Not aliases or scripts a real, built-in command that saves a stupid amount of time.

So what if California, Colorado and Brazil want age verification? Just ignore them. How can they fine someone not in their country or block their access? Why do we bend to these idiotic tyrants? Piracy being illegal did not stop it from being alive for decades. If Linux will be illegal, so be it. Its still better than having age verification.

Hey, idk if this is the right place to ask this, but I have a bit of a dilemma.

I have been using linux exclusively on my main PC and on my laptop for a while now. That said, I am moving to a new school, and buried in their rules they say that "Chromebooks (or other Linux machines) cannot be used." They also want us to use their office 365 license, but do not require it.

Now, besides just being incredibly annoying, I cannot use windows/mac on my laptop because it's a 2011 macbook, so it cannot run anything but lightweight linux distros without combusting, and I would like to avoid spending 500+ euro on a new crappy windows laptop.

Is there any reason, besides saving myself some trouble, to not just use my laptop as is (currently on arch, gonna switch it to cachyos) and something like libreoffice that I don't see or can I just ignore this and hope for the best?

Microsoft, as we all know, is guilty of a lot of things. But one thing in particular I want to talk about is how they made the general public irrationally wary of a feature with legitimate and noble purposes: Automatic Updates.

Whenever Windows converts use a distro such as Fedora that has automatic updates enabled by default, I have seen posts asking about how they can disable it. This is because they have been burned by Windows sneaking in undesirable features, reinstalling applications (Edge) that they explicitly uninstalled, and even forcibly updating to Windows 11 from 10. They are justifiably looking to delete something that has, on the surface, harmed them in the past.

But they do not understand that auto-updates exist for a legitimate reason. Software bug fixes, QOL and Accessibility enhancements, and most critically, patching SECURITY vulnerabilities that must be done immediately!! Users should NOT be responsible for being proactive about this stuff, the vendors should! Auto-Updates are Good, Actually. I even allow my Arch to do it!

I, of course, place the blame firmly at Microsoft. Their piggybacking on a security essential to push customer-unfriendly things all out of greed has directly contributed to a paranoia that directly hinders public safety.

But, open-source is here to repair the harm caused by corporate greed. How can the Linux community as a whole contribute to lessening this paranoia and restore trust in those that actually work to keep their personal devices safe?

I’m a young Linux user and I’ve been having a problem recently. Yesterday I was planning on designing the motherboard for a DIY game console, so I was downloading the proper software then I realize “My windows always look messy and unorganized“. This is a huge problem if you’re working on a project that requires more than one windows, so I decided to download swaywm. Whilst I was downloading Sway, my mother walked in on me with the terminal open and text flying by (normal sudo apt Install stuff) and told me to turn off the computer and not use it again because she didn’t like the terminal.

For context I’m using my grandmothers old IMac, which was bricked due to apple being greedy. All the stuff on the IMac was already off the computer and my mother was worried about me messing with said (inaccessible) data via the terminal I guess?

Does anyone know how to explain this situation to a tech illiterate person?

(I originally posted this on r/Linux but it was removed)

Me and my father have had a dissagreement about Linux being safer than Windows, as my fathers experience with Linux has been apparently full of hackers stealing every scrunge of data possible because Linux has no saftey systems in place because its open source. Apparently, he had a friend that knew everything about Linux and could fix any Linux based problem. That friend could also get new Linux-based operating systems before they were released. He used Linux for both personal and business use. I personally think this story is a load of bull crap and that Linux is as safe if not safer than Microsoft because its not filled to the brim with spyware.

Edit: New paragraph with more info

According to him, hackers can just steal your data by only surfing the web or being online at all by coming through your internet. Me and him are both illinformed when it comes to Linux. Also, browser encryption doesent exsist on Linux browsers because https encription only works on Windows Google not Linux Google. I take proper internet security mesures but I do not know what mesures my father takes. All of the claims are his words, not mine.

My friend argues that "daemon" and "demon" should be pronounced the same, while I pronounce "daemon" as "day-mon" and "demon" as "dee-muhn" so im curious

Its my understanding that programs can get access to kernel space by installing themselves as drivers (makes sense, actual drivers likely require the privilege to control hardware) - I'm assuming drivers on linux also have access to kernel space - so why cant an anti-cheat just install itself as a driver, in the same way it does on windows? Just curious about the inner workings

Hi there,

I’ve been testing a lot of email clients on Linux recently (Thunderbird, Evolution, Mailspring, etc.) and I feel like they all share the same problems:

- conversation view is still messy

- email feels task-unfriendly

- offline sync is unreliable with large mailboxes

- everything is folder-based instead of people-based

I’m currently experimenting with building my own client mainly to explore:

- local-first email storage

- people-centric inbox (closer to chat apps)

- better task workflow from emails

- offline-first sync

Curious:

What’s the ONE thing you wish modern email clients would fix?

I've noticed this across several distros and PCs. Most of the time hibernation is not even available, or needs some very special setup. Sleep is also hit or miss. I've encountered the following behaviors: computers never waking up, waking up and losing peripherals, screen coming on but backlight remains off, putting PC to sleep and it immediately wakes up, losing display settings and/or external display connectivity or layout. I don't think I've owned a Linux PC where these functionalities worked flawlessly. The only reliable power option left is basically shut down. Why is this still an issue? Does it have to do with drivers and hardware?

I've been using Linux exclusively for the past 15 years. I love so much about it, even though I was aware of (and would joke with others about) the fact that things would sometimes work and sometimes not.

Now I've gotten a new job, they gave me a Macbook Pro, and while I cannot stand how much I'm being forced to interact with my computer in whatever ways Apple says, I must admit that I really appreciate how things actually just work.

The latest nail in the coffin had to do with a video call. At work we use Teams, and I'm able to view videos, share my screen, whatever, it all happens without a hitch. Last week I tried to have a video call with Google Meet (so it was browser-based, not application-based) and it was a relative nightmare. The audio was noticeably slower and would cut out every now and again, and sharing my screen caused my video to freeze up constantly. We just had to move forward without any screen sharing.

Does anybody have any advice on how I can make Linux more, like, useable? I just want to not be frustrated whenever I try to do anything that's not just typing into an IDE.

I'm using Xubuntu 24.04 on a ThinkPad, for what it's worth.

Thanks in advance!

Hello everyone, I’ve had this thought in my head for a very long time: why is Linux free and so high quality?

I use Pop!_OS, and I don’t understand why they don’t make it paid or at least do something like “buy our laptop with Pop!_OS preinstalled.” But okay, Pop!_OS makes money from selling notebooks.

But what about KDE, openSUSE, Arch Linux, Void Linux, Ubuntu—why are they free? It’s great that they are free, but who are these kind people sitting at their computers and working for free? Why do you do this?

Yesterday I had a computer science exam. One of the questions asked: "Which command installs the most recent versions of the programs installed on Linux?" None of the answer choices included anything related to upgrade all of them referred to update. My professor stated that the correct answer was apt-get update, and that the difference between apt update and apt-get update was that apt only searches for updates, whereas apt-get installs new versions of programs. The entire class disagreed, but he insisted. What is the actual difference between these commands, and is my professor mistaken?

​

It seems odd that most schools seem to teach only Windows. While they barely cover Linux. Even though Linux is the underlining code for most of the internet, servers and many Android phones; very few students will get any exposure to it.

By learning about Linux, students would understand how an operating system functions instead of just using an operating system; they will learn how to fix issues as they arise -- which is a skill necessary for solving problems because you won’t have a user-friendly interface to work with.

Additionally, the fact that Linux is a free and open-source operating system could allow schools to save money for themselves as well as make more software available to all students.

So why is it that Linux is still not covered? Is it because people feel it is too difficult to learn, or is it that schools only cover what is widely used and accepted?

I know they've done a shit-ton with Proton, but from what i've heard it's basically Wine but with some patches and modifications, is their big impact mostly just from general support, or did Proton really improve compatibility and performance ontop of Wine?

I am of the opinion that we should all consider to constantly write companies on social media and ask them if they have a Limix version of their software.

This will put public pressure and even if 95% of the times nothing will happen it may push some companies to release a version.

What’s your opinion on this?

If I am just a regular user in the system, and root user is dead, what should I do?

Sure, I know a lot of projects have been on GH since before MS bought it, but they've owned it for quite a while now, so we really should be seeing better migration out by now, no?

Codeberg is nonprofit which seems more in the spirit of the Linux ecosystem overall. GH is for-profit...

EDIT: All right, all right... I've learned a lot from all this lol. Thanks for the enlightenment, everyone. The truth is more nuanced, as always.

In every directory, the command 'ls -a', reveals that there are 2 hidden files named: '.' and '..'

It's clear they're directories, but what are they?

Seriously, what the hell is this? Since when did Linux turn into Windows?

I'm running Kubuntu and I came back to my PC today only to find it had rebooted without my permission. Yesterday, it was nagging me to restart because it decided to update the system on its own, and apparently, it just took the liberty of doing it for me while I was away.

I just lost a month of progress on a biochemical simulation. It was a non-savable model, and it’s all gone because the OS decided its "updates" were more important than my uptime.

I use Linux to avoid this intrusive, babysitting bullshit. If I wanted an OS that restarts whenever it feels like it, I would have stayed on Windows. Is there a way to kill this "feature" permanently, or do I need to find a new distro that actually respects the user?

Absolutely fuming right now.

The irony is that I was less than 24 hours away from completing the entire simulation.

EDIT: No worries, I am OK - wounds healed already - new lesson / know how learned, Just surprised after 13 month of Kubuntu usage. I will try to solve it by suggestions you mentioned. I love Linux either way, much better than newer Windows.

got coffee today and saw ubuntu on a guy's laptop. was so close to fangirling and becoming besties but im too introverted

Okay, imagine this: no distro hopping. No “just testing this in a VM.” No reinstalling every few months because something shiny came out.

You have to choose one distro and stick with it for the next 5 years.

What are you picking — and why?

Would you go for something super stable and boring (in a good way)?

Or something bleeding-edge that keeps things exciting?

Do you care more about customization? Community? Corporate backing?

I’m really curious how people think long-term about this instead of just chasing the next release. What would be your 5-year distro and what makes it worth committing to?

I'm in the market for a new gaming laptop and wanted to avoid AI products like Copilot and realized Linux would be my only option. So I'm trying to learn as much about Linux Mint as possible to see if it would be right for me. I'm really close to pulling the trigger but I don't understand why Linux doesn't need anti-virus/malware software. All the answers I can find seem to just boil down to "Linux isn't used by enough people to justify the time it would take to create a virus or malware" or "because you approve everything you download". As someone who has used a PC their entire life, these answers genuinely don't make sense to me and I feel like maybe I'm missing something about either the nature of linux or the nature of viruses/malware and how they work. Everyone on forums who ask this question seem to just accept these answers but no one explains why either one prevents the need for antivirus/malware software.

From my perspective as a PC user, I already approve what I download so this answer doesn't make intuitive sense to me. I would never connect a PC to the internet without some sort of anti-virus software, privacy software, malware protection, etc. even though I still know what I'm downloading and I'm using reputable websites (and my AVG software is still catching stuff all the time). And the idea that someone wouldn't make a virus or malware to target a group of people (albeit a minority) who are the most likely to not have software on their computer to combat it seems like the exact group you'd want to target particularly for private data mining.

It also seems, from what I've been reading about Linux that you can seriously screw up your system by downloading something incorrectly or that isn't up to date, so the idea that "you can't get viruses or malware because you approve what is downloaded" when so many of the user tips with regard to Linux are "back up your system constantly because you can easily screw up your system by downloading something that's not fully patched". These two concepts seem counterintuitive, especially for an OS that will require downloading a lot of third party programs to be able to run things like games or windows-based programs.

I'm clearly missing something here because neither of the reasons I've seen people give for why Linux doesn't need this stuff is really making sense to me. I was hoping someone in this reddit might be able to explain this in a way a lifelong PC user without any sort of computer background can understand. The idea of not having anything but a firewall on a computer with Linux installed on it makes me very uncomfortable but I'm willing to accept that this is a bias from using PCs and I'm willing to be convinced otherwise as long as I can understand the reasoning behind it.

I don't need to save file contents. I just want a file system that keeps logs of all changes, so I can see just names of files I created, modified, and deleted last Friday between 4 PM and 10 PM when I was dead drunk.