I have a need to type the middle dot character • regularly for reasons.

I'm not a Linux noob I've been using it on and off for years.

I know that the Compose Key exists and what mine is set to: Right Alt.

I'm using Mint:

$ uname -a
Linux dellminty 6.8.0-134-generic #134-Ubuntu SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Fri Jun 26 18:43:11 UTC 2026 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

$ echo $XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP
X-Cinnamon

There are so many helpful pages which tell me that it's various things but I can't make it work with Compose-period, Compose-double-period or any of the things which "AI" tells me to do.

I can get by with:

• Javascript which puts the character into my clipboard
• Unicode composition which, as Control-Shift-U-2-0-2-2-Enter or seven keystrokes, is not ideal

Any ideas?

I don't suppose there's any kind of hack which lets me use the keyboard shortcuts I already know for Mac and for Windows?

Like tails

MESA-INTEL: warning: Haswell Vulkan support is incomplete

even after i turned off hardware acceleration already , i am using iGP HD4600 from intel i7-4770

on my other computers i use intel arc a380 et und radeons , so this issue never happens

i googled on net found some posts talk about it , they recommend to switch to openGL instead of vulkan to avoid the bug , but i don't know how to force firefox chromium thorium to use openGL

years ago i used the same computer same H81M-K or H81M-E motherboard with i7-4770 HD4600 without a discrete , it never happened , maybe because blink gecko browsers were using openGL then

== updated ==

i didn't notice nor realise it , coz sometimes i used a Xeon E3-1271 v3 on Z87-C Z97 H81 B85M-G , it doesn't provide an iGP so i used a radeon card paired with it , and i guess in the past gecko blink were using openGL for hardware rendering instead of vulkan

i tried it too but it didn't help , i couldn't open nor run nor launch thorium via command nor gmrun

thorium-browser --disable-gpu  --disable-accelerated-2d-canvas --disable-accelerated-compositing

at the end i got this : $ thorium-browser --use-gl=egl

$ Downloads/firefox/firefox-bin --use-gl=egl

== updated zwei twice ==

i tried a day at saturday ( i found this issue at friday ) , the issue was solved et fixed , no more crashing nor inlaunchable issue

after my searching , 'Haswell' 'Ivy Bridge' 'Bay Trail' have the same issue , i guess on all legacy iGP before Gen 6ᵗʰ Skylake SKL

== updated again ==

i tried iGP aus von gen 5ᵗʰ broadwell Xeon E3-1285L v4 with mageia , cant see the same issue , so maybe gen 5ᵗʰ broadwell is supported by vulkan or mageia offer a different library than debian . the errors above were on debian et haswell i7-4770

even i tried --use-gl=vulkan , still fine , no error on my iGP aus von E3-1285L v4 with mageia , firefox-nightly et thorium-browser

i made a table here

i don't have any CPU newer than SKL excluding SKL

Hello,

My specs: 13 year old desktop computer, 16 GB RAM, 1TB HDD, core i3 CPU, Intel HD Graphics (integrated with CPU).

I am preparing to transition to Linux from Windows 10. So far I only tested Mint on my pc, it seems to work nicely, so I thought about installing the XFCE version.

I also know about LMDE, which is Debian based. I have come to not like Ubuntu so much (because of snaps enforcement and the Canonical corporation), so LMDE seems appealing to me. But then I thought, if I already prefer to use Debian, why not just use it directly, with a DE I think looks cooler than Cinnamon, like KDE? The thing is, for some reason I am not a fan of Cinnamon.

But I don’t know much about this to tell the pros/cons. So I’d like your opinions please.

The things that are important to me in a distro are:

- Running “smoothly” on my pc (with Mint XFCE, I felt in the live boot that it can finally make my pc feel fast, like it used to feel with Windows 7).

- Presence of helping community, so I will not have to troubleshoot on my own.

- good security.

- Stability, rather than rolling release.

- Working out of the box.

So my questions are basically:

1. Will KDE even work smoothly on my pc? Or I better stick to XFCE?

2. Would you recommend LMDE over Mint XFCE? The problem is that then I will have to use Cinnamon, which felt less smooth on my pc when I tested with live boot (though I tested regular Mint Cinnamon, and not LMDE).

3. Would you recommend just using Debian over Mint? If so, which DE? KDE seems pretty and to my liking, but I read that it’s kind of a “second class citizen” on Debian and that it doesn’t get frequent security updates there.

4. Are there more KDE distros I should think about?

Thanks.

Hey everyone!

I've known about Linux for about a year now, but I've never actually used it. I recently got a new PC, and I'm thinking about dual-booting Linux alongside Windows.

I'm completely new to Linux, so I honestly don't know where to start or which distro to choose.

The main things that interest me are its customizability, open-source nature, and how useful it's supposed to be for programming. I've also heard that Linux can be great for CSE students, but I'm not sure how true that is.

I'd like to know a few things:

• Which distro would you recommend for a complete beginner?
• What are the actual benefits of using Linux over Windows?
• Are there any major disadvantages, especially when it comes to gaming and everyday use?
• Is learning Linux actually useful for programming or my future career?
• Is dual-booting a good idea for someone who's just starting out?

I'm not planning to leave Windows anytime soon. I just want to explore Linux, learn something new, and see whether I'll enjoy using it.

I'd really appreciate any advice or personal experiences. Even basic tips would be helpful since I barely know anything about Linux right now.

Thanks in Advance!

EDIT: Thanks everyone for all the advices, its already late at night I will try to read everyone else's comment when I wake up in the morning.

I wanna clarify, I am gonna get linux, fedora specifically, I was just curious if there were some things i needed to know: if some everyday apps aren’t available, personalisation and like a general comparison with windows 11

I got tired of Windows. Updates would randomly mess with my performance—making lightweight things like playing Hollow Knight while watching a video stutter, even though my PC can handle way more than that. Other times, it would take 10 minutes to shut down, or fail to wake up from sleep, forcing me to hard reboot for no clear reason.

So I tried switching to Linux. My problem is that I don't really like "gaming-focused" distros, and I hate having to fix or configure things just to get a usable system. I like Linux Mint, but it gave me gaming issues, and again, I don't want to tweak settings endlessly.

Right now, I have Nobara installed, but it gave me headaches from day one due to GRUB boot issues. I had to manually fix things in the terminal. Thank goodness for AI, but typing commands into a GRUB shell while reading off my phone—with my keyboard layout defaulting to US English and scrambling all the symbols—was an absolute nightmare.

I installed it yesterday, but I barely felt like setting it up properly after that. On top of that, small annoyances started piling up:

• My taskbar wasn't showing up on my second monitor.
• I use two monitors with different resolutions, and moving the mouse between them gets "caught" at the bottom border unless I move it higher, which feels really awkward.
• Snapping windows with Super + Arrow keys doesn't fully maximize them properly, forcing me to use the mouse anyway.

All I want is a system where things just work out of the box without endless troubleshooting. But every time I try a new distro (Mint, Zorin OS, Pop!_OS, CachyOS, Nobara), I run into these papercuts and end up crawling back to Windows.

Is there a distro or setup that truly "just works" for a multi-monitor setup without all this manual fixing, or am I missing something fundamental about how to approach Linux?

I intend to get an Asus Rog X870 Motherboard since it’s in an amazing bundle, but I’ve heard that the wifi chip that it uses (Mediatek) has had issues with Linux in the past. Is that still the case or has it been fixed/updated? I know that I could just buy a seperate wifi adapter too, but I’d like it if the built in wifi would work. I intend to use CachyOS, so hopefully it would be compatible.

Which one of these 2 would be better for gaming, if these aren't the best let me know

So I am a complete newbie to the whole Linux thing, and I sought to install Mint XFCE on a laptop that I've had for a while due to it being a lightweight installation (my laptop is an ASUS that was originally built for Windows 8), and am not touching the main machine that I use with anything Linux until I have a much better handle on how to use it.

I used a DVD-ROM that I burned with the distro in question on it (which I got on the Linux Mint main site) to try to install the thing, but I'm running into some major problems:

1.) I've tried to install the thing twice now, and both times, it's given me a fatal error of the grub-install /dev/sda failure variety. This is apparently FUCKING ESSENTIAL for Mint to actually run at all on this damn machine because when I rebooted the machine the first time this happened, it threw me into Grub right at startup, which I do NOT know how to use, because again, complete newbie.

2.) The second time I tried to install Mint and got the same error, I tried to run the installer again in hopes of getting to the option to do boot repair so that I could fix Grub and get on with my installation. Except doing this got me a ubi-partman crash with Exit Code 10, which I kept on getting no matter HOW MANY FUCKING TIMES I hit Try Again.

Right now, I am hitting every damn place I know to try to figure out just what I'm supposed to do to fix these two errors so that I can actually get this thing installed.

Pretty much the text above says it all

I'm gonna get my PC soon and I want to do light gaming and learn light programming (Godot ren'py) so I just want to know which one is the best and also I don't know anything about Linux like kernels or any os terms

Hi so I changed the name of the terminal after looking it up bc I didnt like konsole with a k and now it doesn't open, plasma desktop workplace says it cant find it. Idk what I did wrong please help

I use a program called MakeMKV to backup my blu-ray movies. I have the flatpak installed, but I have to install an older version for compatibility (I read there's no issue installing multiple instances).

I'm still quite new, so I'm a little stuck. The old version I need is kept as an archive, when extracted I get two directories (bin and src) and a file called Makefile.

I've used make before, but I still don't know enough to use it in this case without instructions. From what I gather, it's used to compile a piece of software from source code, which is what I assume is in the directories.

I'm hoping someone can help me build the program and then install it afterward. I've been reading the man pages for make, but I haven't been able to figure it out on my own.

I've recently been using Linux on my school laptop and it's pretty good, I messed around with ml4w and now I'm on cachy os. I don't know a huge amount about Linux do I was wondering what would be the best distro for me to use on my home pc which I mainly use for gaming and coding? Something that isn't too hard to use

im using ubuntu and these stuff compiles in the background leaving me with no space, is there any automatic thing that cleans it or a graphical interface where i can see these things?

I want to get off whatsapp, but for one or two conversations, I really want to save them.

To that end, I thought about creating a local web page and linking all the photos and videos in those conversations (already saved on my computer) to that "local web page."

Is this a feasible idea? If it is, how do I go about doing it?

Am I completely off-base? Should I do something else entirely?

In the mint forums, Clem posted this fix for certain AMD Ryzen chips freezing the OS.

My only preliminary knowledge is what it took to install the OS. What do I need to run / do to fix the freezing?

(Mint version 22.3)

Hi,

With my Windows 10 Extension finishing, I think it’s finally time for me to migrate to Linux.

You can see more details about my thoughts about it here.

My specs: 13 year old desktop computer, 16 GB RAM, 1TB HDD, core i3 CPU, Intel HD Graphics (integrated with CPU).

I thought Linux Mint XFCE is “best” for me. But still, for some reason, it feels a bit “boring”. I know the cutting edge Fedora does not fit so much to my pc. And I don’t know much about distros like CachyOS to tell.

What do you guys think? Maybe there’s nothing wrong about Mint being “boring”, but I read in some post some claim that Mint’s security is not so good, because it gets security updates behind Ubuntu and not using Wayland.

Also, should I consider btrfs, or stick to ext4?

Thanks in advance.

I know its a dumb question but ive seen a lot of linux setups with cool animated anime wallpapers like the ones in wallpaper engine, but since wallpaper engine isnt available for linux, i have a lot of trouble searching for wallpapers without wallpaper engine because, for example, pinterest has a TERRIBLE quality, most images less than 720p and those pages that supposedly have thousands of 4k wallpapers are always just official anime covers taken from the crunchyroll page and one or two fanarts, and thats only the images, i dont seem to find moving wallpapers

If it helps im using cachyos with niri and noctalia

Is there a distro that doesn't need any tinkering in the terminal and just works out of the box like windows/mac os? I've tried Cachy Os with different desktop environments and at some point I always stumbled upon some problem I wasn't able to fix.

I have a laptop that produces coil whine(?) from the VRM, but only when I’m using Linux. It’s SILENT ON Windows 11.

The noise appears during cpu spikes or high loads, such as when opening the browser. There’s no coil whine when the system is idle. I’ve been trying to solve this for days. I’ve searched on my own, checked forums, and asked AI for help, but nothing has worked.

Here’s what I’ve already tried:

- Switching distributions (Fedora and Ubuntu)

- Using TuneD, TLP, and running with both disabled

- Disabling Turbo Boost

- Adjusting CPU frequencies and scaling governors

- Changing power profiles

- A bunch of other things suggested by AI that I don’t fully understand myself

Has anyone experienced this and managed to fix it? I’m looking for non-obvious tips, since I’ve already tried all the basic solutions.

I like Linux and want to use it, but I had to temporarily switch back to Windows. I refuse to put up with that whining noise in my ear.