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

RISC-V With Linux 6.15 Adds Support For BFloat16 "BF16" Instructions
https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-6.15-RISC-V

https://redd.it/1jt24cx
@r_linux

Whenever I read Linux still introduced as a "Unix-like" OS in 2025, I picture people going "Ah, UNIX, now I get it! got one in my office down the hall"

I am not saying that the definition is technically incorrect. I am arguing that it's comical to still introduce Linux as a "Unix-like" operating system today. The label is better suited in the historical context section of Linux

99% of today's Linux users have never encountered an actual Unix system and most don't know about the BSD and System V holy wars.

Introducing Linux as a "Unix-like" operating system in 2025 is like describing modern cars as "horseless carriage-like"

https://redd.it/1jt2qwa
@r_linux

Turn newly installed Ubuntu gnome desktop into pretty, slick, ready to work one in single command

I created noscript you can run in cli with just one command, no manual download required, that turns Ubuntu gnome desktop into pretty, slick, ready to work one with night light and other slick gnome settings already configured.

This is the WHOLE noscript at gnome_settings.sh. This project just runs this via cli. No cloning or installation required.

#!/usr/bin/env bash

# night-light settings
gsettings set org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.color night-light-enabled true
gsettings set org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.color night-light-schedule-automatic false
gsettings set org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.color night-light-schedule-from 20.0
gsettings set org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.color night-light-schedule-to 6.0
gsettings set org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.color night-light-temperature 4000

# dash-to-dock settings
gsettings set org.gnome.shell.extensions.dash-to-dock dash-max-icon-size 24
gsettings set org.gnome.shell.extensions.dash-to-dock dock-position 'BOTTOM'
gsettings set org.gnome.shell.extensions.dash-to-dock extend-height true
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface clock-show-date false

# hides the trash from dash-to-dock
gsettings set org.gnome.shell.extensions.dash-to-dock show-trash false

# shows apps from current workspace only
gsettings set org.gnome.shell.app-switcher current-workspace-only true
gsettings set org.gnome.shell.window-switcher current-workspace-only true

# reduces desktop icons size
gsettings set org.gnome.shell.extensions.ding icon-size 'small'

# hides home directory on desktop
gsettings set org.gnome.shell.extensions.ding show-home false

# turns off mouse acceleration
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.peripherals.mouse accel-profile 'flat'

# disable "screen locking after period of inactivity"
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.session idle-delay 0

# NOTE: ubuntu specific settings
# disable update notifications
gsettings set com.ubuntu.update-notifier no-show-notifications true

Check full showcase and documentation on github

https://redd.it/1jt4y17
@r_linux

Nefoin - Auto Install Any Nerd Font You Want in seconds via CLI. No Manual Download or Cloning Required.
https://redd.it/1jt520q
@r_linux

Accessing ReFS from Linux

I (the fool) created 2 mirrored drives using ReFS (Microsoft's proprietary "Resilient File System") before switching to Linux completely and realising I no longer had access to 3TB of data. Of all file systems I happened to us the only one that is incompatible with Linux drivers and the only way to read the data was a proprietary industrial solution from Paragon Software. After months of looking up how to read ReFS from Linux, I figured out a solution that doesn't seem to exist anywhere else on the internet: Passing the entire drive (not partition) to a Virtual Machine running Windows. This can be done completely offline and as far as I can see has no privacy implications. Here's how I did it:

1. Install Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) from your package manager
Very useful tool for managing KVM instances and more. I also used it to understand how to get KVM working at all.

2. Ensure KVM works
https://computingforgeeks.com/install-kvm-qemu-virt-manager-arch-manjar/
I used the above link and some troubleshooting skills to get everything running.

3. Download Windows 10 ISO
Windows 11 introduces login issues and install requirements and blah blah blah... Feel free to try with Windows 11 but I found 10 to provide a far simpler experience and since I didn't connect to the internet I wasn't worried about malware and security updates.

4. Install Windows 10 in a VM using VMM
I used OpenSnitch to block internet access, but the network can be configured before launching the ISO for install by checking the "Customize configuration before install" option and disabling the network. Other than that just read the prompts, click next, and wait for Windows to install.

5. Pass the drive to the VM
After the install is complete and Windows 10 is able to boot, shut down the VM. In the top left there are 2 icons: a monitor and an (i). These are tabs, the monitor shows the VM and the (i) shows "hardware" details. Open the hardware tab and Add Hardware. In the popup select Storage from the sidebar, then select "Select or create custom storage". In the text field beneath it type the path to the ReFS drive (eg. /dev/sdb, NOT the partition /dev/sdb1). After that just click Finish.

6. Pass an NTFS drive or partition to move the data to
Repeat the above process for a drive that both Linux and Windows can read. There are ways to make Windows read ExFAT drives, but that's beyond the scope of this post.

7. Run VM and copy the data
When Windows launches it should have both drives visible in the file explorer. You can copy and paste what you want, or use a Robocopy noscript (tutorial) for convenience.



Follow these steps and Bobs your uncle. At least in my case. This may not be the best way but it's the only one I found online. Please comment if something isn't clear, and good luck 🫡

https://redd.it/1jt55us
@r_linux