If so, why? I'm genuinely curious. I have never encountered anyone who runs it.

I'm a programmer by trade with twenty years of experience, having first used Linux in 2004 (iirc), and I thought I knew the game pretty well. There are CPU-bound tasks, memory-bound tasks, network-bound tasks, and disk-bound tasks. I'm doing async programming and it's working fine, offloading i/o to the kernel while my app is doing cpu stuff. Except, I'm now using a laptop with 8 GB of memory and Linux Mint-Cinammon on HDD as my main machine, and somehow shit is constantly in the swap and waits for the disk. Right now I'm moving a Windows partition, I have quit everything except four Firefox tabs, Emacs, and Double Commander — and I still think I might kill myself before the ordeal is over. The entire system is completely and totally fucked. Barely anything moves, nothing responds in any kind of a timely fashion. Emacs freezes when typing, with two open buffers. Audio playback stutters. VPN is nonresponsive. I closed all the hundreds of buffers in Emacs, I set the priority and io priority of Gparted to the minimum, and the other apps to the max. I set swappiness to zero, and turned off the swap altogether with swapoff. All of this barely helps. I'm drunk right now, and still this affair bugs me beyond measure. I could maybe deal with this as a one-time thing if swapping and disk i/o weren't incapacitating the system every day.

Is Linux kernel so ridiculously single-threaded that any i/o cripples the entire thing? Or is something tuned horribly wrong in Mint by default? Can I unfuck this somehow? I live close to a river, I can't take this much temptation.

With the recent GN video I'd been wondering about turning an old mini PC from eBay into a little Linux TV box for streaming. I'd need access to Android apps (I guess through Waydroid).

After a brief look, it seems that the two options are some form of LibreElec system running Kodi or Arch running Plasma Big Screen. Any thoughts / advice? And if I went for Big Screen, does anyone know of any distros that ship with it or will I have to spin it up myself on Arch?

https://flathub.org/en/apps/com.github.wwmm.easyeffects

https://github.com/wwmm/easyeffects

I highly suggest this app, especially on old pc with limited speakers or bad microphones. Even when you have good speakers is still great for any limited audio streams (podcasts/videos/web radio), the "Crystalizer" option does wonders.

Easy Effects is an advanced audio manipulation tool. It includes an equalizer, limiter, compressor and a reverberation tool, just to mention a few. To complement this there is also a built in spectrum analyzer. Easy Effects is the successor to PulseEffects. Easy Effects only supports PipeWire's audio server. PulseAudio users should instead use PulseEffects. Because Easy Effects uses the default PipeWire sound server it will work with most, if not all, applications you use. All supported applications are presented in the main window, where each can be enabled individually. Easy Effects is able to apply effects to an input device, such as a microphone. This is, for example, useful in audio recording, but it also works well during voice conversations.

Yes, Linux is faster 🥳

The Oasis driver is very well known on Windows, it makes WMR headsets like the HP Reverb G2 work again, after Mixed Reality has been removed from recent versions of Windows. Arguably, it works even better than it ever did before "officially".

Now Oasis is available on Linux as well, even though some features are not quite working with this initial release (like pairing with the internal Bluetooth receivers of the headsets).

It's based on Ignition, a project that makes Windows-only SteamVR drivers work on Linux: https://github.com/BnuuySolutions/Ignition

His PC runs Ubuntu 24.04 and the mouse is a Razer Basilisk V3 35K. I tested it on my Ubuntu PC and it had the same problem.

Here's the fastfetch output:

....              marko@markubuntu
              .',:clooo:  .:looooo:.           ----------------
           .;looooooooc  .oooooooooo'          OS: Ubuntu 24.04.4 LTS (Noble Numbat) x86_64
        .;looooool:,''.  :ooooooooooc          Host: A620M GAMING X (-CF)
       ;looool;.         'oooooooooo,          Kernel: Linux 7.0.0-31-generic
      ;clool'             .cooooooc.  ,,       Uptime: 58 mins
         ...                ......  .:oo,      Packages: 2282 (dpkg), 19 (flatpak-system), 29 (flatpak-user), 15 (snap)
  .;clol:,.                        .loooo'     Shell: fish 4.8.1
 :ooooooooo,                        'ooool     Display (Odyssey G40B): 1920x1080 in 27", 240 Hz [External]
'ooooooooooo.                        loooo.    DE: GNOME 46.0
'ooooooooool                         coooo.    WM: Mutter (X11)
 ,loooooooc.                        .loooo.    WM Theme: Yaru-dark
   .,;;;'.                          ;ooooc     Theme: Yaru-dark [GTK2/3/4]
       ...                         ,ooool.     Icons: Yaru [GTK2/3/4]
    .cooooc.              ..',,'.  .cooo.      Font: Sans (11pt) [GTK2/3/4]
      ;ooooo:.           ;oooooooc.  :l.       Cursor: Yaru (24px)
       .coooooc,..      coooooooooo.           Terminal: GNOME Terminal 3.52.0
         .:ooooooolc:. .ooooooooooo'           Terminal Font: Ubuntu Sans Mono (13pt)
           .':loooooo;  ,oooooooooc            CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 7600X (12) @ 5.46 GHz
               ..';::c'  .;loooo:'             GPU 1: AMD Radeon RX 6600 [Discrete]
                                               GPU 2: AMD Raphael [Integrated]
                                               Memory: 5.41 GiB / 14.77 GiB (37%)
                                               Swap: 0 B / 4.00 GiB (0%)
                                               Disk (/): 878.47 GiB / 934.80 GiB (94%) - ext4
                                               Local IP (enp8s0): 192.168.64.111/24
                                               Locale: en_US.UTF-8

It has a GIGABYTE A620M GAMING X motherboard.

Uggh, wat do? Do I have to reinstall?

Also Is Fedora easier to install things like a mainstream VPN than Zorin?

This is a second time now in the last couple of months that my openSUSE Tumbleweed server has become inaccessible over the night with the terminal printing over and over:

BTRFS error (device dm-0 state EA): bdev /dev/mapper/cr_root errs: wr 549, rd 45080, flush 8, corrupt 0, gen 0
systemd-journald[404389]: Failed to send WATCHDOG=1 notification message: Transport endpoint is not connected
BTRFS error (device dm-0 state EA): bdev /dev/mapper/cr_root errs: wr 549, rd 45081, flush 8, corrupt 0, gen 0
BTRFS error (device dm-0 state EA): bdev /dev/mapper/cr_root errs: wr 549, rd 45102, flush 8, corrupt 0, gen 0
systemd-journald[404389]: Failed to send WATCHDOG=1 notification message: Transport endpoint is not connected
BTRFS error (device dm-0 state EA): bdev /dev/mapper/cr_root errs: wr 549, rd 45103, flush 8, corrupt 0, gen 0
BTRFS error (device dm-0 state EA): bdev /dev/mapper/cr_root errs: wr 549, rd 45106, flush 8, corrupt 0, gen 0
...
systemd-journald[404389]: Failed to send WATCHDOG=1 notification message: Transport endpoint is not connected
...
BTRFS error (device dm-0 state EA): bdev /dev/mapper/cr_root errs: wr 549, rd 45128, flush 8, corrupt 0, gen 0
BTRFS error (device dm-0 state EA): bdev /dev/mapper/cr_root errs: wr 549, rd 45138, flush 8, corrupt 0, gen 0

Both times a restart seemingly fixed everything, as in the computer booted up normally and my services started up and seemed to work just fine.

I ran

btrfs scrub status /

UUID:             redacted
Scrub started:    Tue Sep  1 09:26:40 2026
Status:           finished
Duration:         0:02:36
Total to scrub:   495.58GiB
Rate:             2.96GiB/s
Error summary:    no errors found

and

smartctl -a /dev/nvme0

smartctl 7.5 2025-04-30 r5714 [x86_64-linux-7.2.2-1-default] (SUSE RPM)
Copyright (C) 2002-25, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org

=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Model Number:                       Samsung SSD 990 PRO 4TB
Serial Number:                      redacted
Firmware Version:                   4B2QJXD7
PCI Vendor/Subsystem ID:            redacted
IEEE OUI Identifier:                redacted
Total NVM Capacity:                 4,000,787,030,016 [4.00 TB]
Unallocated NVM Capacity:           0
Controller ID:                      1
NVMe Version:                       2.0
Number of Namespaces:               1
Namespace 1 Size/Capacity:          4,000,787,030,016 [4.00 TB]
Namespace 1 Utilization:            733,311,033,344 [733 GB]
Namespace 1 Formatted LBA Size:     512
Namespace 1 IEEE EUI-64:            redacted
Local Time is:                      Tue Sep  1 10:01:48 2026 EEST
Firmware Updates (0x16):            3 Slots, no Reset required
Optional Admin Commands (0x0017):   Security Format Frmw_DL Self_Test
Optional NVM Commands (0x0055):     Comp DS_Mngmt Sav/Sel_Feat Timestmp
Log Page Attributes (0x2f):         S/H_per_NS Cmd_Eff_Lg Ext_Get_Lg Telmtry_Lg Log0_FISE_MI
Maximum Data Transfer Size:         512 Pages
Warning  Comp. Temp. Threshold:     82 Celsius
Critical Comp. Temp. Threshold:     85 Celsius

Supported Power States
St Op     Max   Active     Idle   RL RT WL WT  Ent_Lat  Ex_Lat
 0 +     9.39W       -        -    0  0  0  0        0       0
 1 +     9.39W       -        -    1  1  1  1        0       0
 2 +     9.39W       -        -    2  2  2  2        0       0
 3 -   0.0400W       -        -    3  3  3  3     4200    2700
 4 -   0.0050W       -        -    4  4  4  4      500   21800

Supported LBA Sizes (NSID 0x1)
Id Fmt  Data  Metadt  Rel_Perf
 0 +     512       0         0

=== START OF SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED

SMART/Health Information (NVMe Log 0x02, NSID 0xffffffff)
Critical Warning:                   0x00
Temperature:                        45 Celsius
Available Spare:                    100%
Available Spare Threshold:          10%
Percentage Used:                    2%
Data Units Read:                    36,634,591 [18.7 TB]
Data Units Written:                 88,390,637 [45.2 TB]
Host Read Commands:                 173,217,468
Host Write Commands:                2,664,966,303
Controller Busy Time:               19,920
Power Cycles:                       30
Power On Hours:                     9,824
Unsafe Shutdowns:                   15
Media and Data Integrity Errors:    0
Error Information Log Entries:      0
Warning  Comp. Temperature Time:    0
Critical Comp. Temperature Time:    0
Temperature Sensor 1:               45 Celsius
Temperature Sensor 2:               47 Celsius

Error Information (NVMe Log 0x01, 16 of 64 entries)
No Errors Logged

Self-test Log (NVMe Log 0x06, NSID 0xffffffff)
Self-test status: No self-test in progress
Num  Test_Description  Status                       Power_on_Hours  Failing_LBA  NSID Seg SCT Code
 0   Extended          Completed without error                9824            -     -   -   -    -
 1   Short             Completed without error                9824            -     -   -   -    -

which dont seem to show any errors. The SSD writes are quite high though. The SSD in question is under two years old, and acts both as a boot drive and a data drive for my data.

So is my SSD cooked? What troubleshooting steps should I take? Or is this a warranty case? (The data is backed up alredy.)

Thanks in advance!