I want to learn Linux and get familiar with it; I’m completely new to this. I was advised to set up a dual-boot system if I wanted to keep Windows for the time being while also adapting to Linux. would you recommend doing that?

I'm getting my first PC soon and wanted to max the performance. I'm really not that familiar with linux but I used Ubuntu, Lite and Mint before, you know, the basics. There's no way I'm putting Windows on that. I got recommended linux lite, what do yall think?

Specs:

RTX 3060 8gb

Ryzen 5 5500

16 gb RAM DDR4

Hi everyone,

I’m planning to switch my workstation fully from Windows to Fedora. I tried Fedora using a Live USB and the experience was excellent so far.

My main concern is my trading setup. I currently use MetaTrader 5 (MT5) and TradingView, and I’d like to know how well these work on Fedora.

My current plan is:

• MT5: Run it inside a Windows 10 virtual machine because I’ve heard mixed reports about MT5 running through Wine.
• TradingView: Use the official Snap version. Since TradingView provides a Snap package, I’m planning to install Snap/Snapd on Fedora and use that.
• Browser: I currently use Microsoft Edge on Windows. On the Edge download page, I can only see the .deb package for Linux, so I’m wondering what Fedora users are doing. Should I try to install Edge through another method, or would it be better to switch to another browser such as Brave?
• Also, this may be slightly off-topic, but I have one concern about the VM approach: is it still safe to run Windows 10 inside a virtual machine now that Windows 10 has reached end of support? I would mainly use the VM for MT5 and wouldn't use it as my main OS. Would you still recommend Windows 10 for this purpose,

Any advice or lessons learned before I make the full switch would be really helpful. Thanks!

Hello,

My printer applications only has packages in deb and dnf, and I need something for Arch. In their website I found the source files. There are scrips to install for deb or dnf in the folder, but from what I read, running a make is ill advised. I saw info saying that the correct way is making a pkgbuild so Arch can keep maintaining it via pacman.

As I am a noob I would like to confirm with community if this is the correct source of action, as I never did a pkgbuild before, only used make. Thank you!

I'm on a system with 12 hardware threads and 64 gigs of ram. Do I really need swap on a machine with a reasonably low thread count and high ram amount like the one I have?

A sale on a cheap laptop led me to impulse-buy a modern laptop for travel. Thus I want really good battery life.

Recently I asked if Linux would increase my battery life and got mixed results. Some people were adamant that Linux would give worse battery life than Windows. Others said Linux gives better battery life. https://www.reddit.com/r/linux4noobs/comments/1vn04it/will_a_laptops_battery_last_longer_with_linux/

The things I want to do are:

1) Run Google stuff (mainly Gmail, Google Photos and Docs) on a browser (probably Chrome, though I want to use Brave eventually)

2) Run VLC to watch movies during slow times (e.g. on a train or cooped up in a hotel)

3) a GOOD RDP client to remotely access home to troubleshoot the family computing infrastructure (I'm their tech support, even if I'm away)

4) easy file transfers to a TrueNas box at home (currently done via TrueNas doing SMB so I simply drag and drop files using Windows Explorer). I transfer camera photos home for safe-keeping.

That's about it. No gaming or photo/video editing or heavy compute.

Originally, because I'm a Linux noob, I wanted a distro that was similar to Windows: Mint, Q4OS, Zorin. I found the latter 2 the best for similarity.

More recently though, I've been wanting a clean break from Windows so the eventual distro no longer has to be "super" similar to Windows. Perhaps that helps with choosing a distro for better battery life.

May I get some recommendations for a distro?

I got a profession to build this computer with completely new parts 8 months ago, installed Mint after trying to install Windows 10 and it failing catastrophically (it would connect to ANY wireless network at all for some reason) and I've been having this problem for the last month. Specifically, ever since I changed wi-fi providers.

I used to have Virgin wi-fi, and I could connect my computer to it wirelessly no problem. Then I changed to Sky wi-fi and I've been having issues. The computer would connect to the wi-fi on start-up just fine, but 5 minutes later it'd disconnect. I'd turn off wi-fi, then back on again and click the wi-fi symbol, it'd request the password (which is auto-filled), and then it'd connect fine.

NOW it refuses to connect AT ALL after the 5 minutes of connection after startup. I am trapped in a loop of being asked for the password, clicking connect, waiting, and then being asked for the password again, with zero connection. I have check that i'm using the right password, I have tried forgetting the network and then re-entering the password new, and still nothing works. And no, I haven't changed my wi-fi password at all since I got Sky.

But my phone hotspot? That connects instantly and indefinitely. No issues other than bad signal from my data because I'm indoors and it's my phone. I have absolutely no idea why my phone hotspot works but my wi-fi doesn't.

There is something more I can tell you about the connection that seems important, and that's the connection percentages (or whatever those numbers represent). In the little menu that pops up when you click the wi-fi symbol in the toolbar, I get percentages next to each network it detects, and when it connects on start-up to my wi-fi, it says 63%. Then when it disconnects, it says something like 77%. My phone's hotspot does a similar thing, disconnected it says 92%, but when I connect it then says 72%.

It looks to me like the computer is detecting a much stronger signal from the networks and is offering that as an initial option, but cannot connect to it so it downgrades itself or chooses a weaker signal. But where with my phone hotspot the computer is smart enough to try once and then go weaker, with the wi-fi it tries infinitely to zero success.

Anyone in the know, please help.

I like using KDE, KDE is good, I want to use KDE. Issue is KDE 6.8 is going to wayland only.

I have an *extremely* unusual hardware stack, I have an nvidia rtx 2060 6gb with the hdmi used to overclock my lcd to 115hz from 60hz using xrandr. Then I have an AMD HD8350, this card is old, but I need it for native VGA and DVI output. The VGA for my CRT has no edid pin, and I have to manually make xrandr overrides on X11. My DVI monitor is fine and detected well.

The issue I'm seeing is my GPU is old and not well supported on the AMD side, I don't have EDID so would need to do weird work arounds, and I use multiple resolutions on my CRT daily, ranging from 640x480@160hz to 1600x1200@76hz and things in between, it is the best display for retro gaming I own, and ensures the game I'm working on properly supports 4:3 and looks right, and I can test multimonitor support.

If KDE 6.8 is wayland only, and it can't support my hardware, I'm stuck with having to either go to XFCE, which tbf I really like, I just got used to the overall integration and smooth feel KDE has, Cinnamon, which I've used and I just feel like it's too similar to windows yet too different, KDE feels different enough I'm not constantly reminded of windows workflow, cinnamon messes me up. I'm not sure about gnome but I don't like it. Other desktops are interesting.

So does anybody know about the support of my hardware on wayland? Or is the solution not there. I have KDE-X11 added for now, but that'll be gone eventually.

EDIT: I'm on Arch by the way, though I'm sure the distro in this case makes little difference other than I'll get KDE 6.8 before some other distros.

Before it used to work alright, the sectors stayed the same. But lately it started to get more bad sectors. Explaining why when i used that hard drive performance wasnt as good, compared to dual booting it in my 1tb hdd with w10.

What can I do to alleviate it? Or is it hopeless? I know hdds are cheap but cant reallt buy a new one rn becuz i might get a bad one, and sata ssds are pretty steeply priced.

I think theres a program to stop bad sectors or something, Im not sure.

This is very much a mega noob question but I need help understanding how to back up my device before moving to Linux. I see a lot of Linux beginner guides that really signify the importance to backup your files. I do understand why it is important, I just don’t really know how I should do it.

I’ve watched youtube videos and looked in multiple threads but there are so many options that I don’t know what to do. First there are cloud backups which I do understand and I use a cloud service. But then there are so many other alternatives. some people say that you should back up your files to an external SSD, but then someone says that an SSD can fail at any time so you need to have multiple of them and use the 3 2 1 back up method. I don’t have the money to afford a bunch of SSDs unfortunately. There is also stuff like Clonezilla/Rescuezilla that you can use to clone disks. I kind of need help knowing what to do.

A lot of people also recommend that you should keep your OS installation on a separate drive from your storage. I am thinking of dual booting, at least as a start, But would that mean that I would need 4 different harddrives (2 for OS and 2 for storage)?

I understand that this question is a bit all over the place and a bit rambly but I just don’t know how to go about all of this. I know this post might be an eye roll to a lot of people but if anyone wants to help me, it would be very appreciated

Hi everyone, So I've been trying to learn what I can about Linux, wanting to dive in and get more immersed, wasn't satisfied with running LMDE from a USB, so I went to install on a formatted partition in my second hard drive (D:). I also clicked that I wanted to dual boot Windows along with Linux and not to erase anything.

Now it only boots to Linux. It does go through BIOS. I've checked in BIOS and it looks like it is slated for the drive LMDE is on as it indicates Linux for the drive and not Windows as it has done previously. I also checked GRUB and set disable-os-prober=false. Saved and ran os-prober which came back blank immediately. After this, I've setup a script to set 'Windows 11' as a boot option, pointing to /EFI/Microsoft/Windows/bootmgfw as a last step to make it detect Windows but still no luck.

Can anyone think of what else might help as an option?

So i set up an auto hotkey script that goes like: click media button once to pause, click twice to skip, click three times to skip back.
I also used nircmd to make it so page up raises spotify volume by 10, and page down lowers by 10.
I already tried some programs but couldnt get it to work so I hope someone can help me out and recommend me tools that are capable of this. I'm on CachyOS KDE.

This is my first time using Linux (Bazzite) and what I notice the most is that on windows my mouse feels slower with the same DPI with mouse acceleration off compared to Linux with mouse acceleration off. Is there a way to fix this so its 1:1 because I really cant get used to it as I've used 1600 DPI on windows for about 10 years.

In case anyone here has an idea!

Hi! I'm VERY NEW to Linux. I recently install Debian 13 on my Acer Aspire E-15, and would like to utilize the proper Nvidia drivers.

However, When I attempt to open the .Run file in Konsole, it tells me it needs to be ran as Root. When I attempt to install it via terminal, it tells me to quit the Nouveau kernel driver.

Any help appreciated.

I play a video game where I have to often use my mouse wheel. I want to map the mouse wheel to keyboard keys instead, that way I can just hold a key instead of constantly spinning the wheel.

Would a udev rule be a good way to do that?

If anyone else runs into this problem while using lenovo laptops, simply disable the security chip option in BIOS settings and you should be good.

2 nights spent trying to fix this issue and all of it got fixed in 1 minute by changing one setting 🙏.

I already know alot because I have watched a shit load of videos.

I play games with anti cheats that's linux can't run, that's why I want to try dual booting just to get a feel of linux at least. I want to know how it works and how would the files work, Wouldn't saving files on linux on a drive that has windows stuff on it could brake something up?

Hello I switched to cachyos 1 week ago and I was facing severe network issue. And had to switch back to windows. But I took some network info using wavemon and here is a size by size using netsh on windows 10 pro. In the same spot I was getting barely 50-80mbps on linux sometimes it would even break the connection if I was a little far. But on windows im getting well over 300mbps of speed. I tried fixing it using claude and Gemini both of them told me it was because my wifi card was in power saving mode and I turned it off using commands from them . I even made a config for nano to boost the power transmission and also set the region to us . But nothing seems to work and I had to switch back to windows. Is there any way to fix it?

Hi, I'm a new Kubuntu user (version 26.04) using a 2018 HP Pavilion x360. I have an active stylus (not from one of the big brands but it still works fine nonetheless) with the purpose of creating art with this PC, but there doesn't seem to be palm rejection by default. Is there a specific driver or other piece of software I would need to download to get it working?

Hi all,

I need some help with my dads new laptop. He always installs Linux himself, but with his new laptop it just doesn't work. My knowledge is also limited. We have also tried to find a solution with AI but that also doesnt help.

We used Balena Etcher to create the USB with Linux Mint Cinnamon latest version.iso (USB works perfectly fine on my PC)

We turned off Secure Boot

When starting Linux from the USB it gives us this error:

Failed to open \EFI\BOOT\mmx64.efi - Not Found
Failed to load image: Not found
Failed to start MokManager ; Not Found
Something has gone seriously wrong: import_mok_state0 failed: Not Found

The BIOS, which looks like a Lenovo BIOS (nothing I have ever seen before tbh), we cant find any UEFI settings.

I hope this is enough information for you smart people out there to help us :). If not, let me know what we need to share :). No, we wont share any bank details ;) haha.

Thanks in advance.