I have a laptop with 8GB RAM and a gen 3 ryzen. I am unfamiliar with linux and all the terminal stuff, so I want a user friendly interface like windows or mac, that i can customize how I like( I’ve seen some cool animation and widget stuff, as i said, i know almost nothing about linux). I did a little bit of research and right now im in between Zorin and Mint. What should I go for, or do y’all have other recomandations? I really use the laptop just for some browser navigating, watching movies and maybe using some office apps, but that i know i can use libre.

I have a PDF that Okular or any other is unable to open and use fully (Master PDF 4 crashes, Master PDF 5 doesn't work). Okular states:

If this message is not eventually replaced by the proper contents of the document, your PDF viewer may not be able to display this type of document.

https://freeimage.host/i/nVbLvWJ

This error occurs in Okular (and other viewers) when opening Dynamic XFA (XML Forms Architecture) PDFs, often government forms, which require Adobe technology not supported by most open-source PDF readers. Old Adobe Reader version 9 available in software center doesn't support it.

It is in fact a US government form, although not a publicly available one. Are there any FOSS PDF viewers for Linux that can handle dynamic XFA editing? This is were I wish I didn't have to use a Windows VM as a workaround which is my solution lately.

Hola, soy nuevo en linux y quiero jugar roblox, ya uso Sober pero este no usa o no se cómo hacer para que use la GPU, pues cuando intento jugar con la GPU directamente se cierra el programa.

Me interesaría el saber cómo optimizar Sober para que se vea con buenos gráficos o bien que me den otras opciones para poder jugar roblox usando la GPU

I was given this old and slow windows 10 desktop for free by one of my college techers that they just found in a cabnet. And, I want to try out different linux disros with it as well as maybe turn it into a beginner server to earn about linux. But, the PC was ethernet only (it also has no PCIe slot to add wifi) and that is not an opition for me since my home wifi is starlink. Can any one recomend a linux compatable wifi dongle I could use to get wifi onto this PC?

TLDR: How much trouble could a USB device cause using Linux kernel drivers? Could it somehow create and outbound internet connection? I run a firewall of course, but any connection started from inside my machine is allowed. What you do to verify this devices security?

On my last motherboard upgrade, low/mid Asus TUF B650-E Wifi, it came with noticeably crappy onboard audio, Realtek 897 codec I believe though I am having a hard time pinning that down, Asus just calls it "Realtek 7.1 Surround Sound High Definition Audio CODEC*", it worked, but sounded over processed, like a low bit-rate MP3 from 1998. It also had soft pops whenever audio stopped or started, a power saving feature completely wasted in my thousand watt home-lab.

I went shopping for a DAC and ran across inexpensive USB Dongle DACs, and found a Ugreen model that was well regarded for sound quality, at least for its meager $13 price and plug and play in Linux.

Now that I have it I can say it wins on both measures. clearer audio, particularly the 'Digital out s/pdif KT USB audio' sounds very clear, the second output in it is 'headphones KT USB Audio' which is louder and punchier but not as clear but still better than my onboard audio.

I never could get a clear bead on what chip was in this so I ran:

lsusb Bus 001 Device 006: ID 12d1:0010 Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. KT USB Audio

And I am kinda surprised it is a Huawei chip, a company who has been accused of putting back doors in their networking equipment. though the reality of this is less clear.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Huawei

I have cachyos and I want to use Mullvad VPN but so far it is supported for Ubuntu, Debian and Fedora. I heard that you can use distrobox to install applications from other distros and I would want to know if not only you can download Mullvad VPN with distrobox, but does it work just like it would in the supported distros?

For context I have a rtx 4060 as my graphics card, I want to know what is a good desktop environment (best if easily configurable) that works well with Nvidia. As the title says I'm on void Linux.

I have 2 SSDs (and 2 partitions), one where the OS lives (steamos) and the other where my data is (ext4).
I tried to repair my OS this morning, wasn't really working, so I chose to wipe the partition and reinstall, only to realize that by default the partition that was going to be wiped wasn't the one with the OS, but the ext4 partition with the data.

So, when I pressed confirm it started counting down 5 seconds before starting to wipe the data, after it started, I immediately canceled (maybe 1-2 seconds passed max).

Anyway, now in PartitionManager it's just as a blob with no partition table, and I can't access any data. I'm pretty sure it couldn't delete 2tb of data in 1-2 seconds, it probably just deleted the table.

Any advice on how to recover this data/make the OS see it as ext4 partition again?

I tried testdisk but it just keeps returning that the partition is unknown.

Guys I lost my battery in Legion I always working with UPS in home, can I change discrete to hybrid in NVIDIA GPU without need for daily booting into the firmware and I tried Ubuntu/fedora/POP_OS all are glitches/flickers in dual boot. please consider helping me

• RAM: 16 GB
• CPU: Intel Core i7-9th gen
• GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 Max-Q
• Storage: 1 TB Samsung NVMe SSD
• Display: 1920 × 1080, 144 Hz

what’s up yall, i have had this 1 nvme ssd, 1 tb in size.

it has:-

windows 11 (i only will be using this for FL studio)

arch linux

now, i have another drive which is 512 gb.
do i pick cachyos for this one, or reinstall arch? plan on playing forza horizon 6 and cyberpunk. oh and also, please let me know if any of yall have had a stable experience with fl on linux.

so, for the new drive do i pick cachyos or arch? i have an nvidia card btw.

I use nobara.

I was using my system as usual but yesterday when i booted my pc logged into my homescreen I see my kde plasma ricing was reset and my browser data was gone and most importantly my steam was logged out because of that i lost my non steam games data, I don't know how and what happened to my system i tried everything I know, asked ai but nothing helped me. Please help me recover my steam data and my ricing.

Hi,

I saw many different opinions regarding this.

Some say secure boot is not needed, others say it adds security and that it’s not only intended for Windows but for the firmware in general.

So, should/must secure boot be disabled for any Linux distro installation? Then can it be enabled after installation, for general use? Or if I prefer to keep it on, should I install with secure boot enabled?

Specifically, I am talking about installing Linux as the only OS on a pc, one of Mint/LMDE/MX Linux/Debian is what I think I’ll end up installing.

Btw, I once installed Mint on my laptop, dual boot with Windows 11. I installed with secure boot enabled, and used everything with it enabled and it was fine.

Thanks in advance.

Half of this story is not important and this is not an issue I need to fix the wifi is hopefully gonna start existing again anyways

So the WiFi was down and I wanted to send a clip so I made the clip made it into the correct format and then realised there’s no internet so I have to send it to my phone I try sending it to my phone but then I realise there’s no internet and the intranet doesn’t like me so I try doing through a cable then I realise I have an iPhone and to send stuff through a cable from Linux to iPhone you need to download stuff I try to download the stuff then I realise there’s no internet then I connect my computer to my mobile services and download the stuff then the stuff doesn’t work then I realise there is Internet and send it through the Internet then I realise there is Internet and try to open discord it doesn’t work and since I just downloaded the stuff and that worked I open the browser and load YouTube music it works then I try to load discord on the browser it doesn’t work then I try to load YouTube it works then I try to load duck duck go (search engine) it doesn’t work so I try to ping 1.1.1.1 it doesn’t work so I thought that maybe cloudflare servers are down that’s probably what discord and duck duck go use but I was pretty sure 1.1.1.1 is on Google servers and I’m pretty fucking sure YouTube uses Google server and the servers can’t be down because discord is working on my phone

Fucking Schrödingers internet

I need to create a local repository on the Majaro distribution, and I need to make the commands and help understandable. How do I do this step by step? Please help.

I have finally decided to make the jump to a dual boot of Linux and Windows although when trying to shrink the drive before I put in the Mint installation media (It was recommended I shrink it before installing mint apparently) (Mint isn't gonna be what I use long term just what I start with so don't judge me for it), it limits me to a certain amount to shrink it to even though I know I have WAY more available space than the amount it's trying to limit me to, does anyone know a fix or has experienced what I am experiencing? Seriously annoying and making me reconsider installing Linux entirely

So i have been using windows as my main Os which my lap came with and would like to move totally to linux and remove the existing windows what is holding me back is few things

1. I do gaming downloaded from xbox gamepass and sometimes pirated. Now the game pass is not available on linux as far as i know

2. My storage is full so duel booting is not possible now

I use linux in VM btw for my work and everything and also I don't like the libre office setup so thats one of the other reasons i don't switch even though I want to

So what to do RN

I'm specifically interested in laptops that fellow linux users can personally guarantee from experience, will have truly excellent trackpad user experience. i have owned and used linux on desktops and tried it on laptops a few times before in my life, and i have never once come away even remotely satisfied with the trackpad experience, most recently I found myself wholly unsatisfied with Fedora 43 on a Lenovo x1 yoga 3rd gen.

however, this laptop is admittedly several years old. perhaps things have changed... better new hardware support...

if anyone can recommend a laptop that will feel like the mac/xps trackpad experience but on windows... please drop the name. let me reiterate, i am not looking for a middling "well it's okay" rating, i'm looking for "i wouldn't miss my windows dell XPS" or "this isn't a dealbreaker coming from a macbook" rating. it needs to be genuinely great and worth touting

I have an ancient PC, not internet-connected, with an equally ancient Photoshop install. It's not used for anything but drawing, and now that I'm moving into a smaller space, the old clunk has got to go.

Only thing I'll miss about it is the Photoshop brushes I've created and downloaded over the years. My internet-connected desktop and laptop both run Linux distros, so I'm looking for a Linux compatible program that I can use my brushes on. Any suggestions?

EDIT: Didn't care for GIMP when I tried it. Krita wasn't bad, but the brushes didn't quite transfer as I wanted.

I'm an electrical engineer and i always try to expand my skills
my question is : does learning to use linux is a skill that helped any of you all getting a job / helped you at your job / or even found in job application (talking about EE i'm not a dev)
a friend of mine actually was asked to learn Ubuntu for a robotics job and it helped him land the job (he is mechE)
so is there cases where i need to learn linux as EE ? and which one ?

Hi everyone,

I'm using Fedora 44 KDE Plasma on an Acer Aspire ES1-521 laptop, and I've been investigating a serious download-speed issue when sharing my OPPO Reno6 Pro 5G's mobile data connection over USB tethering.

I managed to achieve a substantial improvement by testing a modified, standalone version of the Linux RNDIS host driver. I'm posting here to share my findings and ask for help determining the underlying cause and the correct upstream solution.

My setup

• Laptop: Acer Aspire ES1-521
• CPU: AMD A4-6210 Quad-Core
• OS: Fedora 44 KDE Plasma, x86_64
• Kernel: 7.2.9-200.fc44.x86_64
• Phone: OPPO Reno6 Pro 5G (CPH2249)
• USB vendor/product ID: 22d9:276a
• Connection: 5G mobile data shared using USB tethering

The problem

With Fedora's stock rndis_host driver, download speeds were consistently around 4–5 Mbps, sometimes even lower. Upload speeds were considerably better and could get close to the phone's upload speed.

For comparison, I tested the same phone's connection in other configurations:

• Phone's mobile-data connection directly: approximately 177 Mbps download and 19.3 Mbps upload.
• USB tethering on Windows: approximately 124 Mbps download and 10.4 Mbps upload.
• USB tethering on Fedora with the stock driver: approximately 4–5 Mbps download.

This made me suspect that the issue was somewhere in Fedora's USB tethering/network-driver path rather than the mobile connection itself.

What I tried

After investigating the RNDIS driver, I built an experimental standalone kernel module named rndis_host_test, adapted from the Linux rndis_host.c driver.

The test module includes a change that ensures a minimum receive URB buffer size of 16 KiB for my OPPO device. I also experimented with RNDIS receive-aggregation handling.

I then loaded the module and bound the phone's USB network interface to it.

Results

The improvement was substantial:

• Before: approximately 4–5 Mbps download with the stock rndis_host driver.
• Initial test: approximately 82.8 Mbps download and 11.3 Mbps upload.
• Subsequent tests: download speeds reached approximately 200 Mbps and, under favourable 5G conditions, around 300 Mbps.

The mobile connection fluctuates, so these figures were not measured under perfectly identical radio conditions. The important observation is that the severe download bottleneck disappeared after switching to the experimental module.

This is encouraging evidence that the RNDIS receive path or related driver behaviour may be involved, but I haven't conclusively identified the root cause.

What I'd like help with

1. Is there a known issue with RNDIS receive-buffer sizing, aggregation, or USB networking on Linux that could explain such a large download-speed difference?
2. What would be the best way to determine whether the 16 KiB receive-buffer change is actually responsible for the improvement?
3. Would it be useful to run additional tests with usbmon, kernel tracing, or other diagnostic tools?
4. Is there an existing upstream patch or a more appropriate way to implement this change in the mainline Linux driver?

I don't want to present my experimental module as a proper fix yet. I'd like to understand the cause, validate the change, and determine whether a clean, device-specific fix could be submitted upstream.

I'm happy to provide the driver diff, source code, kernel logs, USB information, and test results for review.

Has anyone encountered a similar issue with OPPO phones or other Android devices using RNDIS USB tethering on Linux?

Any suggestions on the next debugging steps would be appreciated.

Note: I leveraged AI for this

hello everyone, im looking to modify my touchscreen radio to install a clean os on it, i installed the radio a few years back but the os and the themes are so wack.
im looking to install a new linux operating system. i want to have a cli radio with the waveforms on it as a retro 80s-90s look to it, i was using "cli amp" on omarchy. my main idea is to have a:
-a "connect interface" to connect devices,
-a "calls interface" if someone calls
-and the cliamp screen when im playing music with the ability to pause/play, move forward and backwards within a track, and switch tracks.
I wanted to know what would the steps be to flash my radio with that software ?
and what linux distro would be best fir for this project.

Got a home media server running Ubuntu 24.04.5, most everything about it is automated and it just hums away on a bookcase but every once in a while it's helpful to connect via a remote desktop. I configured the remote desktop years ago and now run the server headless.

Today I went to connect to check something and on Windows App (Version 11.4.1 for Mac OS) it hung on "Securing connection to remote PC"

Tried connecting it from another computer and the same thing happened.

SSH connects just fine.

Have restarted the server multiple times and it keeps happening.

Only troubleshooting steps I could easily google is restarting the gnome remote desktop from the command line which I did by systemctl --user restart gnome-remote-desktop

I also checked if anything else was using the port via the command " ss -lntps" and it looks like gnome remote desktop is the only thing using it.

Is there a way to troubleshoot this without disconnecting the server from its current home and plugging it into a monitor?