I’m thinking having an older family member try Linux due to their current age of PC and end of Windows 10 support. The PC doesn’t have the recommended specs for Windows 11 and they don’t really want to spend a lot for a new tower unless they have to. All this user does is check emails, Facebook, YouTube and online banking all through a browser. I’d like to keep it simple and maybe Windows looking.

The requirements would be:

1. A Distro that does automatic security and app updates without any intervention. Mostly having Firefox or Chrome update behind the scenes if they are doing online banking.

2. A panel where you can de-group apps showing each individual window and name. i.e. similar to way Windows can be setup to show multiple Firefox/Chrome windows running along taskbar instead of just a highlight under pinned icon.

The specs of computer are
4th Gen i5
8GB RAM
250GB SSD

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated

i personally don't use linux but i think i will,since i want to have control over my system. but im also conflicted that if immutable/atomic distros got popular and became de facto default of linux it would be useless for me to switch.

so can someone tell me if my fear about atomic is real or not? and if its real will mutable still exist?

since if linux is going way of immutable then linux is useless for me ,i can deal with not controlling windows. but i won't go to another os that doesn't want me to control it.

i understand this post may look stupid,but hearing about immutable and searching about it made me not want linux if its going that way. so i want to know if mutable will be there or not.

My laptop specs are:
Ryzen 5 5625u
16gb DDR4 3200mhz ram
512GB SN740 NVME SSD

Integrated Radeon graphics

Im an engineering student, i use vscode, claude code, codex, antigravity, slack, google docs (and the whole suite like gdrive etc)

I saw phonebuffs youtube video about windows vs linux and i was intrigued, can you guys tell me the benefits of switching to linux? i mean i can dual boot to windows so if i need anything ill have it on the side? Also about the ms office apps problem, doesnt using the gsuite solve that? and what about battery on laptops?

I’ve been using Pop!_OS 24.04 for a few months, but I wanted to try out KDE Plasma. I was torn between Fedora KDE and Kubuntu, but Fedora really caught my eye. I still consider myself a beginner in the Linux world, and I’ve seen many people say that Fedora might not be as stable—and therefore not ideal for beginners. I don’t have an Nvidia GPU, and I’m aware of the codec issues; I’ve read the RPM Fusion documentation, and it seems easy enough to resolve. That said, is it a good distribution for a beginner, or is there a high risk of things breaking during use? I plan to do a lot of software development on it. I usually see comments regarding casual use, but what about for someone working in tech? Is it stable enough for software development?

would that game called bloodstrike work using proton with the steam edition https://store.steampowered.com/app/3199170/Blood_Strike/

Hello,

My second hobby is photography, i take a lot of pictures for fun and for our family travels.
I am looking for a reliable, good-quality image denoising software for Linux. It's practically the only thing making me keep a windows installation on my machine since i made the switch a few months ago. I have adapted to using RapidRaw as a Lightroom replacement, it's not perfect but it's good enough for most edits, and it's in active development so i guess it'll only get better. It can also import LR presets, which is a huge advantage for my workflow... however, in it's current version (1.6.2 at the time of posting this) the denoise tools in it are completely broken - the images end up extremely dark and have huge purple squares in them.

I've tried installing a local AI model with ComfyUI - it ended up working, after a few days of try and error with an AI, but it's clunky, not great to use and not amazing results. Maybe it can be made better with more tweaking, but i am a bit sick of it.

I've pondered online solutions, but they are all expensive.

Tried OpenPhotoAI too, it seems very decent but sadly only really works with nVidia GPUs. Technically it works without too, but it uses the CPU instead, if you have AMD GPU, and then a single image takes a loooong time to process.

Searching online/AI, it seems currently there's nothing really... "good" to use. However, i know things change very rapidly and the world of Linux is huge, so i decided to come here and ask real people, not AI and web searches for ideas.

Sooo, any suggestions?

Thanks!

I am currently trying to boot linux mint 22.3 for the first time. I have made a bootable Udisk with a verified ISO for cinnamon mint 22.3 (through etcher). However when going to the boot menu my usb drive is nowhere to be found. instead it gives my SSD and HDD together with a few options of several USB-types and CDrom all of which do absolutely nothing. i currently have windows 10 on my ssd and booting any of the options just brings me back to windows 10. The only exception is my HDD. when booting it my screen shows several dots in the upper lefthand corner before giving me an error and saying that i need to input the correct disk with no way of leaving that screen. When i restart my pc it shows me the linux boot menu (grub i believe but im not sure entirely) giving me a countdown of autoboot and none of my inputs works. after the countdown ends it launches a flashing and dimmed linux mint desktop. After restarting again im back in windows though it runs much slower and i cant input anything for the first minute. I only boot linux mint this way when using the back usb ports on my pc. when using the front ports it just goes to windows instead. after my pc is restarted it splits my usb drive into 2 partitions instead of one. one remains recognized with all the files the other becomes empty and unrecognized.

I have quick boot off and cant seem to find secure boot anywhere in the BIOS settings.

My Processor = Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-2500K CPU @ 3.30GHz, 3310 Mhz, 4 Core(s), 4 Logical Processor(s)

My motherboard = Gigabyte Z68X-UD3H-B3

also i have checked and the usb boots fine on a different laptop

Does anybody know why this is?

Hey everyone,

I previously used Linux Mint on an older laptop, but on my new laptop, I’m currently on Windows. I’d love to fully switch back to Linux, but there’s one major dealbreaker holding me back: Internet Download Manager (IDM).

Nothing on Linux seems to match IDM’s convenience—specifically the floating "Download Video" bar that pops up right over playing videos and lets you choose resolutions on the fly. This is essential for me when downloading videos from adult streaming sites like MissAV and similar platforms.

For those using Linux for media downloading:

1. Is there a Linux-native downloader or browser extension setup that replicates IDM's video panel effectively on these sites?
2. How do you handle video grabbing on Linux for sites with HLS/M3U8 streams?

I am posting this reluctantly because reddit is a toxic mess most of the time, but two hours of research and I am no closer to an answer. If this is the wrong place to ask please aim me.

I am about 6 months into using Bazzite Linux and decided to make a program for content generation for a game (does not matter for my question but for context its a program to either randomly or psudeo-randomly produce a custom planet for the game space engineers) I want to make this tool available if/when I finish so leaving it a python script (I am well aware the unholy pain converting that to c++ will be) is not going to be a good way to share it.

The problem is that while I know and have compiled stuff to exe files for windows, before I switched, I do not know anything about doing that for linux. Can anyone aim me at the noob resources for that?

I started making it in py half to teach myself py half to see if I could, I got far enough in that I stopped to think and now I need help finding the off ramp.

Edit: Thank you all for the help! I am just going to stick to python and share that when I am done.

I’ve been running Linux on my desktop for quite a while now and I’ve had no problems, but recently if I try to install any distribution I lose all signal through my HDMI almost immediately during the install process, no matter if I use my graphics card or the built in HDMI. I also cannot use compatibility mode.

i want a easy to use distro that i can control everything in it

It's older PC, Intel CPU, NVIDIA RTX 1080, 16GB RAM, old 2.5" SSD.

I want to use it almost like a console, with minimal keyboard use. Turn it on, auto logs in.

I've got a Logitech K400 (Keyboard with trackpad), and just like to use the trackpad for basic navigation to browse Netflix and Amazon content, and the occasional browsing of news and YouTube.

Hooked up to a big screen TV via HDMI.

I just want to do pretty simple stuff with minimal fuss, navigate with one hand (while eating/drinking).

- Use big screen TV via HDMI.
- Watch Netflix (not at 720p).
- Watch Amazon Prime.
- Browse news and YouTube with minimal keyboard input (just sitting back using trackpad), high fps and bitrate with smooth playback.
- Use Plantronics Bluetooth headphones (with BT dongle) and not have crackling audio or drop-outs.
- Play movies/TV shows acquired from another source, encoded with various codecs (h264, h265, etc)

I want to use just one browser.

so i have a bunch of flac audio files and i want to convert them to mp3 320kbs, does anyone know how i can do that?

Hello everyone! I have maya autodesk here on linux (fedora 44) and it even runs, but there is one issue which is when i open it, it gives me a windows of "Specify a licence server" even though im a student. What should i do?

Hi. I have a laptop that I used sometimes just for 3 things:

1. playing heroes 3 on the couch

2. plugging it to the tv to watch stuff on stremio

3. ASL homework (I record myself signing sentences/a story and upload the file to the college blackboard)

Unfortunately, it updated to windows 11 automatically and now it's unusable. It freezes doing any of those things. The camera freezes and skips signs, the movies lag behind the audio, even heroes 3 with graphics from 1999 is now running slower.

So I'm really thinking about taking the plunge and switching it to Linux, it's become useless anyway.

My question is: I know theres a bunch of different types of linux you can install, I'm just looking for one thats easier to learn and "programs" (Distros?I dont know the right terms) that let me do those 3 things, do you guys have any recommendations? Thank you

Any app or scripts out there regarding systemd logind.conf file settings?

I have a bodged up script to handle the lid, but wondering if there is something better.

cheers.

Hi, I store movies and series on external SD card and NVME in an enclosure on my server, the SSD is on EXT4 , but I got an enclosure for an SD card and idk what file system to use, both are only 500GB. I read that BTRFS maybe will give me more storage? neither sd or ssd are the fastest or anything

Hi, I have a question. I have a 2015 Dell Inspiron 15 3552 with 4GB of RAM, a 128GB SSD, and an Intel Celeron N3060 (1.60GHz) processor. I plan to use it for things like NetBeans, web browsing, and watching videos—basically just the essentials, since it's the only computer I have for my programming course. I currently have Linux Mint XFCE installed, but it still feels a bit slow. What do you recommend?

im completely new to all of this. all i know is linux exists, there a different distros and all are for different cases.

im looking for something simple, unbloated, but also still functional and familiar. nothing too bare like arch.

(i dont know if im giving a correct example, but if what i understand about arch is correct - very bare, for people who understand a lot about linux already, perfect for customization but very easy to mess up - i dont want that just yet.)

i want to be able to game, watch videos, browse the internet like usual, but i want to be able to know that my operating system isnt doing random and unneeded bullshit plus spying on me, while slowing my pc down.

im sorry if im asking for the wrong things or seem dumb, im just very new to all of this. thx for reading :D

Ive heard this for the last several years. That for what ever reason or another typically the motherboards and BIOs fo the Asus Tuf & Rog, MSI Raiders, Vectors, etc and Acer Nitros tend to struggle with not only running Debian Based distros but sometimes they flat out won't install.

However, the one exception seems to be Fedora really works well with Asus. I can confirm as I recently got Fedora up and running on an 8 year old Asus ROG Strix GL703. It's running flawlessly!

It even recognizes the NVIDIA GPU after some configuring in the Konsole. Not planning on using it for Gaming though. It will be my daily "hacktop" for homelabs with GNOME Box.

I work as a SOC Anyalst and have been in IT for a few years now. It's kind of almost excepted in the industry that gaming PCs are awful for Linux. The one exception seems to be the Lenovo Ideapad Gamings (I have a Gamibg 3 dual booted with W11 and Ubuntu). Though I have been told that the Ideapad Gamings aren't true Gaming Laptops like the Legions. They are business Laptops with better GPUs.

Why is this?

I'm using PopOS with COSMIC and this is probably one of the most frustrating things about Linux for me.

I just want ONE place where I can install, update, uninstall, and see all my GUI applications.

I don't care about CLI/dev stuff like Python, Node, npm packages, libraries, etc. I'm perfectly fine managing those from the terminal.

I'm talking about actual desktop applications.

Right now it feels like everything has its own installation method. APT, Flatpak/Flathub, Snap, AppImage, .deb files, tar.gz, vendor installers, their own repositories, etc.

COSMIC Store is nice, but then I'll search for something completely mainstream like JetBrains DataGrip and it's not even there.

What I want is basically Windows' "Installed Apps" equivalent.

Bonus points if manually installed apps can at least be detected and shown, even if the manager didn't originally install them.

Does anything like this actually exist?

I need a simple text editor that uses individual windows instead of tabs. Tabs are just not working for me. I had Xed and twice I have lost unsaved files when I was copying blocks of text into separate files and had not saved all of them yet. Xed just closed on me twice now. I really need something where each file is its own window.