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?

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

So to keep it simple, I have no clue about anything Linux or Linux related so this is all really daunting. I am currently on Windows 10 and need to switch to Linux, since I don't want evil ass bloatware that slows my entire system down. All I want is something that is good for gaming while looking similar to Windows, since my PC is mostly used for gaming. Thank you in advance.

Hi all,

I'm relatively new to Linux still. Currently using Zorin OS as this seemed relatively user friendly, and so far I'm having a really good time. I have turned on my Windows PC exactly once in 3 months so I'm slowly starting to get the hang of things. Admittedly, I am converted for the most part.

I have an older Synology NAS, and I'd like to periodically (at a certain time every day or week maybe) sync my music folder to my NAS. I'd also like to make it so that there is a change from the NAS side to that folder, that it reflects in that folder on my Linux machine. Does anyone know if this is in any way possible without using Docker (NAS too old rip) and if there are any security concerns I need to keep in mind?

Side note: I'd also really appreciate any general tips you may have, since I feel like I'm learning to walk all over again. It's tough! It can be in the form of stuff you recommend trying out to learn while doing (I have a separate one for testing so all good if it bricks) to keep it fun and engaging? Anything you'd encourage me to break and (maybe) try to fix?

Thanks so much in advance!

*I have an old Toshiba Satellite (C550 series) with the following specs:

CPU: Intel Celeron @ 1.80 GHz RAM: 6 GB DDR3 Storage: 320 GB HDD (planning to upgrade to a 256 GB SSD soon) GPU: Intel integrated graphics Wi-Fi: 2.4 GHz only Battery: Lasts around 30 minutes (mostly used plugged in) Current OS: Windows 10*

I'm looking for a Linux distro that's lightweight, stable, beginner-friendly, and gives the best performance on this hardware. I don't mind a minimal UI if it improves responsiveness.

Which distro would you recommend and why? (Lubuntu, Linux Mint XFCE, Xubuntu, MX Linux, Debian XFCE, Fedora LXQt, etc.)

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

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.

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'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.

I won't be using two different partitions. But rather two actual physical drives.

I don't mind going into the bios and changing the boot drive priority if I have to switch.

Anyone else have it setup like this? I want to know any issues I may run into.

Thanks.

Yesterday i installed CachyOS as a dual-boot. Everything seems to be working, but i have noticed one issue, the colors on my display look washed out.

This is especially noticeable in the browser. Areas that should appear black look grayish, and blue tones seem dull and less vibrant than they should be. It feels like the overall color output is faded.

Has anyone knows how to fix it?

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Hi everyone,

I'm having a boot problem with Linux Mint and I hope someone can help me understand what went wrong.

My laptop has 4 GB of RAM, and Windows was very slow, so I decided to install Linux Mint.

I didn't have a USB flash drive, so I used a tool that allowed me to boot the Linux Mint ISO from a partition on my internal drive. The installation completed successfully, and Linux Mint booted and worked normally.

Later, I noticed that the system felt slower than expected. After checking, I found that the EFI/boot files were on my SSD, but the Linux root filesystem had actually been installed on my HDD.

I wanted everything to be on the SSD, so I copied the Linux installation from the HDD to the SSD and reinstalled/configured GRUB to boot from the SSD. I also updated the boot configuration. After that, I deleted the old Linux files from the HDD because I thought they were no longer needed.

The laptop worked for a short time, but after rebooting it no longer booted.

While troubleshooting, I realized that the original tool had left an important boot-related reference pointing to the old HDD. It contained a line like:

UUID=6b4d8b2d-1d4d-4a8b-9b7b-8d4f2d5d6c9a

I believe the system is still trying to use the old HDD UUID, but I had already deleted that installation. I also get messages indicating that the boot filesystem is read-only.

My questions are:

- Is this likely caused by an incorrect UUID reference?

- Can I repair the bootloader and UUID configuration without reinstalling Linux?

- Is there a way to recreate or fix the missing boot files?

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Hi guys, I recently replaced my trusty 10 year old ASUS k501u😢 with an ASUS VivoBook S14 with an OLED screen

After I got it, though, I started thinking about the risks associated with OLED screens, specifically burn-in. Since I spend many hours coding, the risk of having vscode icons permanently burned into the screen is very high over time (i think). That’s why I wanted to ask you if, on Linux (I use Linux Mint), there are solutions like pixel shifting, pixel refreshing, anti-flicker etc... what solutions does Linux offer? Or what software solutions are available?

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

Hi, I recently installed garuda mokka but I have lots of problems with this. I want to try cachy os now. Is there a way I can have Garuda mokka look on cachy os? And how to switch distro safe?

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.

I want to dualboot a linux distro(open to recommnedations for dual booting distro) with my windows 11 in a single 1tb disk will this be a problem in terms of corrupting windows or linux and any info on how can I do it? would appreciate it! and isi t a smart idea I will use windows for gaming and linux for discord etc.(running windows 11 rn)

I have a Nvidia gpu if that's a problem

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.