This PC is basically my life, I use it for work (freelance business), entertainment, and to self host a server so I'm hesitant. I have a handful of questions for now while I look into it more:

1. I'd prefer not to dual boo, but it might be the safest way to start? If I dual boot, get used to Linux and (hopefully) get everything I need working, can I then go from dual boot to erasing the Windows partition and recombining so I then only have Linux installed and can keep the work and programs I already installed on Linux?

2. I do voiceover work, music production, and digital art/photography. Anyone else here do all this and what programs would you recommened to replace Audition, Photoshop, and Cubase?

--2.1. Regarding music production, has anyone successfully used vst files from Windows on Linux?

3. The drives for my server are NTFS. Does anyone have experience with this format on Linux (I use Emby)?

4. My bread and butter right now is voice acting so I NEED everything to play nice. I've read there might be some issues with drivers for my hardware, namely Focusrite Scarlett 4i4 and Behringer UV1. Anyone have any experience with this?

EDIT: Wow that's a lot of responses. I'd like to respond to each but I'm a bit overwhelmed with all the info haha. I think I'm gonna grab an old external USB drive and live boot from there and test things out. Thanks to everyone, I've got a tonne to mull over now. Appreciate it!

Things have taken a bad turn for Bcachefs as Linux supremo Linus Torvalds is not happy with their objections.

When using TMUX, it is easy to create a script, which opens TMUX, configures the screens/panes of TMUX and open/run programs.

I like this a lot.

My baseline would be something like, when I login, some applications are executed and their windows automatically placed on a virtual desktop.

For example:

• Open Firefox and put it on virtual desktop 1
• Open Terminal in fullscreen and put it on virtual desktop 2
• Open VSCode and put it on virtual desktop 3

Something like that is possible with sway, in the environment I am working, sway is not able to run XWayland applications w/o crashing.

Is there any way to have this functionality on Gnome, Mate, Xfce?

Even better would be something to open several windows and arrange them automatically for different work tasks/projects I am working on. Any ideas?

Edit: Solved! Thanks for the input. Auto Move Windows extension for Gnome solves my problem.

There is xclicker which is a flatpak app, but it only automate mouse clicks, but there is nothing for key presses, I am surprised I could not find anything on this, but is there any GUI for this? Also is this possible on a technical level (in flatpak especially, I dont know if apps can simulate key presses). I know of ydotool, but that uses root, also its not a gui

Hi folks,

Recently, I started to listen to music locally instead of using streaming services because I have had enough of all the annoying parts of it. I gathered a lot of Opus and FLAC files that have lyrics embedded in them. I am searching for some music players that can display them. The one I am using right now is Elisa. It is awesome, but I would still like to know if there are more alternatives, just in case. Thanks!

I'm considering getting a 9950x3D on either Monday or Tuesday at a Micro Center as a upgrade to my current setup. My main question is, how is the experience with the 9950x3D on Linux with strange architecture with half of the cores having extra L3 cache and the other half with a normal amount of L3 cache.

I have been busy working and suddenly there's been a promotion for the 9950x3D that I want to take advantage of since my motherboard on my current system has been deteriorating as of late. Asrock x570 Extreme4 with a 3700x. USB has been very flaky and I've been dual boating and the other SSD slot is on the chipset. Which makes my windows boot incredibly slow.

I plan to stay on Arch Linux or hop over to CachyOS but want to know what are your thoughts on this as well?

I primarily game but occasionally do some video/audio encoding, video editing and want to build ffmpeg-full from the aur but takes too long on my 3700X.

I've only been able to read/watch three mediums level1tech, and two Phoronix articles, but haven't mental capacity to register and remember everything.

I watched the Ryzen 9950x3D? On Linux video by Level1tech. And one of the things he mentions is gamemode. Is it recommended.

As for the Phoronix articles one is the review of the 9950x3D and the other is the cache optimization driver.

By default for the Ryzen 9 9950X3D it was using the "frequency" preference as default. But if writing "cache" to /sys/bus/platform/drivers/amd_x3d_vcache/AMDI0101:00/amd_x3d_mode it will prefer using the CCD with the larger cache. This cache vs. frequency bias can all be easily manipulated at run-time for those interested.

Is there some sort of automation for this? Or, do I have to do it manually for each program? I've never messed with kernel parameters other than for my Nvidia GPU to get Wayland to work.

I'm sorry that this question feels very unorganized. I just don't have time to write a proper one. I'll be able to reply on my next break.

Thank you for your help.

Hi all. I'm currently running a home server using Ubuntu OS, but I'd like to try and explore other options for operating systems to better my skills with linux/unix.

Currently I'm considering switching to Fedora server (though feedback is welcome) because I've been running it as my daily OS for a few months now and I quite like it. I'm also looking at Debian server because that's what my old professor used and he did nothing but speak its praises.

Only issue is I'm concerned about data loss from moving the installation. Currently, the server is setup to run several Docker images running my programs. While moving over the images shouldn't be difficult whatsoever, I'm afraid my storage setup might not be so easy. Currently, it's two 4TB hard drives running in a logical volume. I'd love to simply be able to move over all the files to a backup drive, but I don't have anywhere I can store >5TB of files as a backup.

I googled around, but I couldn't find too many guides on migrating logical volumes. The one or two I did find were most definitely written for someone with far more linux knowledge than I have as a relative noob, so any advice would be extremely welcome!

Testing different ones out and wanted to see what your success rates were

I just got this laptop (Asus TUF A15 2021) today and it surprised me that everything works just fine out of the box on Vanilla Arch, except NVIDIA gpu I had to install it manually on battery power that's why I enable powersaving mode. As for games performance it's basically the same as windows no more no less.

Firefox seemingly very recently shipped their own titlebar controls buttons, which worsens even further the lackluster OS integration. In the screenshot you see my regular control buttons on the window to the left (default KDE Plasma theme) and the new custom buttons Firefox is serving now.

Would anyone know how to undo that change in about:config or anywhere else?

I never really see hardware lacking Linux support mentioned, which got me caught by surprise when a computer with a Broadcom network card couldn't use the card. What other hardware don't work with Linux?

My question is basically the title, but here are some more details.

My computer is used about 75% for work, 20% for personal use (almost entirely web), and 5% for gaming. ~2 y.o. midrange rig w/ Intel CPU, AMD graphics, 32GB DDR4 RAM.

For work, I need lots of straightforward things: video conferencing on Teams (web is fine), Zoom, Word document editing (web is fine), a bunch of other web apps, some light database stuff, etc.

Plus two things that are a bit trickier: OneDrive professional/SharePoint (so I'll need abraunegg's onedrive) and Excel 2024 desktop (web isn't good enough) for which I'll need to run Windows (10? Ameliorated, maybe?) in a VM.

But I also want to do gaming. I wouldn't install a kernel-level rootkit anyway (and I boycott Denuvo), so SteamOS-level compatibility should work great for my needs. I also have a Quest 3, so I'll want to do PCVR, which apparently works great (with Bazzite).

But I don't really grok what Bazzite being immutable means for using it as a daily driver for work/productivity. Under the hood, it's just Fedora 42, right? For immutable distros, you use flatpaks instead of apt install, and they're basically just "apps" that should "just work", right? Do I care about kernel modification?

Or, more to the point, I don't know what I don't know. After preliminary research on this all, I think my plan of going for Bazzite then adding abraunegg's onedrive and a Windows VM with Office 2024 will hit all my needs, but can anyone "sanity check" that plan, or compare the pros/cons with a non-Ubuntu-based alternative?

I'm good enough with computers that I should be able to tinker through the inevitable small challenges that will come up, but I don't really have enough time to do it twice if my initial plan is terrible. (I connect to a Debian server remotely using the terminal, so I have some background—but I needed to install a bunch of packages to get web app software running, and idk if I'll need that as a desktop user.)

Any advice much appreciated! And thanks for reading this far, even if you don't comment. :)

Edit: thanks for the input so far! I'm turning in, but I'll read everything and reply to stuff tomorrow.

Im trying to figure out how online search funkcion works.. Didnt have much luck for now. And also general discusion about the app would be wery helpfull for eweryone.

What Distros do you want to shoutout and why you think they are doing well/are the best at what they do?

I am curious what is out there and have only had some experience with Linux Mint, SteamOS, and Pop!_OS

A new version of fontconfig release recently with the added option to disable bitmap fonts. If you're using a rolling release distro, this might break bitmap fonts for you. It definitely does on Arch (and likely Arch-based distros) because they opted to disable them by default for some reason (AFAICT upstream gives the choice but does not recommend one way or the other).

This'll cause fontconfig to skip bitmap fonts, your apps won't be able to access them.

To fix it, you need to configure fontconfig to not ignore bitmap fonts. There are a number of ways to do that.

I'd recommend a user-level fontconfig file. Create $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/fontconfig/fonts.conf with below contents and you get your bitmap fonts back. This negates the file in /etc/fonts/conf.d/70-no-bitmaps-except-emoji.conf. This is the first time I'm configuring fontconfig so there may be a better way ¯_(ツ)_/¯

This should've definitely been news imo especially because this is not the default behavior of upstream. I shouldn't have to read fontconfig PRs to figure out why my fonts broke, even on Arch.

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM "urn:fontconfig:fonts.dtd">
<fontconfig>
  <description>Accept bitmap fonts</description>
  <!-- Accept bitmap fonts -->
  <selectfont>
    <acceptfont>
      <pattern>
        <patelt name="outline"><bool>false</bool></patelt>
        <patelt name="scalable"><bool>false</bool></patelt>
      </pattern>
    </acceptfont>
  </selectfont>
</fontconfig>

I've been using Pop!_OS for a few years now, and it's worked like a dream. Everything works out-of-the-box, and gaming on Linux has never been easier. But it almost works a little too well. Learning Linux as opposed to Windows for all my games was a fun challenge.

But, now that I'm familiar with how to set up any game that needs a little help besides Proton, I'm starting to want to delve into my OS more to see what I can customize, and I think picking a new distro with slightly different architechture will be very nice.

Don't get me wrong, I still want something that works by itself more often than not. But I would love to have something a little more cutting-edge that gives me a little more control.

I started with Linux by installing Kubuntu, and I really miss KDE Plasma. I know Kubuntu is still on Plasma 5, and I've been wanting to find a distro that lets me use Plasma 6.

I've narrowed my choices down to three distros: Nobara, Garuda, and Bazzite.

So far, I've confirmed that Nobara and Garuda come with Plasma 6, but I haven't found that information for Bazzite yet.

So, what do you think about these distros? What are the pros and cons for you?

I'm leaning the most toward Garuda - but I'm worried Arch may be TOO big of a leap. I really just learned that Fedora is not Arch-based, so I know Garuda will be a bit of the odd one out of the three.

TL;DR: Nobara, Garuda, Bazzite - which one is good and do any suck?

EDIT:

Thanks, everyone, for the insightful and helpful comments! From what everyone has said, I've come to find that either CachyOS or Solus will fit my needs best.

CachyOS seems optimized for gaming, while Solus' curated rolling releases seem (to my untrained eye at least) to be somewhat of a step between the way Debian-based distros upgrade and the way Arch-based distros upgrade.

I'd love to hear people's experiences with both of these! I think I'm going to try to dual-boot them and see what setup looks like for both.😄

I installed Linux Mint on my Lenovo Yoga 7 laptop and it's been great, with the one exception of not really having a tablet mode when I flip the screen. Its not a huge deal, but I watch shows that way and sometimes miss an on-screen keyboard.

The actual keyboard stays active when flipped, which is fine until I pick it up or have it on my lap and accidentally hit some random key.

It seems from some looking around that Mint doesn't do great with this and I'm open to a different distro that's fairly beginner friendly, but even better if there are some options I'm missing to keep what I have.

I'm just so sick of Microsoft and Google. But there's two things holding me back:

1. I wanna play Steam games on my PC

2. I am just an amateur hobbyist, not a tech wizard

Is there any hope for me?

I made the jump off windows to EndeavourOS. I work from home most days of the week, and as such RDP to my workstation(laptop on a dock nearby).

I need an RDP client that can authenticate to win11 RDP, and support audio/mic to the session. Being able to span dual-screen is a plus.

I can't install any software on the work PC as I do not want to fall foul of the security team.

RDesktop doesn't support mic input. Remmina doesn't appear to authenticate to win11 properly. FreeRDP not updated in 8 years?

Sometimes my entire screen will turn green requiring a reboot. This has happened while gaming but also while watching videos in browser. I'm trying out undervolting/underclocking using LACTL. Have you experienced this? What was the cause and how did you fix it?