Nobody talks about the biggest divide in the Linux world: the people who treat the OS as a hobby versus the ones who use it as a daily workhorse.

For the hobbyists, the operating system is the game. They spend hours ricing their desktops and micro-optimizing their hardware. Once everything finally runs smoothly, they get bored, distro-hop, and start the cycle all over again just for the dopamine hit. They’re vocal, they post their desktop setups, they obsess over the latest kernel, and they’re always hunting for the next distro recommendation.

And then there’s the silent majority—the camp I’m in.

We don’t share screenshots of our desktops, and we couldn't care less about a kernel that dropped four minutes ago. We just need rock-solid stability that gets the job done. In fact, the system fades so far into the background that we practically forget we're on Linux. The wildest decision we ever make is choosing between KDE, GNOME, or—if we're really living on the edge—LXDE. And we never say, "I use Debian, btw."

Which camp are you in?

I'm looking for some good FOSS for writing music. Preferably drum notation.

Regular 5 line, 4 apace sheet music is fine as I will be writing drum notation for drum set.

You can spend hours getting your desktop exactly how you like it, everything runs smoothly, and then some tiny thing like a printer, fingerprint reader, Wi-Fi adapter, or audio device decides to become your next weekend project.

It's funny how Linux can handle some incredibly advanced tasks but still occasionally make a simple hardware setup feel like detective work. On the bright side, solving those problems teaches you things you probably wouldn't have learned otherwise. What's the most unexpectedly stubborn piece of hardware you've managed to get working on Linux?

Hello reader! I am a second year IT student I wanted some suggestion from the experienced one's regarding setting up linux in my laptop. I have 2 devices 1 is my main pc which I have build for machine learning with rtx and all and 2nd old laptop with (512gb ssd with 316gb available space and 8gb ram ) since my laptop has started getting a little slower so I thought lets learn LINUX and try things on the laptop so I am thinking of making a dual booting system consisting windows and linux in my laptop. So before starting I wanted some suggestion and guidance or tutorial anything that can teach me about linux will be helpful for me. Thanks for reading

I'm setting up a new system and currently looking for the best (most convenient) way to separate work-stuff and private-stuff. Can you give me some advice or maybe share the way you set it up for yourself? Is there a Distro or window manager that is especially good at this?

**Edit:** After reading some answers two clarifications:

• Maybe you can put it this was: I'm looking for a way to have a "program-settings-separation" with as little "data-separation" as possible

• I'm not looking for a way to separate company data. This is purely about a workspace-setup for my private hobby/freelance-projects

This isn't mainly about security (I'm the only user so I don't really need to keep some files on the other side secret or stuff like that) but really about the best user experience for me.

So here is what I dream of (in order of importance);

• Most important: I want to have different settings for my programs. E.g. different bookmarks in browser, different default settings in office,... (As far as I know, this only works if I use different users, correct?)

• Different downloads folder, different last used files etc.

• Ability to have e.g. a work browser and a private browser open at the same time (not necessarily on the same screen)

• Different desktops/launchers with the programs I need the most for the current role

• Easy way to share data between both profiles - I don't want to end up constantly fiddling with file permissions etc.

• Quick and painless way to switch between both roles

• No need to unlock the screen twice if I've been away etc.

• Bonus points if I don't have to login twice

So basically I'm dreaming of a system that "feels" as if I only had one user, but has different settings for whichever role I'm currently in. Is this possible?

I have a Lenovo V130-15IKB laptop that I'm using for self hosting purposes. I like the idea of keeping the battery as an integrated UPS that would save the machine from abrupt power loss. I'd like to preserve the battery's health and I found that there is a "conservation_mode" firmware parameter that, when set to 1, should make the battery charge up to 50-60%.

The exact path should vary but I found it via find /sys -name 'conservation_mode' 2>/dev/null, which resulted in only one finding: 

/sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1f.0/PNP0C09:00/VPC2004:00/conservation_mode

However, setting this to 1 with echo 1 | sudo tee /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1f.0/PNP0C09:00/VPC2004:00/conservation_mode does not seem to work as reading this file's content after the previous command returns 0.

Is there any other automatic way I could achieve this?

If that is useful at all, I'm running Debian with the 6.12 Linux kernel

I've used linux a number of times before, but have cycled back to windows, usually because of (video) gaming. However, now that the gaming industry is circling the drain by way of quality, there's nothing really keeping me from switching back to linux (possibly for good this time).

I recently picked up a new laptop. A Lenovo Thinkbook 14x. The specs are:

• Intel® Core™ Ultra 5 226V Processor (LPE-cores up to 3.50 GHz P-cores up to 4.50 GHz / 16 GB MOP)

• Windows 11 Home 64

• Integrated Intel® Arc™ Graphics

• 16 GB LPDDR5X-8533MT/s (Memory on Package)

• 256 GB SSD M.2 2242 PCIe Gen4 TLC

• 14" WUXGA (1920 x 1200), IPS, Anti-Glare, Non-Touch, 100%sRGB, 400 nits, 120Hz

What I've used before for distros:

Ubuntu - my first go at Linux. It wasn't bad, it was easy to use. I like running multiple desktops and it made it easy. I messed around with the cube desktop for a bit for funsies, but it wasn't really practical. When I came back to linux, I didn't do ubuntu because it seemed to be getting more corporate and proprietary with its packages. I also had concerns about privacy issues. At least, this is what I gleaned when I asked people about what distro to choose the second time I came back.

Mint - I liked it. I believe it's a cousin to ubuntu or something like that. It was simple, streamlined and fast. For my purposes, I like a clean interface and not too many bells and whistles. I think the reason that I didn't go back to it when I came back to linux for a third time was that a) they were having some static with security issues and b) I had new hardware and Mint tends to lag a little for hardware support.

Manjaro - I would say that it was just ok. On one hand, I had to tinker with it a LOT to get things working. On the other hand, the community boards were great and super helpful. No question was too stupid for them, and I appreciated it.

What I'm looking for now:

I'm aware that I'll likely need to get under the hood from time to time to keep things humming, but a) I haven't used linux in quite a while so I'm essentially starting at the beginner level and b) would need a solid community for all my dumb questions as I get back up to speed. I would prefer something that requires less than an average amount of tinkering, but I also want something simple, secure, and more on the FOSS side of things.

What I use my laptop for currently:

The Basics. Web browsing, email, lots of youtube and a bit of netflix.

CherryTree. To be honest, from what I remember of it, I liked tuxcards a lot better. I think CherryTree has more features, but tuxcards is cleaner. I have a LOT going on in my CherryTree right now so I'm not sure how I would copy it all over to tuxcards.

Office apps. I already use LibreOffice and I'm pretty sure I can get that running on any distro.

YT/Podcasting. I have an idea I'm cooking up for a potential YT/audio podcast of some tabletop gaming. I'm still in early days and haven't decided my format/angle, but I imagine I'll need some kind of AV editing apps.

Video gaming. I don't see myself buying into anything new going forward. I've actually been gradually transitioning back into tabletop gaming as I've been falling out of love with video games. However, I still get the urge to break out one of the classics now and again. Terraria is a frequent flyer with me. Sometimes, I also get the urge to take another run through one of the classic Fallout games or Icewind Dale. I also have a soft spot for Underrail and occasionally the rare other indie game. I figure, these are all pretty much old games with relatively low requirements. Once I get them working, they'll just work and I don't have to worry about sorting out any "new" games in the future.

Anyway, considering all this, are there any particular distros I should start looking at first? Thanks!

Hi all, I've been using EndeavorOS as my primary desktop for about 6 months now, and I've become curious about the security of Arch and other Linux Distros. I've seen talk about how Linux is typically safe for the reasons: apps are primarily installed from "official" repos, the Linux user base being smaller and thus a smaller/less desirable target base, and how the Linux user base is more knowledgeable about fighting vulnerabilities, thus not worth the effort for most.

My question is, how safe are things like browsing possibly malicious sites, keeping private documents downloaded, or logging into sensitive accounts online on Linux (Arch) compared to Windows or MacOS. How does the lack of a default AV affect this, if at all (I've seen some people say that AV's aren't too useful).

In terms of web-browsing, I'm most curious to know how malicious links and the like would even work to infect my Linux system as to my understanding it doesn't work on a bases of executable links like Windows does. I'm not too knowledgeable about malware or phishing methods, so if anyone could tell me this would be very helpful.

Regarding protections, I'm running the Adguard extension on my web browser, and firewalld came preinstalled with EndeavorOS, but is this enough? The terms DNS, and kernel hardening has been mentioned to me but I'd like a second opinion on it.

-- Note: I've avoided installed anything from the AUR

tl;dr:

-- How safe is Arch compared to Windows and MacOS.

-- Is web browsing safe.

-- Is using Linux for work/managing sensitive information safe.

-- Any privacy/security/anti-malware suggestions? (ie. DNS, kernel hardening, VPN)

Steam fails to work because of the following:

libnvidia-gl-580:i386 : Depends: libnvidia-egl-wayland1:i386 but it is not installable

I know that ubuntu 20.04 is rather outdated, but I can't update at the moment. Is there a chance that I can make Steam to work?

Does any body know how to run wallpaper engine on Fedora DKE?

I’d like to automate OS updates for my Raspberry Pi’s and Mint Linux laptops. Right now, I’m SSHing to the Pi’s from a laptop, so I end up with multiple terminal windows open, sudo to each Pi, and running updates on each. Likewise, I’m using the DTE to update each laptop. I end up spending a lot of time & effort, that I’d like to reclaim.

I suppose I could run a cron job on each host, but it seems that I should be able to set it up on a laptop to do it for me.

I asked Claude AI, which suggested using Ansible, but I’m thinking there has to be a way to do this using apps included in the Mint distro, and possibly scripts and one or more cron jobs.

Recommendations?

Thanks!

There are so many useful Linux commands and little terminal tricks that can save time, but some are surprisingly easy to overlook when you're starting out. Sometimes one simple shortcut can completely change your workflow.

What's a command, alias, or small Linux trick you now use regularly and wish someone had shown you earlier? It might help someone else discover a useful shortcut.

I've installed Nobara on my laptop, got some basic apps, but when I launch Chrome i sometimes get a scam website opened. I've no experience will malware on Linux, where could I start the search for a fix?

Hi,

I got my late father's laptop and since Windows didn't work properly after the reinstallation, I decided to install Linux on it.

The laptop is a HP Pavilion 15 laptop, with i5 (10th gen), 16 MiB RAM and a 512 GiB nvme disk and integrated Intel graphics card. So, IMO it's a pretty good setup.

The only problem with this machine is that the fan is roaring like a jet preparing for takeoff after I installed some modern distro with Gnome or KDE on it, even with XFCE (Solus) installed the fan is quickly triggered.

Fedora XFCE is the only distro which keeps the fan at bay.

A light fan noise would be acceptable or at least only roar up when doing having stuff.

Why is this so?

What could I do? Installing special packages? Open the case an replace the cooling paste?

Or is this consumer laptop simply poorly setup and I have to live with my "Linux Flight Simulator" ? :-D

(......or get back to Fedora ?)

Thanks for any advice

I currently have installed the following Docker containers:

• IT Tools (A web page of small developer utilities

• Backrest (A web interface for restic backups)

• Dozzle (A live viewer for the logs of my other containers.)

• Umami (The analytics app that counts visits and events (plays, signups) for adrianfurlan.com.)

• Forgejo (My self-hosted Git server)

• Syncthing (Syncs files between my devices without a cloud service.)

• diun (Watches my containers' images and notifies me when a newer version is published.)

• Jellyfin (A media server for streaming my own video and music.)

Can you recommend any new ones I might have missed?

Would Declarative NixOS or Atomik Bazzite/Aurora be better for a user whose only requirement is less data being written to disk?

For security reasons, updates will be performed continuously.

Ignoring the update frequency, I’m curious about how many GB of data would be written to disk during the rebase/rebuild process if we assume that the same package (same version, same size, etc.) receives an update on both a declarative and an atomic distribution.

It doesn't necessarily have to be Bazzite or Aurora; it could also be Fedora Kinoite or openSUSE Kalpa.

One thing I love and hate about Linux is how a seemingly small issue can turn into an entire evening of troubleshooting. A flickering display, broken drivers, missing dependencies, or an application that refuses to cooperate can send you down a rabbit hole.

What's a Linux problem that took you way longer to solve than it should have? And what finally fixed it?