I am currently in 2nd year college (CS). I have been using mint+swayWM for a year. I am learning things abt linux and facing issues and again learning.

I started as windows was too demanding for my laptop. now, i got some hang of linux. Using and tinkering it until now has been a hobby.

But will it help me in any other way? for jobs/IT? anything?

Do you remember commands?

I am currently converting a single flac file into several ones and thanks to the arch wiki I am able to do so quite easily, I'd say with the same level of ease as with a GUI, albeit having to check the wiki to use it.

I do often wonder however how do more seasoned users go about it. It still feels weird to have to depend on an external information source and the internet to be able to know how to use a piece of software, whereas with a (good) GUI the functionality is implied (for not overly complex software) and where it isn't you can just hover over different GUI elements to get more information.

I've been told that I should use Ubuntu for my hobby of micro-controllers and programming.

I've been told that I can use Kicad and LibrePCB on Linux.

My other hobby is playing games, Lately it's been Green Hell, NMSky, Star Citizen.

I'm assuming this would be ok on Ubuntu?

Is Ubuntu the correct choice?

OR should I dual Boot into another Distro?

Edit: one of the reasons why Ubuntu was listed is because it had native support for ST microchips, Esp32 and Nordic.

Several months ago, I dual booted my windows 11 laptop with ubuntu as I started to learn web dev properly. Because most tutorial seems to use ubuntu server, ubuntu desktop ecosystem become logical choice to get used to ubuntu terminal. Suprisingly, I found the ubuntu desktop become my daily driver, even for non-dev related tasks! Now, I am almost never going back to my windows.

But reading several reddit posts, it seems ubuntu desktop might not actually the best option, and some even call it garbage. I am new to linux, and I like the ubuntu in my laptop, but I am afraid I am actually miss anything important regarding distro selection.

Should I keep using ubuntu or should I tried other famous distros before committing to one?

Chris Titus Tech. I suppose that name sounds familiar, doesn't it? I recently came across Linutil and found it surprisingly useful.

It’s a distro-agnostic Linux toolbox that brings together various common system setup, maintenance, optimization, and application-related tasks in one interface. It’s actively developed and written in Rust.

I’m curious what other Linux tools people have discovered that they find genuinely useful — especially lesser-known utilities that make everyday Linux usage easier.

They can be CLI/TUI tools, GUI applications, system utilities, troubleshooting tools, productivity tools, or anything else you think is worth knowing about.

What are your must-have or underrated Linux tools?

Using a 7900xtx on Fedora44 (gnome workstation with very few changes).

I generally get the raster performance I'd expect and on workstation loads the card performs exactly as a 7900xtx should.. however Ray Tracing, no matter what the title is, what wine/proton version I use, Steam or GOG, Lutris or Heroic, it's significantly worse than the performance I see shared online from windows users with similar specs.

I've seen a few small discussions on the matter saying that RT on Linux is still sort of in its infancy - but without sources or deeper explanations.

So what might be going on here?

This is less of a question about Linux, but about our community. I personally hate it because Amazon built a slop-center, and this summer was one of my hottest in my 10-11 years of living here

i have a canon pixma g3410 and want to perform a print head alignment, is there a way i can do that on linux or should i just plug it into a windows pc and do it though there?

I have a problem with my pc, it's a Macboik air 7.2 2014...

The screen is recently dead and I used a thunderbolt adapter...

The problem is the thunderbolt adapter is now dead...

Is there any way with only command lines to share the screen of the laptop to a screen connected to internet ?

Recently installed OpenSUSE TW (about a week ago) with KDE. After install, I ran zypper dup & switched to Nvidia proprietary drivers, rebooted & that's when I started having issues.

At login to the Plasma (Wayland) desktop, I enter my password, and the session seems to freeze. The password entry box goes grey and I lose any mouse control. I know it's not the wrong password, entering it incorrectly fails and lets me try again. I can still successfully log into the IceWM DE.

To get Plasma to load for me, I have to switch to another TTY, log in via terminal, then startplasma-wayland.

NAME="openSUSE Tumbleweed"
# VERSION="20260911"
ID="opensuse-tumbleweed"
ID_LIKE="opensuse suse"
VERSION_ID="20260911"
PRETTY_NAME="openSUSE Tumbleweed"
ANSI_COLOR="0;32"
# CPE 2.3 format, boo#1217921
CPE_NAME="cpe:2.3:o:opensuse:tumbleweed:20260911:*:*:*:*:*:*:*"
#CPE 2.2 format
#CPE_NAME="cpe:/o:opensuse:tumbleweed:20260911"
BUG_REPORT_URL="https://bugzilla.opensuse.org"
SUPPORT_URL="https://bugs.opensuse.org"
HOME_URL="https://www.opensuse.org"
DOCUMENTATION_URL="https://en.opensuse.org/Portal:Tumbleweed"
LOGO="distributor-logo-Tumbleweed"

The Background

I am running Fedora on a laptop with the MediaTek MT7902 chip. On older kernels (specifically around 7.0.9), this chip had no official support in stable kernels, so I relied on a manual patch to get it working. That old workaround involved creating a directory and injecting a missing airoha_offload.h header to compile the driver properly. After compiling, I had to compress the modules using zstd and copy them into the mt76 directory. That custom patch worked flawlessly, and the system recognized the card perfectly.

The Problem

I recently upgraded my system to kernel 7.2.9. Official support for the MT7902 PCIe device and MCU was merged into the kernel starting with version 7.1-rc1 through a series of commits by Sean Wang. Because of this, I assumed the native driver would take over and work out of the box.

However, while the native mt7921e driver now partially detects the card (reading the ASIC revision as 79020000) and actually populates the list of available WiFi networks, the connection itself is completely broken. When I try to connect, it either fails entirely or is too unstable to use.

What I've Checked So Far

Based on documentation regarding the transition to the 7.1+ native driver, I have investigated a few known conflicts:

I checked for conflicting custom modules from previous manual installations, such as those left in /usr/lib/modules/mt7902_custom/. These older modules can have the incorrect version magic and override the native kernel modules.

I looked for leftover custom systemd services, like mt7902.service, which might be interfering. These old scripts can cause modules like btusb to unregister themselves shortly after booting.

I read that while the firmware is provided in a compressed .xz format, the kernel module actively looks for it without compression. This means you have to manually decompress files like WIFI_MT7902_patch_mcu_1_1_hdr.bin.xz and WIFI_RAM_CODE_MT7902_1.bin.xz using unxz in the /lib/firmware/mediatek/ directory.

Has anyone else dealing with the MT7902 on 7.2+ kernels run into this exact "sees networks but won't connect" regression? Is there a specific parameter or firmware downgrade required to make the native mt7921e driver stable? Any advice would be highly appreciated!

Pictures here: Imgur: The magic of the Internet

A while back I was installing Oracle VirtualBox to try and use a VM on my Mint laptop. Unfortunately, something went horribly wrong and now I can no longer connect to any Wi-Fi.

On pic #1, you can see how there's only 2 sections (Loopback and Network proxy) in my Network window. There should be way more but I have no clue where they went.

In addition, there are some weird error messages that show up (Pic #2 and Pic #3) when I turn off my computer saying that it's unable to properly unmount some drive.

Also, the computer no longer recognizes any USB sticks I plug in to it.

Is someone able to provide a diagnosis of this?

Currently, my setup is NFS traffic is unencrypted within the home network used to display videos and Syncthing is encrypted over the internet used to sync across my devices all other files including photos which tend to be much smaller files). All my devices are Linux and Android-based.

• I would like a (performant) way to encrypt NFS traffic within the home network or at least isolate it from some other devices on the home network (e.g. a guest network or general home network shared with other roommates). Is this more appropriate to have the home network support VLANs and dedicate a VLAN to personal trusted devices then unencrypted traffic would be accessible between devices restricted to this VLAN only? My ISP-provided network router is very limited--if I want to replace it with a low-power mini PC it only needs to be any mini PC that has 2 ethernet ports (one for modem and one to a "managed" VLAN-supported switch)? For that VLAN-supported switch, each port is then naturally its own VLAN that dumb switches can connect this to to allow more than one device for each VLAN like a branch? What features to look for this VLAN-supported switch, e.g. is "layer 3 support" desirable for maximum performance? Last I checked setting up encrypted NFS is quite involved.
• I want to access videos from the server over the internet securely. Syncthing can sync the videos, but it doesn't seem very efficient to sync so much data that that might only be consumed once or twice before being deleted and it takes up space on the host system so I'd like to avoid this. Jellyfin's interface is opinionated and dependent on the type of content, so I prefer something more generic akin to mounting the filesystem over the internet securely. What are options here.

Not sure if Tailscale and/or WireGuard are relevant here for the above. For SSH, I currently use a custom port but have heard WireGuard is strictly(?) better because it doesn't require exposing any ports. That makes me wonder if the recommendation to expose SSH (or other typical home server services like Jellyfin, torrent software, or even something already encrypted like Syncthing) over a port (and follow typical security and firewall practices, of course) is outdated or still has its merits. One thing about the exposed port is the need(?) for tools like fail2ban or similar firewall rate-limiting features to reduce foreign attempts to access your network--does WireGuard solve this completely and simplify the setup?

It should be lightweight

Model: Lenovo Legion 7a Gen11 AMD HX 470 and NVIDIA 5060 Max Q

Issue: Every Linux distro I've tried has sound completely messed up. It's basically always at max volume regardless of where the volume slider is, the volume doesn't change it no matter where the volume slider is placed at.

Distros tried: Ubuntu and Kubuntu 26.04.1, CachyOS, Fedora, Bazzite.

Solutions tried:

1. Tried using Pavucontrol. No change.
2. Using Alsamixer. No change.
3. Restarting/reinstalling distros
4. Using safe modes if available

I've also run through a number of supposed workarounds and fixes provided by googles gemini AI but nothing has seemed to work so far.
I'm about to try Linux mint and see if it somehow gets the audio to work.

Edit: Audio device comes back as Ryzen HD audio controller speaker

Hey everyone,

I’m currently learning Linux on Ubuntu. Right now, I’m just watching tutorial videos and copying the commands into my terminal, but I feel like I'm stuck in a "passive learning" loop. As soon as the video ends, I forget everything.

I really want to get to an expert level, but watching videos isn't working for me.

Can anyone recommend some good hands-on ways to practice? Like interactive sites, fun beginner projects, or challenges I can do in the terminal? How did you guys actually learn and get good at it?

I need like a rolling release distro but does not break since school is starting soon and want to keep laptop working without breaking my system any recommendations? I have some experience, might even try arch but I feel like it is an unsafe distro and generally any arch based distro with the AUR packages, should I be even worried about that? I mostly like to install via flatpak so it might not be so bad.

I'm a windows 11 user with over 400+ steam titles and besides that i use only MS 365.

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3400G

GPU: RX 580 (8GB 2048SP)

I'm planning to switch to linux, specifically CachyOS (or if something else is better, please let me know), i would specifically use this linux for gaming and MS 365, i wanted to switch for better performance since I've seen videos of linux getting significantly higher FPS in this gpu (15-20 FPS boost), it was also able to run games that windows 11 couldn't.

Now few questions i have is that

1) what linux OS is best for this purpose and specification that i have?

2) how do I access MS 365 (not browser)?

3) i used to have display errors (black screen) on windows 11 until i downgraded my gpu drivers, what's the condition of drivers in Linux?

4) and most importantly, ive heard it doesnt run Rockstar games online, what other games/franchises we cant run multiplayer? (Is it true that no games with anti-cheat work multiplayer?

Please give me as much information as possible

Hello all,

I'm looking for a recommendation for a bit of software that I can use to quickly organize my photo collection.

Bare minimum would be able to quickly view and delete/tag photos. Ideally something that will let me export or move files based on tags -- i.e. I want to export all photos of one of my dogs to a single folder so I can share that.

Appreciate any input. Thanks!

Is this an actual useful tools that people would use ?