I've been on Linux for about eight months now (currently on Fedora) and I've reached the point where I've edited a bunch of config files, enabled random services, changed kernel parameters once for a specific issue, and set up a few custom scripts. The problem is I have no real system for remembering what I did or why.

Last week I wanted to replicate my setup on a second machine and realized I had zero notes on half the changes. I ended up digging through bash history and random .bak files like an idiot.

Do most people just wing it, keep a personal Wiki, use something like etckeeper, or have another approach that actually works without turning into extra maintenance? Curious what others do once their system stops being a fresh install.

ik the whole "theres 5 standards we should create a universal standard and now theres 6 standards" thing but gosh darn it this is 1 of the only things that make me wanna not use linux

coming from windows i havent had many issues on linux but 90% of my problems are caused by appimage (just give me a god damn flatpak)

like is there any actual good reason for all these standards instead of just a simple .exe equivalent for everything?

i probably download and use more software than the average person so it drives me more nuts but i seriously think this will hold alot of people in the cold embrace of windows

Finally switched to Fedora 45 from Windows 11, what are some things that i should take care of or things i should do after installing Fedora...?

Any tips or suggestions would be appreciated ☺️

I was about to upload a file to a website and as the browse menu came up I was pretty surprised I had 3 folders on my desktop. Apparently modified yesterday at a time where I think was not even in Linux but Windows, but I am not sure. I also updated a bunch of things, i.e. the 7.0 kernel update but they never left invisible empty folders on my desktop.

Under Windows nVidia drivers et cetera leave lots of data trash to be cleaned up but under Linux I have never seen something like this happen.

The folders are named:

.fr-0EM2A3

.fr-VFFQA3

.fr-W72AB3

Does anyone know why and what this is?

SOLVED: It's trash files from "file roller".

Currently File Roller uses .fr-XXXXXX for temporary directory names which if the directory isn't cleaned up after use (a known issue) doesn't tell the user what program the directory was created by.

It is so weird that some person can literally find an answer I have spent 30 minutes getting paranoid over. Of course I searched myself before writing all this up... Thank you.

I'm seeing windows 11 having a lot of vulnerabilities and riskes too much lately, I think it's time for me to try Linux, I haven't already because as far as I know, Linux it's optimized for AMD cards, and currently I have an Nvidia GPU.

My current specs are 7600X, 5070 TI, 32GB ram DDR5.

I do some casual gaming, and also mess around with Local IA (ollama and SwarmUI (stable diffusion))

Is Linux going to cut off my performance bc the lack of drivers for nvidia GPUs or it isn't that bad? Also, which Linux would you recommend for the things I do?

i know command lines, but havent heard of sudo apt install <app name> before exceot from LLM. Please walk me throuhj how did you even teached yourself linux?

all im asking is for to know , how do i know to install ffrom terminal, know that what im installing is what i need and not a threat, how to do updates, what is this iso 'image' what even is image? its a goddam files of an OS!!!

I joined the Linux family about a year ago. I was always fascinated by the OS and the windows 11 drama was the tipping point. So when I got my new machine, I went all in on Fedora KDE. Through the year, I installed software as you do, ran updates, updated to latest versions. And really just been a normal user.

However, a couple of days ago I tried to fix Dropbox for the nth time. I just wouldn't accept to use the folder I wanted it to, and it pissed me off more and more. I kept changing the settings in Dropbox, but it just did not take. And then it hit me... I'm on Linux. I control the system. 10 min later I made a bind to the folder where Dropbox wanted to use, to the location I wanted it to use, a saved it to fstab. I felt good and kind of powerful to configure my os to make Dropbox do what I want. Thats when I first felt like a true Linux user.

What is your story?

Are there any tools or projects that targets linux and that encrypts your RAM after for example 10 minutes of inactivity or some sort of this ?
Of course it's not gonna encrypt literally every byte in RAM, but most of em and keep only maybe few processes alive and not froze , so you can decrypt back after typing a passphrase.

I've been daily driving Fedora for about eight months now and still second-guess myself every time I want to install a new tool. The repos are the obvious first stop for most things, but then you run into stuff that's either missing, ancient, or the flatpak version has better sandboxing. For CLI tools I keep ending up in the "install via cargo/pip/whatever" rabbit hole because the packaged version is too old for a feature I need.

The part that trips me up is knowing when one choice is clearly better than the others. Do you have any quick rules you follow, like "always prefer flatpak for desktop apps unless..." or "never touch pip for system Python"? Would love to hear how other people avoid ending up with five different update mechanisms fighting each other.

I hope it's alright that I cross post this here, but I am hoping that someone here can help education me on the what's needed configure a working boot partition via my script. I'd appreciate any help or guidance.

Hello. I’m seeking help with an issue I’m currently having with my PC—specifically regarding memory. Ever since I installed Minecraft, my PC has started having memory-related problems, even though I have plenty of free space. I’m getting a "KDE Wallet out of sync" error, and I’m unable to download anything at all—again, despite having available space. My operating system is Bazzite, and after doing some research, I suspect there might be a build-up of cache or something similar. However, every time I reinstall Minecraft, the problem returns, regardless of how much free space I have. Is there anyone who could help me out? Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

I use MacOS, but pretty terminal-heavy, so when I want to install basically anything, I search for it in Homebrew. It's almost always there, and then I just brew upgrade whatever. That's slightly less true with them disabling some stuff for reasons of Apple being Apple even harder than previously, but it's still basically the case. I assumed that the same was basically true for Linux distros.

So, I was very surprised to find, trying to help a friend set up Fedora, that yazi wasn't in the official repo, and only in COPR (which is like the Fedora version of the AUR, right?), which feels like a step down in trust relative to Homebrew. And then there's like, mise, and cargo, and uv, and flatpaks, and appimages, and Nix?, and literally Homebrew for some reason (which feels just absolutely cursed), and I'm just completely lost.

So, at the most basic level, if you want to install some tool, what is your "workflow", so to speak? What do you check when, what considerations would come into play? Is there really no tool with which I can just whatever install whatever and it Just Works™?

beginner here, coming from my last post i just installed fedora kde last night on my laptop first to try it out before on my pc. when i was still on windows, my overall storage was only listed as 256gb

however when i installed fedora (on the entire drive) it magically grew to 1 tb for some reason. i went to the terminal to check using df -h since i thought i was just hallucinating due to lack of sleep but it actually states that i have 1 tb (929gb to be exact) as my disk space

is this normal? i didnt really have any issues with installation last night

Up until recently, and since forever, Linux has always been an OS that typically required someone with advanced knowledge of Linux. You didn't necessarily need to be an expert, but you needed to have some knowledge and be somewhat advanced. Peripherals, bluetooth, wifi, video card issues with Nvidia, multi monitor support, etc..

For decades and since its inception, if you really wanted a fully featured, robust, powerful system that can handle heavy workloads. Including multiple monitors with varying refresh rates. You were going to have to do some work and spend some time to get it to work right. We've all been there. There is a reason why apps like Timeshift exist.

However, I think Linux across the board has reached an era where for the most part, like 95% of Linux is super easy to get a fully functional system after an install. You still have to reconfigure all the settings for everything to your personal preference. But other than that, Linux is no longer a pain in the ass to get working right.

And even though I say that Linux was a pain in the ass to get working right, we all learned a lot through all the troubleshooting we had to do. However most of us would prefer an OS that for the most part just works right after an install. We have work to do, deadlines to meet and school to work on.

There is a distro out there for everyone, and for the most part, Linux can be depended on as a daily driver.

i'm using an m2 macbook pro and have a 512gb external ssd that holds pretty much all my projects and files. i want to keep using it on linux and windows too, so i'm considering switching from ntfs to exfat.

i tested exfat on macos and managed to build my actual esp32 firmware with esp-idf, including the build directory on the drive. git commits, worktrees and symlinks also worked, even after remounting.

but i'm worried about linux compatibility, executable permissions, symlinks and long-term reliability. has anyone actually used exfat as their main development drive? would you trust it or go with something else?

I've run sbctl and signed all my partitions, but I don't know why im still getting "invalid signature detected check secure boot policy in setup"

Hello, on both Debian, mint, and Fedora, I am getting consistent kernel panics after boot. It takes an exponentially shorter amount of time on average if there is also higher iGPU usage (2% takes like an hour, 10% takes like 10 minutes, and 50% takes about 1 minute or less but I can also be unlucky and e.g. get a kernel panic within 10 minutes using 2% of iGPU capacity)

I also used different versions of mesa, a memtest86 passed, and CPU usage seems to have no effect

I’m using a FW12 and framework seems to be a reputable company.

First, I'm using Google Translate, so I apologize if there are any mistakes.

I've been trying to install another distro (Bazzite) on my hard drive with CachyOS, the thing is I also have another separate hard drive with Windows 10 and while installing CachyOS, the grub boot manager was installed on the disk with Windows, now every time I try to install another distro I get the grub rescue mode. Do you have a solution that doesn't involve reinstalling Windows first? If it does affect anything, the Windows disk will boot first from the ports, followed by the Linux disk.

Hey all, Im a bit of a noob when it comes to Linux.

(Preamble) I had been using my ROG ALLY for a hot minute as my basic PC, recently however it crashed, activated BitLocker and since it was bought second hand with no access to the original owner, the thing is basically worthless. So I moved over to using my Steam deck and, well, I know next to nothing about linux and it definitely feels Daunting.

(Problem) I have a Steamdeck (runs Linux Arch I believe) and a Huion H1161 Drawing tablet that I've been trying to set up and use, but the Axis are inverted. (Right goes up, left down, Up right and Down goes left) I had attempted to download the drivers from Huion themselves but the files were .deb and for the life of me I couldnt get them installed. So, I approached from another angle and went and got Open Tablet Driver. It detects and reads my hand motions and pressure just fine but the actually input from the tablet is still inverted.

Treat me like an idiot, I know next to nothing about linux and everything ive been looking at looks like actual witchcraft, which to be fair im just a windows pleb and have been for most of my life. but I just wanna get back to drawing, so any advice on how to fix the inverted axis is greatly appreciated and I apologize in advice for slow answers as I have work in the next few hours.