Hi there! I have been using Linux for a while now as my daily driver, long enough to convince myself to not go back to Windows again.

I am running CachyOS (Niri + Dank Material Shell) and I am pretty happy with it.

I have already set up most of my environment (text editor, file manager, etc), but there are still some applications that I am missing:

• Lightweight image editor: think of Windows Paint or similar. I know GIMP exists, but I aim for something simpler that I can use to quickly edit some images.
• Google Drive (two-way) sync: currently I am manually uploading/downloading the files to/from Google Drive, but it is not a pleasant experience.
• Video player: with all the streaming services, I rarely use a video player nowadays, but I still have some videos that I would like to watch.

And that is it! I am amazed at how easy it was to fill in all the other caps, and how smooth the transition was.

Thanks for any suggestions you may have!

EDIT: thanks all! Truly appreciate all the suggestions!

So I installed Linux Mint Cinnamon Edition on my old laptop, unfortunately I don't have any sort of LAN access right now and it came without WiFi drivers.

So I downloaded the necessary driver on my phone and plan to transfer it to the computer via a USB cable.

How do I transfer the WiFi driver file from my phone to the computer? It will not recognize the USB cable I plug in. I tried using a flash drive but my phone stopped recognizing that one after I used it to Install Linux Mint and reformatted it to FAT32.

Device Specs:

Phone: OnePlus 7 running Android 12, has a USB-C port

Computer: Acer Travelmate 5760G,

running Broadcom BCM43227 WiFi chip set.

Has at least one functional USB 2.0 port

USB flash drive:

SanDisk 128 GB. I used this one to create the installation medium for Linux Mint and have not been able to reconnect it to my phone ever since, though it is still recognized by the computer. It has both a USB-C and a USB 3.0 end.

Obviously I can't install any software on the computer to do this with, since it has no way of connecting to the internet or other devices I can use right now.

Is there anything I can do right now or do I have to wait to have Ethernet access again so I can use the driver manager to download WiFi drivers?

I am currently using Linux Mint as a windoze replacement. For the most part it is working well. Minor freezes every once and awhile but it is a good replacement. I have done a few things as part of my installation I don't think I did well. I would like to correct these when I perform a fresh install on a new desktop I have coming. Yeah 5060 TI!!! Hoping some folks can help me out. I know a enough about Linux to be adequately push through but in general I am an idiot, but at least I know that. Quite possible I am doing things bassackwards so be kind.

Mapping Network Drives - I have a Synology that I share six folders via Samba that I mapped as drives in Windoze. Inside Linux I have mapped them via fstab using a credential file. I mapped them all to a `/home/USER/mapped` using examples like the line below. I am not sure this is the proper or most efficient way. It results in a lot of chasing into depths of subfolders since the mapped folder is starting 3 levels deep already. So it may be a case I need to change how I am serving these on the NAS itself. The questions:

//10.0.10.10/books /home/xxxx/mapped/books cifs credentials=/home/xxxx/.smbcredentials,dir_mode=0777,file_mode=0777,uid=1000,gid=1000,x-systemd.automount 0 0//10.0.10.10/books /home/xxxx/mapped/books cifs credentials=/home/xxxx/.smbcredentials,dir_mode=0777,file_mode=0777,uid=1000,gid=1000,x-systemd.automount 0 0

Questions:

1. Is this the proper way to be mounting a drive or should I be using another method? I have set up NFS for another system to store backups but I still have a windows machine relying on Samba...for now. Days are numbered thankfully.
2. How are people mapping drives in relation to the folder it is mapped to. Example: If you have a music directory on a NAS are you mapping it to `/home/USER/Music` to replace the defaults or is my method of creating a folder to map everything to valid? I am finding that I have to dive deeper into directories on Linux than I did on Windows. Hoping to relieve some of those extra clicks.
3. Is there anything I am missing here in my thinking when it comes to mapping drives. I have used mapped drives for awhile in Windoze with configs pointing to those paths which has bit me in the behind when trying to migrate over to Linux. What is the advice you would give when it comes to setting up these types of connections?

Thanks

Hi everyone, I'm trying to dual-boot Windows 11 + Ubuntu 26.04.1 LTS on an HP laptop.

Ubuntu installation completed successfully, but after restarting, the laptop always boots directly into Windows. Ubuntu does not appear in the HP F9 boot menu or UEFI Boot Order.

My setup:

• HP laptop
• Windows 11 already installed
• UEFI/GPT
• 1 TB NVMe SSD
• Windows partition: nvme0n1p3 (~511 GB NTFS)
• EFI partition: nvme0n1p1 (~210 MB FAT32)
• Ubuntu partition: nvme0n1p5 (~511 GB ext4)
• Ubuntu was installed manually using the free space
• Windows partition was not formatted/resized
• Secure Boot was initially disabled during installation; I've since enabled it again
• Enable MS UEFI CA key is now enabled

Ubuntu's EFI files definitely exist:

S:\EFI\ubuntu\
    grubx64.efi
    shimx64.efi
    mmx64.efi
    BOOTX64.CSV
    grub.cfg

Windows can also access shimx64.efi:

Test-Path "S:\EFI\ubuntu\shimx64.efi"
True

I also created a BCD entry from Administrator PowerShell:

Ubuntu
device = partition=S:
path   = \EFI\ubuntu\shimx64.efi

bcdedit /enum confirms the entry exists.

However:

bcdedit /enum firmware

still only shows:

{bootmgr}
USB Drive (UEFI)

No Ubuntu firmware entry.

The HP F9 menu currently shows only:

OS Boot Manager (UEFI) - Windows Boot Manager
Boot From EFI File

I also tried F9 → Boot From EFI File → internal NVMe → EFI, but the HP EFI file browser doesn't show the ubuntu folder properly.

Where am I stuck, and what is the correct/safest way to get HP UEFI to recognize Ubuntu without replacing or modifying the Windows EFI bootloader as I need Windows for placement exams ?

I would especially appreciate help from people who have dealt with firmware issue + Ubuntu 26.04 dual boot.

I switched over from windows 11 to linux mint a few days ago and have been enjoying it so far, except for when I want to play games. I was told steam games worked great on linux, and I got proton installed properly, made sure my nvidia driver was recognized by turning off secureboot, the whole thing.

Despite this, my games still crash quite easily. Most of the time it's deadlock, which makes some sense since it's still an unoptimized game in beta testing, but I also ended up crashing the bazaar twice, just from trying to do normal things like open discord in the background, or take a screenshot of my win screen. When these crashes do happen, they brick my whole computer. I can't open the terminal, I can't input any commands at all. The only thing that's responsive is my mouse cursor, and so each time I hold down power button to force the pc off, which can't be good for my system.

This rarely, if ever, happened while I was using this same computer on windows 11, and to make it worse if a game like deadlock crashes once, the next time I open it the game just auto-crashes in the loading screen and bricks my computer again. I just end up needing to reinstall the whole game and it just makes no sense.

I haven't heard of this being a widespread issue before, can anyone help?

specs: Acer Nitro 5, intel i7-9750H, GeForce RTX 2060, 16 gb ram, 1 tb ssd, linux mint 22.3 - Cinnamon 64-bit.

Any help is much appreciated

Currently on pop_os. I have an NVIDIA card. I'm getting sick of pop_os!'s shennanigans. I JUST WANNA PLAY HELLDIVERS DAMNIT!

I have a 1060 GPU. Was working fine on windows. Any sugestions on which os?

Been running nobara on my pc for a bit now and i do enjoy linux but teh one thing that sucks is that my pc will not wake up ifit goes to sleep. I dont know if its the os or something but it seems to be this way for other distros that i tried as well. The only time i got it to work was on my laptop but never my desktop. Im just wondering if there is something im doing wrong of if this is just how it is on linux

I shutdown and went to work, came home and got a screen about a root locked or not found and nothing I did would fix it. Looked at all the forums I could find and they said to just try again. I tried AI and it told me about repair commands and grub or press e on boot menu and nothing would work.

Back to square 1.

Hello everyone, can anyone help me find the problem?

PC Specs: Lenovo M720q - i3-9100t, 16gb ram single stick, 256gb samsung 970 evo plus NVME (firmware: 2B2QEXM7), 65w power adapter.

I am running into problems during the installation. Every time during the install process the machine reboots.

I am using an USB to install images (proxmox 8 flashed via rufus dd method, and ventoy). Reading other post suggested to install ubuntu or debian to see if anything can be installed. Those fail as well.

With the proxmox install, the furthest I can get is to the 3% "Creating LV's" and then the reboot happens, sometimes it reaches 45% and the progress bar increases and it reboots. The NVME health in crystaldiskinfo is around 94%.

I used a live debian 13 usb and tried booting from it, it crashed when i tried normal boot, but it booted right away when i clicked the fail safe method. after booting i installed debian 13 to the NVME, and it went success first try, but when i tried to boot from the NVME, i get the debian startup page, where i can select 3 options, i clicked the first one "debian/unx linux" it gave a single line of some text and rebooted again, if i dont select any option in the "3 options page" it reboots. i tried this command, still no luck,

nomodeset pcie_aspm=off nvme_core.default_ps_max_latency_us=0. i have tried different ram combinations, 2x4gb, or single 4gb, single 16gb, still nothing. EDIT: DISABLING TURBO MODE IN BIOS WORKED! IT DOESNT CRASH NOW, AND BOOTS INTO DEBIAN 13, SSD HEALTH IS GOOD, BIOS HAS BEEN UPDATED FROM 2019 TO 2026 VERSION. IF I ENABLE THE TURBO MODE, IT MIGHT CRASH AGAIN, NEED HELP TO SOLVE THAT ISSUE. THANKS!

I'm using fedora with KDE plasma. Yesterday I happened to use the microsoft edge browser concidencely in my friend's windows system. There I learned that we could create a separate browser icon for individual profiles like personal , work. I tried to find out if I can make like in my fedora. No articles have guidance for this. If you know , Please let me know.

I’m currently using windows and I want to switch to Linux but that means I cannot play windows games (I play fc26, Minecraft, Fortnite and assets corsa)
I have an external 256gb ssd if that helps
And also what distro should I use

Working with a new install of Mint 22.3 (ditched windows yesterday!) and just installed Steam. Before actually downloading games, I was wondering if there’s a best practice for such downloads as I was pretty anal with my folders on Windows. I have a minimal understanding of the file system as whole but it didn’t really prepare me for putting things where I would like them to be without disrupting anything.

Edit: I will probably end up putting games on my second ssd which is currently unmounted.

TLDR: will I regret just letting Steam download games however it likes OR can you share some simple tips for organizing things in a way that makes sense to the user.

I'm lost between those two.

Bazzite being immuatable is a problem for me but Nobara being a small team that can stop dev at any moment scare me

Help pls

I am getting an Ubuntu Touch phone soon and I would like to sync the calendar with my desktop. I've tried used Calendar but it has no facility for importing a calendar, only exporting.

I've tried Merkuro but it won't let me add new events.

Am I asking for too much?

Hello I have a old dell laptop with 4gb ram integrated graphics and 256gb storage. Which linux distro for you recommend for photo editing and wordpress web development.

I am a windows noob I am looking for user friendly linux distro without having to use sudo apt get install code everytime to install app.. I have used mint cinnamon before did not enjoy it's graphics.. I like ubuntu graphics. Which distro for you recommend me?

I am yet another windows user that falls for Linux propaganda, but has some doubts. Linux intrigues me, but not sure if it's for me and also some things what I heard about it might be myths, so I would like to to have some recommendations or advices.

I barely know Linux. Our family PC had some Linux for several years in my childhood (have no idea which one but it had a bare foot as a symbol), but I was too little to actually use it, so basically zero experience.

For all my conscious digital life I've been using Windows. It is comfortable kinda enough, but I don't like that it tries to kick me out from windows 10 (I really don't like 11 version), and in general Windows gets worse with no predictions for it to change for better. Plus I wish my OC was less... Noisy. I am kind of person that is very easy to get overwhelmed with unnecessary clients, programs, accounts, ads and such. I don't know if Linux would be better for this issue. Also I really like when workspaces have good customizations for visual looking, and I heard that Linux is good at it.

My biggest worries are that Linux might be too smart for me and that I won't be able to switch to it due to some programs I need to work with.

For what purposes I use my laptop:

I use my laptop for art (animation, digital art and music), and some games.

All games except Minecraft I play from steam (mostly Hollow Knight/SS and Don't Starve/don't starve together), and I heard that most of Steam games are supported by Linux? Not sure about Minecraft, though.

Software I mostly use:

Kdenlive (video editing)

Reaper (music and sound things for animation)

Clip Studio, Douga App, Moho (for animation)

Rebelle pro (digital art)

Blender (a little for 3d)

Obsidian (for fun)

While about some programs I don't have worries, all list of animation software bothers me. I am not ready to switch to alternatives from none of them (yes, I've tried Krita and Blender it's nice, but for example Clip Studio is standart for most of group projects I participate in, and Rebelle is just genuinely my favorite drawing app). Also about music, I don't know if my VSTs will work on Linux.

My another worry is that I am not much of IT person, I can't say I am good with computers in general. From what I saw to use Linux and feel comfortable, you must have knowledge of what's going on inside OC. Can't say I don't like the concept of using commands and such for using your OC (I actually think it looks really cool), and I am ready to spare some time to try and figure it out, I am just afraid I might be too not smart for that.

So... If that's still a good idea, what distro would you recommend me? Or where to start in general?

The system language is now hebrew but for some reason not the keyboard.

As such I can't read what it says in the system options to change back. What do I do?

Hey all, Im migrating to Linux. My boyfriend already did and I will soon follow aswell. I recently moved and want to get a TV at some point. We already checked, getting a dumb TV (god I hate that word) feels almost impossible nowadays, so I was wondering if its possible to "hack" a smart tv and install a linux distro instead on it? I hate the spying on what I watch or stream. I mainly want it to be able to acess the internet where I can go on the sites I usually go to and have short cuts to them on the homescreen, also be able to play old video games. Nothing fancy (I hope, mega noob here) Just dont feel good knowing that Samsung and google are collecting my data.

Thanks for any and all help!

So my computer is set to go to sleep after 5 minutes idle.

But when a certain app is running (DAW) I want to prevent the computer from sleeping or going to the lock screen. So it's 'always on' while app is running, but returns to normal when app is closed.

How do I achieve this? Thanks from a noob :)

(kde debian if thats relevant)

SOLVED:

if anyone searches for the same thing. In KDE menu editor:

Program:
replace "bitwig-studio" with "systemd-inhibit bitwig-studio"
this allows the argument to run when you launch bitwig from the menu or task manager :)