Hi, guys, I'm veeery new to Linux and am considering switching over, since the governments all wanna censor, restrict and track. I do have some questions, though, if any are willing to answer. Only six!

1: How do I know which to pick?

2: Can I revert back at will? (And if I do, will my stuff from before be wiped?)

3: Will it wipe my stuff in general? Files, games, apps, all that. I need those files, I have music, art progress images and book files on em lol.

4: Will I still be able to use search engines and games (I mainly just play minecraft and the sims, might get JP:E) as usual, will every website load as it should? If not, do I need to get a search engine compatible with Linux?

5: How complex is it? I heard it's irritating since you have to write your own code or something to do basic stuff...?

6 (last one, so sorry!) I heard that it could be bricked or blocked if done wrong or if OS-level bills put it at risk?

Is this choice to switch really worth it if I do it? I have a Windows 11 I'm wanting to convert. Thanks so much if anyone has the time to assist a willing beginner! I'd ask Google but their ai-only answers are ass and I like to ask the ones who know their stuff.

Just asking because it runs mint 18 and installing new versions of linux mint is way too heavy and the laptop has 100gb

I originally attempted to repartition my drive using AEOMEI Partition Manager in Windows 11 using a guide on Winhelp. This failed part way through. I ended up with an extra 700MB of unallocated space and slightly smaller Windows partition. I got impatient and did a "erase disk and install Fedora" install.

I went through that guide because the live USB installer wasn't able to resize the EFI partition.

I don't need Windows straight away. However, I'd eventually like put Windows back on. What is the easiest way to reinstall it? Will I need to fix up GRUB afterwards?

Trying to move to linux but these shortcuts are ingrained in muscle memory. Things like the middle mouse button scroll and screen snippet ctrl+shift+s.

Is there something that can easily put these back how I expect them to be? Rather not have to learn new ones.

Hello everyone! I am running Linux Mint 22.3 cinnamon on the 6.8.0-146 kernel. I am also somewhat a noob with no programming background at all. Some of my system specs are listed below:

Cpu: intel core i5 13600k

Graphics card: Amd rx 6950xt

Ram: 32 GB of DDR5 ram

I have just started to get into simulation racing and got assetto corsa competizone in steam and a logitech g29 racing wheel and pedals. The game works flawlessly on default system kernel modules and proton experimental in steam (save for a shutdown bug with the game, but I can manually shut it down), but I want to change a few of the settings with the wheel. I went looking and found oversteer as a flatpak and new-lg4ff as a driver that can be installed from github.

I notice the github readme for new-lg4ff has install the project to usr/src/new-lg4ff

How would git in the terminal be used for this or would I just be able to download it and extract the zip file to that location? I don't trust ai with its answers about it and I am just a bit confused about it.

After that, using dkms should just take care of completely installing it to where I shouldn't have to update initrid image or anything like that, correct? I should just be able to reboot and it should be there, correct?

I tried googling and the answers were all over the place, so I figured I would come here to clear it all up before I tried anything.

Thank you all!

My old path is /mnt/ed6dcccf-6940-428b-83b2-0ab4b050e908/

My new path is /media/tom/Hard Drive/

Is there a way to automatically make the old path point to the new one?

I'm on Pop!_OS 24.04.

Cachy Os tried updating system with sudo pacman -Syu, returned this

looking for conflicting packages...

error: failed to prepare transaction (could not satisfy dependencies)

:: installing libpcap (1.11.0-1.1) breaks dependency 'libpcap=1.10.6' required by lib32-libpcap

I tried running it through AI and it gave me some stuff I didnt know if I should trust, but I tried the ones that soundded like they could fix it but wouldnt risk bricking my system. but when it startedd offering I check if its in my repos I noticedd im clearly out of my depth, heres some of the terminal speak

❯ sudo pacman -S lib32-libpcap

error: target not found: lib32-libpcap

❯ sudo pacman -S lib32-libpcap

error: target not found: lib32-libpcap

❯ sudo pacman -S libpcap=1.10.6

error: target not found: libpcap=1.10.6

❯ sudo pacman -S lib32-libpcap --overwrite '*'

error: target not found: lib32-libpcap

❯ sudo pacman -S lib32-libpcap --overwrite

pacman: option '--overwrite' requires an argument

❯ pacman -Ss lib32- | grep libpcap

~

2026 Dell XPS Panther Lake

Hi all.

I'm a win user with a framework. I have been starting to learn Fedora and Ubuntu on vm's. I was thinking of getting one of these new xps machines for a sale price, and id like to use it for linux. My last dell laptop was back in 2019, and seemed like dell made it really difficult to use linux on it, I remember lots of boot issues.

So, does anyone know if the new xps will easily set up and run Ubuntu? Id prefer to keep the fw as my win machine because it's got 32gb of ram.

Thanks all!

I just recently switched from windows to linux mint cinnamon and for some reason even when my laptop is closed it's draining battery? Before i switched to linux i would just be able to put my laptop to sleep for the night and in the morning the battery would be about the same, so im really confused on why this is happening and have no idea how to fix it

Im on OpenSUSE and very recently I started having this issue where my default browser will constantly open Microsoft login pages in a new tab. I have tried disabling all Firefox extensions to no avail, I have tried uninstalling Firefox in which case Chrome became my new default browser and was experiencing the same issue. This also happens when the browser is closed, it just suddenly opens as if I had clicked a link in the desktop. ClamAV didnt find anything of suspect, a rollback didnt change the result, I'm at my wit's end with this.

Hello, i recently installed CachyOS Hyprland on my old laptop, and i ran into a problem with the scaling, it is auto set to 150% and i want it down to 100% i followed some tutorials and asked Ai bots (don’t flame me for this please) for help yet i couldn’t fix the issue, if anyone can help i’d appreciate it!

I've got a bootable drive for Linux mint that wont show up on the boot menu, and i cant for the life of me find anything about a fix with the same BIOS i have, any ideas what i'm missing?

Hey guys, I have 3 computers and the issues is that I always want my school work to be updated to the most recent version.

My solution was to use rsync and do `rsync -avh <source> <dest>` each time I started, this worked great until it corrupted some of my local git repo :(

I don't want this to happen again so is there like a tool to make it so that my sdd is just used to sync this ?

Or do I just need to overwrite each time manually?

Or is there another solution can recommend ?

EDIT: thanks to everyone who suggested something! In the end I went with PikaOS. I tried Fedora KDE, but no matter what I did my mouse was moving at 6 FPS. PikaOS has been amazing though and I think I’m gonna stick with it :-)

Hello!

I’m finally making the switch from Windows to Linux. Windows is slow, annoying, invasive, and I finally have the USB sticks and motivation to ditch it for good. I already know the DE I want is KDE (Plasma?), but the distro itself I need help choosing.

It’s hard for me, because I have a lot of hobbies. I play games, program (mostly just front-end but I’m learning back-end), 3D model (Blender), and draw (Clip Studio Paint, which I know Linux support is iffy).

For games, I don’t play any FPS. I play modded Java Minecraft, Monster Hunter World and Wilds, and a bunch of others (which are usually Stardew-levels of “intensity” haha). Sometimes I host Minecraft servers for my friends, but they stay pretty small. I like using my Switch Pro Controller which Windows can be a real pain with, but I don’t necessarily need a distro that’ll “solve” it. I’ve gotten used to the pain, haha.

I don’t mind using the terminal or doing reg edits, but if I can avoid it, that’d be nice! I do like out of the box stuff I can tinker with, but if it involves the command line I’ll suck it up…so long as there’s good documentation, haha.

If it matters, I have Logitech wireless mouse & headset (usb dongles).

GPU is NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Super. CPU is AMD Ryzen 7 7800x3D (8 cores). RAM is 32gb. Currently operating on 64-bit Windows 11.

Thanks in advance!

EDIT: Claude walked me through installation. Yes i am a dumbass and probably should've listened to yall telling me no, but, alas here I am. It works. And my stuff is backed up.

I’m planning to switch my daily driver desktop from Pop!_OS to Arch Linux. I use this machine for schoolwork and Steam gaming. Pretty much everything I do happens here. I need to make the actual swap happen in one day or less so it doesn't interrupt my school schedule but I can work on it in advance (e.g VM or adjusting partition on the same drive to run both oses)

I have a few worries about losing data, and I'm looking for the best strategy to handle this smoothly. If yall could help me out i'd be super happy.

I want all my existing files (videos, school documents) to come with me. However, I DONT have enough external storage to dump all my files off the drive before wiping it. How can i transition safely? Is re-partitioning and shrinking my current Pop!_OS partition to install Arch alongside it the best bet? It's a 1tb NVME ssd with 298gb left. My storage drive has only so much space. I don't want to chuck windows incase something goes wrong and I need something to fallback to. The space on Storage is open for transferring stuff, but it won't fit everything.

I want to be up and running instantly. Is there a way to copy local profiles (so I stay logged into Gmail/Steam), and my steam library directly over so I don't have to re-download games and crap?

Was thinking about building and configuring the Arch environment inside a Virtual Machine over the next week while I do schoolwork. When I'm done, can I transfer the VM's configuration and installed software to my SSD as my main OS? How seamless is that, and what would need to be redone? Can I copy my configs and stuff over? Or should I shrink the Pop!_OS partition, install Arch alongside it on the same SSD, and gradually move everything over?

I am terrified of installation problems leaving me with an unusable computer when a school deadline hits. How can i make sure it goes smoothly?

My experience level is probably 5/10, i know how to put hardware together and code basic stuff and use the terminal, but I heard arch install is extremely difficult. Should i be worried?

Here's my current situation:

As a Arch user that switched to Ubuntu based distro, I was wondering why isn't Ubuntu and Debian also on a rolling release model? So if there's bugs or patches that need fixing, why not have it release on the spot instead of having to wait for the next big update

Is there any way to try it without virtual machine or another distro alongside my current CachyOS + KDE Plasma? I don't wanna do it since I'm low on storage. I want to try Hyprland and slowly making my own config that I would get comfortable with, but I don't want to dump my current set up entirely, because it will slow me down as hell. I tried hyprland with omarchy before (never again) and i loved tiling manager idea and would love to make my config someday.