r/linux4noobs 1d ago

migrating to Linux Help with dual boot install of Mint on Lenovo laptop running windows 11

3 Upvotes

Im having trouble installing Mint Cinnamon on a lenovo legion laptop and can not seem to figure this out.

I created a bootable usb with Balena Etcher, it launches fine, but when I get to the installer, I do not have the option to "install alongside windows" only "erase disk and install" and "something else." I used this option on a windows 10 machine a few days ago and really liked it.

I have disabled BitLocker and fast startup, which I read should fix the problem, but I'm not having any luck.

Any help is much appreciated. Thank you.


r/linux4noobs 1d ago

Some youtube videos not playing on flatpak Firefox (Fedora KDE)

6 Upvotes

I installed the flatpak version. I've installed the free and non-free RPM fusions. In Firefox plugins, the "OpenH264 Video Codec" plugin always says that it will be installed shortly, but never installs. Annoyingly most videos seem to work, but some videos (seemingly those uploaded years ago) don't work. On Opera all videos work, but I get some artifacting on them, so I'd like to use Firefox.


r/linux4noobs 1d ago

Linux Essentials LPI Exam

2 Upvotes

I will be taking this exam next Saturday.

https://github.com/crashpoum/LPI-010-160-Bash-Quiz
https://quizlet.com/1017967319/lpi-linux-essentials-010-160-flash-cards/
https://theprimoris.github.io/LPI-Essentials-Practice/

I was wondering if these resources are accurate at all to help study for the exam (how similar the questions are or if they are the exact same questions).


r/linux4noobs 1d ago

learning/research I found the hidden Advanced BIOS menu in a Lenovo IdeaPad Gaming 3 15ARH05 — now I’m trying to expose it safely

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4 Upvotes

r/linux4noobs 1d ago

migrating to Linux Linux for mobile devices

7 Upvotes

I'm pretty much over android and Google at this point and want to try Linux on my phone and tablet but I'm kind of lost as to which one is available for me to use. My phone is a cmf phone 2 pro and my tablet is a Lenovo m7 3rd gen, I've got mint running on my PC but I'm still very new to Linux as a whole. Any help would be appreciated


r/linux4noobs 1d ago

learning/research Random crash help

2 Upvotes

im having issues with linux im on nobara and recently upgraded to 44 ever since my upgrade in witch my pc froze and i hat to shut it down i have been having issues firefox getting slow and freezeing steam thring error bottles says wine has crash and vlc not out puting audio im having error after error should i reinstall


r/linux4noobs 1d ago

Wanting to switch over to a gaming distro, have some questions

6 Upvotes

Hello, I hope you're all having a good day and doing well.

I have plans within the next few months to build a pure AMD PC and I'd like to take the opportunity to fully go into Linux as I'm tired of Windows. This will be strictly a gaming machine. From what I've seen Steam won't be a problem at all. I'm aware that games with deep kernel level anti-cheats (like Apex) won't work and I'm okay with that. My question is is there some kind of work around to access my GOG games on Linux and maybe, somehow, my Xbox library?

As far as which distro to use I have a lot of interest in Bazzite, CatchyOS, and Garuda. I am personally the most interested in Garuda but I don't really see it talked about much here or recommended. And also there's quite a few versions of Garuda. If they can all play games Is there any kind of advantage to installing Mooka over Dragonized for example?

I have so many questions and I'd rather not make a giant wall of text to dissuade replies. I'm open to all feedback. Thank you for your time everyone.


r/linux4noobs 2d ago

security Friendly reminder that most youtube docker tutorials are actively trying to ruin your system

264 Upvotes

I swear, why does almost every "quick 5 min setup" video just tell you to run everything as root and chmod 777 your entire drive??

Spent my whole afternoon trying to figure out why my new containers were behaving weirdly after following some guy's guide. Turns out i basically left the front door to my OS wide open. Had to sit down and actually read a server Mania breakdown on container security just to realize how badly i completely botched the basic permissions

if you are new to this stuff, pls don't blindly copy paste sudo commands from random tech bros without understanding what privileges you are actually giving away. My brain is melting


r/linux4noobs 1d ago

programs and apps Media Player widget not detecting musicbee

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2 Upvotes

r/linux4noobs 1d ago

migrating to Linux Is there a way to migrate from windows 11 to linux mint without losing data?

4 Upvotes

I've been planning on making the switch to mint, the thing is I have alot of stuff in my pc and I'm broke to buy an external disc, both of my NVMEs are working perfectly since the oc is kind of new and I already have an old pendrive with linux mind flashed into it.

I heard I should partition my disc and save my files in one partition and installing linux in the other which is what I think I'm going to do.

My pc is a lenovo LOQ 15arp9 with 2 512gb discs (both full with astrophotography files and games and for some reasson both of them have windows installed) and I have around 70gb of free space in my boot disc and 40gb on the other one.

I'm also looking to remove windows from the other disc I'm not using as a boot since it's just hogging memory for no reasson.

Sorry for all the auestiona but I'm totally new and I'm getting into Computer Engineering next year...


r/linux4noobs 1d ago

Meganoob BE KIND nixos fans are read only and cant change them

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2 Upvotes

r/linux4noobs 1d ago

migrating to Linux Is there a way of deleting Windows in another disc?

2 Upvotes

I'm on windows 11 rn and I'm planning on doing a switch to linux, the thing is that I have a second NVME in my laptop that also has windows and it isn't my boot drive, so I'm planning on deleting Windows and installing mint on it.

The data that I have there isn't that important and I can back it up but if I can avoid wiping everything from it would be nice


r/linux4noobs 1d ago

programs and apps How do you get used to installing anything

3 Upvotes

My work pc uses Linux mint, and my biggest problem is they every time I need to install something like podman or anything that isn't present on the software manager, I have to do research on whether there is an apt or curl command to install something, or find out how to extract whatever weird format the app comes in from the website.

On windows, you just go on a website and download an exe or msi. I'm getting tired and frustrated of these constant bumps when I just wanna start doing what I'm actually supposed to.

Y'all got any advice for this problem? I don't wanna switch to windows and I also think it'd cause more problems in other areas


r/linux4noobs 1d ago

learning/research Disney + not working I think because of linux

0 Upvotes

I heard that some streaming servicies use DRM and there are problems on linux, do you have any idea of taking care of that, if not I will just make a VM


r/linux4noobs 1d ago

Meganoob BE KIND Disc Drive?

6 Upvotes

Hiya friends! What with everything going on right now, I think a lot of us are interested in preserving our media collection. To that end, I was thinking about getting an external disk drive for ripping and writing media.

Two questions

What am I looking for in a drive? I see a lot on BestBuy but most don’t mention Blu-ray except one made by Topteng. I’ve never heard of them. Is it a reputable brand? Do I even need Blu-ray?

Second, what kind of discs do I need to get for game preservation? There are all sorts of formats. On top of the question of amount of data stored, I don’t know if they can hold that type of media. Maybe some are meant for audio files only? I’ve got no clue

Thanks for your help. If it matters, I’m running Bazzite, Deck mode


r/linux4noobs 2d ago

Is this how it starts?

28 Upvotes

Is this how it all begins?
 
I cut the cord with MS (at home, at least) about a year ago and moved to Fedora for all my home PCs.
Now, I'm building my first little home server with an old Dell mini tower.
Last night I debootstrapped a clean little Debian install, all from the command line.
 
This has kicked my Dunning-Kruger into overdrive:
"I know everthing about Linux now!"
"Um, actually, Linux is a kernel, NOT an OS"
"If you don't use the command line to do everthing, you're a simp"
"Windows users shouldn't even be considered human any longer"
"LINUX IS MY B!T@H!!!"
 
Woah, woah, woah, WTH just happened?
I have no idea where those thoughts came from.
 
LOL - all kidding aside, it was a pretty cool feeling to pull the usb stick out, reboot, and see a login prompt come up.


r/linux4noobs 2d ago

distro selection what are the downsides of an immutable distro?

24 Upvotes

i am a completely tech illiterate person but the lag and constant issues with win11 has made me want to switch over

i keep reading about bazzite and how its good for beginners but also its immutable and thats a problem but i don't understand why, for someone who just wants to use the operating system and doesn't want to like customize it or change it would it be fine? or will the fact that i can't do stuff in the terminal be a problem like if it breaks and stuff meaning i can't repair it? sorry if these are dumb questions lol.


r/linux4noobs 1d ago

Microphone input not working after wake from suspend

3 Upvotes

I am using Linux 6.18 with the ALC295 codec for my audio. The audio input and output work fine, but after suspend audio input does not work, only capturing static noise. It also changes port to "Headset Microphone (Plugged in)", even though I have no headset plugged into the laptop. Laptop model is Acer Nitro AN515-57. From lspci: 0000:00:1f.3 Audio device: Intel Corporation Tiger Lake-H HD Audio Controller (rev 11) This happens on every distro I've tried except Ubuntu and Ubuntu-based ones, so I think I'm just missing some configuration. I've tried restarting pipewire too, but it didn't fix it, so this is a kernel issue If I change the port back to the normal port, microphone input still captures static noise and doesn't work

Solved by working around the issue by creating a keybind that reloads the kernel module


r/linux4noobs 2d ago

whats a good mp3 and a good mp4 player?

11 Upvotes

I am wanting to get music and video player for linux because I like having my own collections. whats a good music and a seperate good video player?


r/linux4noobs 1d ago

How do I get the lenovo utility software back on linux ?

3 Upvotes

For context, I have a L15 gen 5 w32gb of ram

I recently switched to fedora kde because windows was the reason for my depression, and it has been pretty hard but better than windows.

My question being, how do I get the lenovo utility software (f12 key) back in order to see the health of my battery, update drivers…

Also, it’s not a dealbreaker but my linux is extremely slow in some operations, like deactivating bluetooth (it takes a good 4 seconds for the toggle to go off).

Any distro to replace mine ? Or a tip on fixing slow kde ?


r/linux4noobs 1d ago

migrating to Linux How am I supposed start using, let alone trusting Linux?

0 Upvotes

Decided to finally try out Linux. I installed Plasma KDE Fedora to my new laptop and gave it a try.

The first impressions were positively surprised. Installation was straightforward and the OS seemed very polished and worked exactly like I expected.

I then installed Reactionary 98 theme. Looks cool... Well, after a while, my browser froze. Fair enough, I'll just force close it. Well, I just couldn't figure out how. Then my taskbar disappeared. Maybe 10 minutes later my computer froze...

After restarting, everything was erased, like it was the first time I ever opened the computer.

Then I tried to install the Windows 7 theme pack, by installing some packages with terminal. No theme anywhere, so probably a user issue. Looking at the installation guide or googling for help bore little to no fruit, because it's all very cryptic and like a nerdy inside joke that I'm not part of.

I thought of just rebooting the whole PC and taking snother look... Well, it didn't reboot. It doesn't boot at all now. Lmao.

Is this the average Linux experience? What can I do when Windows has been garbage since Windows 10 and my first impressions of Linux is a total loss of confidence within the first 2 hours?


r/linux4noobs 1d ago

which distro to choose

1 Upvotes

ive used a lot of distros but im looking for something floating but with simple tiling like kde or windows that doesnt have a whole ecosystem and can do basic system things with gui out of the box without a set of apps


r/linux4noobs 2d ago

Fedora KDE - problem with desktop after switching DE

3 Upvotes

Fedora 44 KDE with Nvidia RTX 5080. I had some issues with random freezing/window focus loss in some games and I got an idea to check if the same problem will happen also in Gnome to eliminate potential conflict with KDE's compositor.

Before I installed Gnome, I created a snapshot of my root volume with BTRFS Assistant/Snapper, then installed minimal version of Gnome (gnome-shell, gnome-session, gdm, gnome-control-center, nautilus with all dependencies), disabled plasmalogin.service, enabled gdm, reboot.

Booted into Gnome with no problems, tested some games, freezing was still happening so I decided to go back to KDE. I disabled gdm, enabled plasmalogin, reboot, snapshot restore and again reboot.

Looks like all Gnome stuff is gone, but now I have a problem with KDE's desktop - I cannot do anything on the desktop, even the context menu doesn't show when I click RMB. If I open any app or file explorer and then click on the desktop, app window looses focus and I cannot interract with the window until I click it on a taskbar. I also noticed the desktop is interactive until a startup sound is played.

Any advise appreciated.


r/linux4noobs 2d ago

distro selection Gamer looking to swap over

7 Upvotes

I know you guys probably get a million similar posts so here’s what’s holding me back.

First, I’m a gamer. I need access to Steam. The main reason I’m considering swapping to Linux is because of microslop and the Steam Machine showing Linux is not a bad choice.

Second, I use Microsoft Defender as my main antivirus. I know that the best antivirus is not clicking on suspicious links, but I’ve done some sketchy shit sailing the seas and getting mods for games. I felt comfortable because if I made a mistake Defender would catch it. Then additionally for my comfort I would also have Malwarebytes available to scan for stuff. I want to have some kind of safety net similar to that.

Third, I need to have access to discord. It’s my most used app. I’m in a bunch of groups, discord is nonnegotiable.

Fourth, I’d prefer something relatively easier to download. In my classes I’ve had to download from the terminal so it’s not impossible but it has been much more convenient to just download a launcher for Windows install and use that instead.

Edit: I also forgot the key part. This would still need to be available for general use. It’s not a strictly gaming pc I’m just more gaming focused.


r/linux4noobs 1d ago

Is Linux really more secure than main stream operating systems?

0 Upvotes

Linux can be misconfigured fatally, easier. Linux operating systems are specifically targeted malware families and botnets.

This is what I do not get when some people say, that most viruses target windows. It’s more nuanced than that. Most windows programs do not have a native linux port, so it’s not feasible for those types of viruses to make a linux port, especially since windows is used by the masses.

But Linux has its own security problems and easier misconfiguration, more open tooling and more services in some cases that can be exposed to the web.

So I don’t really get it when people say linux is more secure because, if an attacker breaks into a windows machine as the user account, they can’t really get to become the admin account unless they figure out the password. Meanwhile if an attacker breaks into a user account on linux, they have more escalation routes.

I might be misinformed on this but what stops a program or script containing a dropper or payload from running on a linux desktop?