ,g$$P""       """Y$$.".     OS: Debian GNU/Linux 13 (trixie) x86_64
  ,$$P'              `$$$.     Host: GL62M 7REX (REV:1.0)
',$$P       ,ggs.     `$$b:    Kernel: Linux 6.12.57+deb13-amd64
`d$$'     ,$P"'   .    $$$     Uptime: 19 mins
 $$P      d$'     ,    $$P     Packages: 4039 (dpkg), 42 (flatpak)
 $$:      $$.   -    ,d$$'     Shell: bash 5.2.37
 $$;      Y$b._   _,d$P'       Display (AUO44ED): 1920x1080 @ 60 Hz in 16" [Built-in]
 Y$$.    `.`"Y$$$$P"'          DE: KDE Plasma 6.3.6
 `$$b      "-.__               WM: KWin (X11)
 
                               CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-7700HQ (8) @ 3.80 GHz
                               GPU 1: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti Mobile [Discrete]
                               GPU 2: Intel HD Graphics 630 @ 1.10 GHz [Integrated]
                               Memory: 5.00 GiB / 7.68 GiB (65%)
                               Swap: 145.95 MiB / 7.92 GiB (2%)
                               Disk (/): 100.87 GiB / 224.94 GiB (45%) - ext4
                               Disk (/media/username/Data): 451.32 GiB / 913.43 GiB (49%) - fuseblk
                               Local IP (wlp2s0): 192.168.1.244/24
                               Battery (BIF0_9): 100% [AC Connected]
                               Locale: en_GB.UTF-8

https://www.productindetail.com/pn/msi-gl62m-7rex-1869uk

EDIT : kinda like the stuff Pika OS has, which I tried to compile and run here, but the dependencies did not want to be obtained.

I've customsied this version of debian too much to just switch to that, and besides , that OS specifically warns you that it's experimental and should not be used for serious applications and I want a stable system.

I have found several programs that let me see what hardware I have, but none that manage drivers, allow me to do "custom" stuff to it like ... run fans faster, or similar things.

I have run thermald , but even then, running fallout 3 or balatro makes my computer hit 95C (on the gfx card, with CPU not much cooler ~88). I did re-thermal paste and termal pillow my laptop, and it's the same heating problems still.

I don't know how to get "hardware profiles" for NVIDIA X server settings.

        _,met$$$$$gg.          owl@nest
     ,g$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$P.       --------
   ,g$$P""       """Y$$.".     OS: Debian GNU/Linux 13 (trixie) x86_64
  ,$$P'              `$$$.     Host: GL62M 7REX (REV:1.0)
',$$P       ,ggs.     `$$b:    Kernel: Linux 6.12.57+deb13-amd64
`d$$'     ,$P"'   .    $$$     Uptime: 19 mins
 $$P      d$'     ,    $$P     Packages: 4039 (dpkg), 42 (flatpak)
 $$:      $$.   -    ,d$$'     Shell: bash 5.2.37
 $$;      Y$b._   _,d$P'       Display (AUO44ED): 1920x1080 @ 60 Hz in 16" [Built-in]
 Y$$.    `.`"Y$$$$P"'          DE: KDE Plasma 6.3.6
 `$$b      "-.__               WM: KWin (X11)
  `Y$$b                        WM Theme: Breeze
   `Y$$.                       Theme: Breeze (Dark) [Qt], Adwaita-dark [GTK2/3/4]
     `$$b.                     Icons: breeze-dark [Qt], breeze-dark [GTK2/3/4]
       `Y$$b.                  Font: Noto Sans (10pt) [Qt], Noto Sans (10pt) [GTK2/3/4]
         `"Y$b._               Cursor: breeze (24px)
             `""""             Terminal: yakuake 25.4.2
                               Terminal Font: FontAwesome (18pt)
                               CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-7700HQ (8) @ 3.80 GHz
                               GPU 1: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti Mobile [Discrete]
                               GPU 2: Intel HD Graphics 630 @ 1.10 GHz [Integrated]
                               Memory: 5.00 GiB / 7.68 GiB (65%)
                               Swap: 145.95 MiB / 7.92 GiB (2%)
                               Disk (/): 100.87 GiB / 224.94 GiB (45%) - ext4
                               Disk (/media/owl/Data): 451.32 GiB / 913.43 GiB (49%) - fuseblk
                               Local IP (wlp2s0): 192.168.1.244/24
                               Battery (BIF0_9): 100% [AC Connected]
                               Locale: en_GB.UTF-8

https://www.productindetail.com/pn/msi-gl62m-7rex-1869uk

I'm on Nobara Linux (with KDE6) using a dark theme. I'm using Unity Mod Manager on some games, which, with my current configuration has unreadable text on buttons etc because the text color is the same as the button-background.

When I switch the color in the settings to a light-mode theme like Breeze, everything in Unity Mod Manager becomes perfectly readable.

How do I force a single application to use light mode and/or a specific color-scheme?

So I have a MSI laptop that has an issue of draining its battery while turned off. Decided to look in to this problem today.

Started the machine and could not connect to the internet. The time and date on the machine is way off.

Can not connect though ProtonVPN, tested diferent WiFis that my phone can connect to.

Any ideas what to do? Tried some simple guides and i am quite inexperienced.

I'm on Linux Mint 22.2, trying to update Project Zomboid to a beta version, and when Steam gets to the 'validating' part of the update it hangs. The content_log.txt file shows the following:

[2025-09-30 17:04:24] GetCellList - failed to get AppData for WinUI

[2025-09-30 17:04:24] Load failed: /home/USERNAME/.steam/debian-installation/steamapps/libraryfolders.vdf.

[2025-09-30 17:04:24] Load failed: /home/USERNAME/.steam/debian-installation/config/libraryfolders.vdf.

The 'GetCellList' error repeats a bunch so I'm assuming that's where it's hung up, but I wasn't sure if the 'load failed' messages were relevant so I included them too.

I've tried restarting Steam, my computer, and internet comments suggested deleting the files that are causing the problem, but when I temporarily moved them to the trash that didn't fix the issue (they've been restored now). Any ideas for next steps would be greatly appreciated! Please let me know if I need to be adding any more info from different log files.

The Cinnamon power management settings on Mint have options to suspend OR lock my ThinkPad when the lid is closed but I can't seem to find a way to make it do both.

Update: fixed

Hello, Ubuntu Studio/KDE here.

Is there any way to change the shortcuts priority? For example, there is a way to switch to keyboard layout 1 by pressing left Ctrl, and to layout 2 by pressing right Ctrl, but in that case any other shortcut that has Ctrl stops working. If I set the layout switching to Ctrl+Shift, any shortcut using Ctrl+Shift+anything else won't work.

On windows, there is a third-party program that allows selecting layouts via right and left Ctrl, and it doesn't interfere with any shortcuts that use Ctrl, i.e. the layout change will trigger only with a single Ctrl press, no holding, no chords. Is there a (relatively easy) way to achieve this in Linux?

I don't know how to get unbanned. I created an account with a wrong username (with typo) a few nights ago, tried again, and failed, gave up. Tried to create an account with a different name/email and got this. Unsure how long this will take to cool off. It said something about "send a mail to explain why you're creating accounts" before It just shows everything as this.

The only bloody reason I wanted to create an account was to see if I could set some kind of dark mode, looking at that wiki makes me feel like I'm starting into a lightbulb, but I'm running debian, and wanted to get info on the init system in use in debian.

Debian uses systemd as its default init system

Devuan was created specifically to avoid systemd, offering alternatives like SysV init, OpenRC, and runit

I do not know what an init system is. I don't know what systemd is. I do not know what Devuan is. I do not know what SysV init is. I do not know what OpenRC is. I do not know what runit is.

I vaguely understand what debian is. Although I would be the wrong person it explain it. I know it's the type of linux that ubuntu is. And I know it seems like every disto I look at says it's based on ubuntu, and therefore is debian since ubuntu is based on debian.

What I don't understand is if everyone hates ubuntu, but ubuntu is based on debian, but nobody hates debian, why is everything based on ubuntu and not debian?

How do I know if I want the debian version of a distro, or the devuan version? What are they even talking about?

Hello everyone.

It's been quite some time since I installed Linux alongside Windows, and recently I mostly just use Linux.

I made a mistake when partitioning my drive, multiple times. I tried dualboot on my previous machines in past and time and time again the same happens: I think "well linux is lightweight" and give it like a 50 GB partition, then realize it's not enough.

I think I managed to shrink my windows partition and grow my linux root partition once, however I don't remember how I did that exactly.

Now I'm thinking of a way to backup my windows partition and move it to an external USB drive, to reformat it for linux use, but still be able to boot into windows, maybe via VM? Is it doable?

My current partitions:

nvme0n1     259:0    0 476.9G  0 disk               # the only drive in my laptop
├─nvme0n1p1 259:1    0     1G  0 part /boot         # I think this is an "UEFI" partition, not sure if I can touch it in any way
├─nvme0n1p2 259:2    0    16M  0 part               # This is "Microsoft reserved partition", it was automatically created by windows during installation, not sure if I can touch this
├─nvme0n1p3 259:3    0 129.4G  0 part /mnt/windows10    # my "C:\" partition with windows, ntfs, I want this to run in a VM or be bootable from external drive
├─nvme0n1p5 259:4    0    50G  0 part /             # My archlinux partition, ext4
├─nvme0n1p6 259:5    0  14.4G  0 part               # "WINDRIVER" partition, ntfs, I think it was there when I bought the laptop, not sure if can be touched in any way
└─nvme0n1p7 259:6    0 282.1G  0 part /mnt/games    # btrfs partition for data shared between windows and linux, here's my steam library with games, btrfs because it's well supported by linux and windows (with a third party driver)

What I ideally want:

• Probably UEFI partition
• 130 GB partition for archlinux, probably this should be ext4
• 280 GB partition for non-system data (movies, music etc), probably btrfs
• 50 GB partition for /home, probably btrfs as well
• Windows 10 as a bootable live USB or virtual drive that can be run in a VM stored on external USB stick

What are my options?

Is it possible to backup windows partition in way that it can later be run in a VM or being booted from external drive? Can I just format that partition into ext4, move my / partition files to the new partition and use it as my new root partition? I hope it won't break file permissions and stuff and "just work".

What can I do safely to get rid of windows on my drive, but still keep the working system somewhere else in case I need the software (you know, adobe, corel, MS office etc.)?

I'm not good with most of these things (partitions, can they be safely resized or moved around, backed up and restored, what's UEFI partition etc.).

Before you say "just make a backup and do whatever you want", I understand that this is what I should ideally be doing, but unfortunately I don't have multiple huge drives just laying around, I only have 1 external SSD which does not have too much free space, so I'd like to find some optimal way to achieve this without having to buy terabytes of additional storage.

Linux mint cinnamon 21 btw. I updated a bunch of applications yesterday. I couldn't tell you what got updated, I'm sorry. It was a bunch of stuff after not having updated much for several months.
(Edit: according to the modified date of my config files in /boot/, I might not've updated anything since January ):

On boot, I get the usual welcome from the motherboard screen:

AMIBIOS(C)2023 American Megatrends, Inc. ASUS PRIME B65OM-A AX ACPI BIOS Revision 1616
CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 7700X 8-Core Processor Speed: 4500MHz
Total Memory: 32768MB (DDR5-4800)
USB Devices total: 0 Drive, 4 Keyboards, 3 Mice, 3 Hubs
Detected Storages...
SATA6G_1: Samsung SSD 860 EVO 2TB
SATA6G_2: HDC HD6OEFZX-68B3FNO
SATA6G_3: WDC WD6OEFRK-68LOBN1
SATA6G_4: WDC WDS200T2BOA
M.2_2: Samsung SSD 990 PRO with Heatsink 1TB

In case it's relevant, the gpu is a MSI 6700xt. I'm not sure why it says 4 keyboards & 3 mice, but I do have a lot of USB cables plugged into the back for various reasons (maybe 8? 10?).

Then there appear these error messages for a few seconds:

0.3400851 pci 0000:10:00.0: Failed to read data
1.0549851 hub 8-0:1.0: config failed, hub doesn't have any ports! (err -19)
3.5725731 usb usb1-port6: Cannot enable. Maybe the USB cable is bad?

Then the monitor goes black (like, no signal black).

What should I do/check?

BRB, looking to see if I can still ssh into my pc with my windows laptop

EDIT UPDATE: I checked my pc's IP address on the router. It's connected to the router via ethernet, and it's detected, Mac address provided and all. Even thought it seems connected to my router, and it's powered on, I'm still not getting a response.

I'm trying to ssh with windows powershell on win10. "ssh blindfrog(notmyactualusername)@localipaddress" and all.

ssh: connect to host localipaddress port22: Connection timed out

If anything, I'm fine with replacing parts if I have to, even my drives. My /home and other important files are backed up to my NAS

UPDATE: ~~I booted off a USB stick with Mint, found the initrd.img on my desktop pc under /boot/ There's a lot of versions of initrd listed, it looks like? They were all last modified the time of my update spree yesterday. How do I inspect them? Right clicking, I don't get an option to "mount" them, nor am I sure how to do it in terminal. Opening the folder in terminal, then doing just "mount initrd.img" gets me:~~

~~mount: initrd.img: can't find in /etc/fstab.~~

Gonna try to get to my pc's bootloader :u

UPDATE: Found grub config file in my pc under: /etc/default/grub.d/50_linuxmint.cfg

I followed these instructions and added these lines to the end of the file:

GRUB_TIMEOUT="5"
GRUB_TIMEOUT_STYLE="menu"

Now I'm stuck on how to "sudo update-grub", but do it for the desktop pc, not my bootable usb stick, lol

UPDATE: Found this resource involving chroot. I followed the "Manual Grub Restoration Method," but first had to unmount the automatically mounted drive to emulate the instructions.

I had a problem at step 4, after successfully doing

sudo mount --bind /dev /mnt/dev
I'm getting the response for each of the other bind commands:

sudo: unable to allocate pty: No such device

According to this source, I used --rbind instead at the first source's step 4, but kept getting the same "can't allocate pty" message.

UPDATE: Skipped all the above and went to chroot the automatically mounted drive with my OS

sudo chroot /media/mount/lotsoflettersandnumbers /bin/bash

Success! But "sudo update-grub" gets me:

/usr/sbin/grub-mkconfig: 37: /usr/share/grub/grub-mkconfig_lib: cannot create /dev/null: Permission denied
/usr/sbin/grub-probe: error: cannot find a device for / (is /dev mounted?)

I'm not sure how to properly set up my system before chroot so update-grub will work
So I can get to my desktop's bootloader
So I can see if there's something to help me recover the previous kernel with sufficient drivers

If I don't have any leads on this adventure by tomorrow morning, I'll just reinstall with Mint 23 v.v
Sneak edit: I swear on my life one of the update notifications was the release of Linux Mint 23, but nowhere can I find it online now. I skipped it after my million updates because I didn't want to break anything; figured Mint 21 support was probably expiring soon & I'd look up people's takes on the new version before updating to it-- but now it doesn't exist?

I have installed CachyOS in my main gaming machine and i want it to work like the steam deck: Boot into big picture mode and then you can exit to desktop mode. I went with the desktop image instead of the handheld one because i wanted to use GNOME. I've looked at the cachyos-handheld package but it seems its only for KDE systems.
I tried to make my own scripts to start the compositor using a one-shot system which i believe is what bazzite does, unfortunately i cant get the steam part to work, as the gnome part does work. If someone can take a look at it and give me a hand i would be extremely grateful.

Here is the script you run to switch the next boot:

#!/usr/bin/env bash
set -euo pipefail

usage() {
  cat <<'EOF'
Usage: os-session-select <gamescope|gnome-wayland|gnome-xorg|plasma-wayland|plasma-xorg>

Writes ~/.config/steamos-session-select and logs you out so the one-shot wrapper
can launch the requested session exactly once on next login.
EOF
}

target="${1:-}"
case "$target" in
  gamescope|gnome) ;;
  -h|--help|"") usage; exit 1 ;;
  *) echo "Unknown target: $target"; usage; exit 1 ;;
esac

cfg="$HOME/.config"
sentinel="$cfg/steamos-session-select"
mkdir -p "$cfg"
printf '%s\n' "$target" > "$sentinel"

if command -v steam >/dev/null 2>&1; then
  steam -shutdown || true
fi

# End the current session (GDM should be set to autologin)
if [[ -n "${XDG_SESSION_ID:-}" ]]; then
  loginctl terminate-session "$XDG_SESSION_ID" || true
else
  systemctl --user exit || true
fi

It creates a file in the home directory to indicate to the boot script what to launch, then it kills the current session to restart the gdm manager.

And here is the script of the actual launcher:

#!/usr/bin/env bash
set -euo pipefail

sentinel="${HOME}/.config/steamos-session-select"

xexec() {
  local cmd="$1"; shift
  if command -v "$cmd" >/dev/null 2>&1; then
    exec "$cmd" "$@"
  else
    echo "Error: required command '$cmd' not found." >&2
    exit 1
  fi
}

choice=""
if [[ -f "$sentinel" ]]; then
  choice="$(tr -d '\n\r' < "$sentinel")"
  rm -f "$sentinel" || true
fi

choice="${choice:-"gamescope"}"

case "$choice" in
  gamescope)
    if command -v gamescope-session-plus >/dev/null 2>&1; then
      unset WAYLAND_DISPLAY
      unset WAYLAND_SOCKET
      unset DISPLAY
      export XDG_SESSION_TYPE=tty
      export WLR_BACKENDS=drm
      export ENABLE_GAMESCOPE_WSI=0
      exec gamescope-session-plus steam
    else
      echo "gamescope-session(-steam) not found in PATH." >&2
      exit 1
    fi
    ;;

  gnome)
    exec gnome-session
    ;;

  *)
    echo "Unknown session choice '$choice' – falling back to GNOME Wayland." >&2
    exec gnome-session
    ;;
esac

When i look at the journalctl output for the error i see what causes the issue is:

xdg_backend: Failed to initialize input thread
Failed to load plugin 'libdecor-gtk.so': failed to init
SDL_Vulkan_CreateSurface failed: VK_KHR_wayland_surface extension is not enabled in the Vulkan instance

And then a core dump. Again, any help would be much appreciated, thanks!!

My stack that matters :

Debian
KDE
Dolphin

I faffed around with running dolphin in admin mode to paste the fonts into the relevant folder before. I wanted to preview the font , and double clicked it. It just asked me if I wanted to install it to system or just this user.

Goddamnit.

Hey, I'm needing some help getting my controller working in game.

It's a Razer Wolverine V2 pro RZ06-0471. It has two switches on the back, I'm using it in 'wireless' (with the 2.4Ghz dongle) and 'PC' mode.

I'm running Fedora 42 with KDE
using steam with proton

Steam recognizes the controller and the device inputs all work fine when I use the input tester in the controller settings on steam. When I open up a game, however, the controller isn't recognized. The glyphs are all showing mouse/keyboard icons.

Edit:

The issue was related to steam having been installed through the discover store (as a flatpak). Uninstalling the flatpak in the discover store, and then installing steam through the terminal (sudo dnf install steam) made the controller be recognized again no problem!

I'm newish to Linux, wondering if you can point me in the direction of an easy way to sync files across devices (Android, Linux, maybe Windows). Internet advice suggests syncthing but recent articles show it was pulled from Android play store. There's is a fork listed there but is that going away too, who knows

What would be some easy alternatives? Nextcloud? Thanks in advance.

And preferably run it as single.sh and dual.sh when I need whichever. It's a Wayland session.

~~(Otherwise I'd have to manually arrange them every time I plug/unplug one of them.)~~

Edit: ~~I also would like to do this without unplugging.~~ Currently, when I disable/enable a monitor, its geometry gets reset.

Edit 2: Unplugging/plugging works, no idea why it didn't work before. However I still would like to do this via scripts because setting monitor setup from super+P also resets the geometry.