I realized my VLC was broke some point in the week after updating Arch. I spend time troubleshooting then find a forum post with replies from an Arch moderator saying they knew it would happen and it's my fault for not wanting to read through pages of changelogs. Another mod post says they won't announce that on the RSS feed either. I thought I was doing good by following the RSS but I guess that's not enough.

I've been happily using Arch for 5 years but after reading those posts I've decided to look for a different distro. Does anyone have recommendations for the closest I can get to Arch but with a different attitude around updating?

the x264 av1 file plays only audio on vlc but works with flaws on mpv: on mpv I get audio and video, but every 5 to 6 seconds it's like instead of getting 24 fps I get 22, the user noticing the missing frames.

Is this a hardware issue? software?

debian 12.11, vlc 3.0.21 flatpak, mpv 0.40.0 flatpak

what do I do?

So sitrep:

Newish desktop

• i7-13700K
• 64Gb DDR5 6000Mhz
• RTX 3070Ti
• MSI PRO Z790-P (WiFi is not a factor, permanent ethernet connection.)

Needs:

• Gaming
• Music composing
• Coding (Mostly python)
• Video editing

I've been using Linux on and off throughout the years, but lately I've fallen out of the loop somewhat. Started with Slackware around 1998, Kubuntu in the 2000's, Ubuntu 2010's, Kali and Mandrake 2020's -> on my laptop, Ubuntu server on my RasPi. At work, we have a few Fedora servers I have to maintain. So not a complete novice, but somewhat obsolete info.

I have been looking at the immutable distros, like Bazzite and Pop!_OS as I've done the whole song and dance of constantly repairing my distro because of various issues, and I'd like my main recreational machine & distro to be low maintenance, I get to fix linux servers at work enough already, I don't want to bring that home.

With gaming, I've understood that linux has come a loooooong way since I last tried sometime around TBC Launch for WoW when Wine barely worked with it.

Music composing is a little annoying, since apparently both Ableton and FL studio are not an option. I've heard good things about Reaper, but I'll have to do some more research. Feel free to educate me on this topic if you have some insider info. I don't play live sets, just compose and mix.

Video editing, currently I use Davinci Resolve, and apparently it works fine on Linux, just some limitations and shenanigans with codecs. Alternatives are welcome, I don't need 90% of what resolve offers, I can make do with a simpler software as well.

Thank you kindly in advance for departing thine wisdom.

I'm looking for a music player on Pop!_OS that supports playlists, repeating a single track while still being able to swap tracks in the playlist, and also supports fading between songs and when stopping playback. And ideas on what to try?

So far I've tried VLC, Audacious, and Rhythmbox, but none of those seem to support all of those requirements. (Rhythmbox was close but the repeat one from the toolbar plugin doesn't work.)

Edit: Got it working in Rhythmbox after toggling the repeat options a few more times. Still curious if there are other options out there though.

Jujutsu is essentially an alternative front-end or "porcelain" to git, both magnificiently simplified and powerful.

I tried it after using Emacs Magit for about six or seven years, and jujutsu is really easier to use than git and useful if one wants a tidy public history of changes (with "tidy" and "public" as Linus Torvalds recommends). Plus it is fully compatible to git as backend - other contributors will not even note you are using it.

• I'll buy used, so don't want latest and greatest. It won't be my main laptop.
• to run linux obviously.
• good battery life, light, not too small to use, but large enough to type on (obviously can do without numeric keypad). not too fragile!
• I'll be doing some light python work, perhaps some c/c++ but I'm not after a workhorse, just something for quickly fixing bugs, or making notes on
• sub 200 GBP / 250USD I guess

I'd be interested in hearing recommendations, and also what to avoid!

Hi, I recently finished setting up my Asustor NAS, and I found the snapshotting setup in it a bit confusing, so I'm writing this as a quick reference that might be hopefully useful to others.

For context, my device is a AS1102TL, and it's running ADM 4.3.3, but I imagine it should apply to all recent Asustor devices.

First of all, the reason I picked Asustor instead of e.g. Synology... it's because it was not clear if the latter actually supported LUKS full disk encryption on an external usb hd. In Asustor you have to ssh into your NAS, but you can definitely do it.

The only gotcha: If you created the LUKS volume recently on another system, it's likely that it'll be using Argon2 for key stretching. A memory-intensive algorithm, for which the 1GB of memory provided by my AS1102TL is not enough. The solution is simply to add another key with a different algo, e.g. PBKDF2, or just create the volume on your Asustor. Either way, you're going to be able to read and write it both from the NAS and another Linux on your pc.

$ sudo $(which cryptsetup) luksOpen /dev/sdb1 encrypted # "encrypted" is just the name that I gave to the device, pick anything... remember the `-S` flag if you need to select a key in a different slot
$ sudo mount /dev/mapper/encrypted /mnt/USB1
... do what you want ...
$ sudo umount /mnt/USB1/
$ sudo $(which cryptsetup) luksClose encrypted

Unfortunately, this doesn't mean that once mounted, the disk will be integrated in the ADM ui (you're not going to be able to see it in the "External Devices" ui, nor be able to select it as a destination in the "Backup & Restore" ui).

Normally, mounted external drives are available on paths like /share/USB0, /share/USB1. Maybe it could be possible to mount (or symlink your mount point for) your disk there, to make it usable to ADM, but by default /share is an immutable loop mount of /volume0/.@system/sharebase.loop

$ lsattr -d /share/
-----i------- /share/

Trying to workaround that with chattr and maybe manually modifying sharebase.loop felt a bit more risky than needed, so I didn't attempt that (the ADM ui doesn't provide a btrfs send functionality, so it's not very interesting for our purposes anyhow).

Now, you have two different approaches to accomplish incremental backups of btrfs snapshots, one where you just create them yourself from the CLI, and one where you can try to reuse the snapshots created in ADM.

1. Create snapshot from the cli

sudo btrfs subvolume snapshot -r /volume1 /volume1/.@snapshots/v20250710-0951

pick a parent snapshot, and send the incremental changes:

sudo btrfs send -p /volume1/.@snapshots/v20250710-0936 /volume1/.@snapshots/v20250710-0951/ | sudo btrfs receive -v /mnt/USB1/

I'm using the same naming convention, and same location that is used for snapshots created by ADM (you wouldn't get conflicts anyhow, unless you're creating another one in the exact same minute).

I recommend the -v verbose flag for btrfs receive, otherwise you're not going to see progress while the operation is ongoing.

That's it! Of course, the first send will have to happen without specifying a parent with -p, to do a full clone.

2. Reuse snapshots created in ADM

There are two problems with this: the snapshots created by ADM are not read-only and they are mounted right under the toplevel.

To address these issues:

sudo mount /dev/md1 -o subvol=/ /mnt/rootvol
sudo btrfs property set /mnt/rootvol/v2025079-2324/ ro true

then pick a parent snapshot, and send the incremental changes:

sudo btrfs send -p /mnt/rootvol/v2025079-0824/ /mnt/rootvol/v2025079-2324 | sudo btrfs receive -v /mnt/USB1/

As above, use the -p and -v flags as needed. That's it!

If you're wondering why did we have to mount the / subvol, you can try without:

You can mount the snapshots directly in ADM's Snapshot Center, by toggling the Preview toggle for a snapshot. In that case, they are still going to be RW, though mounted as RO. You can deal with that by remounting: sudo mount -o remount,rw /volume1/.@snapshots/v2025079-2324/ && sudo btrfs property set /volume1/.@snapshots/v2025079-2324/ ro true,

You can then try to send the changes, but what you're going to get is:

$ sudo btrfs send -p /volume1/.@snapshots/v2025079-0824/ /volume1/.@snapshots/v2025079-2324
ERROR: not on mount point: /volume1/.@snapshots/v2025079-2324

The error is a bit confusing (you have mounted the volume! why is that not good enough?), but you can get a bit of clarity with btrfs subvolume list.

$ sudo btrfs subvolume list /volume1 -qua
ID 256 gen 159842 top level 5 parent_uuid -                                    uuid cbc37b20-901f-b043-8cf1-59b814814140 path <FS_TREE>/base
ID 258 gen 151914 top level 5 parent_uuid -                                    uuid 5039c206-1a89-dc45-a9fe-43f8959cb672 path <FS_TREE>/.iscsi
ID 259 gen 159840 top level 5 parent_uuid -                                    uuid 06d46207-9aa2-2944-ba38-e5736963ec12 path <FS_TREE>/.@plugins
ID 2758 gen 157876 top level 5 parent_uuid cbc37b20-901f-b043-8cf1-59b814814140 uuid 256c36c5-7033-a945-a2db-b6a334a8419f path <FS_TREE>/v2025079-0824
ID 2759 gen 157859 top level 5 parent_uuid cbc37b20-901f-b043-8cf1-59b814814140 uuid 88942ee6-8b52-3d4d-b972-5de2d6764728 path <FS_TREE>/v2025079-2324
ID 2762 gen 159833 top level 256 parent_uuid cbc37b20-901f-b043-8cf1-59b814814140 uuid 6d636914-35a0-3f42-9486-bf5d673b94c5 path base/.@snapshots/v20250710-0936
ID 2763 gen 159836 top level 256 parent_uuid cbc37b20-901f-b043-8cf1-59b814814140 uuid e99df217-4946-a740-bba9-99f64f1a0d69 path base/.@snapshots/v20250710-0951

Now, compare with the output when listing /mnt/rootvol:

$ sudo btrfs subvolume list /mnt/rootvol/ -qua
ID 256 gen 159867 top level 5 parent_uuid -                                    uuid cbc37b20-901f-b043-8cf1-59b814814140 path base
ID 258 gen 151914 top level 5 parent_uuid -                                    uuid 5039c206-1a89-dc45-a9fe-43f8959cb672 path .iscsi
ID 259 gen 159840 top level 5 parent_uuid -                                    uuid 06d46207-9aa2-2944-ba38-e5736963ec12 path .@plugins
ID 2758 gen 157876 top level 5 parent_uuid cbc37b20-901f-b043-8cf1-59b814814140 uuid 256c36c5-7033-a945-a2db-b6a334a8419f path v2025079-0824
ID 2759 gen 157859 top level 5 parent_uuid cbc37b20-901f-b043-8cf1-59b814814140 uuid 88942ee6-8b52-3d4d-b972-5de2d6764728 path v2025079-2324
ID 2762 gen 159833 top level 256 parent_uuid cbc37b20-901f-b043-8cf1-59b814814140 uuid 6d636914-35a0-3f42-9486-bf5d673b94c5 path <FS_TREE>/base/.@snapshots/v20250710-0936
ID 2763 gen 159836 top level 256 parent_uuid cbc37b20-901f-b043-8cf1-59b814814140 uuid e99df217-4946-a740-bba9-99f64f1a0d69 path <FS_TREE>/base/.@snapshots/v20250710-0951

as you can see, the snapshots created in ADM are directly under top level 5 and if you list them under /volume1 (which is just the mount point for the /base subvolume), they are not found directly underneath (despite them being mounted there), which is why you see them being under their own <FS_TREE>.

Conversely, the ones that you can create directly from the cli under volume1, appear as top level 256 and they are under <FS_TREE>/base if you list the subvolumes under /mnt/rootvol.

I hope this has been useful.

From Sebastian Wick’s Mastodon

Blender is getting HDR on Linux via Wayland before Windows! This isn't by accident, but shows how creating a system with a different design creates better results for users and application developers.

Firefox is in this same boat too. It will get HDR support on Linux* sooner than Windows. Firefox currently only supports HDR on MacOS.

Hello there, fellow Linux folks!

So, having previously tried Arch and some of its derivatives, I've found it incredibly useful to have systemd showing processes when I turn my system on and off.

However, my current distro (OpenSUSE Slowroll) doesn't do this. Is there a way to enable it?

Most file managers I've encountered default to icon view. One of the first things I do is set the default to detailed list view. Might be a preference for seeing names and dates over many identical folder icons, or just an old habit from using Windows. But I'd be curious to hear about the benefits of icon view and why it's usually the default in Linux GUI file managers.

What does everyone else use and any reasons to prefer one over the other?

Apart from that I am looking for a solution to a personal issue (see my other comment), I posted this because I was thinking this could be a great way to support other new Linux users and friends.

So, I was originally just going with Mint 22.1, but I’m getting a 9070xt and see mint is only on kernel 6.8 which doesn’t particularly support it?

Is using it still okay? Should I go with Bazzite instead? Or something else. I’m fine with a little amount of work to get shit working nice and all, I am fine with figuring out how to use the terminal if needed and all, just want something stable to play games and other shit on. Mint sounded good, but not if it won’t support my GPU.

I'm very new on Linux and i'm trying to get some help.

I tried Linux mint and other debian distros, and since i dont have the sufficient skill to manage linux, this time i'm choosing Kubuntu because of the KDE environment , which i like a lot.

I know more about linux mint and kinda know how to work with him, but kubuntu never tried and i will try this time... but i have some questions if someone can help me.

Kubuntu is ok for a new person on linux?

I want to install apps/programms via flatpak, since this looks more easily for a newbie as me and because of the sandbox, which seems is good (?).

On Kubuntu, is easily to install flatpak via diskover? I see i need to add the flathub repo, but my question is if someone have getting any error or problem with this, or if this is easy to do it.

Other question I have, is about some apps i want to install if i dont find it or just find it on github or something similar. I find an app that really like but this app dont appear in any store, and this app is only available on github via flatpak and .deb . In this case, since the app is not available on flathub or diskover, or via command lines (like sudo apt install firefox - if you understand me) , how can i check this is not a virus or can do bad things on my linux? I use total virus for this, and the checks gives zero flags, but would like to know if for example, i install this programm via flatpak, can break my system.

Other question is about flatpaks from flathub. I know flatpak usually dont follow the theme of my DE. Which is the best way these flatpaks have the same theme as my DE? Is using the flatseal? Any tip about this?

And, btw, if you can give me some tips and advice as linux/kubuntu newbie, it would be amazing for my journey. Cheers all!

Hi, as many others I am looking to switch to linux before microsoft kills win 10. I read a lot of advice online for distros, but my main needs are not really discussed. I need a distro that runs well for game dev specifically unreal engine 5.4-6.

I am currently aiming to try mint, as it has been recommended to be stable and i already dabbled a little bit with Ubuntu on my laptop.

I am not afraid of some tech journey, but even though arch seems the coolest, with Wayland, kde, hyperland customization, i am not confident enough to use it for work. I heard it can completely crash your system if your a noob.

So in essence i need something stable that is relatively easy to use and has great ue5 and gaming perf. Thanks in advance for all the help.

New features

• Content server: Add a checkbox in content server user preferences to prevent a user account from changing its own password via the web interface
• Restoring database: Improve performance by an order of magnitude
• Add a tweak to Preferences->Tweaks to permit displaying the sort value for series in the Tag browser
• Welcome wizard: Change default output format to AZW3 for Kindle as MOBI is obsolete and all Kindles released within the last decade plus support AZW3
• Add 'Search "not in"' and 'Filter "not in'" buttons to Manage authors and Manage Items

Bug fixes

• Windows: Fix a regression in the previous release that caused terminal windows to popup momentarily when adding PDF files or converting them Closes tickets: 2115246

• E-book viewer: Fix a regression in 8.4 that broke fading of the background image Closes tickets: 2115057

• Tag browser: Fix clicking on categories to search for books by first letter of series not working correctly for non-English language books Closes tickets: 2116006

• Edit metadata individually: Ensure Next/Previous buttons work even if something re-orders the books in the book list. They will now iterate over the books as they were at the time the dialog is created Closes tickets: 2115111

• Windows: Generate catalog: Workaround for systems where a broken antivirus or similar holds open files in the catalog library causing a permission denied error Closes tickets: 2115084

New news sources

• La Presse by quatorze

Improved news sources

• Economist
• 1843
• Financial Times
• PC World
• Muy Interesante Mexico
• Hindu Business Line
• Business Standard
• Hindustan Times
• The Week
• Times of India
• Hindustan
• Financial Times
• Reason

A Windows-to-Linux “translation” tool for the 200M+ Windows 10 computers not eligible to upgrade to Windows 11, Operese transfers files, settings, and programs from Windows to a brand-new Kubuntu installation. It's still very much a work in progress, but in my biased opinion, it already doesn't look too shabby!