Best Linux Distro for a Desktop? Some confusion...

Hi,

i'm a newbie, but i love the idea of Linux!

Actually i'm on Windows 10 but i'm using Firefox, Libreoffice, Gimp, etc... and now i think that it's the time to switch from Windows to Linux.

But my question are:

\- i want a distro that is rock solid and supported from a large community

\- i want a distro that is oriented for desktop and like windows for office and production enviroment

\- i can't format and reformat and for that i want a distro that is not an experiment

What do you suggest?

I read a lot and the most suggested is Ubuntu LTS, can you confirm or suggest other solution? I see Fedora, OpenSuse etc... all big name of the Linux world, but i can't test all them.

I see that several laptop producers install Ubuntu as OEM, but nothing install Fedora, OpenSuse, Linux Mint...

My idea is to obtain an OS that can be used without problem for years, i admit that the last format of my Windows system is of 5 years ago... but i don't wnat all the crap that is into windows (privacy attack and other crap included!) and every update slow down my computer.

I know that linux is a comunity based system, but if exist i prefer a distro that is oriented for workstation/desktop.

Thanks a lot!

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VMWARE WORKSTATION VS QEMU on Windows Guests

Hey guys! I need to work with many windows guests and I always used vmware workstation. Does qemu have better performance? I would like to know especially the graphical performance, not for games. In vmware there is always a small lag of the mouse and graphical guis on windows guests.
Just to know i used windows as a host but after I changed to Archlinux, the graphical performance had a noticeable upgrade.

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What’s your daily use and distro you choose?

While sitting here over Christmas chatting vulnerabilities etc the topic came up of what I use and why.

This was a hard question as I actually use more than one OS daily. From MacOS to windows 10 to ParrotOS to Kali to fedora to Qubes to Tails. Which naturally gravitated to - why can’t you just use one?

Part of me wanted to answer - you just don’t understand, part of me said man they are right I’m complicated, another part said - really do you not care about your anonymity etc?

So my question to you - are you a one OS person or multiple? What are your daily task and what OS do you choose?

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Trim down empty space/zeros of dd image?

I recently created an image using dd of my Raspberry Pi, because the configuration is final and SD cards like to break. Before I did that I used zerofree on another machine to zero the free space and can zip the image down to about 1 GB now.

However when I unpack it, it's of course still the size of the SD card (32 GB) and I evidentiality need at least a 32 GB sized SD card to flash it back. Looking at images of Raspbian, Ubuntu etc though they're around 1GB-2GB in size, so I was wondering how I can reduce the size of my image, so I can flash it to any size of SD card + don't have an inflated image when unzipping.

I think it might have something to do with the partition table telling the image how big it has to be, but I might be wrong.

 

tl;dr: how can I trim down my image?

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Fixing CentOS Stream to RHEL Point Releases?

I was thinking about the whole CentOS abandonment in favour of CentOS Stream quite a bit lately for obvious reasons, and I have a question: what prevents someone from creating a CentOS Stream mirror which tracks RHEL point releases?

The idea is this: assume we're on RHEL 8.3; that would mean CentOS is 'rolling' to what will end up in 8.4. Could you not pull all the upgrades to packages and store them until RHEL 8.4 comes out and then 'fix' all the packages from the 'stream' updates to correspond to RHEL 8.4, and then update the mirror accordingly?

It's not a 'new' distribution, you're still running CentOS Stream, so no need for a rebuild from source, and no stepping over trademarks. The whole thing sounds like it could be mostly automated too. It would be a lot easier to do than creating a distro from RHEL provided sources, no? There would still be an issue that Stream is only 5 years support instead of 10, but that's the only significant issue I see.

Am I out to lunch here, are there are any obvious technical or legal problems that make this impossible?

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RFC Nintendo 64 Linux port
https://lore.kernel.org/linux-mips/20201225190503.12353218812e1655f56f0bf8@gmx.com/T/#m0862c3484e0da7195dc8989421d30f01b3b1c63a

https://redd.it/kk74j1
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Linux now supported on the Nintendo 64

Announcement:

https://lore.kernel.org/linux-mips/20201225190503.12353218812e1655f56f0bf8@gmx.com/T/#m0862c3484e0da7195dc8989421d30f01b3b1c63a

The N64 is now the oldest console able to run Linux.

Some previous attempted had been done in the past but never went as far as having a shell running.
The port uses musl and busybox to make it as lightweight as possible, although the OOM is never far away with 4MB of memory in 2020.

GitHub release: https://github.com/clbr/n64bootloader/tree/master/n64linux

In depth denoscription of the N64 architecture: https://www.copetti.org/writings/consoles/nintendo-64/

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What keeps Linux kernel and distros safe from malicious source code?

With the supply chain attacks recently in the news on Solar Winds, I was curious how the kernel itself and also various distros protect themselves from someone inserting malicious code into the source? For example what would prevent one of the kernel developers computers from getting hacked, the hacker inserts a backdoor, and then that gets rolled down to every distro. There are millions of lines of code so it seems impossible to review them all. Same with distros, how do the distros prevent this at the package level?

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How do you roll your own distro?

How do you go about creating your own distro, but keeping it in an ISO format? Most of what I want to do is cosmetic, but also some specific configurations and packages that I want to make consistent.

The tools I was able to find we're mostly no longer supported and didn't seem to work anymore, and the ones that I could get working pretty much just resulted in a standard release and didn't let you change much. I know there's the Linux from scratch project, but I figure there's probably an easier way.

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Commandline Youtube video search and play utility written in bash [NO API]

https://redd.it/kl8ig3
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Installing linux without losing files

Hi there people. Today I have decided that I am tired of windows and am now looking to move over to linux. I've just completed the creation of a bootable USB but am left with one question. Backing up my files. Now in advance I am going to say that I am aware of the partition method. However I think I have a work around. That is the fact that my PC has two harddrives. My idea is that if I use the inbuilt windows backup feature to back up the files to the second harddrive (where the OS is not going to be installed) then it shouldn't wipe the data on said harddrive. Does the installation remove data on both harddrives or is it just the one that the OS is installed to?

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Xmonad vs Bspwm

I have been using both window managers for some time now and honestly I really love xmonad but I like the fact that bspwm is configured entirely in bash. What I particularly like about xmonad is the multihead behaviour, however, I figured out a way to replicate it in xmonad.

What I would like to know is, which is the more powerful window manager and way benefits does each one have over another.

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Music Producer who cant switch to linux because of Maschine mk3

Hi!!
I am a 17 (2 months till my 18th birthday) music producer and begginer programmer who is trying to get into linux to get more into "computer stuff"
I use Pop Os, but I am not able to make a complete switch because I use a piece of gear called Maschine mk3 that only works with Mac and Windows.
I tried to install the software with wine, but the controller does not work (drivers are not compatible I supose)
Given this my options are running Linux on a VM, running WSL2 or running a Dual boot (my least favourite option, as I heard that it may cause problems and that having to reboot my PC when I want to make music is a real pain in the *ss).
Any sugestions??
BTW sorry for any typos, but my auto-corrector is for portuguese and it sometimes bugs for english

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2021 will be year of Linux on the desktop

https://redd.it/kld6t7
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How to Sync Music to iPhone (kind of) Supports iOS 14 and below only works with iPhone 10 and below. (REQUIRES JAILBREAK)

# Please read before continuing with the rest of guide.

Now as the noscript mentions this does unfortunately require a jailbreak, and unfortunately you cannot use the stock iOS music app, so we are going to be using VLC instead. In this guide I will only cover the Jailbreak process for all A7-A11 devices. So the iPhone 5s-10. Please look up the Jailbreak process if your device is not a part of this device set. As I am more familiar with iPhones I only mentioned iphones. But as long as your iPad or iPod uses one of the SoCs mentioned above (so the A7-A11) you will be able to follow this process as well. (Or if you are running a version of iOS that has another Jailbreak method, or is on an iOS version older than 11.) As such, since no proprietary encoding is taking place either, you can use this process to add movies and other videos to your device as well. As this does require a jailbreak I am not responsible for any potential loss of of data. Please do an iCloud backup before continuing.

Jailbreaking:

This Jailbreak is semi tethered, meaning if you shut down your iphone or it dies you will lose the jailbreak. Though if you are just using the Jailbreak every once and a while to add music or movies, then this should not be much of an issue for you. As even if you lose the jailbreak your media files will not be deleted from your device. To reenable the Jailbreak you will need access to you computer.

WARNING for iPhone 8, 8 Plus or 10 users: due to an inability to properly exploit a process called SEP on A11 chipsets, it has to be mostly disabled. This is only an issue on iOS 14 to my current knowledge however. If you do not disable your passcode before installing the jailbreak your device will bootloop. So please disable it before hand as well as touch/face id. Older iPhone users do not have to worry about this. Same goes for iPhone 8 or 10 users on iOS 13 or below as well.

Installing the computer side program called checkra1n:

Copy and paste the following commands:

echo "deb https://assets.checkra.in/debian /" | sudo tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list

sudo apt-key adv --fetch-keys `https://assets.checkra.in/debian/archive.key`

sudo apt update

sudo apt install chechra1n

Then launch the application checkra1n.

If you are on an iPhone 8 or 10 running iOS 14, once again please remember to disable all lockscreen security. And DO NOT turn it back on after you Jailbreak. Doing so will cause a Kernel panic and reboot your device. Then in the checkra1n program, go to options and then check "Skip A11 BPR check" and "Allow untested iOS/iPadOS/tvOS versions" then click "back". From my experience on my 8 Plus the Jailbreak works perfectly fine.

Then click start and follow the onscreen instructions.

After your iPhone is finished rebooting you should see an app on the homescreen called Checkra1n.

Open it then tap Cydia. You must have internet on your iPhone to install it.

After it is done installing you should see an app called Cydia on your home screen.

You're done!

After Jailbreaking:

Required programs:

On linux:

iFuse: (this allows us to communicate with a portion of the iDevice's file system.) install on Ubuntu based distros with sudo apt install ifuse though most distros should already have it preinstalled.

On the iPhone:

Filza File Manager: To install it open Cydia go to the search tab and search for Filza. Then tap on the result called filza file manager (should have a blue toolbox icon) and then click the install button in the top right corner. Then click confirm. It should start to install. Then click return to Cydia. And then exit Cydia.

Finally! We can now transfer some music.

First plug your iPhone into your PC and trust the PC on your iPhone.

On the PC:

Open a terminal and type

mkdir iphone

ifuse iphone

Then select some music from your computer then click copy. Then go to the home folder, then into the

iphone folder. Then create a new folder called Music, and open it. Then paste your music inside of that folder.

On the iPhone:

Open filza and navigate to /private/var/mobile/media

You should then see the Music folder you created. Open it, then tap and hold on one of the items inside and click select from the dropdown menu, and then select all the items in the music folder.

Then click copy (or move if you don't want them to stay in that music folder as well as in VLC)

then tap <mobile to go back a page.

Then navigate to containers/data/Application/VLC/Documents/Inbox

Then click the clipboard button

Then click paste to paste the music into VLC.

Then exit filza and open VLC

You should now see your music in the music tab of VLC.

&#x200B;

I hope this guide helped anyone who wanted to use Linux to add music to an iPhone. It is less than ideal, but at least it works. If you have and suggestions, questions and/or comments please feel free to post them below.

https://redd.it/klf012
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I'm a bit curious: What phones do Linux users use?

I'm currently using a Samsung Galaxy A50, but I plan on upgrading in the future. Samsung doesn't seem to be going in the right direction anymore, so I would like to know what you guys use.

I figured asking the Linux subreddit would be a good idea, since Linux users tend to enjoy customization and privacy, which happens to also be what I'm looking for.

https://redd.it/klf83m
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See Reddit images with just one bash command in your default image viewer!

https://redd.it/klgmo6
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Thank god linux exists...

If it not for linux, I'd not be able to complete my phd project, which requires extreme amount of open browser tabs. In windows its just not possible with my hardware. If I did it in windows, would take me 10 hours. Now in 5 hours, I am done. Now I enjoy 5 hours of me time :)

Cant express how much I love all linux devs.

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Linux Experiences/Rants or Education/Certifications thread - December 28, 2020

Welcome to r/linux rants and experiences! This megathread is also to hear opinions from anyone just starting out with Linux or those that have used Linux (GNU or otherwise) for a long time.

Let us know what's annoying you, whats making you happy, or something that you want to get out to r/linux but didn't make the cut into a full post of it's own.

For those looking for certifications please use this megathread to ask about how to get certified whether it's for the business world or for your own satisfaction. Be sure to check out r/linuxadmin for more discussion in the SysAdmin world!

Please keep questions in r/linuxquestions, r/linux4noobs, or the Wednesday automod thread.

https://redd.it/kliw3y
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coolgreen - a rice dedicated to ease of installation

Allow me to introduce to the community a project I'm currently working on, which I have named coolgreen. Based off of dwm, coolgreen aims to provide a solid window manager while making it easy for newcomers and enjoyable for veterans alike. This project is in the extremely early phases of development, but I hope that some day it can become a viable option for newcomers to the window manager side of Linux. Please, if you have the time, give it a shot and leave some feedback, as I want to make this the best it possibly can be.

&#x200B;

https://github.com/canada-water/coolgreen

https://redd.it/klijra
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