Moving to Linux

So I am in this process of switching to Linux from Windows, I and wanted to share some of my thoughts in here about the process and how it is going.

So day after day Windows 11 was bothering me more and more with stupid things Microsoft is throwing at me and everyone else and how much non-sense it was. From me right clicking anywhere and seeing a "Loading" message on a portion of the context menu until it loaded stupid things I don't care about, up to my Settings menu also loading stuff from the internet with stuff I didn't care as well (and probably nobody does). More and more, every day losing the sensation that I have my PC at my house, and that it is more of something on the cloud.

Games aren't a priority to me anymore, so it made me more comfortable that I wouldn't run on any conflict of a game I couldn't play on Linux.

After "rehearsing" with quite a few Linux distros on VMs I settled for Fedora on KDE and that's what I installed on my PC. Still in dual boot, but I have the feeling it will become the only one.

While not perfect, and I... learned some thing in the process, using it right now feels very good and that it was the right decision. Also, everything I read about Linux today is basically positive, improvement after improvement, feeling of freedom and choice, while Windows feels half step forward and two steps back every day.

Having that said, I guess I can say I use every minimally popular OS in the market as I have 6 PCs in total.

Main desktop running Fedora and Windows 11 on dual boot

MacBook Air M2 running MacOS

Steam Deck with SteamOS / Arch

Raspberry Pi 4 (it's a computer, c'mon) running Ubuntu Server

MeLe Quieter 4C mini PC running Home Assistant (more Linux)

Dell Notebook from work (not mine technically) running Windows 11, which gave me some headaches with the last updates...

So this is it, just wanted to share my thoughts, positivity and hapiness by the change process. Thanks to the Linux community for working so hard on it!

https://redd.it/1jru5nu
@r_linux

My first impressions on Linux. What I like and don't like.

I recently installed linux mint and moved off of Windows 10. It's been pretty decent, and there are a few things I like and don't like. Sorry that it's a long read.

What I like

For some reason, I really like the settings panel and how easy everything is to find. It's not overly complicated, but yet is extremely powerful. Windows 10 has too many settings that most people would never need. It also buries a lot of settings or places them in positions that they shouldn't be in.

Also, I like the software manager.

Bloatware

Another thing is the lack of bloatware. Often times Microsoft operating systems come with a lot of programs you never wanted and never needed but you can't uninstall them. Cortana is a great example of something I never wanted or needed and only got in the way. The same as being unable to uninstall edge.

Privacy

A lot of people call me a conspiracy theorist when I say Microsoft logs everything you do. They think I am crazy but Microsoft itself admits that they do. Somewhere in the Windows settings they tell you that basically everything you do can be used to tailor advertisements or help improve machine learning. You have the option to turn this off but it's also a hidden setting. Also I don't trust Microsoft that it's actually off when I turn it off.

With this linux variant I know everything I do is a lot more private and I love that.

character

I don't know how to describe it but the entire design of this version of linux is very human. I love that fact.

What I don't like

UI scaling

Not specifically related to linux, but there is a problem of every software developer thinking they need to shrink UI at higher resolutions. When in reality most people, even with good vision, will struggle to read text. I don't know if this is an issue of many developers thinking they know better than everyone else or not, but in practice most people don't agree.

Many times in my life I have heard from others, "I bought a bigger TV to read the words easier, but it's worse." Meanwhile I'll mention the issue online and someone gets extremely defensive. They call me wrong or saying I have bad eyesight. I really feel like the ratio of screen versus UI should be the same across all versions, but it's not. It always shrinks.

With linux mint the UI scales weirdly and often times smaller buttons don't exactly get larger, like the X in, but the top right of the screen. Also, my cursor keeps changing sizes, and it's hard to click on specific lines of text.

File system (Linux as a whole?)

Basically I want to keep the operating system separate from my programs but that's not an option. The reason for this is the smaller drive (250GB SSD) might fill up pretty fast. Also the closer it get's to full storage the slower it will run.

Maybe this isn't an issue that much in linux as I am making it to be but just taking away my ability to choose annoys me to no end. At the very least steam allows me to download games onto my NVME instead. I can also place files on there manually.

Also a small feature missing is annoying me. I can't drag and drop items. For example I can't just drag something from the downloads into pictures or videos through the side bar. I have to manually open two windows and rag between them.

Just little things that are missing as well. otherwise it's been pretty decent so far.












https://redd.it/1jrsfhj
@r_linux

“Linux is only secure because of its low user base”

So first and foremost, I am no security engineer or experienced programmer. Just a regular human who only knows how to navigate through directories on Linux. While I get it’s a simpleton’s question, it’s a question I’ve always had.

Now that is out of the way, I’ve always thought about this and while I do recognize it has some merit, I feel as if it’s not the whole truth. Which is why I’m here and asking any experts or someone who is well versed and knowledgeable in this field as I am incompetent.

When I think about it, Linux seems to have good package management, doesn’t give you root access (neither does windows or Mac) and at least to me, seems to have more eyes on its code compared to Microsoft 230k employees (some are not even programmers) or apple 165k. All of these make me believe it has a robust and rigid security system that helps mediate the damage that malware can cause.

With these in mind it makes me think, is Linux really secure because of its user base? Or if you were to put all 3 OS on the same playing field that Linux would still come out on top? Is there other things in Linux that I may have missed that contributes to its security? Thanks.

https://redd.it/1jrtgkf
@r_linux

Finally solved a 10 year battle with multiple monitors today.

Like many, I've struggled to get multiple monitors working cleanly in Linux. I'm an Arch guy (love it) but it's been monitor grief since I can remember over the last twenty years.

Today I won.

I'm running four monitors cleanly that survive reboots and sleep.

I'm running an old Thinkpad (T430). Trusty warhorse that still runs better and faster than my top of the line brand new Windows work Thinkpad.

My battle was always that I could get two monitors working via direct connect from HDMI or Displayports. When I tried to run a third I'd often get wierd errors from xrandr/arandr. It would just fail to initialize the third monitor.

Once it a while it would work but never consisistently.

I've tried USB Displaylink connections, that then convert to HDMI but again, it was one off success for one monitor but wouldn't survive a reboot or would be so fragile it'd be dead and wouldn't come back after a few days or a reboot.

Maddening.

So I finally fired up an AI to work with me. (lmarena.ai, let me choose multiple models free). After telling it my setup and giving it some of the errors I got in Xrandr, and my Xrandr config it solved it all.

My issues: 1) I didn't have enough system RAM to address all the combined desktop resolution. I had 8gb of RAM. To run the third and fourth desktops I needed more. 2) On reboot, the OS was picking up the USB Displaylinks and randomly naming them VGA-1-2 or VGA-2-3. So it would set a resolution that my first monitor couldn't support sometimes, and set it correct other times.

I upgraded my ram to 16gb and surprise! I could initialize all four monitors. Since on reboot they were failing to launch the second and third it wrote me a noscript that automatically named them correctly in the .screenlayout file that xrandr uses on launch of Openbox (my window manager). If for some reason it didn't name them correctly, it gave me a "happy with desktop?" prompt where if I answer "no" it flips the names the re-initializes. Then it all works. I bet with some more work it could query the hardware somehow but for now I'm happy as I rarely reboot so a quick y/n question once every few months is great as is.

So anyway, I've had this laptop since 2010 ish and today, for the first time, I'm writing this up on four glorious monitors.

Also, the Displaylink model I'm using is "Diamond BVU165" if you're looking for a known good usb adapter.

Hope this helps some others that have struggled like me.

https://redd.it/1jry55q
@r_linux

Will wayland ever get fixed in nvidia?

A couple years ago I started to daily drive fedora, with my 3060ti, but wayland was horrible, flickers, screen crashing, nothing was smooth etc… Long story short switched to the “deprecated” xorg and it works flawlessly (how can something deprecated work better lol)


Recently I acquired a new 5090 for AI workflows and I dont want to leave linux, I was on popOs but couldnt get it to boot. I ended up in nobara but first thing I notice is how bad it performs the typical wayland nvidia experience, flickerig, crashes, unresponsivity etc…

Since xorg is not included at this point in any distro that has the latest nvidia drivers I had to install it manually and… Back to having a smooth linux experience as usual with xorg

So my question is, what did Xorg do right so it works flawlessly after years being deprecated, and wayland being a modern development cant get anything right?
Why did linux community took this approach? Maybe it should be changed completely?

https://redd.it/1jrz0m7
@r_linux

Should there be an LLM Linux?

I just thought of a crazy idea and I think its kinda makes a bit sense.

Hear me out:

1) Majority of the people out there just use a browser or some sort of Electron based app like VS Code which is also available as a Webapp.

2) Almost everything can be done using the Terminal.

3) A LLM like Deepseek R1 is an amazing companion for the Terminal if integrated well.

So I am imagining a Distro with basically no DE. Which just opens a Webview on boot showing an interface like ChatGPT with direct access to the Terminal and the internet. This Chatbot can act as a User Interface for accessing the computer. Just like chatting with a friend instead of using a device.

Tell the AI Assistant toinstall NodeJS and open a certain Project folder and run it using the NodeJS, and it will open the project in your default Code Editor (let's say it's VS Code) and run the code using NodeJS.

It will be able to do almost anything but it will be very lightweight (because it can literally be just like Alpine Linux with a Local Deepseek R1in a Webview) and very user-friendly (because it's literally just like talking to your computer..... can't get easier than that).

All we need is an ecosystem of web based apps which can run locally.

Now I know it's not an OS which suits everyone's needs, like I mean you won't be able to run apps like Blender or Android Studio, but you will be able to browse the web, use the plethora of all the Webapps out there, Code using a local AI Assistant, and basically do everything which can be done using the Terminal through the AI Assistant by your command in simple English language. No need for memorising weird Terminal commands and dealing with the ugly Terminal Emulators.

Maybe we can have some sort of Workspace + Tiling WM kind of functionality for multitasking.

Like press Supper to open a new instance of your assistant in the same Workspace in a Tiling Mode, to which you can ask to open a specific app with a certain setup. And a 4 finger swipe to navigate between Workspaces just like Gnome.

I think it would make a great, simple and snappy OS, if a proper ecosystem of natively running Webapps is made for it. Like we can use the VS Code UI for Text Editor, likewise we need a File Manager, a System Monitor, a Media Player, an App Store, etc.

Maybe we can use Go + HTMX + AstroJS, packaged as a single executable, as our tech stack for our apps, which uses the native Webview to display the UI, just like Gnome uses GTK and KDE uses Qt for their apps.

I don't know, I just think it will make a great, lightweight and very user-friendly OS which is very to port to any architecture and can easily adapt to any form factor. Just randomly brainstorming though.

What's your thoughts on this? How do you imagine an AI First OS?

https://redd.it/1jryh0y
@r_linux

This Week in Plasma: polish and stability
https://blogs.kde.org/2025/04/05/this-week-in-plasma-polish-and-stability/

https://redd.it/1js5d89
@r_linux

Panasonic Let’s Note Laptops. Do any of you use them?

I just discovered these things and they seem like the sort of thing your stereotypical Thinkpad T420, Arch user would like. They have user swappable batteries, thick keyboards, and look old. To top it all off, they have modern hardware without being Frankenpads. Therefore, I’d like to know how many of you guys use them. If you know about them and decided not to, why? Also, how is the Linux support on these? Thanks.

https://redd.it/1js4mn2
@r_linux

Use crosvm instead of qemu for running Linux virtual machines on Linux.

But there seems to be no crosvm in any distribution repository.

Crosvm uses virtio infrastructure entirely, and I think crosvm works well with Linux virtual machines.

But crosvm also seems to have a lot of missing features, which may take a long time to complete.

What do you think?

https://redd.it/1js8a6w
@r_linux

SuperTuxKart fun I guess?
https://redd.it/1js9jp5
@r_linux

Do you have Linux related tattoos or want to do it?

Dunno if this is too nerd thing to do but, I've seen people tattoo "sudo rm -rf /" into it and burst into laughing. Or people doing Tux tattoo, that is so cool. There is also Archlinux tattoos too, HAHA.

Do you have one or want to do it?

https://redd.it/1jse20q
@r_linux

Looking for a command line solution to saving files with special characters off a corrupt drive

Hi

I’ve got a large external hard drive I use for network storage and streaming media off of. The drive recently failed, but fortunately still mounts as read only, and seems that just about everything is accessible

I have some files with at least one “:” character in them, and while I was primarily using rsync -avh to salvage content, it seems that rsync refuses to touch anything with a colon in the file name

So I’m looking for two solutions, as right now I’m having to resort to cp -r, which shows no progress and takes a super long time, and I also want to be sure that I don’t leave anything behind before reformatting the drive

There’s an awesome tool I use for renaming files called mmv, where you can use patterns to rename things in bulk like this (to remove the colons in example)

mmv source/“: ” destination/“#1 #2”

If there’s anything at all like this for copying files, that’d be pretty great, as mmv is not an option since the moment it fails to remove the first matched file off the read only now drive, it bombs out and won’t continue, so hoping anyone might know of a nifty sort of “copy as” tool?

Also, I could probably just ask AI about this last bit, but might as well tack it on here too

I want to be sure I don’t leave anything behind, so looking for a command to run that will return a list of all files in a folder (with recursion of course), which have a : in the file name

For reference, these files are mostly TV shows. So the issue I’ve been having first happens at the folder level, and then again for each and every episode, for which in most cases there are many

In example,

/mnt/drive/TV/Superman: The Animated Series (1996)/Season 1/Superman: The Animated Series S01E01 - Episode Name.mkv”

Because of that, I’m mostly confident in what rsync failed to catch, but also a little concerned that some random episodes within a series that has no : in the folder name, might still have a : in an episode name here or there, and I’m walking myself into a scenario of having a bunch of random gaps that will be super difficult to fill back in later

https://redd.it/1jsehln
@r_linux

BSOD is real
https://redd.it/1jsflfp
@r_linux

This old laptop is from 2011 and runs so flawlessly with Linux!

https://preview.redd.it/qsmtrlv4e3te1.png?width=1366&format=png&auto=webp&s=56f4d4f8aa9205a875a8511af48d529ce18dd928

I'm so amazed by the performance of this laptop in 2025. I can even watch YouTube videos at 720p60 with no lag at all — TikTok too! My girlfriend has a newer laptop from 2017 with either an i3 or an i5, I don't remember exactly, but it runs Linux much worse compared to this one, and I don't know why. It's still using an HDD.

I could upgrade the processor to a newer one from that era — it has an PGA988 socket. Do you think it's worth it? I could also replace the HDD with an SSD. What do you think? (I'm using Antix Linux btw).

https://redd.it/1jsfkfv
@r_linux

Video calling on Linux

I'm a university student overseas and I'm dual booting Fedora and Windows on my laptop, and of course I'm getting sick of Windows 11 and its unreliability. For everything I do on my machine, I've been able to find alternatives or workarounds on Linux, for the Office suite, OneDrive, and other apps and services.

And as stupid as it is, the only application tying me to Windows, is WhatsApp. I know, there's WhatsApp Web on Linux, and other wrappers, but (video) calling is something that I need every single day, and having to restrict myself to mobile is just not possible. And it definitely is not practical to have my whole family change messaging providers so that I can use Linux lol. And neither is having to send a link everytime I want to talk.

Is there any workaround that I can use to get it working, perhaps with Wine? Having a VM running continuously for notifications from this one simple, dumb application just is not feasible.

Thanks lol.

https://redd.it/1jsivx7
@r_linux

Distro recommendation?

Hello, I have used started using linux back in the day with Ubuntu until Gnome 3, then moved to Arc for a bit and eventually settled with Mint.

Then for work reasons went back to windows. Now my personal laptop won't support windows for that much longer and am thinking of going back to Linux.


I need an OS that has long term support so I won't have to update for at least a few years and is secure. In terms of software I don't need much, TexStudio and Org mode are the two that I use the most.

Any recommendations or should I stick with Mint?

https://redd.it/1jsiltv
@r_linux

Switched to Linux from Windows for the first time

After decades of Windows use, I've decided to give Linux an honest shot. I work, consume media, create content, and game. I started with Mint, then PopOS, and have landed on cachyOS. I've used it for about 2 weeks now. Overall, I'm liking Linux and will be sticking with it for at least this month. Here are my main gripes/criticisms about Linux:


1. Drive auto mounting, this should be as simple as a right-click, auto mount on boot checkbox. I didn't see this in Dolphin nor Nemo but I could be blind. A new user should not have to deal with modifying Fstab.

2. Keyboard shortcuts and bugs. I've found a lot of inconsistencies when it comes to shortcuts. When I was running Cinnamon, I couldn't create custom shortcuts using Ctrl + shift + any number. I switched to KDE plasma and while I love the alt+space search in concept, it doesn't trigger half of the time. I'm sure I could investigate it further and maybe solve it but this stuff should work out of the gates.

3. Native intuitive key swapping/modify tool. I noticed that some distros/desktops allow me to easily swap specific keys but it was weirdly difficult to swap caps lock to right alt. It was harder than I thought it'd be to solve.

4. A small thing but for Linux noobs, the term "package" is confusing. The difference between a package/program/application might be important for the tech folk but if Linux is to be used by my boomer parents, just calling it an app store might be right for certain distros.

5. Bug where login credentials don't work suddenly. Idk what causes this but it seems to happen on screensaver timeouts. Restarts fix it. I encountered it on Mint and cachyOS. Probably human error.

6. Right clicking on items in the task bar doesn't give me the opportunity to go to properties for that item. How can I verify where the shortcut goes? This could be a kde thing.

I suspect I'll get a fair amount of hate here since a lot of this is sure to be my ignorance. Please be nice.

https://redd.it/1jsknsy
@r_linux

I am trying to switch, but it’s so hard when things don’t work

Just a little rant. I’m aware that there may be solutions to these things. I need to get this out somewhere.

I have a Raspberry Pi running a media server. All of the media is stored on a fairly old USB HDD. It’s on its last legs, and I have already ordered a new SSD to replace it. I was trying to open a Pi-Hole config file with the built-in text editor to see if I could add some local DNS CNAMEs faster than using the web interface. The entire system froze trying to open the file. Wouldn’t do anything for over an hour. I hard reset the Pi, and my USB HDD suddenly wasn’t showing up as a drive.

The only thing that worked was plugging it into a Windows machine. It repaired the drive immediately. Plugged it back into the Pi and it worked again as normal.

Another time not too long ago, I installed Proton VPN to my Pi. With the VPN on, I realised that I couldn’t access any of my media since, obviously, it changed the IP address of the host. So I uninstalled it. Suddenly, the entire system couldn’t access the internet at all… I unknowingly made the fatal error of leaving the killswitch on before uninstalling it. The only solution I found after days of trying to fix it was formatting the entire OS and starting again.

How am I supposed to make a complete switch when things like this happen? I have learned some basic terminal commands, I watch videos about it all the time, learned how to use Docker, learned networking stuff like opening ports and setting up a dynamic DNS address, and so on… and then things just inexplicably fucking break. Is what I’m doing already truly not enough to use this system?

As soon as Windows 10 support is dropped, I want to jump straight over and daily drive Linux. I want to get rid of my iPhone and buy an Android, and install Graphene. I want to do it. Privacy, open source, community, accessibility, I’m all for it. And then suddenly a new problem happens, and I have no knowledge or time to fix it myself.

When I search for solutions, I have no idea what it is that I’m looking for, or what the correct terminology is for anything. I’ll find a solution on Stack Exchange posted years ago that I can see straight away is not going to help, and that will be the only result. Was trying to copy files from a hidden directory owned by the root user. I had to spend hours of my life realising that “sudo cd” will never work, even though “sudo xyz” works for almost everything else.

Anyway, rant over. Hope others can relate.

https://redd.it/1jsl88o
@r_linux

I just built my own kernel!

So, I have been messing around with the deeper parts of Linux (the settings program, extensions, wallpapers and tweaks are definitely not enough customization). And I decided to build a kernel. And I succeeded to build a kernel. Time for absolutely divine performance. And maybe good security. And a larger ego.

https://redd.it/1jsuqg7
@r_linux

Apple Z2 Touchscreen / Touch Bar Driver Lands In Linux 6.15
https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-6.15-Input

https://redd.it/1jswf3n
@r_linux

Wine has come a long way

I just wanted to talk about how an awesome piece of software wine is after some problem I've faced. I have a Steelseries Rivals 3 Wireless mouse and as I've became more comfortable with my laptop's trackpad and not playing any FPS games I' haven't been using my mouse for 2 months now. After these 2 months I've downloaded and started playing The Finals and then I just noticed my mouse didn't work with the dongle. First I thought it was a Linux issue so I tried it on my cousin's Windows laptop and it didn't work there. Then I researched online and found out that I could fix it by re-pairing on Steelseries GG app. But that software is only intended to work on only Windows and MacOS. With some disappointment and little hope I tried it to download on my machine and try to run it with Wine 10. And it worked flawlessly! No graphical bugs, no crashes, I just double clicked on the installer and it did the work then the app appeared on my app launcher. This is no different then installing it on windows and this is awesome. Imagine in future versions you can use any app this way!


Just wanted to express my love for this piece of software. Proton is a godsent software but I think Wine itself deserves some love itself too.

https://redd.it/1jt0s7g
@r_linux