Perfect Linux Setup - How Do You Port It?

Imagine you have your setup just how you like it. All your configs, apps, etc...

Now imagine you get a new PC and would like it to have the exact same setup, how do you usually do it?

I used to simply start from scratch, incrementally installing the apps I need onto my Debian minimal until I got the previous state. Then I'd just pull my dotfiles to configure what I could and do the rest manually. For obvious reasons, this is not optimal and I always forget something.

As a pragmatist, I use my PC to work and, while I don't mind playing around with my setup, I don't want to lose hours setting it up every time just to realize I forgot half of the things.

This got me into trying NixOS and while I can appreciate it's capabilities, the learning curve is really steep and I'm not hardcore enough to learn all of this stuff to just get a consistent setup.

So how do you guys do it? What are your approaches for a reliable, consistent setup across machines?

https://redd.it/1k217lk
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What caused you to finally ditch Windows/MacOS and switch to Linux?

I became fed up with Windows 11 because of bloatware, AI crapware, and my concern of telemetry and my privacy. Around November/December 2024, I finally made the decision to switch. I ended up choosing Linux Mint, and stayed on Linux ever since. I'm using Arch as of now, and it's somehow much stabler then Windows. I will never make the switch back, under any circumstances. What what was the last straw for you?

https://redd.it/1k24vyx
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Arch Linux replacing Redis with Valkey

Talk about a backfire from the Redis decision on licensing. Instead, the companies that they were making the change to go against, fork it, pre-change, into what is now called Valkey, and now distros are moving to it and dropping support because of the license change.

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Arch-Linux-Going-Valkey

https://redd.it/1k29sq4
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Porygon Terminal Progress
https://redd.it/1k2bdgh
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¥enOS - A Little "Linux Distro" based on Slax
https://github.com/smiluredev/YenOS-Desktop

https://redd.it/1k2alr0
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Is there a Linux distro for this?
https://redd.it/1k2dobe
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I forgot how bad windows is

Just finished installing windows on my rog ally

It took three hours to install, made me connect to Internet and sign into a Microsoft account, asked what data I wanted to sent to Microsoft (all of them were checked by default) THEN I HAD TO CLICK DECLINE 5 TIMES FOR A OFFICE 365 FREE TRIAL ON MY GAMING HANDHELD THEN A OTHER ONE FOR GAMEPASS and then only then did it boot into windows to then immediately blue screen before fixing itself on the next boot up to have office 365 open again AND ASK ME TO SIGN UP FOR ANOTHER FREE TRIAL oh and also one wrong swipe and you have the most hateful fucking shit from Fox news plastered across the screen. Then had to spend 30 minutes deleting all of the preinstalled shovelware crap and surgically remove edge with the terminal. Compare this to Linux where it booted into a test environment with the USB drive then all I had to do was partition my drive and click install atleast with the distro I used.

https://redd.it/1k2fkdp
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User Evaluation For Ineptness: UEFI Sobriety check
https://github.com/mycroftsnm/UEFIGame

https://redd.it/1k2cwt9
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Love how beautiful the activity monitor is
https://redd.it/1k2i3wc
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Dual-Booting Fedora and Windows 11 (with TPM, SecureBoot and BitLocker) was surprisingly easy

I just installed Fedora on my newer thinkpad. Because it is a work laptop, I did not want to disable disk encryption and secure boot. When googling this, it seemed like there would be some difficulties with this, as all the articles are older and assume some hoops to jump through. The only things I had to do where:

1. Shrink the main Windows partition (worked without issues in windows' partition manager, completely without decrypting the drive)

2. Enable third-party CA for secure-boot in the UEFI (TPM is still on!)

3. Install fedora from a live-usb on the freed space

4. When booting into windows again, put in the BitLocker key once

Now both OSs work, seemingly without issues. Even the fingerprint works on Fedora

https://redd.it/1k2d90z
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Where is Linux at with post-quantum encryption?

The new NIST encryption protocols haven't had a ton of time to be integrated, but some applications have added CRYSTALS-Kyber. For example, Signal added it as a second layer of encryption.

So does anyone have news about where Linux is at with post-quantum full-disk encryption?

https://redd.it/1k2ok2m
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Tired of Snap? Here’s a simple noscript to install Thunderbird & Chromium as real .deb packages
https://github.com/munawarcmd/Linux-Mint-Deb-Package-On-Kubuntu

https://redd.it/1k2s6kw
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How to avoid AI

In the past few months I've been more and more annoyed about 'AI'. I don't want to use it, and i don't want companies using it on my personal data to maximise their profits.

The problem is, it's in everything now, and most of it is proprietary and it is not clear what it does with your data past the point of 'we're training it on your data'. M$/Google/Facebook etc... all shove this crap down their users throat, it's even getting packaged into text editors now.

Has anybody found a managable yet effective way to exist on the internet and avoid 'AI'?

https://redd.it/1k2u27a
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Are there any linux handheld devices that i can use for just reading books and listening to music?

I want to have a seperate device from my phone that (preferably) has a physical keyboard and i just want to use it for books, music and notes.

I saw Mecha Comet which looks pretty cool but is probably going to be an overkill for what i want. I just want a device i can use when i don't want to get distracted on commute.

https://redd.it/1k2tjh8
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Retro-looking DEs ?

I'm very fond of older user interfaces in general, because they're very simple and there's a charm that only they have. How would I go about finding other DEs that could achieve such goals ? Currently I have Trinity on Fedora, but UIs like HaikuOS or other retro systems are very welcome as well.

https://redd.it/1k2vx9i
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Grammar Checking for email
https://lukaswerner.com/post/2024-10-22@harper_plus_aerc

https://redd.it/1k2ycpm
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Linux on LG G7 ThinQ

I'm pretty new to all this Linux stuff and I was wondering if I could get Graphene OS or Ubuntu Touch on my LG G7 ThinQ (2017 I believe) just to test it out in case I want it on my newer phone. I'm guessing its not compatible but lemme know if it is or if you recommend any other operating systems that are similar to those and are Linux based that may be compatible.

https://redd.it/1k2z7ec
@r_linux

Even after using Linux for a decade I made this blunder. Here's how you can avoid it.

In my home directory I had a bunch of zip files I needed to delete, so of course I did this:

rm .zip

Or so I thought. In reality I typed

rm .zip

Notice the difference? A single space. So all my files except those in folders, or hidden files, were deleted. Lesson learned. Here's my advice, add this to your .bashrc:

alias rm='rm -i'

And back up your files on the cloud! I'm sure glad I did.

https://redd.it/1k316jr
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Easter Adventure by grinseengel
https://gamedevcafe.de/filebase/index.php?download/118/

https://redd.it/1k32lom
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Anbernic, manufacturer of popular portable linux emulator gaming consoles will no longer be shipping to US from China.
https://redd.it/1k375et
@r_linux

Shout out to nautilus-noscripts (which, despite the name, work in Caja, Dolphin, Nemo, PCManFM-Q, and Thunar, too)

https://github.com/cfgnunes/nautilus-noscripts

This project is probably my single most used tool outside of the core OS software, and after it saved me a bunch of time yet again, I figured I'd rave about it a bit, if you'll indulge me.

I'm not much of a customisation devotee. I rawdog basically vanilla Gnome with only a few strategic extensions, and that's the way I like it.
But the one place where this radical turn towards simplicity has presented challenges are file managers.

Back years ago in my Windows days, I used to us Directory Opus and loved it, but none of the third party file managers really stuck with me on Linux. But I still missed some of the cool features. Well, this project fills the gap.

It is a set of noscripts that you can invoke from context click to execute all kinds of useful actions. The selection is extensive, and I use the following the most:

- copy filepath to clipboard (the path box doesn't contain name of the specific file, this lets me yoink the path and the file name in one go)
- paste from clipboard as a file (paste text directly into a file, without needing to create the file first)
- list the largest files/directories
- combine multiple PDFs into one (great for merging multiple PDFs into one before feeding it to my document storage solution)
- optimise PDFs/images for web
- strip exif data via ExifTool
- verify checksum files (to verify my linux .isos, naturally)
- convert webps to pngs/jpgs
- paste as hard links (recursively paste whole folder as hard links, equivalent of cp -al, my MVP)
- permanently delete via shred
- git operations, especially pull

There are a bunch more too. If you find the sheer number overwhelming, you don't have to use them all, the install noscript lets you pick what you want.

If you ever felt your file manager needed a bit more oomph, give it a look.

https://redd.it/1k37s2f
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