How much RAM does Linux generally use? I'm getting sick of Windows needing massive amount of RAM.

Which Linux do you recommend as well? I want Linux just for work purposes.

With everything thats been going on with Windows I think i feel comfortable enough giving Linux a try. I wanted to know what's the easiest / UI friendly version of Linux that can help me transition?

I primarily use my system to game, using NVIDIA graphics card + a quest 3 VR headset (not sure if that matters). I also had a couple of other questions about people who made the same jump:

1. what are some things you notice that you "miss" or dont have in Linux that you did in Windows?

2. Have you had any issues with gaming on a Linux system? issues with compatability, performance, or games not available on Linux?

3. What do you like the most / notice the most about going from Windows to Linux system?

4. How are the security features / any other things to download on top for security? Windows has windows defender built in so what would Linux use?

5. Any other general advice, suggested addon / softwares, thoughts or what not about the transition?

I have a Nvidia gpu if that's a problem

I don't see memory ever fully used, but swap has been used. No hibernation, only web browsing on Firefox and fewer than 10 concurrent tabs.

$ free -h
               total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
Mem:            11Gi       2.7Gi       4.1Gi       469Mi       5.5Gi       8.8Gi
Swap:           16Gi       1.9Gi        14Gi

Everywhere i go its wroten as devtmpfs without the K, or as a crypto miner kdevtmpfsi, i dont have the I at the end. I have debian 13 mate.

sorry im new in this world, im testing linux in a vm somewhere in the future i will put linux on some old laptops i want to do things that can destroy the os, other than that do u know some fun things to do on linux?

A change of pace from favourite distros which you use. I want to know the technical limitations of different distros because of which you aren't using them? The reason for this post is to understand technical limitations of distributions and their maintainers. I am looking for answers related to distribution of packages and maintainer support. Fewer packages in official repository, broken official packages, licensing issues (like proprietary codecs), poor support, etc.

(I am not looking for feelings and emotions. I also understand new updates can break systems because of incompatibility issues so I don't want to hear rolling vs stability. Please refrain from stating personal opinions.)

Im new in linux, I came from windows (windows 11 > gentoo) and now i need help, i know it was a dumb idea doing this but i already made it work and its working just right. i downloaded hyprland as windows manager, librewolf, discord and im currently installing steam and dots-hyprland. i went for gentoo because i made a bet with my friends that was if i got it to work in less than 24 hours i would win 100 bucks (which i did) but now i want to customize it so it looks cool like in those tiktoks, is it hard for me to create a rice from zero with dots-hyprland or should i just look for a premade rice? and some tips on what to do since i know nothing about coding nor linux, im a newbie

Old hp notebook series laptop with 4gb ram and 1 tb hdd, intel i3 7th gen. Tried ubuntu, mint and many other i don't even remember the names. Currently on mint xfce for two months. It's not that good but i just use Firefox for classes so it doesn't lag upto using 4 tabs but there is serious issue with its realtek network adapter i can't use bluetooth and wifi at same time if use both the wifi remain connected but speed drops from 25Mbps to 100Kbps but when i boot back to windows (which is disaster on this pc ) both works fine. Need help to switch to any other os

I'm switching to Linux on my gaming NVIDIA PC and am generally happy to do so! What I've noticed, though, is that gaming distros are all the hype right now, and it seems like the newest popular ones, like CachyOS and Bazzite, are the best things ever for gaming.

I'd like some perspective here. Are these mentioned distros really that much better than a standard stable Fedora installation with 15-30 minutes of gaming of post-install setup (RPM Fusion, Steam, GameMode, CUDA)? I'll also switch to Linux on my work notebook and want a stable distro there. Are there any strong reasons not to just get clean Fedora on both machines to make switching seamless?

If Bazzite really does have many more benefits over standard Fedora + setup and it isn't just hype, please do tell me :)

For context,i managed to get my first laptop(used,of course) last christmas,and as soon as i got it i installed mint on it,and honestly,i have never really regreted it. In my opinion mint is a fantastic example of linux, it only occupies 1.5/2gb of ram on idle,you have all the linux plus(open source,root access/sudo authorization) and the debian family plus (stability and reliability),but i also liked the built in tools like the integrated tool to flash usbs or the system setting feautres,so overall i'm all in love with mint (except the app store,never really used it).

The problem now is....i'm looking on a desktop pc and i'm deciding if i should do a bit of distro hopping or not,couse i've never really tried something different,and i've heard of the AUR attack and the difficulty of installing arch,but i also dont really consider steam os in the near future couse why would i need an os centered on gaming if its not my priority with this pc (also i hate the steam helper for taking up 1gb of ram,and i had 16 on my laptop)

So i'm wondering whether or not i should try something still in the debian family or is there something else you could recommend?

to give more information i mostly code,that's why i'm not really looking forward to steam os,but i'm also looking at local llms couse why not it would be sick and with file scraping on the pc would probably improve production but idk the implication and os requirements it would have

Hi everyone,

I've been thinking about switching to Linux for a few months now. I've spent a lot of time reading about it and watching Linux-related content, and I'm genuinely interested in making the switch.

My main concern is choosing my first distro. I know there are beginner-friendly options like Linux Mint and Ubuntu, and they are often recommended to new users. However, I'm considering starting with CachyOS instead, mainly because of its gaming-focused optimizations and because it seems closer to the Arch ecosystem.

One of my goals is to learn Linux in depth over time, so I wonder if starting with CachyOS would be a good idea or if I'd be better off beginning with something like Mint and moving to more advanced distributions later.

Would you recommend CachyOS as a first Linux distribution? I'd appreciate hearing from people who have used it or started their Linux journey with a similar distro.

Thanks.

Hi so am using cachyOS and I have programs that only works on windows and I need to duel boot to windows to get the program working (I do not have windows installed btw)
so how I duel boot to windows without ditching linux
OS: CachyOS x86_64

Kernel: Linux 7.1.3-2-cachyos

Packages: 13 (flatpak), 1446 (pacman)

Shell: fish 4.8.1

DE: KDE Plasma 6.7.3

WM: KWin (Wayland)

Memory: 11.35 GiB / 15.32 GiB (74%)

Swap: 1.84 GiB / 15.32 GiB (12%)

Disk (/): 141.76 GiB / 949.87 GiB (15%) - btrfs

Hi, all.

I have a Lenovo ThinkCentre M700 that I would like to move from Win11 to Linux. Most of my experience has been with Debian without a GUI, but I want this to be a desktop machine.

With Win11, I have 3 screens active. 1 on each DP connection using a DP to HDMI converter, and a third on a USB port that has an HDMI output. All 3 work.

When I installed Debian (switched drives, so I still have my Win11 drive), I cannot get anything more than a single screen to wake up. I'm using KDE Plasma with X11. I alsop tried Wayland, but it didn't help. There are other reasons I prefer KDE and X11, but I can make changes if needed to use something else.

I had Claude helping try to figure it out, and ended up exercising xrandr a lot. I manually added a new_mode for the screens, adding it to the outputs, there were startup settings made in GRUB. I can plost the chat log if anyone wants to see it or if it is relevant.

Bottom line, screens 2 and 3 never came out of sleep mode. Those were connected to a DP and an HDMI on the USB port.

Other info: Intel graphics adapter. i915 driver installed properly

Display Settings in KDE never showed more than a single display.

Is Debian the right distro? Should I look at Ubuntu or Mint? Does anyone have ideas on how to make this work? What is frustrating is it just turns on and works in Win11, so the hardware is functional.

I'm happy to answer any other questions in my quest to make this work.

Hi. I'm using Aegnux on CachyOS with the bundled Wine runner. Everything in Adobe After Effects launches, but almost the entire UI displays square boxes instead of text.
What I've already tried:
- Installed Microsoft Core Fonts
- Added Segoe UI fonts manually:
- segoeui.ttf
- segoeuib.ttf
- segoeuil.ttf
- seguisb.ttf
- SegMDL2.ttf
- Imported them into the Wine registry
- Verified they appear in: HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Fonts
- Ran wineboot -u
- Restarted Wine
- Checked DLL overrides (dwrite is builtin)
- Wine version: wine-11.3.r0.g0e629ceb (TkG Staging NTsync)
The fonts are correctly registered, but After Effects still shows only square boxes.
Has anyone using Aegnux experienced this?
Is there another dependency or plugin required besides the main AE package?
Thanks!

Hello! I‘ve been using windows for a hot minute and have been having some repeat issues. Rather than reinstalling windows I‘ve decided to instead download a linux distro since I‘ve heard many great things. However, theres too damn many to pick one! Basically, im just looking for a distro that will allow me to both play games well and also be good for working (3d modeling, programming, etc). any recommendations?

So earlier, my sis borrowed my laptop to connect to a TV and watch some movies. It was fine when it was connected but when I disconnected it and connected it to my monitor, it won't remove the TV's display at the display configuration and doesn't respond with Windows/Meta key + P. When I forced it to only display on my monitor and slept the laptop, it then suddenly won't display and needs a restart to work again.

My laptop is a LOQ 15 with a intel cpu and nvidia gpu. The sleep issue which I described in the last sentence of my first paragraph, is a common issue whenever I'm using the laptop without an external monitor connected. Our thinkpad which has an intel cpu and igpu doesn't have this issue and both are using Fedora KDE.

Hello everyone. I have been running Fedora with the cachyos kernel on my main laptop happily for the last 6 months or so. I have an old laptop I want to put Arch on to mess around. My issue is that the laptop more than likely has a virus on it so I want to wipe the whole thing. The laptop has an SSD and an HDD. Is there a way to wipe both drives at the same time? I only see the option to do one drive at a time. I am worried that if there is a virus on there it will transfer between the drives while one is being wiped. Should I just take out the HDD and wipe them separately or is my concern not even really valid?

Additionally I have an external SSD in an enclosure, the plugged in the computer recognizes it as the enclosure and not the drive so the WD software doesn't recognize it to be able to use that to clean that drive. Is the best option just to use windows diskpart and hit `clean all`? Any help would be appreciated thanks!:)

I've been thinking about something lately, and maybe it's a silly question.

One of the things I love about Linux is that there are so many free distributions. But I wonder... will that always be the case?

A lot of these projects depend on volunteers, donations, sponsors, and people contributing their time. What if, at some point in the future, donations dry up, companies lose interest, or fewer developers feel motivated to work on Linux for free?

I know open-source licenses mean the existing code can't just disappear, but maintaining a distro takes continuous work. If enough people stopped contributing, could we eventually end up with very few (or even no) actively maintained free distros?

Or do you think the Linux ecosystem has reached a point where that simply won't happen?

I'm not trying to be negative—I'm genuinely curious how people who have been in the Linux community longer than I have see the future.

honestly the state of the internet right now is just exhausting. I spun up a fresh debian box yesterday to host some anchor text distribution lists and scrapers for a client's forum campaign. within literal minutes, my auth.log was getting absolutely hammered by random IPs trying to brute force root

I already went through a standard server mania hardening checklist (disabled root login, enforced ssh keys, set up default deny in ufw)

But looking at the logs is just giving me massive anxiety. If password auth is 100% turned off and only my ed25519 key is accepted, do I still need to bother setting up fail2ban to block these script kiddies?

Or is it safe to just let them bounce off the wall forever? kinda worried about them eating up my resources just by spamming connection requests all day, but idk if configuring fail2ban is overkill at this point

1. LTS (Long Term Support)
2. Regular (Interim) Releases
3. Rolling Release
4. Fixed Release
5. Something Else

I'm currently using Arch Linux with Hyprland (HyDE) on my Mac Mini 7,1 and i've installed Steam using the multilib repository. I downloaded The Binding of Isaac: Repentance+ and when i tried to open it it just crashed. I've tried with other games and the same happened.

I am now trying to download the game using Proton Hotfix

If installed brave browser, using sys-wine runner, downloaded all directX and d3decom_47, the window seems misaligned to mouse cursor and if trying to play YouTube it crashes after 3 seconds, where could be a problem?