r/linux4noobs 47m ago

How do I install steam on CachyOS?

Upvotes

I'm new to linux and to get the max performance I'm using Cachy, but it's not debian based so I have no idea what I'm doing


r/linux4noobs 7h ago

learning/research music by the terminal

18 Upvotes

Are there currently any good ways to listen to music online via a terminal? I saw that a few years ago there were several projects, but I wanted to know if there's something like listening to a YouTube Music playlist or something similar, I like listening to music while I play games, but I don't really like leaving my browser open in the background because it causes stuttering in the game.

But if don't have anything like that, something to download multiple songs at a reasonable speed would be welcome too, I just really didn't want to spend many hours doing something simple.


r/linux4noobs 2h ago

learning/research Advice for BTFRS backup or snapshot

5 Upvotes

Can you explain to me like I'm five what are BTFRS snapshots and what's the difference with backups?

I read about it but I'm not sure I understand.

I recently messed up my home directory a bit, so I'm thinking of setting up a backup/snapshot but I don't know where to start.

I have btfrs assistant but apparently it's for root only.

P.S. I just upgraded to Fedora 44


r/linux4noobs 12m ago

learning/research Mouse freezes on KDE wayland?

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Upvotes

r/linux4noobs 6h ago

programs and apps Why hasn't anyone made a UWP compatability layer like Wine?

6 Upvotes

I haven't seen anyone make or use a UWP compatability layer and what I have researched there isn't one. Is it just too hard? Is there not enough interest?


r/linux4noobs 21h ago

migrating to Linux How did YOU learn to use the terminal?

86 Upvotes

Did you learn it out of necessity, i.e. learning to fix things? Did you learn it deliberately for ease of use in navigating file directories? Did you use any terminal spinoffs that give menus of commands, perform autocomplete, or check for mistakes? Did you read documentation published by your distro?

Terminal is clearly very useful, but I find that I don’t do any single command regularly enough to really memorize it, except for things like fastfetch or lsblk. I’m curious how so many in the Linux community seem to have mastered it so well.


r/linux4noobs 3h ago

programs and apps KDE Connect Notification sync contents are blank

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3 Upvotes

r/linux4noobs 4h ago

shells and scripting Sudo reflector fails only under specific circumstances.

3 Upvotes

So when the protocol is https and I have a timeout of 60 it fails with the error 403: forbidden. But when the protocol is http with a timeout of 60 it works just fine. Why? Is it safe to just use http?


r/linux4noobs 5h ago

shells and scripting Original Pinebook reflashed emmc - trouble building U-Boot to reinstall

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3 Upvotes

r/linux4noobs 22m ago

Meganoob BE KIND How to watch 4k YouTube vids on Steam Machine

Upvotes

My Steam Machine is my main PC. Running Steam OS. I can watch vids on YouTube on the desktop mode, but it's locked at 480p. I know how to change the resolution in YouTube itself, but it won't let me choose 1080 or 4k. 🤷🏻‍♂️ I'm going thru Google to YouTube. Thanks for any help you can provide.


r/linux4noobs 9h ago

learning/research How do dual boot systems work

5 Upvotes

Yo I just wanted to ask how dual boot systems work since I have a dual boot of fedora and windows 11 on my laptop


r/linux4noobs 23h ago

I’m having the best time I’ve ever had with Linux and I feel like a fraud

63 Upvotes

tldr; Claude has made Linux enjoyable and now I want to know more

I’ve wanted to love Linux for over a decade. I’ve tried it sincerely many times throughout that time, I distinctly remember getting wifi and Bluetooth working on an old XPS13 where the chip did both but the config wasn’t right, and the signal was terrible it took me all day and I was very pleased to have fixed it.

I never really understood Linux and trying to organise files to where I thought they should be but never really being sure, things not working as I wanted them to or worse my attempts at fixing them making things worse.

So I would wrap up another Linux attempt and reinstall windows accepting defeat that I didn’t understand how to troubleshoot or maintain a Linux install.

But now, with Claude anything is possible. I know that there is a deep dislike of LLMs in the Linux community, I get it but without having the instant context based support which can explain what specific flags are doing and how after reading a man page why my attempts didn’t work or I’d be lying if I didn’t say fix this, it’s just fun.

If I want to deep dive an issue or implement something on my own, I can do that knowing that the answer machine can assist whenever. If I need something to just work, I can get it to make it so.

I am picking things up, I certainly know a lot more than I did before but it feels fraudulent to claim myself as a Linux user. Now things are flowing and blockers that used to take hours to being deemed unfixable can be resolved in 30 minutes to an hour I feel unstoppable and I’m having a great time.

I certainly would not be confident enough to self host my own services, but now I do with proper backups and monitoring.

Idk what the point of this post is, Claude + Linux is a great time if you’re mentally deficient I guess.

I do kind of feel like having functional infrastructure to play with makes the whole thing come together, I didn’t start my first IT job standing up a windows domain and associated services - they were just there and I got to monitor and configure them, I can now do windows stuff at a reasonably high level with or without LLMs so I’m not completely computer illiterate but Linux historically didn’t stick.

Since I’m making such progress, and enjoying it I figured that understanding the RHCSA material would be worth while, that’s the current strategy alongside continuing the ‘enterprise-ish’ home lab I’ve got going on.


r/linux4noobs 55m ago

dual monitor freezes , GNOME on Wayland

Upvotes

hey

i am on wayland and using intel i5 12th gen and nvidia 4050 and when something is playing on the secondary display or something is there (any window) it'll pause or freeze but when its empty it'll be normal but pauses randomly
my nvidia smi
suggest me something what can i do

Thu Jul 23 00:41:28 2026       
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| NVIDIA-SMI 580.159.03             Driver Version: 580.159.03     CUDA Version: 13.0     |
+-----------------------------------------+------------------------+----------------------+
| GPU  Name                 Persistence-M | Bus-Id          Disp.A | Volatile Uncorr. ECC |
| Fan  Temp   Perf          Pwr:Usage/Cap |           Memory-Usage | GPU-Util  Compute M. |
|                                         |                        |               MIG M. |
|=========================================+========================+======================|
|   0  NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4050 ...    Off |   00000000:01:00.0  On |                  N/A |
| N/A   47C    P5              3W /   60W |     150MiB /   6141MiB |     17%      Default |
|                                         |                        |                  N/A |
+-----------------------------------------+------------------------+----------------------+

+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Processes:                                                                              |
|  GPU   GI   CI              PID   Type   Process name                        GPU Memory |
|        ID   ID                                                               Usage      |
|=========================================================================================|
|    0   N/A  N/A           91811      G   /usr/bin/gnome-shell                     41MiB |
|    0   N/A  N/A          633025      C   /proc/self/exe                           82MiB |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+

r/linux4noobs 9h ago

migrating to Linux Recently migrated, a few how to questions

4 Upvotes

Recently moved to Nobara Official (i believe it is modified KDE), its all running great, no complaints about performance, ease of setup etc, just a few how to questions. These are all things i know how to do on Windows, but seem unclear on Linux.

I figured out how to get the taskbar (unsure if its called that on linux, the bar at the bottom where the open apps show and the clock is) on both monitors, but can i have it so it only shows icons for the apps open on that specific monitor?

Can the icons next to the clock be collapsed, it feels like they take up 1/4 of the taskbar?

It seems that i can only pin certain things to the taskbar, i have a app i used regularly on windows, it has a linux version, it runs perfectly, but i cant pin it to the taskbar, the file is an executable, but maybe its because its not an "application". Also it has a icon.png file in the same folder, but i cannot get the icon to display, so i get a generic grey document with an ! in the middle in the folder, and on the taskbar it is the wayland icon.

Final questions, more of a request for suggestions. What basic apps should i consider replacing, i dont think i like dolphin (i cant quite figure out why), i have used alacritty before in the terminal, but konsole seems fine, so hit me with any suggestions for different basic apps


r/linux4noobs 10h ago

distro selection I need help deciding a distro for legacy hardware that modern distros don't support

5 Upvotes

Namely, the Nvidia GeForce 640 Kepler GPU. I think it is no longer supported in the kernel. Newer distros (Mint 22.3, ZorinOS 18.1, Debian 13, Fedora 44) produce graphical bugs like flashing or artifacts. Debian 12 seems to solve those issues, although I haven't tested the performance beyond clicking through UI elements and light internet browsing. Interestingly, both Debian 13 and Debian 12 used nouveau but Debian 12 worked better. I tried MX Linux which seemed to support the GPU but the UI of the desktop environment was very customized and complicated. This is a family PC so I need something simple looking like GNOME (which also sadly isn't the most resource efficient). I don't think Debian 12 would be a right final option because it performs worse, like the global search stuttering a lot, and also it looks old in some areas (my dad is sensitive to that lol) and supports few extensions, should we need any. I'm at a crossroads.


r/linux4noobs 14h ago

distro selection What is an easy gaming distro with Nvidia support

9 Upvotes

Hello,

I want to transition my gaming PC to run on Linux because I've been frustrated with Windows 11 lately. What gaming Distros do you recommend.

  • Mostly play single player games, but I play a lot of Marvel Rivals and friendslop over Discord
    • Steam is my preferred game store.
  • I use an RTX 4070 and a i7-14700F
  • I don't have any experience with Linux on PC.
  • I am looking for a distro just for gaming because I have a laptop that I'm fine with running windows.
    • I want to install Steam OS but am waiting for Nvidia support, and I don't have the money to buy an Intel or AMD gpu and motherboard/cpu.

r/linux4noobs 17h ago

How safe is switching desktop environments really?

10 Upvotes

I recently switched from Mint to Fedora KDE. While I do think I prefer Fedora there are a few minor things that irk me, and I'm pretty sure it's all connected to KDE Plasma.

I wanted to test this and try Gnome, but I don't want to do a complete reinstallation of linux. How safe is it to just try installing a new DE?

EDIT: thanks for answering guys, relieved some hesitation on my end. Found out real quick Gnome was NOT what I'm looking for. Guess I'll play around until I find what I like.


r/linux4noobs 11h ago

hardware/drivers Monitor Res issues gsync v1

3 Upvotes

I have a old v1 gysnc monitor and I'm using an AMD 9070xt . The monitor is a second monitor but for life I me I cant find a resolution to get it working, It will only run at 640 . I've tried a few different distros and everything I can find to mess with trying to get it to work I can get as far being able to set the monitor to 4k but no display unless it's set at 640 . I think it's not reading the monitor and it's a display port only monitor so no option to try hdmi . Is the combination of an AMD GPU with Linux and a old v1 gync monitor the cause of my issues anyone else fixed this


r/linux4noobs 1d ago

migrating to Linux Why do people dislike Snap packages??

32 Upvotes

I was planning to switch to kubuntu and was reading on multiple places that people hate the use of snap packages in it. I don't really understand what their problems with it are and would like to know as I want to make it my daily use distro and well, want to be someone who uses the command line for installation (idk why, it just sounds like something fun to do).

So, what exactly are its shortcomings and isn't Snap like the default on all ubuntu and ubuntu based distros??
Is it bad enough that I should consider fedora as the new distro??

PS: I had been using Mint till now, but want to try something a lil better and more customizable.


r/linux4noobs 7h ago

Linux on two different pcs using usb

1 Upvotes

I am installing cachyos on a usb, but I want use it on two different computers. The one I’m planning on installing it on is a Samsung laptop, it probably uses integrated graphics. But I am wondering if I can use the same installation on my other laptop which is more powerful but has an nvidia laptop gpu. Will this cause problems with booting and if so, how can I prevent it?


r/linux4noobs 13h ago

Meganoob BE KIND should i change from win 7 to Lubuntu?

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3 Upvotes

r/linux4noobs 19h ago

New to Linux Mint. My computer has froze about 3 times within an hour.

9 Upvotes

I've only had Linux for about two days, but it randomly froze last night, and I just shut it down. When I woke it up today, it displayed a black screen, so I shut it down.

Then, a while later, it randomly froze right after I woke it up from suspend. Another time while I was scrolling Reddit, and then the third time while I was trying to find solutions. I used REISUB every time.

I checked my RAM usage and I was only using about 2 out of 14 GB, I'm using a pretty recent driver (picture attached), and all the temperatures are normal. I'm completely tech illiterate and I need help.

My computer is an Acer Nitro V15. I know Acer doesn't have the best reputation.

actually i don't really know if this is recent enough

r/linux4noobs 22h ago

distro selection I finally escaped aws bandwidth fees but now im staring at a black screen and a blinking cursor

7 Upvotes

tbh I feel completely out of my depth here.

Im doing a ton of crowd marketing and seo data scraping for clients right now. Running all these automated scripts locally was basically melting my laptop, and hosting it on aws was quickly bankrupting me. The way big cloud providers charge for bandwidth egress is basically legal extortion at this point.

so I decided to just bypass the cloud entirely and grabbed a dedicated 10gbps unmetered box to run my stuff 24/7. The hardware is a beast and the connection is exactly what I needed to not worry about data caps.

the catch? I am a complete linux noob.

I installed ubuntu server 24.04. got my ssh keys working (which took me 3 hours ngl). but now im just sitting here looking at root@server:~# and I have zero idea how to actually get my local python scripts and keyword matrix files onto this remote machine.

do people use scp? do I setup a ftp server? git clone? Every tutorial I read assumes i already know what a bash profile is and skips the basic steps

please help a windows guy out. i just want to run my scrapers in peace without paying bezos my entire paycheck


r/linux4noobs 21h ago

migrating to Linux Is Bazzite a good fit for a first time Linux user?

5 Upvotes

I've had no experience with Linux before, and have exclusively used Windows all of my life. However, I'm planning to build my first ever gaming PC either later this year or sometime next year. I'm not the most tech savvy person out there, but I've been getting more into it lately by modding a bunch of my old video game consoles, and I kinda of find it fun to tinker around with software to get something to work or customize it how I like.

I don't really hate using windows, but i just feel like I want to try something new, and it feels like it just gets slower and more bloated the longer I use it. I've heard Bazzite is pretty friendly to Windows users, but I wanted to know if there any tips or things to keep in mind when switching? I've heard Mint is also good for first time users, but I heard that Bazzite is much more optimized for gaming.


r/linux4noobs 5h ago

distro selection (still a noob!) I want to fall off the bridge and fall into the Arch Sea on my main computer, what will i need (besides all the installation stuff)

0 Upvotes

Title says most, what i mean is what resources will I NEEEED if i want to do this successfully? Any videos you guys recommend? Any sources you guys recommend?