The SSL certificate for the Manjaro forum has expired... again. Right as Stable drops.
https://redd.it/1pirj8g
@r_linux

Valve: HDMI Forum Continues to Block HDMI 2.1 for Linux
https://www.heise.de/en/news/Valve-HDMI-Forum-Continues-to-Block-HDMI-2-1-for-Linux-11107440.html

https://redd.it/1piu0vs
@r_linux

"Rust in the kernel is no longer experimental — it is now a core part of the kernel and is here to stay."
https://lwn.net/Articles/1049831/

https://redd.it/1piuk59
@r_linux

Is there a compelling reason for Fedora to perform updates in this Windows-style manner? Why can’t the system apply updates while it’s running, so that the reboot doesn’t involve any waiting because everything has already been completed?
https://redd.it/1piwkia
@r_linux

Age verification bills & KOSA being voted on in committee this Thursday

The House Energy and Commerce subcommittee that oversees these age verification bills are voting THIS THURSDAY aka tomorrow to pass these bills onto the full committee, and then the full House. We need to drive as much opposition as we can on these bills, specifically KOSA, the App Store Accountability Act, and honestly any age verification bill which many of these are.

This is how to do it and how you can fight back on age verification

1) Call the house representatives in the committee. Use a call noscript if you don't know what to say

You can do it two ways. You can either go to the subcommittee site and call each one here: [https://energycommerce.house.gov/committees/subcommittee/Commerce](https://energycommerce.house.gov/committees/subcommittee/Commerce)
(scroll down, click their names, phone number is under their picture)

or you can use this call noscript to connect to members here: [www.badinternetbills.com](http://www.badinternetbills.com/)

you can use this call noscript too: [https://docs.google.com/document/d/1IyBUe6frFGF44rJQU3TahZ5zyG3tC7jai\_hPneAKlnM/edit?tab=t.0https://docs.google.com/document/d/1IyBUe6frFGF44rJQU3TahZ5zyG3tC7jai\_hPneAKlnM/edit?tab=t.0](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1IyBUe6frFGF44rJQU3TahZ5zyG3tC7jai_hPneAKlnM/edit?tab=t.0https://docs.google.com/document/d/1IyBUe6frFGF44rJQU3TahZ5zyG3tC7jai_hPneAKlnM/edit?tab=t.0)

2) Spread the word! We need as much mass opposition as we can right now. So many stakeholders, policymakers, and politicians etc are looking at public opinion on these bills. We were able to stop them before because of the mass opposition, we need that again. Let everyone you know know. Spread the word!

Link to see the bills for Subcommittee Markup: https://x.com/BenBrodyDC/status/1998516632176775647

https://redd.it/1pj744o
@r_linux

All time total visitors by OS on website isitreallyfoss.com
https://redd.it/1pjb5nb
@r_linux

Tor Ditches C for Rust and Your Privacy Benefits
https://www.sambent.com/tor-ditches-c-for-rust-and-your-privacy-benefits/

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

Switching from Win11 to Ubuntu 24.04.3

Hi folks! Writing my experience here about switching from Win11 to Ubuntu for my personal laptop.


I have been using the Zenbook S14 UX5406SA for almost a year. I was running Windows 11 on it because it was serving my needs pretty fine. I use my laptop for my personal chores (web browsing), light gaming and watching videos online.

As I started traveling and started using my laptop more and more, I noticed that the standby battery was absolutely terrible. It would easily drain >5% per hour. I messed with Windows power settings to limit the CPU %age usage, killing all background processes and uninstalling all the programs I don't need. I did see a slight bump in the battery life, but it was still a far cry from being satisfactory.

I did some research on how Ubuntu compares to Windows in terms of battery life, and it was mostly mixed. Instead of going all in I decided to split my 1 TB partition into two halves, keeping the Windows Boot Manager in case I would need it in future for Windows-specific tasks.


Installing Ubuntu was the standard affair. Getting the USB drive ready, booting into the installer, the installation process itself, was very fast and hassle-free. I was installing on a separate partition on the same drive, for which I had to turn off the Bitlocker encryption first. Slight annoyance, but worth the effort.

Launching Ubuntu desktop made me realize how clean and utilitarian the UI is compared to Win11. There are some shortcuts that I had to get used to, but overall I absolutely love it. I moved the dock to the bottom because I use MacOS extensively at work.

I decided to start installing the necessary apps, starting with Steam, Spotify and Chrome. I got to know that there are multiple ways to install the applications. Either you install it from Snap, if it is published at all, or you get the Debian package. It's a slight bit confusing, but okay.

Throughout the entire affair I noticed one thing, the battery usage was **amazing**. I managed to get full 8 hours of heavy usage on a full charge compared to 4-5 on Win11. In addition to that, the standby battery usage is phenomenal. I barely see any dip in the battery after I put the laptop on standby. This is the closest I have seen this laptop perform when compared to to MacOS.

With all that, everything is just snappy. Apps launch instantly, wake up from standby is insanely fast, all actions are very responsive.

Here comes the headache part. I was noticing that Steam and Spotify were blurry. I looked this problem up and it turned out that Ubuntu 24.04 switched to Wayland display server as it's default option. Apps that were written with X11 in mind, like Steam and Spotify, do not scale to HiDPI screens in Wayland mode.

Upon switching to XOrg from the login menu, everything looked crisp. But there was a problem, some games in Steam didn't have audio output. After some tinkering here and there, I found a very hidden post about how PulseAudio driver had problems with multiple audio sources. After almost a day of debugging, I found this samaritan posting a fix about increasing the buffer size here. Rebooted, and voila. That did the trick! All games are working perfectly with audio intact.

For the folks who are on the fence:

1. Ubuntu is extremely lean and fast. If your primary concern with Windows is the bloat and you want to trim it out, Ubuntu is a no brainer.
2. It's still an OS with programmers in mind. If you have zero programming experience, and do not wish to spend the time to figure the problems out, stay away. Ubuntu has come a far way, but it still needs some commitment from the users to configure the drivers as per your hardware. It doesn't work out of the box as well as Windows.
3. It's the closest thing to MacOS you can have on a Windows machine. If you want a good balance between regular desktop OS and a programming environment, it's the best choice you have in market.
4. App compatibility **may** be a problem, do research if the

applications you use on a regular basis are available on Ubuntu and work as expected.

Hope this post helps!

https://redd.it/1pjlnl9
@r_linux

I Made Something For Linux :)
https://redd.it/1pjv0za
@r_linux

FLOSS Shop (Germany) sells Librem 5 for only 599€ (+shipping)
https://www.floss-shop.de/en/electronics/devices/78/librem5-mobil-phone

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

Guys, who else has this strange obsession with trying old Linux distro releases?
https://redd.it/1pjxzg9
@r_linux

Chess-tui: Play lichess from your terminal
https://redd.it/1pjz2o5
@r_linux

DMS 1.0 "The Dark Knight" Released | Dank Linux
https://danklinux.com/blog/v1-release

https://redd.it/1pk0arq
@r_linux

Is Linux becoming mainstream now?

I noticed how many people are starting to change their preferences from Windows to Linux due to latest news about Microsoft's ending of Windows 10 support. An how Windows 11 is bad. I'm also impressed how Gabe Newell is developing so fast Linux Gaming. Steam Deck is great portable console. I used virtual machines to try various versions of Linux. I liked Ubuntu and Manjaro.

So, I believe Linux's situation may soon improve well. I remember times when anime culture in Russia was heavily marginalized and felt so alien for ordinary citizens. Now Russian streaming services are gaining more profits from Japanese animation, especially due to western sanctions. It became mainstream here. So, I bet Linux may get such attention in future. I'm impressed how Linux community improved very well and made a great work. I heard that Linux could now run videogames at more FPS than Windows.

If this so, maybe it's time for Windows to leave throne for a retirement. After all, back in times, old Mac Os was the #1 operating system back in 80s and 90s.

https://redd.it/1pk4oxp
@r_linux

Pop!_OS 24.04 LTS with COSMIC Released: A Letter From Our Founder
https://blog.system76.com/post/pop-os-letter-from-our-founder

https://redd.it/1pk7vef
@r_linux

Affinity for Linux? Canva's next big move could reshape the desktop software market
https://techcentral.co.za/affinity-for-linux-canvas-next-big-move-could-reshape-the-desktop-software-market/274861/

https://redd.it/1pk7rwg
@r_linux

KDE Gear 25.12 released!
https://kde.org/announcements/gear/25.12.0/

https://redd.it/1pk8viv
@r_linux

I'm running Gentoo with a portable backup git, pkg registry and s3 bucket on a repurposed Pixel 6 android phone
https://redd.it/1pkdgqz
@r_linux

Why is the sensor support so poor compared to Windows (HWiNFO) and how do we change it?

Currently reading information about temperature, voltage, power draw, fan speed ect on Linux can be quite spotty and almost always less detailed than on HWiNFO on Windows such as with power draw (as far as I can tell there is no easy way to view the wattage consumption of different components in the system).

My understanding is that sensor data is generally exposed through /sys/ files by kernel drivers which communicate with the hardware directly under the hood. Running lm\_sensors on my laptop mentions that "thermal management is \[often\] handled by ACPI rather than the OS" so this also indicates to me that some sensors are interfaced through ACPI. I'm not sure if there are any other sources of sensor data is may or may not be used.

There are two parts to reaching parity with software like HWiNFO on Linux:

# Sensor Data Parity

The first is of course to be able to get access to all of the same sensors. Throwing around some ideas, keep in mind I know very little about what I am talking about so please correct me or provide more context:

* If a kernel driver itself has the information but isn't exposing it then we can patch the driver to expose /sys/ files to userspace. This was briefly mentioned here: [https://community.frame.work/t/responded-sensors-availability-linux-vs-windows/47416/8](https://community.frame.work/t/responded-sensors-availability-linux-vs-windows/47416/8). My initial thought would be that there would be a bunch of info for components that are commonly used in enterprise (such as certain CPUs). I suspect this approach is probably more viable for components such as CPUs or GPUs.
* In a lot of cases there may just not be any vendor support or documentation, I suspect this is the problem for a lot of things like fans. In this case we may have to make use of the work HWiNFO has done on Windows. This could be done by reverse engineering how HWiNFO works (either by snooping communication with hardware or looking at decompiled software) but I suspect this would be a tedious and manual process that is just fighting an endless uphill battle, far from a solution that could "just work" like HWiNFO does. I imagine software such as WINE is out of the question since HWiNFO likely calls Windows only drivers that do not exist on Linux or ACPI calls that probably are impossible to get working for some reason.
* Request hardware companies to better support Linux. I think this is unlikely for most cases where there isn't already an expansive effort to support linux by these companies.
* Some kind of communication bus fuzzy search (such as by using i2cdetect). I think lm-sensors does this to an extent but I don't think it does much in most cases and can potentially cause issues.
* In some cases a kernel driver does exist but is obscure and not enabled by default or lacks support by frontend software. I experienced this with my laptop 7535U of which I can use the zenergy (amd\_energy fork since I couldn't figure out how to easily install amd\_energy) driver to view per core energy usage. I had to install this driver myself and no frontend software that I used seemed to support it.

# A comprehensive frontend

While there are a couple frontends for different sensors there is none nearly as comprehensive as HWiNFO on Linux. This is in part due to the aforementioned lack of sensor data but possibly also because the software that I've seen is often targeted at specific types of sensors rather than as a centralized hub for nearly all of them (also see point about zenergy above). Getting the above done seems to be the biggest bottleneck but I'd be willing to write a GUI (with CLI fallback) myself if it comes to it (probably in the iced toolkit).



# What can we do as a community to improve the situation?

Is what I said earlier correct?

If so how could I or anybody else get started with say reverse engineering a sensor or creating a patch for a kernel driver. What resources are available to get started?

DISCLAIMER: No, this is not

LLM written. I handwrote it in VIM in like 40 minutes then spellchecked it. I also made a post in the Arch Linux subreddit with a different noscript which I changed in this post because I think it made people think that my post was LLM written.

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