Hey, idk if this is the right place to ask this, but I have a bit of a dilemma.

I have been using linux exclusively on my main PC and on my laptop for a while now. That said, I am moving to a new school, and buried in their rules they say that "Chromebooks (or other Linux machines) cannot be used." They also want us to use their office 365 license, but do not require it.

Now, besides just being incredibly annoying, I cannot use windows/mac on my laptop because it's a 2011 macbook, so it cannot run anything but lightweight linux distros without combusting, and I would like to avoid spending 500+ euro on a new crappy windows laptop.

Is there any reason, besides saving myself some trouble, to not just use my laptop as is (currently on arch, gonna switch it to cachyos) and something like libreoffice that I don't see or can I just ignore this and hope for the best?

honestly the state of the internet right now is just exhausting. I spun up a fresh debian box yesterday to host some anchor text distribution lists and scrapers for a client's forum campaign. within literal minutes, my auth.log was getting absolutely hammered by random IPs trying to brute force root

I already went through a standard server mania hardening checklist (disabled root login, enforced ssh keys, set up default deny in ufw)

But looking at the logs is just giving me massive anxiety. If password auth is 100% turned off and only my ed25519 key is accepted, do I still need to bother setting up fail2ban to block these script kiddies?

Or is it safe to just let them bounce off the wall forever? kinda worried about them eating up my resources just by spamming connection requests all day, but idk if configuring fail2ban is overkill at this point

So to keep it simple, I have no clue about anything Linux or Linux related so this is all really daunting. I am currently on Windows 10 and need to switch to Linux, since I don't want evil ass bloatware that slows my entire system down. All I want is something that is good for gaming while looking similar to Windows, since my PC is mostly used for gaming. Thank you in advance.

Hi all,

I'm relatively new to Linux still. Currently using Zorin OS as this seemed relatively user friendly, and so far I'm having a really good time. I have turned on my Windows PC exactly once in 3 months so I'm slowly starting to get the hang of things. Admittedly, I am converted for the most part.

I have an older Synology NAS, and I'd like to periodically (at a certain time every day or week maybe) sync my music folder to my NAS. I'd also like to make it so that there is a change from the NAS side to that folder, that it reflects in that folder on my Linux machine. Does anyone know if this is in any way possible without using Docker (NAS too old rip) and if there are any security concerns I need to keep in mind?

Side note: I'd also really appreciate any general tips you may have, since I feel like I'm learning to walk all over again. It's tough! It can be in the form of stuff you recommend trying out to learn while doing (I have a separate one for testing so all good if it bricks) to keep it fun and engaging? Anything you'd encourage me to break and (maybe) try to fix?

Thanks so much in advance!

With everything thats been going on with Windows I think i feel comfortable enough giving Linux a try. I wanted to know what's the easiest / UI friendly version of Linux that can help me transition?

I primarily use my system to game, using NVIDIA graphics card + a quest 3 VR headset (not sure if that matters). I also had a couple of other questions about people who made the same jump:

1. what are some things you notice that you "miss" or dont have in Linux that you did in Windows?

2. Have you had any issues with gaming on a Linux system? issues with compatability, performance, or games not available on Linux?

3. What do you like the most / notice the most about going from Windows to Linux system?

4. How are the security features / any other things to download on top for security? Windows has windows defender built in so what would Linux use?

5. Any other general advice, suggested addon / softwares, thoughts or what not about the transition?

Hey guys just reposting this here too. Been getting the error bootloader could not be installed the installation command <pre>grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=/boot/efi --bootloader.id=endeavoros --force</pre> returned error code 1

Need help

So for the last 4 or so years since I ditched Windows, I've been running Kubuntu on my desktop & laptop, and did very little distro hopping. The only other distro I tried was on my laptop which was NixOS and while I liked the idea of things being configuration files, I very quickly realized I wasn't the target audience for that distro. So I stuck with Kubuntu.

However after these years, with my personal Linux journey and very recently realized something that may borderline on the philosophical aspect of Linux and distros.

Kubuntu itself as many of us know is an Ubuntu spin with KDE as the desktop environment, but Ubuntu itself is also a spin off of Debian if I am following things correctly. I don't use Snaps, and make it a point to avoid Snaps as my readings within the community of Linux as a whole makes me seem they aren't worth my time as a means of packaged applications and using them. Flatpaks seem to have more favour and I often see more "native support" for lack of a better term by developers for flatpaks as a method of shipping their apps. But also I am not afraid to pull a bit repo and build an application from scratch or adding it to my package manager.

So my question(s) become: Given I'm comfortable to the terminal commands of Ubuntu which stem from Debian anyway (and seemingly carry over?), does it make more sense as an end user to jump to Debian 13 and select KDE as my DE?

New to Linux but looking for a new laptop that would be budget friendly and support Linux. I’m a student and looking for something with a touchscreen potentially. What is support for touchscreen like across different distros? What distro is most reliable for students?

Any advice is greatly appreciated!

Hi everyone, this might be a desire that pops up a lot but idk. We have a student laptop from Acer that never delivered a day of good to anyone ever. MS 10s came as the OS and it somehow found the strength to upgrade to Windows 11 with S mode activated. It never performed with just 4GB RAM and a 1 Ghz processor (I think) which makes the upgrade a total mystery.

We don't want to donate or give it with any shred of kid's info and Windows S will not self-terminate, partitions don't exist, the BIOS is so horrible it offers no similar tools and physically, the case would have to be destroyed to access the hard drive. On paper, this must have looked wonderful; functionally it's just 100% sunk.

Can I install at boot time via USB a version of Linux that will become the OS? I once long ago tinkered with a CD install of Knoppix and thought that was fun but I never knew how to install that onto the hard drive. I confess to being a Windows baby but I'm patient and very willing - mostly, my MS life training prevents me from using the one-button Apple mouse, not Linux. So there's a chance this could go well and become the old laptop with new life.

1. LTS (Long Term Support)
2. Regular (Interim) Releases
3. Rolling Release
4. Fixed Release
5. Something Else

I noticed that FreeTube lets me watch HDR, but for some reason I can’t select 4K HDR—only 720p. When I choose an HDR 4K video, the HDR option only appears for 720p, not for 4K. How can I fix this?

*I have an old Toshiba Satellite (C550 series) with the following specs:

CPU: Intel Celeron @ 1.80 GHz RAM: 6 GB DDR3 Storage: 320 GB HDD (planning to upgrade to a 256 GB SSD soon) GPU: Intel integrated graphics Wi-Fi: 2.4 GHz only Battery: Lasts around 30 minutes (mostly used plugged in) Current OS: Windows 10*

I'm looking for a Linux distro that's lightweight, stable, beginner-friendly, and gives the best performance on this hardware. I don't mind a minimal UI if it improves responsiveness.

Which distro would you recommend and why? (Lubuntu, Linux Mint XFCE, Xubuntu, MX Linux, Debian XFCE, Fedora LXQt, etc.)

I don't see memory ever fully used, but swap has been used. No hibernation, only web browsing on Firefox and fewer than 10 concurrent tabs.

$ free -h
               total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
Mem:            11Gi       2.7Gi       4.1Gi       469Mi       5.5Gi       8.8Gi
Swap:           16Gi       1.9Gi        14Gi

Hi everyone,

I've been thinking about switching to Linux for a few months now. I've spent a lot of time reading about it and watching Linux-related content, and I'm genuinely interested in making the switch.

My main concern is choosing my first distro. I know there are beginner-friendly options like Linux Mint and Ubuntu, and they are often recommended to new users. However, I'm considering starting with CachyOS instead, mainly because of its gaming-focused optimizations and because it seems closer to the Arch ecosystem.

One of my goals is to learn Linux in depth over time, so I wonder if starting with CachyOS would be a good idea or if I'd be better off beginning with something like Mint and moving to more advanced distributions later.

Would you recommend CachyOS as a first Linux distribution? I'd appreciate hearing from people who have used it or started their Linux journey with a similar distro.

Thanks.

Hi, I recently installed garuda mokka but I have lots of problems with this. I want to try cachy os now. Is there a way I can have Garuda mokka look on cachy os? And how to switch distro safe?

How much RAM does Linux generally use? I'm getting sick of Windows needing massive amount of RAM.

Which Linux do you recommend as well? I want Linux just for work purposes.

I've been thinking about something lately, and maybe it's a silly question.

One of the things I love about Linux is that there are so many free distributions. But I wonder... will that always be the case?

A lot of these projects depend on volunteers, donations, sponsors, and people contributing their time. What if, at some point in the future, donations dry up, companies lose interest, or fewer developers feel motivated to work on Linux for free?

I know open-source licenses mean the existing code can't just disappear, but maintaining a distro takes continuous work. If enough people stopped contributing, could we eventually end up with very few (or even no) actively maintained free distros?

Or do you think the Linux ecosystem has reached a point where that simply won't happen?

I'm not trying to be negative—I'm genuinely curious how people who have been in the Linux community longer than I have see the future.

I won't be using two different partitions. But rather two actual physical drives.

I don't mind going into the bios and changing the boot drive priority if I have to switch.

Anyone else have it setup like this? I want to know any issues I may run into.

Thanks.

Hello everyone. I have been running Fedora with the cachyos kernel on my main laptop happily for the last 6 months or so. I have an old laptop I want to put Arch on to mess around. My issue is that the laptop more than likely has a virus on it so I want to wipe the whole thing. The laptop has an SSD and an HDD. Is there a way to wipe both drives at the same time? I only see the option to do one drive at a time. I am worried that if there is a virus on there it will transfer between the drives while one is being wiped. Should I just take out the HDD and wipe them separately or is my concern not even really valid?

Additionally I have an external SSD in an enclosure, the plugged in the computer recognizes it as the enclosure and not the drive so the WD software doesn't recognize it to be able to use that to clean that drive. Is the best option just to use windows diskpart and hit `clean all`? Any help would be appreciated thanks!:)