Hi guys, basically as the title says I want to make external SSD drive with "Windows to Go" for the stuff that I really need Windows for unfortunately (proprietary CAD software) but there is no software for making this on Linux that I can find

Edit: typo

Hey guys, I wanted to ask you how you manage your gpg keys? Having them in plaintext all the time on my hard drive feels unsecure.

I have my ssh keys in a password manager (KeePassXC) that only exposes them to the keyagend, when unlocked. Do you know if something like that exists for pgp too?

cross-posted from: https://feditown.com/post/2129456

This is my first real dive into hosting a server beyond a few Docker containers in my NAS. I've been learning a lot over the past 5 days, first thing I learned is that Proxmox isn't for me:

https://sh.itjust.works/post/49441546 https://sh.itjust.works/post/49272492 https://sh.itjust.works/post/49264890

So now I'm running headless Ubuntu and having a much better time! I migrated all of my Docker stuff to my new server, keeping my media on the NAS. I originally set up an NFS share (NAS->Server) so my Jellyfin container could snag the data. This worked at first, quickly crumbled without warning, and HWA may or may not be working.

Enter the Jellyfin issue: transcoded playback (and direct, doesn't matter) either give "fatal player error" or **extremely **slow, stuttery playback (basically unusable). Many Discord exchanges later, I added an SMB share (same source folder, same destination folder) to troubleshoot to no avail, and Jellyfin-specific problems have been ruled out.

After about 12hrs of 'sudo nano /etc/fstab' and 'dd if=/path/to/nfs_mount/testfile of=/dev/null bs=1M count=4096 status=progress', I've found some weird results from transferring the same 65GB file between different drives:

NAS's HDD (designated media drive) to NAS's SSD = 160MB/s NAS's SSD to Ubuntu's SSD = 160MB/s NAS's HDD to Ubuntu's SSD = .5MB/s

Both machines are cat7a ethernet straight to the router. I built the cables myself, tested them many times (including yesterday), and my reader says all cables involved are perfectly fine. I've rebooted them probably a fifty times by now.

NAS (Synology DS923+): -32GB RAM -Seagate EXOS X24 -Samsung SSD 990 EVO

Ubuntu: -Intel i5-13500 -Crucial DDR5-4800 2x32GB -WD SN850X NVMe

If you were tasked with troubleshooting a slow mount bind between these two machines, what would you do to improve the transfer speeds? Please note that I cannot SSH into the NAS, I just opened a ticket with Synology about it.

Here's the current /etc/fstab after extensive Q&A from different online communities

NFS mount: 192.168.0.4:/volume1/data /mnt/hermes nfs4 rw,nosuid,relatime,vers=4.1,rsize=13>

SMB mount: //192.168.0.4/data /mnt/hermes cifs username=_____,password=_______,vers=3.>

I'm on Mint. I have two partitions, one at 100GB I set up for the main OS installation, and another 1.9TB installation I use for storage. But the first partition is getting some storage issues, which comes partly from Timeshift (which I already redirected) and partially from Steam, specifically Proton. I want to redirect Steam onto the larger partition, but the space Steam takes up in this way is taken up by several smaller files and folders that add up to a lot, so I feel unsure about how to change things properly.

And a follow-up question, is it safe for me to expand that smaller drive with Gparted or something, or would that put the data on it at risk? Since it's the OS partition, that's important data.

Hello,

I've bought a capture card and I want to capture my main PC with OBS on my laptop, however I've run into this weird issue where I can't mirror 1440p because mirror forces both outputs to the max supported refresh rate regardless if it supports that on a given resolution or not.

I use Fedora 43 GNOME.

Setup is as follows:

• DP from GPU to my main 1440p 240Hz monitor
• HDMI from GPU to the capture card to the laptops USB

I can set the capture card to be 1440p 60Hz in the "Joined" mode where it works as a 2nd monitor and it works fine as I can set it to 60Hz there but "Mirror" just forces it to 120Hz (on any resolution) and my main screen gets forced to 240Hz.

I was unable to change this with "xrandr"... I assume it's because of Wayland. It works enough to show me the display modes at least and I can also verify trough the OSD on my main monitor that it's running at 240Hz and also that it switches from whatever lower refresh rate I set to 240Hz whenever I use mirror.

Right now I have to use 1080p only... luckily it works at 120Hz despite the capture card claiming only 120Hz at 720p but still, I am stuck with 1080p on my main screen.

xrandr during Mirror

werecat@fedora:~$ xrandr --output DP-2 --mode 2560x1440 --rate 240.00 --output HDMI-1 --mode 2560x1440 --rate 60.00 werecat@fedora:~$ xrandr -q Screen 0: minimum 16 x 16, current 2560 x 1440, maximum 32767 x 32767 DP-2 connected primary 2560x1440+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 700mm x 390mm 2560x1440 239.88*+ 1920x1440 239.84 1600x1200 239.94 1440x1080 239.87 1400x1050 239.76 1280x1024 239.78 1280x960 239.80 1152x864 239.87 1024x768 239.74 800x600 239.81 640x480 239.72 320x240 238.24 1920x1200 239.94 1680x1050 239.73 1440x900 239.80 1280x800 239.70 1152x720 239.91 960x600 239.72 928x580 239.78 800x500 239.72 768x480 239.72 720x480 239.35 640x400 239.49 320x200 238.84 2048x1152 239.87 1920x1080 239.88 1600x900 239.72 1368x768 239.74 1280x720 239.79 1024x576 239.43 864x486 239.60 720x400 239.07 640x350 239.59 HDMI-1 connected 2560x1440+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 600mm x 340mm 2560x1440 119.86*+ 1920x1440 119.85 1600x1200 119.82 1440x1080 119.82 1400x1050 119.78 1280x1024 119.71 1280x960 119.86 1152x864 119.77 1024x768 119.59 800x600 119.49 640x480 119.52 320x240 117.34 1920x1200 119.85 1680x1050 119.80 1440x900 119.81 1280x800 119.68 1152x720 119.53 960x600 119.74 928x580 119.55 800x500 119.47 768x480 119.24 720x480 119.65 640x400 119.64 320x200 117.55 2048x1152 119.82 1920x1080 119.77 1600x900 119.83 1368x768 119.67 1280x720 119.67 1024x576 119.56 864x486 119.69 720x400 119.54 640x350 119.24

Is there anything I can do about this? Video link in thumbnail. Thanks!

EDIT:

This works for the main monitor but does not for the output to capture card during mirror... it works in "Join" mode though

werecat@fedora:~$ displayconfig-mutter set --resolution 2560x1440 --refresh-rate 120 --connector DP-2

werecat@fedora:~$ displayconfig-mutter set --resolution 2560x1440 --refresh-rate 60 --connector HDMI-1 Error: org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.InvalidArgs: Invalid mode '2560x1440@60.000' specified

I'm redoing my home server. I'm moving from arch to fedora server to force myself to learn that stuff.

I also want to use the bcachefs subvolume and compression features. I am presented with a couple issues I need smarter people to explain to me though.

subvolumes: My understanding is subvolumes in bcachefs dont get mounted separately like you would expect. they are just folders that you can isolate a snapshot to. so I dont need to mount a subvolume, just mount the filesystem it exists in already and it comes along for the ride. but what happens if I want to rollback? Lets say I want to rollback to a previous snapshot on the / but not mess with anything in the subvolume /home/thatuser. wouldn't rolling back to the previous root also rollback the subvolumes contained within? perhaps I should create a separate partition just for root afterall.

mount: I can mount with

mount -t bcachefs /dev/device1:/dev/device2:/dev/device3

and everything works. However, if I mount with

mount -t bcachefs UUID=(externalUUIDfromshow-super)

not all devices in the pool will attach. some stay detached. so how am I supposed to mount them all at boot? I can't just refer to them by device path because if I add more drives later, those paths may change.

compression: the documentation is kind of out-of-sync on different sites but what I was able to piece together is you can set different rules for compression recursively for different directories/subvolumes like this...

sudo bcachefs set-file-option /mnt/tempy/ --compression=zstd:3 --background_compression=zstd:12

then read back what was already set with....

getfattr -d -m 'bcachefs_effective\.' /mnt/tempy

so while the above makes sense for a root or user home folder, for VM disk images, I might want to set...

sudo bcachefs set-file-option /mnt/tempy/vmstorage/ --compression=none --background_compression=none --nocow

or even do something similar without the nocow for media folders within the compressed home user folder...

sudo bcachefs set-file-option /mnt/tempy/home/thatuser --compression=zstd:3 --background_compression=zstd:12
sudo bcachefs set-file-option /mnt/tempy/home/thatuser/media --compression=none --background_compression=none

mount at boot: okay, I know I need the DKMS and userspace tools installed as separate packages since Kent was naughty and got his project booted out of the kernel. but I'm not entirely certain how to convey to fedora it needs to bundle those pieces with the initiramfs. I know arch uses something different from fedora to do that, with fedora using dracut. I need to learn how to use dracut.

install: this I have no idea what to do. Fedora's anaconda expects something very different and will not eat what I'm trying to feed it. so I need to find a way to bootstrap a fedora server install on to this system. Supposedly theres a way to do that with DNF.

Anyway, could someone explain the subvolume puzzle to me and maybe give pointers on bootstrapping fedora server and teaching it to mount all the devices in the pool at boot?

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/38798523

I don't use apps like whatsapp or skype because they sell my data and don't trust them.

I was hoping for a foss alternative to talk to my parents, regular folk who need something easy to set up on their android devices, ideally through fdroid.

I don't want to reveal a real phone number because I don't want ads from nobody.

I don't need to see my parent's faces, I just need to talk to them and maybe send files and lines of text.

Since PopOS isn't really going anywhere since 2022. I'm looking for a new distro that out of the box works with Nvidia and is optimized for gaming. I looked at Bazzite and CachyOS. Does anyone have experience with these?

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/52686006

Forewarning: I don't intend to respond to debates that have turned toxic in comments. Knowing how this topic can be, please don't aim create one.

Context

With the EoL of consumer Windows 10 recently, I have had a fair few friends and family that have moved over or are preparing to move to a Linux distro in the near future, with my guidance. As such, I wanted to gauge some of the community for what distros and editions (default DE's) that many are actually recommending for others, as well as ones that are recommended to avoid. In additional, I am curious what stipulations are tied to said recommendations (limitations, specific use-cases). In a lot of Lemmy and Reddit threads, Mastodon posts, and YouTube comment sections I have scoured, I have seen many recommendations, some that I currently strongly know why you would or wouldn't recommend something. If you care to read what I have to say, I also want to know why my choices do or don't hold up for use cases you've encountered. I have definitely not tried every hardware combination, distro, desktop environment, or other component, and want to know if I am missing anything from others' experience.

My Own Criteria and Top Recommendations

Wayland

I have a few things that I largely see as important for a functional desktop distro that can be recommended for most, if not all use cases. The first is a Wayland-first desktop environment. After using Linux on my own computers for over 10 years, I have suffered through (especially on NVidia) dealing with X.Org and the often severe limitations that can arise. Ten years later on the biggest Wayland environments, we have a pretty firm lack of screen tearing (which leads to an experience that feels much smoother than X.Org or Windows ever did). We also have variable refresh rate support, different refresh rates on different monitors actually working correctly, HDR support, and even cromulent fractional scaling. For all of the faults with the fighting over FreeDesktop protocol specification for Wayland, most of everything that is needed is here, with certain exceptions like some applications missing global hotkeys, some applications sucking at screen capture, and a lack of applications being able to request positioning controls of their windows (primarily for multi-window applications like KiCAD). In which case, having a X.Org fallback environment is still useful for the more deal breaker problems in occasionally needed applications.

KDE

With that in mind, I think by-and-far that KDE's approach to desktop development has led to a project that is fairly reliable, yet almost completely uncompromising. KDE has made a lot of things work for "standard" desktop users (i.e. not power users that know how to work a terminal). While still being flexible for power users, and not lacking most of every feature that someone could want out of their environment and applications. Most of everything in KDE that at one time required some level of terminal use has been made into a graphical application.

Viewing SystemD journals? There's an app for that. Viewing hardware utilization, temperatures, and process info? There's an app for that. Video editing? There's an app for that. Permission management for Flatpaks? There's a settings applet for that. Setting permanent mount points for new drives? There's an app for that. Connecting to your phone for wireless file transfer? There's an app for that.

I could honestly go on that as far as completeness goes for a variety of the common and less common tasks. KDE covers a lot of different tasks to perform and works well with a wide variety of different applications for more specific tasks (photo editing, 3D modeling, CAD, game design, gaming, screen recording, note taking, office suites, audio editors, VOIP and web chat applications, etc.). KDE is by far an environment that doesn't assume much of anything about other applications, causing the least amount of issues compared to environments like GNOME or certain window managers. With all of what makes KDE what it is, I tend to lean heavily toward distros that have good support for the environment. Additionally, modern NVidia cards with the NVidia-open drivers seem to work quite well with KDE whereas on other environments may not be as seamless and reliable from what I have seen.

Pipewire

Another big aspect of that leads to my distro choice is what sound server is the default choice. Back when I started using Linux, it was mostly a field of ALSA + PulseAudio, a couple studio distros that ship ALSA + JACK, and some minimalist distros that were plain ALSA. For most use cases, it was easy to argue that PulseAudio added the right features to be usable for standard desktop and laptop PCs. Now we have Pipewire, which while not the default for every desktop-oriented distro, arguably should be the default experience new users are shipped. PulseAudio had and still has a lot of trouble with various audio devices where even plain ALSA would give less problems at the cost of usability. In many devices I have tested, devices that had problems with PulseAudio don't have these problems with Pipewire. A good portion of these devices include the integrated audio chipsets on various motherboards (RealTek audio mostly), which is a big deal as the motherboard audio outputs and inputs are very commonly used. Pipewire even has the benefit of being able to be interacted with both as PulseAudio and JACK, meaning that PulseAudio utilities and JACK utilities will still work quite well for the power users that want/need them.

Minimal Required Terminal Usage

One thing I look for in a distro + desktop environment is how much of the terminal is expected to be used. I have touched upon in it already in my preferred desktop recommendation, but overall most desktop-oriented distros aren't completely independent of the user needing to use a terminal. I think that the occasional oddball system setting or some straight-to-the-point diagnostic tool/script is fine, but requiring regular use for common applications is a bad idea. I personally use the terminal a lot, but a year before the Windows 10 EoL I really started getting a feel for how graphical applications are used in place of terminal applications and utilities, so that I have all of the relevant information for how to do common pain point tasks while using minimal to no terminal usage.

In many cases, the stigma around Linux users needing to regularly use the terminal is mostly gone for many mainstream desktop-focused distros, and the only thing really holding that stigma for new users is every tutorial being written as generically as possible, rather than how to do a thing in different desktop environments. Many of the (more well-written) tutorials were written by people who want to quickly and efficiently solve the issue, even if that means using tools many users may not be comfortable with.

Distro Hopping

This is a short one, but I really dislike recommending something that I know that the user will likely want to jump away from in the future. Many distros have all since caught up in usability and ease-of-use to what used to be recommended as 'training-wheels' distros to the point where it seems that having to reinstall to a different distro and potentially learning a new desktop environment in a year or two might be doing more harm than good for the user who just wants to use their computer in the way they see fit. The only use case I could see is moreso recommending legacy distros for users on legacy hardware or distros with pre-installed and pre-configured proprietary drivers in the cases where it is too difficult to bootstrap the installation of said proprietary drivers after installing the core distro.

Filesystem

Finally, there is the lesser point of what default filesystem is used during installation. CoW filesystems like btrfs have become quite reliable, have very useful features (differential snapshots, subvolumes, checksumming). Particularly, my own setups for snapshots and checksumming have saved me from particularly bad file edits or from drive pre-failure (gradual failure). While I think ext4, xfs, and other filesystems are still perfectly fine choices currently, this is something that will weigh heavier toward filesystems like btrfs in time. Ext4 in particular isn't the most resilient to gradual drive failure, and I have in the past ended up with quietly corrupted files without much warning from the drive that ended up having a very short remaining life. If I weren't proactive in spotting and investigating the problem, I could have very well lost the full contents of that drive as SMART only start failing self-test very shortly before full drive failure. Meanwhile with my experience with pre-failure on BTRFS, a filesystem will happily go read-only if there a checksum failures in the filesystem, which can very easily point out that something has gone wrong and will either need maintenance or a drive swap. As more distros than just OpenSUSE actually implement some sort of competent snapshot feature as a default in installs, CoW filesystems will become more of a game-changer for regressions in updates, restoring mangled or deleted user files, etc.

What I Currently Recommend

I have a few choice picks for my current recommended distros that I personally recommend. For the primary use case of generic computing (light office usage, mostly web browsing, maybe a bit of photo editing) I will generally recommend an LTS distro, namely Debian or OpenSUSE Leap, with the KDE desktop. Both current versions of Debian and Leap include a version of Plasma 6 and have done a good job of being usable with minimal problems on such hardware.

For more avid users (often what would be considered power users on Windows) or target hardware that is too new for a given LTS distro, distros like Fedora KDE Workstation and OpenSUSE Tumbleweed with KDE are my prime choices. Fedora can take a bit of extra setup and require a bit of terminal usage in said setup (Appstream data for RPMFusion, future kernel versions installing kernel-devel for out-of-tree modules, setting the nvidia-open flag for proprietary NVidia drivers). Overall, both work quite well. I tend to lean toward Fedora due to the 6-month point release with semi-rolling kernel and mid-cycle DE version refresh versus full-rolling of Tumbleweed. Tumbleweed does utilize btrfs snapshots with selection in the boot loader for easy rollback from any regressions in updates however, making the big downside of a rolling release less painful.

Finally, for more gaming-focused use-cases, I have started recommending Bazzite recently. A Wayland-first immutable distro based on Fedora Kinoite with ready-made downloads for pre-installed proprietary drivers genuinely provides a painless experience for a gaming-focused environment. Installing any software that doesn't come packaged as a Flatpak can start to show the cracks in ease-of-install compared to a non-immutable distro. As such, the user's focus in primarily gaming and what can be done with applications with flatpak distribution is something that should be verified before recommending.

What I Currently Recommend New Users Avoid

• Manjaro (extensive track record for poor maintenance, cannot deliver what it aims to promise)
• Ubuntu (poor 6 month point release QA, lower LTS release quality than its parent distro, Snap, Canonical's wasted efforts in canned projects)
• Arch Linux (distro explicitly intended for tinkerers, explicitly expects reading release notes every update)
• SteamOS (distro not intended for general usage, explicit hardware targets)
• Pop! OS (one major incident of poor packaging, poor management of LTS release schedule, not Wayland-first (yet), no KDE default)
• Linux Mint (not Wayland-first (yet), dropped KDE default)
• Kali Linux, Parrot OS (pentest-focused niche distros even if there is a desktop installer variant)

I have a laptop with an 11 inch screen and 768p display. Naturally, my usage breakdown is:

• 80% one window in fullscreen
• 15% two windows side by side
• 5% other

I've considered tiling window managers. I used i3wm on this in the past. It was a little complicated and I customized the bottom bar to show commands for dummies.

alt-Enter: term | alt-D: launch | alt-F: fullsc | alt-1: new workspace | alt-shift-1: move to workspace

That plus some battery, wifi, time info. I never got 'good' with i3 and would consult the cheat sheet regularly.

Is there a paradigm (tiling or otherwise) that would let me quickly and simply launch programs with the keyboard (like most distros these days) and switch between fullscreen windows? and set them side by side as needed?

My usage is keyboard-first but mouse-available. i3 didn't seem tailored to mouse usage the way some other tiling wms are. and sometimes you'd launch a program like the wifi settings window and it wasn't built to be resized for a twm, so it looked weird. (no floating window support.)

edit: Tried

• cachy+LxQt
• cachy+niri
• AntiX + IceWM

Couldn't figure out how to remap keys in LxQt. Niri was cool but a bit overwhelming especially on a laptop with just kb+touchpad and it's easy to back yourself into a corner (window wider than the monitor).

IceWM allows for super+arrows to move windows side by side like Windows. I don't love it but it works okay. Performance is also a big concern and my idle RAM seems to be around 300M for AntiX vs 700+ for cachy+niri.

cross-posted from: https://programming.dev/post/40414734

Hi,

I would like to forward automatically Text messages.

A couples of years before, I was doing it easily with some FLOSS apps

But none of those apps (I keep the apk ;) ) works anymore on "recent" AOSP[^1] phone 🤨 ( Thanks to g**gle, to not take care of retro-compatibility )..

So, I lost time to dig for new apps (FLOSS and not)

• https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.pierreduchemin.smsforward/ The GUI is launching, but nothing happen.... not even an error message.
• https://apkpure.com/sms-forwarder/com.frzinapps.smsforward in addition do not be FLOSS it weight 70MB XD !!! , no thank you.

I'm willing to write a "Shell" script to run under Android, to just do that (I've never developed for Android, so if you have any advice I'm all ears )

or any other solution like

• Linux phone ROM ( without systemd )
• or maybe a simcard dongle, to allow my Linux computer to receive/send text ?

[^1]: a ROM that use AOSP is generally gapps free 😍

Trying (and failing) to setup Timeshift. Hoping to have it do snapshots of an ext4 LUKS-encrypted Arch system partition.

Documentation is thin on the ground and relates heavily to the GUI so problem solving hasn't been easy.

This is what I get when I run it for the first time:

$ sudo timeshift --create --comments "initial snapshot" First run mode (config file not found) Selected default snapshot type: RSYNC Mounted '/dev/dm-0 (nvme0n1pX)' at '/run/timeshift/991/backup' ------------------------------------------------------------------- Estimating system size... Creating new snapshot...(RSYNC) Saving to device: /dev/dm-0, mounted at path: /run/timeshift/991/backup Syncing files with rsync... E: rsync returned an error                                             E: Failed to create new snapshot Failed to create snapshot ------------------------------------------------------------------- Removing snapshots (incomplete): ------------------------------------------------------------------- Removing '2025-11-07_10-30-22'... Removed '2025-11-07_10-30-22'                                          ------------------------------------------------------------------- E: Failed to remove directory Ret=256

I initially left timeshift.json empty except for 'backup_device', but this is how it filled it out:

{  "backup_device_uuid" : "ab13bb9a-e4d6-4884-b8c8-XXXXXXXX",   "parent_device_uuid" : "904be7d0-a38d-4aed-9ee4-XXXXXXXX",   "do_first_run" : "false", "btrfs_mode" : "false",   "include_btrfs_home_for_backup" : "false",   "include_btrfs_home_for_restore" : "false",   "stop_cron_emails" : "true", "schedule_monthly" : "false", "schedule_weekly" : "false", "schedule_daily" : "false", "schedule_hourly" : "false", "schedule_boot" : "false", "count_monthly" : "2", "count_weekly" : "3", "count_daily" : "5", "count_hourly" : "6", "count_boot" : "5", "date_format" : "%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S", "exclude" : [ "/root/","/home/joe/" ], "exclude-apps" : [] }

I believe that unless you tell it otherwise, it will write snapshots to the same partition, which is what I want. 'parent_device' appears to be the LUKS crypto container that the root sits in.

Anyone spot the problem? Any help would be much appreciated!

Also, if I wanted to exclude a dir (inc. all subdirs & contents) at root called 'blah', would "/blah/**" be the correct exclude pattern?

I'm wondering if there are possibly any tools out there to do this: Declare a color scheme and set them to all apps CLIs and TUIs, either immediately on upon restart of each app individually. I'm on NixOS and looked at Stylix, once properly set up it automatically sets color schemes to apps. To change the color scheme I'd have to rebuild my nix configuration which is slow.

I promise this isn't a rant or cry for help; I'm just sharing an interesting observation that the Linux community might appreciate. Please know I'm comfortable and knowledgeable enough to be dangerous on any platform, though I generally prefer Unix/Linux and macOS over Windows. I inherited an obsolete, under-powered MacBook Air (Intel i5, 4G RAM, 128G SSD) and I've been testing virtually every popular distro on it for the last few months. I encountered the same Linux shortcoming across every distro, and I thought some of y'all might find this mildly interesting.

There seems to be an underlying issue running Linux on MacBooks, stemming from the fact that MacBooks require a kernel module with proprietary firmware blobs to support their Broadcom wifi & bluetooth hardware. Now, the Broadcom module is readily available in every standard package manager, but it will never be included in the mainstream kernel since it contains closed source software. For distros with a self-contained installer, this is not a huge problem at first - just download and install the appropriate Broadcom package separately to patch your kernel after installation and you should be good, right?

No. Trouble is the kernel and other packages (but mostly kernel) get updated constantly, seemingly without regard to existing kernel module compatibility. Depending on the distro, that Broadcom package might be weeks or even months behind the latest kernel release. The effect of this is that it's never safe to just run software updates on a MacBook, because you're playing roulette with your wifi hardware every time. Desktops with ethernet are easier to recover from because it's easy to plug in, but for a laptop relying on wifi it's a much bigger hassle when your wifi breaks.

Obviously you can just revert to a prior kernel then pin the working kernel version in place, but held packages like your kernel impact other software as well. Simply running Linux on MacBook hardware generates this ongoing cycle of issues over the proprietary software blobs required for the hardware. Typical designed-for-Windows devices face this issue far less frequently, so the added hurdle for MacBooks feels mostly ignored by the general Linux community.

This makes rolling release distros particularly problematic on MacBooks, which is really a shame. Even an atomic distro like Bazzite (which provides that Broadcom module right out of the box, by the way) breaks a MacBook's wifi sooner or later if you install updates normally. I thought I was clever running Kali Linux for awhile. It runs really nicely on this meager hardware and KDE felt zippier than many other distros. I still had to manually install the Broadcom driver after installation, but with a Debian back-end I was really hoping it would pull delayed enough releases to keep the wifi working... it did not. Kali runs a rolling release based on Debian Testing, which still pulls recent enough kernel updates to break the wifi.

Many Arch-based distros won't even install (btw), because the install images require a working networking stack, relying solely on the kernel's built-in hardware support. I'm certain there are workarounds, but there's no obvious, easy way for casual users to inject the required Broadcom module into the downloaded installer. Sadly, the best long term solution I've found is to just stick to annual, major LTS release distros like Debian Stable where enough time passes after most package updates that my cursed Broadcom module has had sufficient time for the dev to catch up.

Don't get me wrong, I've been running Debian + KDE on my older-but-much-beefier MacBook Pro for years now, and it's been a constant source of pleasure to use. I just thought I'd share a little about the unique challenges of a Linux fan who happens to own some aging Mac hardware. Someone here probably knows an obvious solution to make this far easier for the average user. I'm not begging anyone for help, though I certainly welcome your comments. In any case, I hope you enjoyed this read. Mac hardware would be really nice to run Linux if it weren't for this module annoyance.

I recently set up Bazzite on my friend's system after switching from Linux Mint due to some Nvidia driver issues. Although the hardware problems are not there anymore, the distro is now facing problems installing certain programs for software development that they had no problem installing in the previous distro. I think there are issues related to the immutability of the distro, though I am not sure since I am new to Linux too. Additionally, my friend is worried about higher storage consumption and slower performance in certain applications.

I realise the distro is primarily meant for gamers and my friend is not much of a gamer themselves, however they told me they appreciate its friendlier KDE interface so I wish to avoid switching from this distro again if possible. However I fear that they may encounter more errors in the future and that I may not be available to help them out whenever needed, so I am in a bit of a conundrum.

Thus I intend to ask here if it is possible to arrange something for easing development related tasks e.g. VM, distrobox etc. or whether it is easier to simply switch to some other compatible distro.

Working on the assumption that Win10 being EOL is going to cause an influx of old hardware becoming available, I was thinking it might be a good time to start looking for a good deal on a laptop for travel. It doesn't HAVE to be an old unsupported laptop, but saving something from e-waste is a bonus. Here's the kind of thing I'm looking for.

• Something small-ish, around a 13" screen.
• Can install Linux. Generally a given, I know. But I think not always an option with Chromebooks? I'm OK with a Chromebook as long as I can replace ChromeOS with Linux.
• X86_64 preferred. For games, though obviously not a great platform for that. Not opposed to ARM, but the PineBook Pro is compelling as a small low-cost ARM laptop, it'd have to be a better deal than that.
• Somewhat serviceable. I'd like to have the option to replace the batteries, storage, and memory. Being able to replace the wireless card would be nice.
• Durable would be a bonus. It probably won't see a lot of use, but it'll get tossed around in a backpack or in luggage.
• Specs aren't too important. I like my distros lightweight, and a web browser will be the most demanding thing it'll run.

All of that might be too much of a unicorn, but if I can find a good deal that mostly fits, I'll be happy.

Dug my old laptop out (HP G60, Turion X2 64) - and installed Mint XFCE on it - so far it's useable, but of course still slow. I'm amazed it works as well as it does (3 GB ram and an SSD). The CPU usage is at 100% a lot of the time.

My question is, what distros do you guys like for this age of laptop? This is a spare so more for messing around. I was thinking of trying Arch as I've hard it's somewhat lightweight but not sure. I've really only used Debian since I've been on linux.