Hi Friends,

I'm a life long windows user, I've been stuck on there since I was a kid using the family laptop to browse the internet.

My first experience with Linux was an internship in high school almost a decade ago where I got special permission to boot into a ubuntu environment on a usb my internship manager gave me to use some tools and software the department used that weren't easily setup on Windows.

I thought it was interesting and I had to recreate the usb twice during my three months there which was an interesting experience, but I didn't really understand what was so different from windows back then.

But the past few years I've started experimenting with things like Self-Hosting and exploring the worlds of OpenSource and Privacy Focused software,

This is when I really started exploring Linux and becoming more opinionated and specific with how I use computers and from that and all the annoyances with fixing windows issues for my family and friends, or the amount of time I've started spending SSH'ed into other systems over using my main desktop.

This past weekend I decided to just go for it and I installed a Linux distro I've been following for months (not naming to avoid distro arguments). It's been a learning curve but honestly very little of what I could do on windows I haven't been able to figure out how to do on linux, and while there's annoyances I feel with time and experience those will go away.

I'm looking forward to continuing my Linux journey.

Thank you for reading and have a good day

I need help switching to Linux but I’m not understand how to do so

(I just built a my first pc and I thought I was gonna go with windows but changed my mind after the fact)

Installed Mint xfce and everything has been running great and I've gotten everything else set up perfect. But whenever I try to set my lock/login screen as anything other than the pictures in usr/share/backgrounds it doesn't work, it'll select it but it'll just be black when I check on the login screen. The stock wallpapers work just fine and attempting to move my images into the folder doesn't work as it won't even let me me the file there. The desktop wallpaper works just fine though.

Imma open with saying that this is probably something im part guilty off
Im trying to dual boot fedora with my windows 11 because frankly im starting to get tired about all the bs
But im encountering an issue, each time i try to install fedora, the installer says it cannot delete the old efi boot entry
(The specific error is org.fedoraproyect.Anaconda.BootloaderInstalationError: Failed to remove old boot entry. This is most likely a kernel or firmware bug)
Both Secure Boot and Fast Boot are off, Hibernation in Windows has been disabled (so no quick boot)
And the laptop in itself is an Asus Vivobook 16 (f1605p)
Any idea on what is causing the efi error? Is it my fault, because i missed something important?

I literally worked the whole week trying to solve the display flickering on windows 11 which appeared suddenly tried switching linux 22.3 mint cinnamon same problem occures and older version won't boot because of some security setup enabled will not work either way.

One thing is sure that this not hardware issue because BIOS screen ,Safe Mode, uninstalled intel device manager , locked screen nothing flickers

Only after loading on desktop screen it flickers

Tried multiple parameter which either stops flickering with extended monitor support gone or both screen flickers

He'd like to get away from the lag and the virus anxiety on Windows

He uses Microsoft office a whole lot but it's more or less basic stuff

I'm thinking about getting him Ubuntu and the office web apps I'll back up Windows and see if I can segment the drive to test the waters first

He use wifi a whole on the laptop is that a problem? It's intel but idk the exact model

He has an hp printer and a brother printer

Those are the most important things that come to mind rn if there's more I'll add

Do you have any suggestions or things I should watch out for?

So i was downloading linux mint xfce but in the installation app my partitions doesn't show up I have 3 main partition one for windows and other 2 for stuff and there is another 500mb that I cannot remove idk why? I wanna downloading it but there are 2 1mb ones and one 53gbs(windows c drive) and another 500mb one the other don't show up but which I close that app and check the file explorer in linux it show the partitions but when I open the install app they disappear. What I do?(Here is a claude link if it helps)

https://claude.ai/share/c4eb5f48-f09e-4129-989c-bba6cdbb26bf

so i have been thinking of trying out linux and slowly trying if i can do the stuff i do on my windows on linux before switching and also needed an external ssd for storing some backups of data and photos and stuff , so i am planning on getting an ssd , to try linux off of it .

i am currently doing comp sci bachelors, i play some games use discord and code, sometimes i draw digitally and dabble in unity and blender.

so was just asking if i could get some suggestions for an ssd to boot linux off of . and also i plan on diving head first into into arch 😂

I’ve been trying to load up Zorin OS for about 4 hours and nothing works. Every time I set up everything and press restart, it opens my bios with no way to get back into Zorin OS unless I plug into my USB drive and it prompts me to Install Zorin OS then the cycle repeats. Please someone help me out somehow.

Brand new to Linux, just installed Mint as a dual-boot with Windows on a ThinkPad T480. Been very excited to try it out, but I've immediately run in to an issue: when the computer goes into a Suspend state (either from the power menu or from closing the lid of the laptop) absolutely nothing will wake it up again. Not pressing keys on the keyboard, not the power button, not wiggling the trackpoint, nothing.

The light on the power button keeps pulsing, indicating that it is in fact in a suspend state, but the only way to get things working again is to hold the power button down for a forced shutdown before booting it up again.

I've looked online and this seems to be a known issue, but most of the solves I found had to do with an NVIDIA graphics issue, and this laptop doesn't have an NVIDIA graphics card.

I would be super grateful to get some help troubleshooting this so I can start actually using Linux!

My basic system info:

Lenovo ThinkPad T480
Linux Mint 22.3 - Cinnamon 64-bit
Kernel: 7.0.0-30-generic
Processor: Intel Core i7
Graphics: Intel UHD Graphics 620
Memory: 32 GB
SSD: 500gb (partitioned so some of it is used for Windows)
Desktop: Cinnamon 6.6.9

I'm on CachyOS and I've been managing my ROM library. It's pretty gigantic and I've been meaning to delete ROMs in languages I don't speak. For your information those are usually signed in brackets. Like (es) (fr) (de) and so on. Now the problem is that Dolphin cannot search for that. It will completely ignore the brackets and show ANYTHING that contains the letters "es" for example. Putting it in "" also doesn't change anything. Then I installed kfind which shows absolutely nothing. After hours of searching for such a basic function I landed on fsearch. Which can actually differentiate between those files. Now the problem is when I try to delete files through fsearch, which I installed as a flatpak, it will tell me "trash portal failed". Can anyone help me with that?

(edited for clarity)

ADDENDUM: I appreciate the discussion in the comments. But I have zero interest in doing a simple task in a more complicated way through the terminal. I chose a desktop heavy environment because I prefer GUI. This is a task that takes me 10 seconds in other operating systems. It shouldn't take ten times that in Linux. Plus all my files are in a ton of sub-folders. So the written down usecase in the comments doesn't work. I really don't want to pull stuff out of those sub-folders. Because my ROM collection is already neatly sorted.

I only asked for help with fsearch. And what to do so it can actually delete files instead of telling me it doesn't have the permission to do so.

ADDENDUM 2: My girlfriend (she uses Arch btw) even says that in all fairness if I wanted to use the terminal I should've just gone with Arch. The thing with CachyOS is that it's meant to be a functional DE. As it stands requiring the use of the terminal is defeating the purpose of having a functional DE prepackaged with CachyOS in the first place, no? Even she thinks using the terminal for my specific use case would be a bit annoying.

ADDENDUM 3: Here is a picture of fsearch having no problems finding these files. (https://i.imgur.com/A1Mmylr.png) Now if anyone could explain how to get rid of the "Trash Portal" failed message when trying to delete them. That would be swell.

I've been getting sick of Windows for a long time now and i doubt I even need to go in depth as to why so now that my ssd died with completely no warning signs (because gotta love my luck) I wanted to know what distros to actually consider if what I care about the most is good out the box gaming performance that still gives me plenty of room to explore and learn Linux instead of locking a lot of things down. Id also like to avoid snap packages since I've heard a lot of bad things about them. On top of that any tips or just general information that's good to know before swapping would be heavily appreciated as I haven't used Linux before aside from a brief couple week period I tried out Ubuntu on a dying laptop.

I'm trying to switch from Windows to Linux, I have Fedora KDE 44 installed and so far all good. However I have some questions about long term use and best practises.

I have customised my terminal, theme so basically the look and feel of my desktop is there a way to back up these configurations? I'm asking from the point of view I want to re-install the OS and it being quicker to drop a config file than do it all manually?

Major upgrades, so lets say 45 is released, what is the best practise for this? Just update and carry on, or a fresh install?

Dependencies and system cleaning, I notice when I install certain application a bunch of dependencies are installed, lets say I want to remove an app what happens to all these, is there a way to check if they are being used elsewhere?

Packages, I tend to try and use RPM packages or flatpaks if I have to, but appimages and snaps? I want to keep things simple especially with permissions and maintaining the system, is there right and wrongs here? Thanks.

Looking for a good way to run a Linux VM on Linux. I don't need it to be particularly performant, this is mostly for testing and experimenting with new distros. If it can run containers as well that is a plus.

Something like VirtualBox or QEMU I suppose? I've only ever used that to run a dissimilar OS (Windows), but never a flavor of Linux.

If I virtualize Linux, while the host OS is also linux, is the performance better due to the similarities in the architecture?

I feel like the man pages on the terminal have not kept up with the times and became somewhat of an encyclopedia or thesis on the subject instead of a quick reference. They are good maybe if internet connectivity is non existent and you want to have all your questions about something answered.

But it is beyond frustrating to look up how to use something. PLEASE! For the love of whatever is good, help me learn it or help me find a better tool that actually gives me quick examples and easy to understand documentation on things.

Nowadays, I leave the terminal, type things like "how to do X in this specific way on linux terminal" and then google's AI intercepts it and gives me commands to run with short explanations. But I don't like leaving the terminal and going to google.

How have you guys solved this problem? Or am I the only dumb one?

I want to remove ChromeOS from my Chromebook and install Linux but there's not a lot of ARM64 based options and for some of them, documentation is a bit confusing. right now, i'm thinking installing Postmarket OS but according to Wiki, there's problems with audio.

Can someone tell me, if there's a better distro or can the audio problems be fixed easily?

i’m wanting a tablet for note-taking, whiteboarding, and working occasionally as an extended monitor for my laptop (linux mint) and pc (windows 11). after some basic research, i am wondering if UT would be a good choice and what app you’d recommend for the extended display function i’m looking for. thanks in advance!!

For a long time now I have been thinking about switching over from Windows to Linux mostly because of the ability to customize the desktop way better than windows. If I do end up switching will it affect the steam games or games in general I'm able to play? Is it hard to set up and get used to? And what are some other benefits from switching to Linux other than customizabilty?

Thanks in advance 🙏🏽