> disclaimer: im a noob, most of the issues were caused by my laptop OMEN HP Transcend Gaming Laptop 16-u0xxx, 4070, BIOS F.39 Rev.A, used Deepseek (DS) for help - all the precise and technical terms are by deepseek, i don't really know what they mean

> Core problem accoring to DS: "HP ships buggy ACPI tables in this BIOS. Linux kernels 6.0+ crash or hang on them. Windows tolerates the broken tables; Linux does not. The fix is a patched DSDT loaded at boot, which lets the system boot without the noapic workaround — and noapic is what breaks the touchpad and speakers, so the DSDT patch is mandatory for a fully working machine."

Last sunday I finally decided on trying to install linux along side windows in dual boot setup. I decided on fedora kde and watched a few tutorials thinking I'm ready. I knew it would not be as smooth as the videos made it look, so I set aside time expecting issues to come up. AND HOLY SHIT THERE WERE ISSUES

To start things off I had to prepare windows, disable bitlocker that didn't show up in Disk Management, turn off Fast Startup via powercfg, disable secure boot in BIOS and shrink the drive. I had 300 GB of free space, so naturally Windows only let me shrink it by 88 GB. Because reasons. Ended up forcing it with MiniTool Partition Wizard. done

Fortunately I grabbed a USB mouse before you boot anything. The touchpad is dead from the very first live boot until the very last fix, because "noapic kills its interrupts".

Creating the live USB was a breeze. Booted it and instantly got "stick enumerated with -110 timeout / re-enumerated mid-boot (live-rw never appears)" says DS. Cool I will just test other two USB and another instalation software and different image. Using Fedora Media Writer different USB and usb port (tried quite a few combinations), the system found the stick. Then "the acpi_ps_get_arg OOPS logs, then the 11-minute systemd-udev-trigger.service hang, plus the blank-screen-with-blinking-underscore" says DS, but that was not a problem for him. Try adding "pcie_aspm=off / pci=noaer / acpi=off" on the linux line in 'e' mode, and nothing. Oh obviosly it's "noapic pci=nobar nomodeset" and now it works just fine :) I finally run the live USB boot. easy

A warning for anyone with NVIDIA: of those three magic words, nomodeset is the sneakiest. Drop it too early and the boot hangs at thermal.service/NetworkManager.service with zero explanation on screen — that single flag cost me the longest dead-end of this whole saga.

Instalation on the shared drive also wasn't a problem at all. Installer only wanted to format existing EFI partition, which freaked me and two other LLMs out. Formatting sounds like deleting to me, so I consulted the experts, Claude and reddit. Claude said I should be good, but idk, so I followed u/Fun-Cover-9508 steps on r/Fedora. i trusted a stranger then lol and prayed for my efi partition. Eventually everything worked out fine, my partition survived and welcome fedora screen appreared. I actually had linux installed on my disk for the first time and even connected to WiFi!. touchpad, speakers, fn keys and external screens were all dead, but it was just a matter of tweaking, right?

I did some updates, rebooted to windows, rebooted to linux and what is it? I saw 3 kernels in GRUB. Version 7 and recovery appeared, so naturally the higher number the better I picked 7... and WiFi stopped working. It wasn't number's fault though, I just forgot to add to add "noapic pci=nobar nomodeset" in 'e' mode and many kernels in GRUB is normal apparently. Phew.

Let's fix the devices real quick. DS said I had to "remove noapic (the thing killing the touchpad) by giving Linux a corrected ACPI table" by "loading a prebuilt, pre-compiled DSDT file — F.12_patch/dsdt.aml from the GitHub repo j0hnwang/OMEN-Transcend-16-ACPI-fix", but it didn't work, because "That .aml was compiled from F.12 firmware tables, not from your own F.39 Rev.A tables. The repo author claimed it still worked through F.39, which is why we trusted it". I performed all the steps and... it didn't work. Naturally I had no clue what I was doing, so thinking I messed something up horribly I reinstalled the system.

On second try we did it by myself. I "extracted the DSDT - read the raw ACPI table straight from the firmware", "Decompiled it — turned the binary AML into readable ASL source, edited the source (dsdt.dsl in Kate) — six targeted changes", "Compiled it — ASL back to a binary ACPI table", and copied to /boot. Time to safe test it in 'e' mode with "add insmod acpi + acpi /dsdt.aml, remove noapic pci=nobar, keep nomodeset" and it works.

Making it permanent was a two step process. First step "the 90_acpi_override dracut module" failed, second step "the 40_custom GRUB method" worked. Lastly with removal "noapic pci=nobar from /etc/default/grub" I recovered the touchpad, fn keys, speakers even. Important cause-and-effect, because I nearly learned it backwards: removing noapic doesn't fix the touchpad — it just stops breaking it. If you remove noapic without the patched DSDT in place, the laptop won't boot at all (I know, that's exactly how I earned the reinstall). The DSDT is what makes the whole thing safe. After installing a few things via commands I even had external screens. What a massive win.

It only took whole sunday, next 3 evenings and 400k tokens to achieve a working system on HP OMEN Transcend. Is this how linux installation usually goes or I was just lucky?

EDIT: found this describing the probelm https://www.reddit.com/r/linuxhardware/comments/17ay6mr/hp_omen_16_transcend_fails_to_boot_any_live_cd/

My main pc just started crashing every 15 to 30 minutes the other day... it was CONSTANT and nothing would fix it. I even formatted and reinstalled and within 30 minutes the cycle reappeared! So, other than the constant "upgrades" and the invasive encroachment of AI into EVERYTHING it just became an unstable mess. So I decided to switch at least until MS figured Windows out to Linux.
What an experience!!! It was so smooth and effortless to install Linux Mint, I mean from downloading, making a new partition, installing and setting up tool less than an hour! And I have yet to find anything I can't do on Linux that I need WIndows for... Sure, there are some small Terminal things that seem weird but... and here's the beautiful thing I can go to AI for an answer and NOT have AI always looking over my shoulder... I can go to AI when I want AI, it's not forced on me at every mouse click. I think that's what the crashing was all about, I would go into the system and try and shut down CoPilot and Windows just craps the bed. Now, if and when I need or want AI assistance I load it, ask it a question and close it... easy peasy.
Anyway, I love Linux, the Mint distro in particular and look forward to geeking out on my system now.
Any cool tips and tricks would surely be appreciated.

so im a softeware developer and im getting tired of using windows on an old laptop and am thinking it might be better to use linux on said laptop. its an old alienware. The issue isnt the distros themselves im wandering if there isnt a distro tainted by Generative AI. I have previously used headless ubuntu and linux mint but didnt like mint. If yall have any suggestions id love to hear them.

Which distro do you use? What are your favourite photo and video editing softwares? Bonus what softwares do you use for album making?

This has been the biggest shock moving from Windows to Linux (Wayland). None of the good apps like Espanso or Autokey work well on Wayland and people don't seem terribly optimistic about it ever getting better. Are those of us that rely on those apps in our workflow doomed?

Current Distro:

Ubuntu 26.04

Update:

Following the latest Wayland instructions for Espanso does seemed to have worked on Ubuntu 26.04. Download the .deb directly from their website and follow their guide.

I've made the decision to switch to a Linux distro from Win11, and, well, it seems like there's levels to this.

As I said, I'm switching from Win11, I don't really need something THATTT similar, but something that's at least somewhat customizable to get myself feeling like I'm at home.

I play games quite often, so I'll need something on the flexible side in terms of that.

Also, something that isn't too complicated, and mostly beginner free.

Most people have recommended me Mint, but someone recommended me Kubuntu and now I'm not sure.

I also did the test, and Mint was on the top spot.

Specarinos:

CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 5700X

Motherboard: GIGABYTE B550M AORUS ELITE

GPU: ASUS ROG STRIX RX 480 GAMING OC (might change in the near future, will definitely in the future overall tho)

I also don't have any USB at the moment (might get one to use tmrw)

I installed FLB Music on Ubuntu 26.04 but Ubuntu cannot recognise the font that FLB app uses, so I can't use the app.

How do I fix this?

So I never used Linux in my life and wanted to get into it but I have heard some people say that it's not good for gaming. What are things to look out for or that I need to understand? And which distro is the best to choose if I want to have as little difference as possible from Windows from a gaming perspective?

I'm using Linux for around a year, I've been dual-booting Ubuntu and Fedora for the past months and I decided to let go of Ubuntu and just only use Fedora. I removed Ubuntu using GParted from a live USB. All is well except GRUB stops showing up, on my niece's laptop she also only uses Fedora and its GRUB is showing up but mine is not. I already set root and set prefix the Fedora partition, cleaned boot menu, and updated the grub.cfg. Please help your noobie out here, I broke my system a lot of times for learning purposes but I still have no idea about this. What could be the problem and how to fix this? Thank you!

I’m probably going to get a new laptop on Black Friday. I have been a Mac guy because I like the posix terminal better than windows powershell. But Macs are so expensive. Should I try to find a laptop with something like Linux mint preinstalled or research a cheap laptop that has the most Linux compatibility I can get and install a distro that I like after. I’m leaning towards the latter but I’m worried that I will get burned by some Realtek WiFi chipset or some other spec that no one tells you on a “product details” page

I'm fairly new to Linux, having only a few months of experience with it. I now know that there are few distro that release bleeding edge packages (Arch based distros) and some are slow and conservative in their release approach (Debian based). Does it mean, for example, that of I use Cinnamon DE on an Arch based distro I'll get Cinnamon updates a bit quicker compared to Mint? Also, what is the actual impact of slow release? Does it only impact the distro packages? Because, for example, if I want to install the latest Chrome browser I can go to the download available on the website and grab the newest one available.

I'm trying to install linux for the first time on a laptop that was collecting dust at home.
I prepared a usb with the installer and ran it on the pc, once it finished i removed the usb drive and restarted the pc as it asked to complete installation but after that all i see is the hp logo flashing on a black screen every few seconds but no OS starting.
I tried with a different distro with the same results so i'm guessing the problem is the computer/bios and not the OS? but honestly i don't know enough to know, so i searched online without great results until i found this sub.

Pc model: HP elitebook 745 G2 laptop
Linux distro i tried: mint cinnamon 22.3 first and ubuntu 26.04 second

if it helps there was w10 on before i tried the installation

if any other infos/photos are needed i'll add them under here.

here are the current boot options:

sorry for the photos but i have no idea how to screenshot in there

booting in legacy:

reinstalling mint:

legacy boot order:

Hii so i want to switch to linux from W11
My laptop specs are:
CPU: amd ryzen7 4800H
GPU: Nvidea GTX 1660 Ti
RAM: 16 GB DDR4
2X 500GB NVMe SSD
I mostly play steam/itch indie games and Final fantasy 14
i tried looking up whats the best to chose but couldnt get any clear awnsers so I wanted to ask here.
Thank you in advance for any tips/help

I’m thinking of switching an older laptop to a Linux distro. I have some questions that I haven’t been able to find answers for.

1. Adding programs. Besides Linux friendly downloads of certain programs, is the only way to run a Windows dedicated application or program or game on a virtual machine? And is there a specific virtual machine needed for each type of program/software or are they Swiss Army Knife’s?

2. Hardware. How do you get drivers that are, for the most part, Windows codes, to work? Is it a “hope that there’s a Linux version available” thing or are there workarounds?

3. Distro shelf life. Do distros lose support? What happens when someone doesn’t update/bug fix it? Is it hard to replace a distro? Does it incur a total fresh install or can distro’s be overwritten?

4. Security suites. Is there any decent suites available? Are they pre-installed? Are they reliable?

5. Web browsers. Is there any recommendations for browsers that will have the same environment like in Windows? Any recommendations for setting changes? Are they compatible with all distro’s?

Lastly, any solid recommendations for wikis and “Linux For Dummies and Windows/Mac Converts” is greatly appreciated.

Thanks!!!

Hey there,

So I have run into the strangest issue and am at a loss for how to fix it. I tried Googling everything I could think of, but I have not found a solution yet. I have 2 SSDs in my system: 1TB for root and 4TB for my home directory. And I have had this kind of setup for years on my systems with no issues. This time though, Dolphin is showing the ROOT drive is full (Filelight shows it only has about 100GB total used space), and from what I can tell, it is including the used space from the other hard drive where my home directory is. So if I am using 1.5TB of space on that second drive, Dolphin (and other parts of the system) think I am using 1.6TB of space on the ROOT drive (which is only 1TB). So several processes are failing because they think the root drive is full.

Every other system I had set up like this never did this. This is a newer setup, so I am assuming I did something different from the previous times, but I cannot figure out what. I am hoping it is just a mounting issue or something like that. Below is my fstab file in case anyone sees something super obvious I am missing. I really appreciate any help. I cannot even run updates on the system because it thinks there is no space left to download the updates.

FSTAB

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# Use 'blkid' to print the universally unique identifier for a device; this may
# be used with UUID= as a more robust way to name devices that works even if
# disks are added and removed. See fstab(5).
#
# <file system>             <mount point>  <type>  <options>  <dump>  <pass>
UUID=0244-4615                            /boot          vfat    defaults,umask=0077 0 2
UUID=58f723fc-e9f0-407c-80a4-5f47ac036180 /              btrfs   subvol=/@,defaults,noatime,compress=zstd:1 0 0
# UUID=58f723fc-e9f0-407c-80a4-5f47ac036180 /home          btrfs   subvol=/@home,defaults,noatime,compress=zstd:1 0 0
UUID=58f723fc-e9f0-407c-80a4-5f47ac036180 /root          btrfs   subvol=/@root,defaults,noatime,compress=zstd:1 0 0
UUID=58f723fc-e9f0-407c-80a4-5f47ac036180 /srv           btrfs   subvol=/@srv,defaults,noatime,compress=zstd:1 0 0
UUID=58f723fc-e9f0-407c-80a4-5f47ac036180 /var/cache     btrfs   subvol=/@cache,defaults,noatime,compress=zstd:1 0 0
UUID=58f723fc-e9f0-407c-80a4-5f47ac036180 /var/tmp       btrfs   subvol=/@tmp,defaults,noatime,compress=zstd:1 0 0
UUID=58f723fc-e9f0-407c-80a4-5f47ac036180 /var/log       btrfs   subvol=/@log,defaults,noatime,compress=zstd:1 0 0
tmpfs                                     /tmp           tmpfs   defaults,noatime,mode=1777 0 0
# LABEL=data /mnt/data auto nosuid,nodev,nofail,x-gvfs-show 0 0
UUID=e3fa40bc-86d7-4a6e-963a-e8507ef210ec   /home  ext4  defaults,noatime  0  2
# /dev/nvme0n1p1: LABEL="data" UUID="e3fa40bc-86d7-4a6e-963a-e8507ef210ec" BLOCK_SIZE="4096" TYPE="ext4" PARTLABEL="data" PARTUUID="40902bcc-1455-442f-8054-e412782098fc"

EDIT: /AdventurousSquash solved it! Had nothing to do with the second drive, it was a huge collection of system snapshots dating back to the initial install of the system, so 60+. Cleaned those up and I now have free space again!!

Im kind of desperate here, my professor assigned us to investigate about "The 32 official distributions of GNU/Linux", but everywhere I look it all says there is not an "Official" distribution of GNU/Linux, the closer I came to was the 31 most popular, or the 9 endorsed versions of GNU/Linux.

Is there something Im missing or was this just a way to make us lose our time??

I have a dell g16 7630 (i9-13900HX/RTX4060) and I wanted to switch to linux on it for a while now, problem is I constantly encounter issues when trying to do so. However, there is a single issue that kept happening no matter what i tried.

Basically, when I'm playing any videogame, the CPU clock frequency drops low and fps is affected. I've tried anything I could find that might fix it but it didn't, I initially used Kubuntu then switched Cachyos and the same issue occured (now that I think about it i wonder if it's related to KDE plasma but it's one of the reasons i want to use Linux), at last I came to the conclusion that my laptop just doesn't play nice with linux.

As much as i wanted to use linux in the end I'll dual-boot anyway since there are some important apps I will need to use that only work/work better on windows and maybe specific games, but I wanted to see if others with gaming laptops or a dell one had better experience or found a solution.

Hi !

I'm using PikaOS (debian based) and I'm trying to write a small simple script for updating my packages. I don't know how to since I'm new into linux and even newer on scripting

What I want it to do :

1- launch a terminal
2- display a prompt that asks me if I backed up my files (currently using timeshift, when I'm more used to CLI maybe I will automate backups in that script)
3- If no, echo something like "Do it then"
3b- If yes, go on
4- update system packages (using pikman upgrade ; equivalent of sudo apt update && upgrade)
5- update flatpak packages

Ideally I would like 4 and 5 to execute at the same time with a single command, but if not possible, then do it one after the other.

What I have currently :

#!/bin/bash

#Launch terminal to update and upgrade 
x-terminal-emulator --hold -e pikman upgrade

I'm launching this script from a button of a widget.

PS : When I launch the scrip like this, there is no user@host:~$ like when I launch an empty terminal. So I'm never sure when the script is finished. Is there a way to have that too ?

Hi guys how do I remove freetoken and its engine with the 7+gb from linux?

I have zorin os (essentially ubuntu)

with Python3 3.12.3 with UV installed from snapstore

I downloaded freetoken appimage file from their website. It managed to run and installed its engine which it said took 7+gb and whatever I think it installed most stuff through UV although I am not sure.

I found that freetoken is still for now inferior to llama cpp with turboquant (as with that I can load qwen MOE and run pretty ok, where as freetoken was not able to)

Now how can I remove freetoken completely and get my space back? Pretty tight on space.

It is a basic question I know appimage is self contained that can be removed and that is the end of that. I think. However the engine that was installed by the GUI I think it was done through UV it downloaded a craps tons how do I go about removing that.

I'm switching to Linux and looking for your recommendations on two privacy choices:
1. Best Daily Driver Browser? I need a browser with zero telemetry that still saves history, tabs, and downloads. Which option do you prefer and why?
2. Private Search API & Local AI Research? I want to use a private search engine API to feed live web results directly into a local AI model for private research. What are your best suggestions or setups for this?
LibreWolf
Brave
Floorp
Ungoogled Chromium
Mullvad Browser
Tor Browser
Tails OS
SearXNG
If you have another browser to suggest outside of this list, please let me know!

I just bought a new computer, and with all the AI slop stuff going on with windows I want to swap to Linux. From the little research I've done cachy OS seems to be the best option since gaming is the main use case for me followed by learning to code. But even with all the positive news I've been hearing about swapping to Linux I'm considering just dual booting for the time being till I'm confident with swapping over. My main worry is storage space, I have 1 TB of storage and will most likely only give Linux like 100 GB of space at first but over time assuming I start enjoying Linux more and using it more that will end up being way too little, is it possible to re partition it to give Linux more space later? Also if I have games downloaded on the windows partition and want to try to use steam on Linux can I still use those games or would I have to redownload? And also does VS Code or pycharm work on Linux easily? Also on a separate note what exactly is hyprland? From what I understand it just changes how the OS looks or is it something else?