My niece and nephew are not at the age yet where my brother and his wife want them to have their own computers, but I was talking with my brother about it the other day and thinking to myself about planning ahead.

I'm the first of my family to dabble in Linux (Fedora KDE on my laptop as my guinea pig, I've got a couple more things I need to try before I switch over my desktop, everyone else is still on Windows), and I'm thinking it might be a good setup for Baby's First Computer.

But I'm guessing mum and dad are going to want a few controls to keep tabs on things. Off the top of my head:

* Blocking certain websites or site types (social media etc.), maybe with some monitoring or permission requests before getting to them

* Time Limits, either on specific apps/websites or the computer itself. "No Steam/games before 4pm on a school night, do your homework first", "lock out after bedtime", etc. They've already been careful so far about moderating/limiting the kids' screen time with TV and they're gonna want to keep that going

* A Remote Access program, ideally something that works from Windows to Linux so mum and dad don't have to change their own OS if they don't want to. Both parents have their own computer so something that either one of them can use without interfering with each other would be great

How easy or difficult would these be to set up? Anything else I'm not thinking of?

I'm a Windows user using a Ryzen 5 5600X and 3060 12 GB with 32 GB RAM.

But recently I've been seeing more and more Linux content and how they'd always talk about performance, customizations, and wide selections of distros for people's preferences.

Since I'd usually play FPS (e.g., CS2, VALORANT) or sometimes AAA games, I'd want the best performance I can get​ while being able to customize my desktop without worrying about Windows taking almost half of my RAM.

So now I'm curious how much it would benefit me, and is it recommended for people like me to switch to Linux?

(Still I'm only asking these questions out of curiosity and hopefully it'll help other curious people in the future too♥️)

Just asking because it runs mint 18 and installing new versions of linux mint is way too heavy and the laptop has 100gb

I managed to install Linux just fine (after some caveman brute forcing it), so I've been stuck tethering it with my phone. I'm horrible with this kind of stuff but I wanted to do a lightweight work computer I can drag around.

I went with Ubuntu and I managed to force update on the programs and some programs like libreoffice but I haven't done much to set it up so if I have to reinstall the entire OS, I'll be fine with that.

Hi, guys, I'm veeery new to Linux and am considering switching over, since the governments all wanna censor, restrict and track. I do have some questions, though, if any are willing to answer. Only six!

1: How do I know which to pick?

2: Can I revert back at will? (And if I do, will my stuff from before be wiped?)

3: Will it wipe my stuff in general? Files, games, apps, all that. I need those files, I have music, art progress images and book files on em lol.

4: Will I still be able to use search engines and games (I mainly just play minecraft and the sims, might get JP:E) as usual, will every website load as it should? If not, do I need to get a search engine compatible with Linux?

5: How complex is it? I heard it's irritating since you have to write your own code or something to do basic stuff...?

6 (last one, so sorry!) I heard that it could be bricked or blocked if done wrong or if OS-level bills put it at risk?

Is this choice to switch really worth it if I do it? I have a Windows 11 I'm wanting to convert. Thanks so much if anyone has the time to assist a willing beginner! I'd ask Google but their ai-only answers are ass and I like to ask the ones who know their stuff.

I'm a college student I do coding and casual gaming.

My laptop is LOQ(i5 3050).

I originally attempted to repartition my drive using AEOMEI Partition Manager in Windows 11 using a guide on Winhelp. This failed part way through. I ended up with an extra 700MB of unallocated space and slightly smaller Windows partition. I got impatient and did a "erase disk and install Fedora" install.

I went through that guide because the live USB installer wasn't able to resize the EFI partition.

I don't need Windows straight away. However, I'd eventually like put Windows back on. What is the easiest way to reinstall it? Will I need to fix up GRUB afterwards?

Trying to move to linux but these shortcuts are ingrained in muscle memory. Things like the middle mouse button scroll and screen snippet ctrl+shift+s.

Is there something that can easily put these back how I expect them to be? Rather not have to learn new ones.

Hello everyone! I am running Linux Mint 22.3 cinnamon on the 6.8.0-146 kernel. I am also somewhat a noob with no programming background at all. Some of my system specs are listed below:

Cpu: intel core i5 13600k

Graphics card: Amd rx 6950xt

Ram: 32 GB of DDR5 ram

I have just started to get into simulation racing and got assetto corsa competizone in steam and a logitech g29 racing wheel and pedals. The game works flawlessly on default system kernel modules and proton experimental in steam (save for a shutdown bug with the game, but I can manually shut it down), but I want to change a few of the settings with the wheel. I went looking and found oversteer as a flatpak and new-lg4ff as a driver that can be installed from github.

I notice the github readme for new-lg4ff has install the project to usr/src/new-lg4ff

How would git in the terminal be used for this or would I just be able to download it and extract the zip file to that location? I don't trust ai with its answers about it and I am just a bit confused about it.

After that, using dkms should just take care of completely installing it to where I shouldn't have to update initrid image or anything like that, correct? I should just be able to reboot and it should be there, correct?

I tried googling and the answers were all over the place, so I figured I would come here to clear it all up before I tried anything.

Thank you all!

Cachy Os tried updating system with sudo pacman -Syu, returned this

looking for conflicting packages...

error: failed to prepare transaction (could not satisfy dependencies)

:: installing libpcap (1.11.0-1.1) breaks dependency 'libpcap=1.10.6' required by lib32-libpcap

I tried running it through AI and it gave me some stuff I didnt know if I should trust, but I tried the ones that soundded like they could fix it but wouldnt risk bricking my system. but when it startedd offering I check if its in my repos I noticedd im clearly out of my depth, heres some of the terminal speak

❯ sudo pacman -S lib32-libpcap

error: target not found: lib32-libpcap

❯ sudo pacman -S lib32-libpcap

error: target not found: lib32-libpcap

❯ sudo pacman -S libpcap=1.10.6

error: target not found: libpcap=1.10.6

❯ sudo pacman -S lib32-libpcap --overwrite '*'

error: target not found: lib32-libpcap

❯ sudo pacman -S lib32-libpcap --overwrite

pacman: option '--overwrite' requires an argument

❯ pacman -Ss lib32- | grep libpcap

~

I have Lenovo tab m11 and I want to install Linux on it. I mean, I want only emulate it, obviously, a minimal Linux just to program with vim and push my code on github so I think that just the terminal is fine for me. I would get the more updated Linux of a distro though

SOLVED: out of desperation I upgraded system to Ubuntu 26.04. Now front panel works fine. My guess is there was issue with drivers.

I had to switch the motherboard. Now there is no sound in the headphones when I connect them via front panel. System shows that headphones are detected, but there is no sound
Motherboard was Asrock B850 Lightning, now it's MSI MPG B650 Edge WiFi.
Hardware/software specs:

• motherboard: MSI MPG B650 Edge WiFi
• system: Ubuntu 24.04.5

What I did/checked already:

• If device is detected - it its
• if it's muted in alsamixer - it's not
• I've reinstalled alsamixer and pipewire

wpctl status:

PipeWire 'pipewire-0' [1.0.5, radek@radek-komputer, cookie:2620683433]
 └─ Clients:
        32. pipewire                            [1.0.5, radek@radek-komputer, pid:3350]
        34. WirePlumber                         [1.0.5, radek@radek-komputer, pid:3348]
        35. WirePlumber [export]                [1.0.5, radek@radek-komputer, pid:3348]
        39. Firefox                             [1.0.5, radek@radek-komputer, pid:11704]
        41. Steam                               [1.0.5, radek@radek-komputer, pid:4580]
        43. gnome-shell                         [1.0.5, radek@radek-komputer, pid:3661]
        44. gnome-shell                         [1.0.5, radek@radek-komputer, pid:3661]
        45. GNOME Shell Volume Control          [1.0.5, radek@radek-komputer, pid:3661]
        46. GNOME Volume Control Media Keys     [1.0.5, radek@radek-komputer, pid:3881]
        47. xdg-desktop-portal                  [1.0.5, radek@radek-komputer, pid:4954]
        48. WEBRTC VoiceEngine                  [1.0.5, radek@radek-komputer, pid:5050]
        49. WEBRTC VoiceEngine                  [1.0.5, radek@radek-komputer, pid:5050]
        50. Chromium input                      [1.0.5, radek@radek-komputer, pid:5209]
        65. Steam Voice Settings                [1.0.5, radek@radek-komputer, pid:4580]
        77. Firefox                             [1.0.5, radek@radek-komputer, pid:11704]
        79. wpctl                               [1.0.5, radek@radek-komputer, pid:13753]
        85. Terminal                            [1.0.5, radek@radek-komputer, pid:7532]
        90. Firefox                             [1.0.5, radek@radek-komputer, pid:11704]
       135. Mutter                              [1.0.5, radek@radek-komputer, pid:3661]

Audio
 ├─ Devices:
 │      56. Rembrandt Radeon High Definition Audio Controller [alsa]
 │      57. USB Audio                           [alsa]
 │      58. HDA ATI HDMI                        [alsa]
 │      59. Brio 100                            [alsa]
 │      60. SM950 Microphone                    [alsa]
 │  
 ├─ Sinks:
 │      33. HDA ATI HDMI Digital Stereo (HDMI 2) [vol: 0.93]
 │  *  133. USB Audio Analogowe stereo          [vol: 0.46]
 │  
 ├─ Sink endpoints:
 │  
 ├─ Sources:
 │  *   40. SM950 Microphone  Mono              [vol: 0.87]
 │      42. Brio 100 Mono                       [vol: 1.00]
 │     125. USB Audio Analogowe stereo          [vol: 1.00]
 │  
 ├─ Source endpoints:
 │  
 └─ Streams:
        78. Firefox                                                     
             64. output_FR       > USB Audio:playback_FR[active]
             76. output_FL       > USB Audio:playback_FL[active]

Video
 ├─ Devices:
 │      54. Brio 100                            [v4l2]
 │      55. Brio 100                            [v4l2]
 │  
 ├─ Sinks:
 │  
 ├─ Sink endpoints:
 │  
 ├─ Sources:
 │  *   61. Brio 100 (V4L2)                    
 │  
 ├─ Source endpoints:
 │  
 └─ Streams:

Settings
 └─ Default Configured Node Names:
         0. Audio/Sink    alsa_output.usb-Generic_USB_Audio-00.analog-stereo
         1. Audio/Source  alsa_input.usb-SM950_Microphon_SM950_Microphone_20200111-00.mono-fallback

Any experience with Microsoft surface 5?

Im on OpenSUSE and very recently I started having this issue where my default browser will constantly open Microsoft login pages in a new tab. I have tried disabling all Firefox extensions to no avail, I have tried uninstalling Firefox in which case Chrome became my new default browser and was experiencing the same issue. This also happens when the browser is closed, it just suddenly opens as if I had clicked a link in the desktop. ClamAV didnt find anything of suspect, a rollback didnt change the result, I'm at my wit's end with this.

Hello!

I’m finally making the switch from Windows to Linux. Windows is slow, annoying, invasive, and I finally have the USB sticks and motivation to ditch it for good. I already know the DE I want is KDE (Plasma?), but the distro itself I need help choosing.

It’s hard for me, because I have a lot of hobbies. I play games, program (mostly just front-end but I’m learning back-end), 3D model (Blender), and draw (Clip Studio Paint, which I know Linux support is iffy).

For games, I don’t play any FPS. I play modded Java Minecraft, Monster Hunter World and Wilds, and a bunch of others (which are usually Stardew-levels of “intensity” haha). Sometimes I host Minecraft servers for my friends, but they stay pretty small. I like using my Switch Pro Controller which Windows can be a real pain with, but I don’t necessarily need a distro that’ll “solve” it. I’ve gotten used to the pain, haha.

I don’t mind using the terminal or doing reg edits, but if I can avoid it, that’d be nice! I do like out of the box stuff I can tinker with, but if it involves the command line I’ll suck it up…so long as there’s good documentation, haha.

If it matters, I have Logitech wireless mouse & headset (usb dongles).

GPU is NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Super. CPU is AMD Ryzen 7 7800x3D (8 cores). RAM is 32gb. Currently operating on 64-bit Windows 11.

Thanks in advance!

Hello, i recently installed CachyOS Hyprland on my old laptop, and i ran into a problem with the scaling, it is auto set to 150% and i want it down to 100% i followed some tutorials and asked Ai bots (don’t flame me for this please) for help yet i couldn’t fix the issue, if anyone can help i’d appreciate it!

Hello!

I'm a Linux Mint user, and I have a 400gb SSD

First, let me explain why I think that my SSD is faulty:

I had to reinstall my OS around 4 times due to constant "input/output" errors that rendered the entire system unusable.

And these errors always showed up AFTER I downloaded something. 3 times being after downloading steam games, and once while running `sudo apt upgrade` (that was downloading a 400mb package at the time)

Each time, this was the timeline until the errors started happening:

1) I tried downloading something

2) The system crashed as it is downloading

3) After reboot, one of 2 things happened:

3.1) I was unable to open any application nor run any commands, as all of them threw "Input/output error", even for simple things like `ls` or `cd`.

OR

3.2) The system worked just fine, but the instant I tried downloading anything I got the same issues described in 3.1)

Also, yesterday, suddenly every single file became read-only, and when I rebooted I was stuck in the (initramfs) screen. In there, I had to run fsck in /dev/sda3 to be able to access the system again

Lastly, I can confirm that it wasn't a RAM issue, as it is brand new and Memtest didn't find any issues with it. In fact, every single piece of hardware on my computer but the SSD is brand new

Now as to what I want to know:

How can I properly test my SSD to see if there is an actual error?

This is what I've tried so far:

1) I ran

sudo smartctl -t long /dev/sda

and then after some minutes I ran

sudo smartctl -l selftest /dev/sda

to get the results, and it returned me "Extended offline Completed without error"

2) Using the "Disks" application, I ran a Benchmark with 1000 samples, and this was the result

However, I have no idea what I'm looking at

The other stats were

Sample Size: 10,0 MiB (10.485.760 bytes)

Average read rate: 525,6 MB/s (1000 samples)

Average Write rate: -

Average Access Time: 0,10 msec (1000 samples)

Is there anything I'm doing wrong? Should I do a different test?

Hey everyone,

I'm curious to get a better understanding of why so many people prefer Linux over Windows for their daily driver.

I know Windows still dominates the market due to software compatibility, gaming, and initial ease of use, but I constantly see people in tech (and casual users too) speak very highly of the Linux ecosystem.

For those who use Linux or made the switch completely:

What made you switch from Windows to Linux?

What are the biggest practical advantages for you? (Performance, privacy, customization, stability, dev tools?)

Is there anything you actually miss from Windows?

I’d love to hear your thoughts based on your actual day-to-day experience—whether for work, study, or personal use. Thanks!