Linux

Hello everyone! I know that Linux GUI advanced in last few years but we still lack some good system configuration tools for advanced users or sysadmins. What utilities you miss on Linux? And is there any normal third party alternatives?

cross-posted from: https://lemmings.world/post/17893006

I am in the market for a new laptop. I have searched quite a lot and decided to go with Lenovo. I am connected to mains most of the time and I am looking for compute power over efficiency. So the new Intel Lunar Lake 258V processors are not for me. That means Zenbook S14 is out of discussion. Also before anyone push a Framework plug, No! Framework laptops are not available where I live.

Its for my personal use and my preferred setup is Gnome on EndeavourOS. and its mainly used as a media consumption device. But occasionally it could run ffmpeg h265 encoding, run one or two moderately heavy podman containers (like Jellyfin) and sometimes a 6GB RAM VM or a local LLM model (3b) (very rare).

Basically I have narrowed it down to two laptops:

• Lenovo Yoga Pro 7 Gen 9 (14, AMD) - AMD Ryzen AI 9 365 (Preferred)
• Lenovo ThinkPad P14s (AMD) Gen 5 - Ryzen 7 PRO 8840HS

With Yoga Pro 7 being my preferred pick. When similarly specked with 32GB RAM, both are almost similarly priced, with Yoga running about $200 extra. I feel that new ThinkPads are a little overpriced for what they offer, at-least where I live.

• Yoga has the new AMD architecture (Zen 5).
• Yoga's screen is better than ThinkPad's (2.8K OLED @ 120Hz vs FHD IPS @ 60Hz, OLED option is not available for ThinkPad here).
• Yoga has an Aluminum build. I haven't used ThinkPads in the past, but had a plastic Dell Latitude in the recently (2022) and its build quality and plastics were really bad. Currently I have an Aluminum built laptop (from 2018) and its so much better than Dell's.
• I prefer the aesthetics of Yoga over ThinkPad (Though its subjective).
• ThinkPad is a bit cheaper (by $200) and upgradable.

Yoga Pro 7 Gen 9 (14, AMD) being very new, I don't know about its Linux (EndeavourOS) compatibility.

Does the new Ryzen AI 9 300 series work well with Linux? This is the only linux-hardware.org probe for this laptop.
Yoga Pro 7 Gen 9 (14, AMD):

On the other hand, the ThinkPad P14s (AMD) Gen 5 works well with Arch with Ryzen 7 PRO 8840HS. This puts me in a dilemma, should I spend a little more and for the not heavily Linux tested, but new Strix Point (Ryzen 300 series) Yoga Pro 7 or go for a tested Ryzen 7 PRO 8840HS ThinkPad?

I am planing to keep my laptop for 5-6 years.

If anybody have the new gen AMD processor Laptops running Linux (Any Distro) please share your experience.

I need to use a Windows VM to do a few things - I'm on Fedora and my Xbox controller has been glitching out a lot and I need to try updating the firmware. Also, I got a new RGB keyboard and I'm not able to use the proprietary software using Wine and OpenRGB does not support my keyboard (Cosmic Byte GK34 Firefly).

But when I try to install a Win 10 ISO it won't let me past the Microsoft account page and the oobe command that's suggested everywhere on reddit is not working. It says no such command found.

Windows 11 ISOs also aren't working because even if I put 6GB memory and 80GB Storage for the VM (Microsoft lists 4GB and 64GB as requirement) it still says system does not meet requirement. I'm using the Boxes app for the VM creation.

Hi all,

I have an Intel NUC Skull Canyon. It's running POP_OS!

I purchase a microSD card, and it came with an SD Adaptor.

I've plugged it in, but nothing shows in files.

I have run lsusb, lspci, and even:

sudo lsblk -o MODEL,NAME,FSTYPE,LABEL,MOUNTPOINT,SIZE

However it's just not showing up anywhere.

The microSD is brand new, and a model called:

SAMSUNG 512 EVO Plus A2 V30.

I am not sure if the card is maybe so new, that linux can't see it yet? I doubt that.

I wonder if anyone has any ideas? I don't have another SD Adaptor, nor any other computer with an SD or microSD slot.

Thanks so muchy

Hey all,

My father's business requires him to work a lot with PDF forms, combine PDF files, convert scanned pictures to files, etc.

I've found Master PDF editor, but I've found it to be buggy -- specifically when trying to create a new PDF from multiple files the program errors out saying it can't create the file.

I've also tried running Foxxit PDF editor through WINE but that's abysmal.

Any recommendations on Linux native software paid or FOSS, that can fill forms, create/combine PDFs, and do basic edition (rotating pages, etc) that my 70 year old dad can learn to use?

I moved him away from Windows with the Windows 11 debacle, and he's liked Linux so far except for this one issue

Thanks all for your help?

***** EDIT *****

Thanks all for your responses, I'll be trying out StirlingpPDF, PDFSam, OnlyOffice, and re-trying MasterPDF editor over the holidays while I have some 1:1 time with my dad. Tl;Dr: playing family IT and switching your parents to Linux is rough 😂

I am considering moving away from Ubuntu, but I haven't tried other distributions for years. I started on Linux Mint Cinnamon back in 2012, but switched to Ubuntu when I built my current PC in 2020 because I wanted more up-to-date packages. Now I am faced with needing to replace my SSD which gives me reason enough to install a new distro. I have an AMD Ryzen 7 2700X with 32G of RAM and an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060, so I would need something that plays nicely with nvidia. I routinely use libreoffice, digikam, gimp, virtualbox, bambu studio, sublime text, filezilla, thunderbird, minecraft, steam, Open WebUI and Stable Diffusion (Automatic1111). I liked Ubuntu because it was familiar, fairly easy to customize, and everything was kept fairly well up to date. I am not a big fan of snap, and I would prefer a more logical and unified package management system. I was wondering if you all had some recommendations for me. Thanks

This week's headliner change is something that I think will make a lot of people happy: better fractional scaling! Vlad and Xaver have been hard at work to snap everything to the screen's pixel grid, with the effect that using a fractional scale factor now results in a lot less blurriness as well as no more gaps between windows and their shadows. You'll see it in the screenshot below (which was taken at 175% scale) but the effects are subtly better everywhere. Really great stuff! And lots more too, of course.

Incus is a next-generation system container, application container, and virtual machine manager.

It provides a user experience similar to that of a public cloud. With it, you can easily mix and match both containers and virtual machines, sharing the same underlying storage and network.

Incus is image based and provides images for a wide number of Linux distributions. It provides flexibility and scalability for various use cases, with support for different storage backends and network types and the option to install on hardware ranging from an individual laptop or cloud instance to a full server rack.

When using Incus, you can manage your instances (containers and VMs) with a simple command line tool, directly through the REST API or by using third-party tools and integrations. Incus implements a single REST API for both local and remote access.

The Incus project was created by Aleksa Sarai as a community driven alternative to Canonical's LXD. Today, it's led and maintained by many of the same people that once created LXD.

From https://kde.org/community/donations/previousdonations/

i was just wondering because i do talk to my friends most of the time through email and since gmail lets you add mpop and mop3 to email clients i figured it would be an interesting idea to use an email client on the terminal with built in notifications and stuff, thanks so much

PortsInfo is a simple desktop app that shows a list of active network ports on your linux systems.

In other words, it shows you which servers are running on your computer.

It's a graphical equivalent of running netstat -plunt in a terminal.

The app supports quick search with CTRL+F shortcut.

Hopefully this will be useful to newbies and system administrators.

Has there been any mention of time management tools getting built in into GNOME? I thought I read something a short while ago that would land in one of the next versions, but I can't seem to find anything about it anymore. It had some sort of pomodoro timer as part of it and I thought it was a neat feature to look out for. Can't seem to find it anymore though. Perhaps it was a GNOME Circle post?

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/23071801

Considering a lot of people here are self-hosting both private stuff, like a NAS and also some other is public like websites and whatnot, how do you approach segmentation in the context of virtual machines versus dedicated machines?

This is generally how I see the community action on this:

Scenario 1: Fully Isolated Machine for Public Stuff

Two servers one for the internal stuff (NAS) and another for the public stuff totally isolated from your LAN (websites, email etc). Preferably with a public IP that is not the same as your LAN and the traffic to that machines doesn't go through your main router. Eg. a switch between the ISP ONT and your router that also has a cable connected for the isolated machine. This way the machine is completely isolated from your network and not dependent on it.

Scenario 2: Single server with VM exposed

A single server hosting two VMs, one to host a NAS along with a few internal services running in containers, and another to host publicly exposed websites. Each website could have its own container inside the VM for added isolation, with a reverse proxy container managing traffic.

For networking, I typically see two main options:

• Option A: Completely isolate the "public-facing" VM from the internal network by using a dedicated NIC in passthrough mode for the VM;
• Option B: Use a switch to deliver two VLANs to the host—one for the internal network and one for public internet access. In this scenario, the host would have two VLAN-tagged interfaces (e.g., eth0.X) and bridge one of them with the "public" VM’s network interface. Here’s a diagram for reference: https://ibb.co/PTkQVBF

In the second option, a firewall would run inside the "public" VM to drop all inbound except for http traffic. The host would simply act as a bridge and would not participate in the network in any way.

Scenario 3: Exposed VM on a Windows/Linux Desktop Host

Windows/Linux desktop machine that runs KVM/VirtualBox/VMware to host a VM that is directly exposed to the internet with its own public IP assigned by the ISP. In this setup, a dedicated NIC would be passed through to the VM for isolation.

The host OS would be used as a personal desktop and contain sensitive information.

Scenario 4: Dual-Boot Between Desktop and Server

A dual-boot setup where the user switches between a OS for daily usage and another for hosting stuff when needed (with a public IP assigned by the ISP). The machine would have a single Ethernet interface and the user would manually switch network cables between: a) the router (NAT/internal network) when running the "personal" OS and b) a direct connection to the switch (and ISP) when running the "public/hosting" OS.

For increased security, each OS would be installed on a separate NVMe drive, and the "personal" one would use TPM with full disk encryption to protect sensitive data. If the "public/hosting" system were compromised.

The theory here is that, if properly done, the TPM doesn't release the keys to decrypt the "personal" disk OS when the user is booted into the "public/hosting" OS.

People also seem to combine both scenarios with Cloudflare tunnels or reverse proxies on cheap VPS.

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What's your approach / paranoia level :D

Do you think using separate physical machines is really the only sensible way to go? How likely do you think VM escape attacks and VLAN hopping or other networking-based attacks are?

Let's discuss how secure these setups are, what pitfalls one should watch out for on each one, and what considerations need to be addressed.

The case for Linux and openSUSE is clear. Linux provides viable, cost-effective and sustainable alternatives. Users can enjoy a free, open-source operating system that doesn’t require costly upgrades or restrictive hardware requirements with installing openSUSE. Here are a few things users that want to transition can consider:

• Complete Transparency: Linux distributions like openSUSE are governed by open-source principles, ensuring clear and consistent development.
• No Forced Obsolescence: openSUSE supports a wide range of hardware like modern machines to older PCs that allow users to extend the life of their devices.
• Cost Savings: openSUSE is free to use, with no licensing fees or hidden subscription costs for extended support.

By switching to Linux, users can help combat e-waste as every PC saved from a landfill is a win for the environment.

Hi all, I want to do some screen recording on my linux desktop. And like a normal-functioning member of society, I decided to do it the hardest way and learn ffmpeg CLI to do it. Why? well, something about using underlying tools and customizing their usage excites me.

I have already started doing this, and I am finding I have to do a lot of trial and error to get things right. Before I dive deeper, I want to ask: Am I limiting myself in doing this? Is there anything I could be missing out on taking this route, or something that ffmpeg could not do on its own that a dedicated solution can?

What will I use this for exactly? well, things like recording a video game as I play it (which I suppose will require hardware acceleration to be of viable quality), or recording a tutorial (requiring voice input from mic), things like that.

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/49620916

Now that 2024 is coming to the end and Christmas around the corner, have you considered any donations to be given? If yes where?

Ethernet plugged in but there is no internet. I have no idea what happened. I just took a normal update like I always do and after that it was all gone. WiFi connects no problem, but there is no internet. Unplugged Ethernet and replugged it back in. Nothing. I dualboot with windows, internet works fine there, so there is no hardware issue. Went into a live environment and chrooted into it and reinstalled network manager and still not a fucking thing. Not sure what these are now. I know about the lo one, but never seen the second wired connection or the virbr0. Any idea how to get my Internet back? I really don't want to reinstall the system because of this. And btw, I even tried a hotspot from my phone and a wire tether from it and still no internet.
System is endeavour OS with KDE on Wayland.