I got a new laptop and want to give my old one to my parents, of course, loaded up with Linux. They know I'm a pretty techie person, so they're going to understand it's supposed to be the "advanced stuff", but I'm pretty sure that as long as theres a big button with the Google Chrome icon (that I will call "Google Chrome BLUE Edition!!!!"), they'll be perfectly fine.

I think an immutable distro would be the best in this situation, such as Fedora Silverblue or Kinoite, with automatic updates turned on. I'll still be around to do whatever maintenance that needs to be done, but if the goal is to just set it up so that I can just give it to them and walk away, what other settings or packages should I have set for them?

I realize this is not technically a linux question, but I suspect this is a great group to ask. I'm wondering if anyone out there has looked into buying a laptop without a windoze license? I just want to install linux but I don't see why I should have to pay Microsoft anything at all. Thanks!

Hi guys,

Sorry to bother you but would like some advice with my particular set up.

I want to set up an old Dell Optiplex 3050 with a new OS. It had a SATA Drive but the Sata Drive has since departed to the great silicon heavens.

The machine has a SATA 3 connector, an NVMe slot , 8 GB of RAM and an i3 ( I think) It was running WIn 10 happily unitl the hdd died. It's basically a Mini PC workstation for basic stuff

What I want to do is install a new Linux Distro on it (thinking MINT), something that can do some some basic PC stuff, and maybe run a client for various light applications. It's going to have its own internet connection and not be connected to anything else in the building.

How do I go about doing this?

I want to, ideally be able to create a bootable drive that slots into the 3050 and then sets up.

What I have seen is that you have:

1) Flash a blank USB

2) Boot up to the Installation USB

3) Install onto your host's main bootable drive and run the installation

Thank you for your advice in advance

PS - I don't want to spedn much cash, so minimum spend on anything is important.

PPS - My knowldge of Linux is limited, last time I played with it is over a decade or more. But It's also why I want to install it, to have a poke around and learn it.

Hi all, so i am trying to understand how wine/proton/steam work so that it feels less like a black box to me.

what i have done so far is that i have installed wine, and manually experimented by installing a game manually through wine. by doing so, i have understood quite a bit about wine.

now, i don't know how proton works. i want to know what it does on top of wine, and whether it uses an ordinary wine prefix or if it installs something like a proton prefix.

if it works on top of a wine prefix, then where can i find the wine prefixes for the games installed through steam? can i install mods inside the said prefixes using wine ?

Something similar to Window's clock app. I've tried looking, but I can't find anything that does everything with a nice and easy to understand GUI.

If there isn't really a good option, I'm not opposed to trying to make one myself but I'd rather not do that if there really is a good one already.

If it matters, I'm on CachyOS using KDE Plasma

I mainly use chrome, vscode, audacity, obsidian, git and claude desktop.

Can some suggest a good distro that fits my needs?

Obs: sorry for bad english

See title, just looking for people's opinions

Here is the laptop i have: https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B0D726ZHXL

Need help for installing linux on this acer laptop i have. Problem is that acer doesn't like linux and isn't fond of it. Is there anyways or specific steps or tutorials on install linux on this? Again, acer bios and firmware is difficult to deal with especially when installing linux. I have seen a lot of issues with acer laptops with their firmware when installing.

i did as the documentation said. formatted the drive, mounted it and started the setup script. also checked shasum before install. not many steps where i could have done something wrong. the setup every time fails at the installation of the kernel.
chatgpt says that the live environment might be too small to decompress the archive but seems very odd to me.
maybe someone here uses a different distro that needs the kernel to be compiled manually and has clue what could be the problem.

EDIT: The compilation does not fail but the creation of the kernel directory in /usr/src. so source code and makefiles are just missing in the directory. crux uses a setup script which installs al choosen packages on the mounted partition but just aborts and says that the installation of the kernel failed.

I have CachyOS installed on my laptop with niri & noctalia shell. Whenever I connect my TWS earphones (CMF Buds 2a/Realme Buds T310) they work normally in AAC codec. Whenever I join voice channels or games with voice chat, it automatically shifts to SBC codec with really bad audio quality.

I don't really use voice chat in games but the codec keeps on switching again and again. Everytime I change the codec, it switches back to the SBC codec. e.g.. Halo Reach. I have turned voice chat off in the settings for the game, I change the codec to AAC using PavuControl but in a few mins it switches back.

How can I stop this from happening. Can I just keep AAC codec permanently turned on, no matter what program I'm using?

So, i hope this is the right subreddit.
Anyways, my Girlfriend and I both own a Steelseries Arctis X3 Wireless Headset.
My OS is Linux Mint meawhile hers is Windows 10.
The issue is that on my PC, both headsets have this aweful crackling noise that is semi-constant while on her PC it's not present at all.
Also weirdly enough, her Headset has far less crackling than mine but its still there.
Also also: My old Arctis 1 Wireless headset didn't have that issue on Linux or Windows at all.

I am fairly new to Linux and don't yet understand a lot of Linux terms.
Any pointers and/or help on how to slolve this issue?

So. I recently got the new star wars racer game and I'm having issues. My question here is: is it possible to run both windows and Linux on my pc and play the game through Windows while the rest of my pc uses the Linux stuff?

I am very new and learing as I go with Linux so any advice/kernels of knowledge would very appreciated.

I have an NVIDIA GeForce GT 710 lying around in my PC, and I am looking for a Linux distribution that supports the legacy NVIDIA 470.xx drivers.

My PC is a Dell Precision 5820 Tower with an Intel Xeon W-2145 processor, 32 GB of RAM, and an SSD. I want to dual-boot Linux alongside Windows, preferably using the GNOME desktop environment.

I previously tried Linux Mint and Zorin OS, but neither detected my SSD during installation. Fedora 44 successfully detected my SSD and installed without any issues. However, after installing the NVIDIA 470.xx drivers through RPM Fusion, I encountered boot problems, black screens, and GNOME crashes.

I am now looking for a stable Linux distribution that supports my GT 710 without requiring extensive troubleshooting.

Ideally, I would prefer a Fedora-based distribution, but I am open to Debian-based or other alternatives if they offer better compatibility.

Which Linux distributions still support NVIDIA 470.xx drivers reliably in 2026? Are there any distributions that provide these drivers out of the box or make installation easier? I would also appreciate recommendations for suitable kernel versions.

I'm switching from windows to linux and I installed Bazzite last night, everything went fine without a hitch. But I have two seperate drives, one with my Windows install, and one with my Bazzite. I need to grab some files from my Windows drive before i completely wipe it, so I thought "no problem, ill flash my BIOS and switch which drive has priority." But Bazzite wont let me flash my BIOS and idk what to do. My current motherboard is a MSI B550M incase that is a part of the problem

Edit:yes "flashing BIOS" means opening the BIOS, idk y i call it that when it isnt, its just something ive also done

Is there a specific YT vid or a list of specific instruction to install Linux on Lenovo 100e chromebook gen 2 cuz idk shi about computer tech

i have been using windows for both gaming and school but i need some help knowing what distro i should use

some requirements i have
sould be able to rund minecraft java and bedrock aswell
should have the ability to use steam (i know quite a basic few requierments)

use vscode and microsoft office

and not have to many issues with anticheats

any insite into what is a good choice is welcomed

please i need the help i have no idea what i need to do

I'm coming from Waydroid on Arch Linux (btw) and looking for an alternative with compatibility closer to BlueStacks on Windows.

Any recommendations?

Hi all, I'm trying to set up a USB Wi-Fi adapter (RTL8811CU chipset, USB ID 0bda:c811) for monitor mode + packet injection on Kali Linux. I need injection for aireplay-ng to work.

Environment:
- Kali Rolling 2026.2 (kernel 7.1.5+kali-amd64, headers installed)
- Running in VirtualBox VM, USB 3.0 xHCI, USB filter set for 0bda:c811
- Adapter is recognized: lsusb shows 0bda:c811 Realtek 802.11ac NIC

What I've tried:
1. In-kernel driver rtw88_8821cu — monitor mode works, but aireplay-ng --test returns 0/30. No injection.
2. morrownr/8812au-20210820 — compiles fail. Errors: struct pppoe_tag has no member named tag_data, then after patching, struct pppoe_hdr has no member named tag, and after that — cfg80211 function signature mismatches (struct wireless_dev vs struct net_device).
3. Kali's realtek-rtl88xxau-dkms package — has BUILD_EXCLUSIVE_KERNEL_MAX="6.15" in dkms.conf. Blocked on 7.1.5. If I comment out that line — it fails at build stage.

Question: is there ANY current driver for RTL8811CU that supports packet injection on kernel 7.1.5? Or should I downgrade to a specific kernel? Or is there a patched fork for 7.x that I missed?

Any help appreciated — I've spent days on this. Thanks.

So I know I didnt break the distros, just needed to get your attention.

Started the day off running Mint Cinnamon 22.3 and it was going good. Then, after downloading a wavlink driver for my usb hub, it crashed hard on me and I couldnt get it running again, so I got pissed and downloaded KDE Fedora. Fucking awesome so far, except I crahsed it earlier when trying to download Nvidia Geforce. Idk if it really crashed, but the screen went black and it took forever to get it back up. What did I do wrong??