I became a moderator of and overhauled r/grub!
https://reddit.com/r/grub

https://redd.it/mefjzm
@r_linux

Adding a "support/donate" button to the native application centers can greatly help increase donations to free software projects and prevent many good software from Dying

I recently read an article about free software and learnt that less than 5% free software users actually pay or donate something for the projects which leads to stagnation or death of the project due to lack of funds,
I guess it is partially because its difficult for a user to actually go and fund a project directly on there site, its just tedious for them


I feel integrating a direct donation/support button to the app center can really help developers and ensure quality products in future


i think having something like this could really help entire free software community in general


\(I saw this on a video about elementary os, its really a nice concept for every distro to use \)

https://redd.it/mew5e7
@r_linux

QApt issue - where can I report it?

QApt is not displaying the first letter of the package denoscription. GDebi for comparison.

​

https://preview.redd.it/f900ql3i1mp61.png?width=1009&format=png&auto=webp&s=565735d22ae00a1326610517f79da5520bc35302

I would also like to report this to GDebi team.

​

https://preview.redd.it/6rezr9cu1mp61.png?width=391&format=png&auto=webp&s=c211f5c6d7da779a31ceb4ea1aa3bb7577bf77ec

https://redd.it/mej2lm
@r_linux

Why are some linux Youtubers so edgy? Rant|

So over the past few weeks I've noticed a trend in Linux content on YouTube, Theres this genre of content thats super edgy and which is sometimes informational but throws in forgotten memes and insults people in their videos.

Before I go any further, Let me just say not all linux Youtubers are like this. I dont really use linux or care about it that much but I still find the videos of Gardner bryant, Chris titus tech and the lunduke guy to be very educational and entertaining all while being super respectful.

I have mainly three examples to back up my claims.

1. Mental Outlaw

His content while educational has a healthy dose of outdated memes sprinkled in, and I just cringe whenever he says "normies" or "noobs". I mean the dude compares the general population to prisoners, Yeah I get the point that youre trying to make but there is a better way of going about it my dude. He even compares normal people to slaves that fought for the confederacy. Like are you comparing software preferences to an actual human tragedy? Like watching his content theres just this general feeling of contempt towards people who dont use linux. I just feel like he doesnt understand that different people have different use cases than him

2. DistroTube

Again, his content is educational and most of the time he is very respectful but from time to time the dude goes off the rails. Best example of this is a video where he talks about software rights and then transitions to gun rights and starts brandishing his guns and asks people to buy AR-15s and shit. Like okay but how is that in any way related to Linux and free software? On top of that he rants about other individuals / companies exercising their freedom. For example Mozilla said something about making the web safer and he took it as censorship and went on a rant. Again someone came up with a license that allows for ethical reuse of code and again he lost his shit because the creator wanted to prevent unethical use of their code.

3. Luke Smith

In my opinion the edgiest of the three. distrotube, credit where credit is due puts his money where his mouth is, he doesnt like mozilla, he uninstalled it. But luke hates web bloat and ads. In his recent videos he rants about this lady who has ads on her blog, he basically says that she dosent incur a lot of expense to run her blog and therefore she should remove ads from her blog. I guess he didnt stop to consider that his might be her way of making a living but what ever. Hypocritically he has multiple ads on his videos and donation links. Going by his logic he hasnt incurred a lot of expenses for running his channel therefore he should stop monetizing his channel.

He is very similar to mental outlaw edgy memes and outdated references and a general contempt for general people. But he goes above and beyond that. In a video he goes off on a massive 9 minute rant about indian people. Why? Because their tutorials have bad mics and he doesnt like their accent. Like i would get it if they gave you incorrect info but ranting about people for conditions outside of their control is just sad.

​

Again these are things that I observed, you might disagree with me and thats fine. I feel like if a new user watches these videos I dont think theyre representing the community in a good way. But then again they dont have to do that, they dont have to conform to my expectations but I sure as hell can rant about them.

[https://redd.it/meyap8
@r_linux

This week in KDE: all the things
https://pointieststick.com/2021/03/26/this-week-in-kde-all-the-things-2/

https://redd.it/me6law
@r_linux

I've saved a 15 years old 32-bit computer with linux.
https://redd.it/mf3efn
@r_linux

Best in-depth books for learning Linux

So I’ve been using Linux for around 9 months now. I haven’t really encountered significant any problems as of yet, and when I do run into obstacles a quick search on the Web guides me to the solution. However I don’t want to spend the rest of my time googling for answers when I have problems - I want to confidently solve them myself. Do any of you have any book recommendations that go in deep for learning Linux?

https://redd.it/mf40mr
@r_linux

The Linux community is by far the best!!!

I stumbled across Linux a few years back and fell in love with it instantly. As soon as I started using the shell I felt like I was properly interacting with the computer. The whole endeavour was a welcome mystery which made me constantly research and look for answers to my questions. That's when I discovered how helpful and important the Linux community truly was.

Every time I reached an issue that saw me struggle, there was always helpful advice to bring my attention to where I was going wrong. All of the resources and help I've received from the Linux community has sped up the learning and understanding process for me. I've also been able to help beginners with some Linux related enquiries, which is the best way that I can say thank you to the community. The welcoming attitude is what keeps the cycle of learning so enjoyable.

I suppose I just wanted to say thank you and show my appreciation to a community who do it for the dedication.

https://redd.it/mf82i0
@r_linux

Ideas for contribute to community

Hi all,

First of all, sorry for my english. I will try not destroy the language.

As a member of a system department who works principally with GNU/Linux, i would like give something back to community, but i have no idea what i can propose to my boss.

Probably, money is not an option. Can you give me some ideas that can be useful?

Thanks you all!

https://redd.it/mf8oa7
@r_linux

7-eleven using Linux on their drink machine
https://redd.it/mfarsc
@r_linux

Linux Terminal Tools: A slide deck of commonly used Linux Command Line Tools
https://ketancmaheshwari.github.io/pdfs/LPT_LISA.pdf

https://redd.it/mfbdde
@r_linux

Thoughts on the unique Void distribution
https://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20210329#void

https://redd.it/mfdhtt
@r_linux

Made my own Linux from Scratch distro at age 13

Just wanted to share with you all. I started getting into the Linux rabbit hole when my first laptop was really slow. I then found out about Linux and wanted to try it. Now 6 months later I decided to make my own distro using LFS. Also working on a gui.

​

​

https://preview.redd.it/wshwbvec6vp61.png?width=720&format=png&auto=webp&s=5a8bee61f1162169213736de22e315b70425e421

https://redd.it/mfe27s
@r_linux

I created a GUI to change BIOS settings for devices with coreboot.
https://redd.it/mffpgh
@r_linux

I want to learn Linux during my breaks at work but don't have access to a Linux machine whilst doing so. Is there a good in browser Linux course for beginners?

I know it's oddly specific but I don't have time at home with a young family and I want to learn it on my breaks at work. I can't install a VM or anything because I work for a big corporate so the PC's are pretty locked down. I'm hoping to find a course that I can do, in browser, without having to install anything. Does such a thing exist?

https://redd.it/mfbpqr
@r_linux

OBS Oriented Distro

Hi Linux community
So I’m designing a relatively large streaming system because I can and I’m bored (I’m talking at least computers overall) and I’m curious to know if anyone ever built a Linux distribution that’s sole purpose is to run OBS and stream to the popular services, similar to how OpenELEC is designed to run XBMC and not much else.

https://redd.it/mfc0q7
@r_linux

My New Life as a Linux User

I hope many of you enjoy reading this. It's long but hopefully interesting.

TL;DR: My story about growing with Linux over the years and my final jump to Linux from Windows. Windows bad. Linux good!

I've been using Linux full time for a little over two and a half years now. Before that, I would install a distro on my computer and play in it for a few weeks and then go back to Windows. I must say, my life seems a lot different now that I have moved away from Windows.

I experimented with Slackware in 1994 but didn't feel like it was at the level of Windows just yet. I actually installed Gentoo in 2004 and even though it was a royal pain in the butt to install, afterwards I saw great potential in Linux. When I installed a Desktop Environment on it (can't remember which one it was. Gnome possibly) I felt it was eventually going to be a viable replacement for Windows one day.

Somewhere in that time I had gotten my hands on Caldera OpenLinux eDesktop (2000 maybe) and that one almost got me to switch from Windows. I used it until they didn't support it anymore. No more updates were available and they had stopped supporting it altogether. So as much as I loved Caldera, I had to stop using it. I had read that they were not going to keep the eDesktop version in their plans. Something about Novell falling to Windows 95 and Windows 98 because Windows had a far easier network configuration built into the OS so Novell software was no longer needed on Microsoft products.

From there I played with many, now defunct, distros like Mandriva, Corel Linux (which I think was a stem from Caldera Open Linux), Red Hat (which didn't become defunct. It just became commercialized like Windows) just to name a few.

In 2007 I got my hands on Ubuntu 7.04. I fell in love with it. I stayed with that for about 9 months. Probably the longest I had stayed with a Linux distro before now. It was truly amazing. I had high speed internet by this time (2001 was my first intro to DSL) and Ubuntu was a perfect match for that. It was nice and fast just like my internet connection. I loved it! Then I started doing desktop publishing. The last time I had done that was with Aldus Pagemaker. I had to use Adobe Pagemaker to do what I needed to do since the client I was working with only worked with Pagemaker. I didn't even look to see if there was a Linux equivalent to Pagemaker. So I ended up back in Windows.

I later tried Ubuntu 8 and 9 but I was just so stuck in Windows again, I couldn't pull myself out of it. In 2010 I started doing some very heavy photography work... Weddings and portraits. I was using Adobe Photoshop to edit photos and then Adobe Lightroom was introduced to me by a friend. This made editing wedding photos quick and easy. For weddings I averaged anywhere from 1,600 to 2,500 photos for each wedding. Lightroom just made it SO easy to balance light and do other light photo editing that took forever in Photoshop. I could also upload a few photos from Lightroom directly to my photography page on Facebook. I had looked for a Linux alternative for Lightroom but there was nothing even close to the power of Lightroom.

So I pretty much stuck to Windows until I tried out Windows 10. I absolutely hated Windows 10! I loved Windows 7 but Windows 10 was a complete failure for me. So the hunt began in early 2018 (March) for a suitable Windows replacement.

My first attraction was to Ubuntu 18.4 since I really liked Ubuntu 7.04. Needless to say I really wasn't into Ubuntu 18.04. I didn't like the new Gnome desktop. I didn't know that I could add a different desktop to Linux until later that year when I had switched.

So I got on Distrowatch and wanted to see what was most popularly searched for on Distrowatch. I saw Linux Mint there at the top (might have been #2) and I saw that it was Ubuntu based but had a different desktop environment other than Gnome. So I downloaded Mint 18.3 Cinnamon Edition and sat on it for like 2 months. I waited to install it because I wanted to make sure I had everything backed up on my Windows

drive. After I had everything backed up on the Windows drive I decided I'd just get another hard drive and test Mint on that rather than destroying the data on the Windows drive (I never liked dual booting) So I bought me a 128GB SSD and put Linux Mint 18.3 on it. I just LOVED how it looked, felt (just like Windows) and it was a pleasant and refreshing experience.

About 2 weeks after installing Mint 18.3 they announced Linux Mint 19.0. I decided I wouldn't completely move into this 128GB drive yet because I wanted to switch to Mint 19 when it was released (I believe there was a beta release but I really didn't want to use a beta release). I caught a great deal on a 500GB SSD so I grabbed it. That would become the new home of Linux Mint 19. It was so nice when I installed 19.0 on my machine. Again, refreshing and worth the wait.

I had committed myself to Linux FINALLY! I had used Linux Mint until early 2020 completely Windows Free at this point. One day, I caught a video on Arch Linux. An installation video. I was intrigued by how it was all manually installed (like Gentoo but seemingly easier and quicker) and there was no GUI. Kind of like how Slackware was in the mid 1990s. So I downloaded a copy of it and again I sat on it for about two weeks. By this time I had VirtualBox on my computer and I decided I'd setup Arch in a VM. It took me a couple of tries (missed the grub install section in the Arch Installation Wiki and rebooted before doing that). Grrr... It wasn't working. It wouldn't even boot to a command prompt. So I installed it in the VM again. This time I saw my mistake and noticed the steps to initialize grub. It booted to a command prompt. YAY!!!

So I had it in a VM and was thinking about what Desktop I wanted on it. Gnome? Nah, I wasn't a Gnome fan. Cinnamon? Eh, I had that already with Mint. I wanted something different. So I hunted around YouTube for some different desktop environment reviews and found DistroTubes channel. He was doing a series of tiling window manager videos and I watched a bunch of them (maybe all of them).

By this time, I had installed Arch on a spare test machine. I really liked the xmonad video I saw on DistroTube. I found a few others and I was convinced I wanted to use xmonad. I really liked it... for about a week. Then I ran an update and xmonad wouldn't run anymore. Bewildered, I took to the internet. I had only been on Reddit a few months at this point and I posted the question on r/xmonad. I quickly found out that the update broke xmonad. This is where I learned the important procedure of booting the Arch installation flash drive, chrooting into my machine, installing a simple desktop environment so I could go in and do what I needed to do to fix xmonad. I needed to recompile xmonad to get it to work with the updates (I probably could have done that in the chroot but I wanted an alternate way to get to the terminal without having to hunt down my flash drive again). OK. Fine and dandy. Everything was up and running again. Two days later I ran another update and had more Haskell updates. Again, the thing broke.

I was getting frustrated with xmonad after every Haskell update. So I set out to to find another window manager because they were so different than traditional desktop environments. I actually installed a few that I liked from the videos I watched. OpenBox, i3, and AwesomeWM. I love all of those but Awesome is current all time favorite.

Every now and then I will log into a different WM but I live in AwesomeWM 95% of the time. I have a 3 monitor setup and I like how each monitor is it's own entity. Meaning I can have FireFox in the first virtual desktop on monitor 1 and I can have Thunderbird in the first virtual desktop on monitor 2. So two programs running in the same virtual desktop on 2 separate monitors. This means I have 3x the virtual desktops than the other Window Managers. Pretty cool!

I mentioned I bounce around occasionally between window managers. Writing this, I'm running xmonad. Yup. You read that right. xmonad!

I figured out a little trick about 4

months after I started using Arch full time on my main machine. I learned about bash aliases and I figured out that I can have xmonad --recompile run every time I run an update. This has virtually killed the xmonad/Haskell update fiasco I was having. Now, when I use the alias to run an update in xmonad, not only does it do the sudo pacman -Syu, it also runs xmonad --recompile and xmonad --restart for me after the update. I never get locked out of xmonad anymore.

This is the reason why I am writing this now. Linux is so versatile right now. I can run different desktop environments and keep it fresh and alive. This is why Linux is so exciting! Unlike the same stale Windows desktop all of the time. It's almost cartoonish to me now whenever I look at a Windows computer (we have them at work).

If you stuck around to the very end of this, I thank you for your interest (negative or positive). In closing I hope Linux and the distro developers (Not just Arch and Mint but all of them) stick around for a LONG time to come!

Also, I can't stress enough to donate to your favorite distro team! It helps keep them busy building new and improved distributions that we all love! I've donated to both the Arch and Mint developers in the past proudly! I've also given a little to awesomewm.org as well. It's a great way to feel like you're part of the community!

DONATE!

Thanks again for reading!!!

https://redd.it/mfi8t3
@r_linux

Emacs Tutorial Emacs definitely easy, it starts everything from "M-x"

Prejudices say: "Emacs is just hard to learn". Such prejudices undermine Emacs' popularity.
This minor project try to break the prejudice and denote how could take least efforts and suffering to learn Emacs.
This series blogs were written originally in Chinese from 2020 and have accumulated around 190 stars.

Emacs is simple and its universe big-bang from M-x.

https://preview.redd.it/pccrqmbxrwp61.png?width=523&format=png&auto=webp&s=c69bac980463e079f481791eb35e6913168dfe9d

# 1. So simple Emacs: Meta Key

Emacs' elegance and simplicity, in a nutshell, is just a Meta key.

Meta is option or alter key on the keyboard. In etymology, Meta means "higher, beyond". Therefore, as spring flows from higher source, we could understand Meta as Source, and associated it with source-code.

In Source Code, function is the first-class citizen. The simple strategy of Emacs is to bind the Meta key (which has source meaning in etymology) to the source-code or function. Then we could trigger the keys M-x (x for execute) to invoke the function.

Start form M-x, you can do whatever you desire, such as inserting the current date:

https://preview.redd.it/fsxrzwvhswp61.png?width=1285&format=png&auto=webp&s=3f6fd57640ce0d4b9e3c1547bcd5332437982d0c

# 2.The primary strategy of Emacs: Introduce the Ctrl key

Take an example to open a file from a directory, you can M-x find-file,

With M-x, we have to type 11 characters to get such a task done. In contrast, we only type 4 characters as C-x C-f with Ctrl key. As we see, to achieve high efficiency, Emacs’s primary strategy is to replace “call function by full name” with the “call function by characters”.

A simpler example, such as “move one character forward”. The complete implementation is M-x forward-character. But after the introduction of the Ctrl strategy, only the characters of C-f is required.

Since C (Ctrl) simplifies M-x, and the character f is the first letter of the function forward-character.

The above method of calling functions with Control is called Command. Command is equivalent to Control, we find that choosing Ctrl as command is also a semantic binding just as choosing Meta as source-code.

​

Read the project here:

https://github.com/AbstProcDo/Master-Emacs-From-Scratch-with-Solid-Procedures

https://redd.it/mfj2z1
@r_linux

My acer laptop with i5-9th, 8gb ram, 2gb graphics card and 1tb hdd with pop os installed is still slow as hell.

I see lots of posts here claiming they saved their old pcs by installing linux on it but my more than capable is still slow with pop-os installed and I have no clue.

Before pop-os, I was a regular user of Ubuntu for years and switched to pop-os only because user interface.

So is it pop-os issue or should I try different desktop environment ?
Hell broke, when even cursor started lagging !

Edit: I should have mentioned what graphic card it is. It's nvidia 940mx

https://redd.it/mfjr5b
@r_linux