A reflection from a Linux fan.

I wanted to post this in Linuxsucks sub but it got rejected (idk quite why). So ill try here so its not wasted.

Hi, i'm from a third world country.
My machine is a Laptop HP Pavilion TS 10. You can search its specs online. I'm glad I have linux bc this laptop comes with windows 8.1 and ITS A NIGHTMARE. Opening a right-click menu sometimes could take minutes. Opening a browser? Death. Seriously it was bad.

I can even edit video in my laptop with Kdenlive! And I can have a browser with several tabs open at the same time! (Though, I edit in a 480p video resolution that its borderline unacceptable for today standards, but its better than nothing, in windows I could not have done nothing, and my last video was still well received). My distro is Debian 13.

Performance its the only thing (according to my user needs) where Linux beats the SHIT OUT of Windows. For a lot of other features its worse and outdated to today standards (though Mint has done a great work for making you use the terminal less, but it is still not perfect).

Microsoft has put a standard of the knowledge you need for using your computer, and that standard is not going to dissapear. We cant really expect a lot of people to use the terminal when they would need a video tutorial and/or get help from the 'tech-savvy' member of their family for something that could be solved with gui in windows. Is that because they are dumb? NO! Its because nobody is born knowing everything.

Like imagine you are a newbie and your distro comes with openbox and you need to configure its hotkeys. You search on internet and your solution is in editing the rc.xml. A text file. with a LOT of text within. And kinda hard to read...

Linux is not only for programmers, I know, but in this situation you would need to be familiar with certain aspects of programming logic in order to edit this file without having done it before. Knowing that the shit that haves this weird <> symbols are "open and close tags". The computer needs then bc thats how it can differentiate between one option and another. Also, be sure that you write those tags respecting uppercase and lowercase bc the computer is not a human, letters are actually numbers and 'a' is a different number than 'A'. AND the closing tag needs the '/' symbol bc if not you are NESTING another tag.

???

And I say this as a Linux lover. This is not a problem for me bc I am (not beating the 'Linux is for programmers' allegations) a programmer and on top on that I am a tech enthusiast. I also from some time ago I have fallen in love with its philosophy, so I am not moving from Linux. But for a non-nerd user, I think we still have things to do.

A lot of people can learn, sure. But we can't really ask a lot of people to do it, bc again, Microsoft has put a big standard for user experience.

So, if a Linux dev is reading this: please consider making a GUI for your utility. I think tha could be a grain of sand for making Linux more comfortable.

And sorry if I come off as a bit smug or smth. My english expression abilities may not be the best, and I assure you my intention is not hating or creating animosity.

https://redd.it/1p2avto
@r_linux

Dell Now Shipping Laptop With Qualcomm NPU On Linux Ahead Of Windows 11
https://www.phoronix.com/news/Dell-Pro-Max-With-Qualcomm-NPU

https://redd.it/1p2ih42
@r_linux

Linux 6.18 Sees Late Improvements For Xbox Ally, Lenovo Legion Go, & Alienware Laptops
https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-6.18-x86-Plat-Near-Final

https://redd.it/1p2j1q0
@r_linux

Firefox now supports the Freedesktop.org XDG Base Directory Specification.
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=259356

https://redd.it/1p2tcq3
@r_linux

ClamAV Signature Retirement Announcement
https://blog.clamav.net/2025/11/clamav-signature-retirement-announcement.html

https://redd.it/1p2zbjr
@r_linux

HP/DELL disable HEVC on some of their laptops

Dell and HP are apparently shipping (some) laptops with HEVC hardware decoding disabled - see the writeup in Ars.

These models are mentioned:

HP ProBook 460 G11
HP ProBook 465 G11
HP EliteBook 665 G11
Dell 16 Plus 2-in-1

It's not clear how this is done. I would hope software, but both these companies have disabled stuff in hardware before.

Can anyone with (access to) one of these confirm if HEVC hardware playback works in Linux?

https://redd.it/1p2zwl5
@r_linux

Exploring the Fragmentation of Wayland, an xdotool adventure
https://www.semicomplete.com/blog/xdotool-and-exploring-wayland-fragmentation/

https://redd.it/1p2wr7n
@r_linux

Built a tiny high-performance telemetry/log tailing agent in Zig (epoll + inotify). Feedback & contributors welcome

I’ve been hacking on a little side-project called zail — a lightweight telemetry agent written in Zig that watches directories recursively and streams out newly appended log data in real time.

Think of it like a minimal “tail-F”, but built properly on top of epoll + inotify, no polling, and stable file identity tracking (inode + dev_id). It’s designed for setups where you want something fast, predictable, and low-CPU to collect logs or feed them into other systems.

# Why I’m posting

I’m looking for early contributors, reviewers, and anyone who enjoys hacking on:

epoll / inotify internals
log rotation logic
output sinks (JSON, TCP/UDP, HTTP, Redis, etc.)
async worker pipelines
structured log parsing
general Zig code quality improvements

The codebase is small, easy to navigate, and friendly for new Zig/system-level contributors.

# Repo

https://github.com/ankushT369/zail

If you like low-level Linux stuff or just want a fun project to tinker with, I’d love your thoughts or contributions!

https://redd.it/1p2ze27
@r_linux

TUXEDO scraps its Linux-based Snapdragon X Elite laptop — says the SoC "proved to be less suitable for Linux than expected"
https://www.windowscentral.com/hardware/qualcomm/tuxedo-scraps-its-linux-based-snapdragon-x-elite-laptop-says-the-soc-proved-to-be-less-suitable-for-linux-than-expected

https://redd.it/1p36b83
@r_linux

sxbar v1.0 release
https://redd.it/1p390ol
@r_linux

ZorinOS 18 has reached over 1 million downloads
https://redd.it/1p3bb9d
@r_linux

What do you reckon this will mean for switching to Linux on Windows PCs?
https://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft/windows-11/microsoft-is-raising-the-bar-and-making-major-changes-to-how-drivers-are-built-and-verified-on-windows-11-heres-the-important-details

https://redd.it/1p3av58
@r_linux

Linux 6.19 To Add Support For The Realtek RTL8125K
https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-6.19-Realtek-RTL8125K

https://redd.it/1p3cjol
@r_linux

Helping Valve to Power Up Steam Devices | Igalia
https://www.igalia.com/2025/11/helpingvalve.html

https://redd.it/1p3fwva
@r_linux

I'm worried about Flathub packaging and reviewing

I'm a huge fan of Atomic (immutable) distros. I love the way it's more build in layers. Like your OS is basically an image, that can be pushed towards any device pretty easily, and reverting that image is pretty easy.

On the desktop I use Fedora Kinoite, and used Silveblue, Aeon and uBlue as alternatives. I'm pretty comfortable in using Flatpaks instead of installing packages, and for CLI stuff it's mostly Podman to run containers.

However their is something that makes me feel worried. A lot of packages on Flathub are community supported, instead of the actual developer(s) providing the build. This means you'll end up in the same situation as using a traditional package provided by the distro. I'm already seeing people dropping maintenance because of lack of interest, difficulties to break the sandbox when needed (IDE tools for example) and depencies that never get updated (even developers is using different ones).

It makes me think if Flatpaks are really the answer. I love the idea of them, but I always compared them to Docker images but for usage with a GUI. But when you look more closely, they are pretty much the same as any other distro package (or worse when they break the sandbox to make it work). I know it's offers SDKs and other integration, but I'm worried Flatpak doesn't offer anything useful for developers right now? Why aren't developers picking up Flatpaks?

I would really like to see some different approach, especially on Flathub. If it's not maintained by the developers, why not list the people that actually do? Why don't show any information on Flathub of the actual dep tree? Why not provide easy version control, multiple channels (like F-Droid on Android), etc. it's all possible, but it seems very pushed away. For the manifest, I have to go to another tab, and lookup the GitHub repo for it. Many things like SDKs aren't even listed.

I know an user needs to have an easy approach, but it feels way less intuitive compared to other tooling.

Yes I'm overreacting, but Flatpaks aren't apps you'll find in the Apple App Store. They are 90% unofficial at the moment, meaning the original developer doesn't give any support in most cases. It makes me feel no one is adopting them, while everyone is creating their own container images. I know it's different tech, but I don't understand it.

https://redd.it/1p3ckad
@r_linux

I just told them how to make circles in GIMP
https://redd.it/1p3lwnv
@r_linux

Calling on whatsapp finally on linux?

Whatsapp has migrated its windows client from a native client to a webview wrapper, but this version of whatsapp web does support calling unlike the browser whatsapp web.

Since the new client is web based shouldn't it be easy to port to linux or run using wine so that Linux users can finally have calling on whatsapp?

https://redd.it/1p3oaoj
@r_linux

[OC] releasing nimki 0.1.3
https://redd.it/1p3oipm
@r_linux

[4232x2688] Arch wall hi res link(https://ibb.co/album/0R3tWf)
https://redd.it/1p3r8bu
@r_linux

what's a simple command or noscript that felt like a magic trick once you learned it?

We all have that moment where you discover a command or a one-liner that saves you from a ton of manual work and you wonder how you ever lived without it.

For me, it was learning about rsync -avP for large transfers. Going from a blind cp that could silently fail for hours to seeing the progress and file list in real-time was a game-changer.

A close second is cd - to jump back to the previous directory.

https://redd.it/1p3ry8g
@r_linux

App development for linux

Hi folks, hope all are well..

I have flirted with linux for years now, running mint on an older laptop and trying to get into it on desktop, then falling back to the dark side (Win) to play games, c++ development and some apps that just womt run - eventually just reverting away from linux as i found myself booting win all the time (dual boot is lame - too easy to just give up)

Thanks to valve gaming is better than ever (and still improving), ms going the other direction and recent events makimg me run linux only and take the bull by the horns (but ms behaviour is off topic).

I wanted you to have an idea where i come from and why i ask this question. I learned the basics of c++ from books and i learned Win32 from help files, internet dev sites and example code. Then i started learning sdl (and it seems sdl2 at the same time) - now their going sdl3 and im out of date again, oh lordy..i have struggled over the years being both student and tutor not knowing enough to be tutor

Now i find myself on linux with no win32, no commom controls for gui and a big heap of libraries out there, glade, gtk, gtkmm, qt and many more. Im not a tutor and im confused. Many say qt, but many talk of licencing issues.

What im looking to do is create a window (maybe sdl2, maybe have to learn sdl3?) and attach controls: text, edit, buttons, tabs, lists, etc.. specifically im looking to have tabs (loke tabs in firefox, but permanant with edit, buttons and lists within them).

Admittedly, ive not actually coded that much lately and a tad rusty, plus ive landed in a place where the tools i know dont exist - at least in a way i know..

Ive looked for forums and while ive found a few, theyre either general linux topics, deep development (kernel, etc) or distro level aimed at using a particular distro (i chose to install pop os after problems with fedora). Nothing that seems to suit whay im trying to do.

Is there a logical place to get help with creating gui apps on linux (with controls?) or swim the murky waters till you learn or drown? Is 'r linux' even a good place to start for advice?

I thank im advance for any that took the time to actually read this and for any advice that may be given as atm im really quite stuck.. maybe im too out of date with what i think i know - computers and development move on so fast..

https://redd.it/1p3s518
@r_linux